It has been awesome so far for me to work here with two women together. I can teach them math, English, basic hygiene and share some Bible stories. I love to have time for them to explain things thoroughly, if needed over and over again, and to see them improve. Despite the obvious language barrier – I don’t speak any Thai and their English skills are very limited – it works out well to communicate with them with the help of Google translator. And besides that they have a blast with me trying to pronounce Thai words. You can imagine, my teacher heart is thriving here.
Samaritan Creations, Beautiful Creations Bakery
Samaritan Creations, Beautiful Creations Bakery
Samaritan Creations, Beautiful Creations Bakery
Samaritan Creations, Artisan Shop
Samaritan Creations, Jewelry
Samaritan Creations, Jewelry Making
Samaritan Creations, Art
Samaritan Creations, Sewing
Samaritan Creations, Cards
One night, I visited two red light districts, one of them is the largest in Thailand. As a short term volunteer, it is not convenient to do Bar Ministry where you buy a drink for the women and chat with them. The goal thereby is to have a conversation with them what Samaritan Creations is doing. It is to invite them to come visit the bakery and program that they know it actually exists and it’s not just a vague promise. The hope is that they decide to leave the street behind and to empower them for a new life. For having this kind of conversation, the women there need a consistent staff face. So what I ended up doing with two staff and one teammate is a prayer walk through the red light districts. It is emotional to walk down the streets full of bars alluring with happy hours and women half naked standing in front of it or pole dancing inside the bars. Couples are going there for watching sex shows together. People are getting drunk.
A quote says “The eyes are the windows to the soul.”
It is heartbreaking and sad to look into the eyes of women. Eyes who are indifferent. Eyes who reveal that they mentally shut down. Eyes who say that they need to pretend.
The emotion of anger and indignation comes up when I look into the eyes of the customers. Eyes of lust. Eyes of craving desire. Eyes of pleasuring themselves.(Lord, give me mercy for those people as well who are broken too, just in a different way)
I’m struggling with finding words how to properly tell you what I’ve seen. There are no words to describe. You have to experience by yourself to understand.
Human trafficking is modern slavery, not only found in the sex business. Labor work and manufacturing are two examples of other huge trafficking businesses. According to the United Nations, the most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation. More than 50% of all victims are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation, in which the majority are women and girls.
Educate yourself is one way how to start fighting human trafficking. So I want to share with you some facts about the sex trafficking in Thailand, a country in the top 10 of trafficking victims around the world:
- Due to Theravada Buddhist culture a woman will never reach enlightenment. So women are the ones providing money for the families and the men are supposed to be the spiritual provider. In terms of morality it is a higher calling to provide for the family than to work in the sex business.
Little sidetrack to Buddhism principles:
Have the right thoughts
Have the right goals
Speak the right words
Perform the right deeds
Earn a living in the right way
Make the right effort
Be intellectually alert
Meditate
- There are different ways how the girls have been trapped by sex traders:
– Recruiters from the bars go into the villages and offer the families there a good paid job for the girl.
– A majority of the girls at Samaritan Creations got trapped through the pressure of the parents. Parents who dropped them off or sent them.
– Generational expectations “the mum did it”, “the grandma did it”
– Seeing examples on Instagram and Facebook of older friends/girls in the village who are doing it.
– Foreign girls are brought to the brothels by mafia. Dangerous people who promise them an opportunity in Thailand and steal then their passports. If you’re caught by the Thai police without a passport you’ll get into prison. So the only option for them is working for the brothels.
- Most girls in Thailand are not physically trapped. They could just walk away from the street and are free. The bar managers trap them through emotional abuse and financial debts on the bar. The girls have a quota they need to reach on drinks and customer fines every month.
- Another way of being not physically but emotionally trapped is by being under pressure by their families to make money for them to send home. The girls make a decent amount of money in that business.
- Some ladyboys are raised this way from the time of their bottle. A lot of ladyboys come out of the monastery. There is a lot of rape on boys by elder monks. Or a monk decides if a boy’s spirit is more feminine. So there is a lot of confusion of sexual identity ending up in transgender.
- Sex trafficking is illegal in Thailand. However, the government is barely accomplishing the execution of this law and even turns a blind eye to the practice as it aids in tourism. The prosecution rates are low.
- Seventy percent of tourists in Bangkok are men and seventy percent of those men visit a red light district during their stay.
- It is difficult to find the exact number of victims in Thailand, however, it is estimated that there are one to two million people working in this trade. It is estimated that there are three to four hundred thousand working in Bangkok and twenty-seven thousand working in a small beach town, Pattaya. The estimated worldwide number of victims in the sex trade is forty million.
These women work where anyone can see them. But most of us don’t because we decide to not look at what’s happening. Please do! Raise awareness of the situation. Raise your voice against this crime. Because our bodies are too valuable and not made to sell it off for cheap.
Thank you Mary Blake and Currie for editing this blog post and making sure all of these facts are true.
