The air echoed with childrens’ laughter, ripples of freedom breaking the quiet of the afternoon. I felt little fingers reach up and tickle my sides and then the patter of feet scrambling to get away. As I chased after TaTa, I felt like a 3 year old again, lost in the game of tickle tag.
Every afternoon, my heart is enveloped by the joy that radiates from these children. This home of 130 kids is drenched and dripping in love. And as I look into this toddler’s face, I am overtaken with a deep emotion for her. For an instant I think I glimpse what God sees when he looks at his daughter.
But then without intending to, my thoughts wander to the life this little girl could have had, the hellish industry that she was destined for. And as I stare into the eyes of innocence, I simply cannot see it. I cannot envision her as the slave to the perverted pleasure of another, nor do I want to. She is too pure, too full of joy, too innocent. The fiery emotion of anger mixed with disgust wells up from my core. Although TaTa gets to ride a bike through the jungle trees, thousands of girls just like her (as well as boys) across the country are sacrificed to evil.
Last week we visited the hilltown where Tata was born. Immediately I was struck by the contrast between this town and the home in she now lives. The stench of poverty thickend the air. Weary faces peeked out of the bamboo shacks and wandered the eerily quiet streets.
But what was etched in my mind long after we left was not the rotted teeth of the aging woman nor the sight of the one bedroom shacks that housed entire families, but rather the little mansion that stood right smack in the middle of the little huts.
It was the house of the family of Le, the village prostitute. Selling her life away to men in Bangkok, the young girl sent her wages home enabling her family to grow wealthier and wealthier. With the only car in the town parked in the driveway and intricate designs decorating the exterior of the house, the home stood as a powerful incentive to the rest of the girls in the town. They looked up to Le. She was their role model, almost an idol. Every day they walked past the display of wealth and honor that her work brought to her family, and they thought maybe one day their beauty could bring hope to their family’s situation as her had.
Back at the house I swing the baby of the house up into my arms, and whisper blessings into her ear. My mind is perplexed with the deep complexities of the sex industry. It’s not like Hollywood portrays it- little girls kidnapped from their homes into a life of prostitution. So often these girls choose it year after year hoping to honor to their parents, hoping to make a better life for the ones that they love by sacrificing themselves.
Here, this toddler would grow up with dolls and bikes, protected from that life. She would go to school, learn a trade, or even attend university. But most of all she would grow up soaked in love. She would live in innocence.
There is something very special about these girls, and as I run around with them my mind cannot wrap around the fact that more and more of them are trafficked every year. I simply can’t understand it, and most of the time I don’t let myself try. It is too gross to me.
All I know is they are here. They are safe to be little girls, to grow into women, and to one day fight for the other girls in their town and destroy the spreading cancer that is unstoppable unless treated from within.
