Blogging is happening today because I found it. My spot. Unfortunately it's a half hour trip on public transit and then a 10 minute walk from where I live, but it's my spot. In Harrisonburg I had a spot. The corner booth of Earth and Tea Cafe. I always did my best work there. In Fredericksburg it was the window table at Hyperion Coffee Shop downtown. In Spain, an adorable cafe called Ito's. In Argentina, the Starbucks in the Abasto mall. In Italy, the courtyard of the University where I took classes. And in Thailand...Antique Cafe, 3/7 Soi Sawadee 1, Sukhumvit 31, Bangkok.
It's tucked just far enough away from the busy streets that I can forget I'm in the 2nd biggest city in Southeast Asia. It's got soft jazz covers of mainstream music, great iced lattes, delicious cupcakes, inviting taupe couches with an assortment of pastel pillows, interesting art work created by the students who work here, and a tree built into the wall that reaches branches sprinkled with paper umbrellas out across the low ceiling. There is an arm chair on the right-hand side of the cafe, about halfway between the glass door entrance and the cash register where the aforementioned delicious cupcakes are on display in their refrigerated incandescent case, and my butt is planted in it.
The best part about this cafe, though, is that it's not just a cafe. It's actually "socially responsible" and an outreach program for the at-risk youth of Bangkok. How awesome is that? My friend Carter introduced me to it - it's a part of the non-profit foundation DtonNamm (pronounced "done naum") Ministries and it offers job training, counseling and education to young men who desire to leave the sex industry here in Bangkok. There are several non-profit foundations in the Bangkok area that are geared towards reaching out to women in the sex industry, but DtonNamm saw a need for one that focused on reaching out to the many male and "ladyboy" prostitutes in the city. For more information about what they do, click here.
Ok - on to what I was planning to share in this blog entry!
When the team from America was here, we visited a different ministry pretty much everyday. Each time I tried to really internalize my experience there so that I could transmit it to you at home, and I also collected as much information as I could about how you would be able to get involved if you felt led to do so.
One of the places that resonated most closely to my heart is called "Home of New Beginnings" - it is quite literally what it's name describes. It is a ministry that welcomes in women who are in need of a fresh start and new opportunities, allowing them to leave a life of prostitution behind and enter a family environment where they will receive the love and care necessary for them to heal. It started in the heart of a woman named Bonita, who is literally one of the sweetest old ladies I've ever met. She lived the better part of her life in California as an elementary school teacher, and when she and her husband reached retirement, they felt led to make a move to Bangkok to do mission work with the rest of their lives. Her husband already had plans of how he would be involved in ministry before they came to Bangkok, but she was unsure exactly how God would use her here. She shared with us her beautiful story of God stripping away everything she had previously found her confidence in and bringing her to the point of truly having nothing to offer to the people of Thailand apart from her very heart - and it was her heart that was moved by the young women that she saw going to work on the streets and in the bars every evening in Bangkok.
Bonita spent a couple of hours with us sharing her story, explaining how the ministry works and educating us on the sex industry here in Thailand. I thought that I sort of understood how and why things operate the way they do here, but Bonita made me realize how much more deeply complicated the issues are than I ever imagined. Most women who work in the industry in Bangkok are actually from the poverty-stricken eastern part of Thailand called Isaan, which is home to primarily rice farming families. The main contributing factors to why so many women end up in the industry are poverty, lack of education, gender inequality, domestic violence and "materialism." Materialism is in quotes because it is not "materialism" in the traditional sense - yes, money is the most important thing to most Thai people, but not because they desire to accrue wealth - it is because they need basic things to survive that they cannot afford. Bonita explained that in Thai-Buddhist culture, it is often the responsibility of the youngest daughter to support the parents, and that all Thai children will give a portion of their income to their parents throughout their entire lives. So what often happens in the poor farming villages of Isaan is that the parents will do back-breaking work in the rice fields until their bodies are bent over and unable to continue working, and then it falls to the youngest children still living at home to find work to support their parents.
There are many routes through which a young woman can find herself working in a bar in Bangkok - and when I say "working in a bar" it is the less crude way of saying prostitution, just to be clear. Whether the pressure comes from her parents, her husband, brother, or her own hungry children, many women leave for Bangkok knowing primarily that there is more economic opportunity in a city, hoping to work in a restaurant or factory. Upon arriving here, the woman may be unable to find work at all, or she may find work for meager pay that does not generate enough to pay her own bills here in Bangkok, let alone to send home to those she came to the city to work for. Then she will hear from a friend of a friend of a friend that knows a guy who will pay her more...and it all escalates from there. After she starts making enough money to support her family back home, which is far more than she could ever make at another job because of the aforementioned contributing factors - lack of education, gender inequality, her past of poverty and violence - she is deeply convinced of the necessity of forcing herself to continue in the "work" she has found.
Other times a family will have a gambling or drinking debt to a money lender in their village, and a bar owner will go into a village and buy that debt from the lender, and then it falls to the daughter to work off the debt now owed to the bar owner. In this situation, the woman may know exactly where she is headed, but has no way to say "no," or convinces herself that she will only have to work a very short time until the debt is paid. However, once in Bangkok, the bar owner will multiply the debt based on simple things the girl does - she needed new "work" clothes, she didn't get the customers to buy enough drinks, she broke a glass, she gets sick and misses 2 nights of work - until the debt becomes never-ending and the bar owner essentially owns the girl.
The stories are all heart-breaking and while they do not make prostitution "ok," they do help you to understand why the issue is more complicated than just a woman choosing to prostitute herself, or even than a woman being trafficked into the industry. The incidence of trafficking in Thailand is higher than some areas of the world, but it is not visible, and it is primarily of women from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam being brought into the country to "work" under the same pretenses that women from Isaan come to Bangkok. There are other organizations that work primarily to bring light to trafficking situations, but it is far more dangerous and covert than the very visible prostitution and ministries that provide a way out that are all over Bangkok. Also, the visible sex industry in Bangkok between the distinct red light districts makes up only 15% of the industry in Thailand - the rest is all very quiet and exists to serve Thai men, as opposed to the customers of foreign, developed countries who come to Bangkok to party. This is getting confusing, isn't it?
The bars that line the streets of the red light districts are loud and shocking, and all of them are geared towards drawing in the male "sex tourists" between the ages of 16/17 up to 65+ that come primarily from Western countries, as well as India and Japan, with the soul intention of buying the commodity sold in the bars - women. The UN estimates that 60% of the foot traffic that comes through the airport in Bangkok is men who are here for sex tourism. This is a modest estimation, and considering that this is the 2nd largest city in Southeast Asia, that translates to a very large number of customers headed to the red light districts. Prostitution is not technically legal here, but it supports nearly all industry in Thailand and therefore the government turns a blind eye. As Bonita put it - "It's about economics, it's not about love."
So where does Home of New Beginnings come into all of this? Bonita and her team do outreach by building relationships with the women who work in 2 of the red light districts - Nana and Soi Cowboy. Between these two areas alone there are around 20,000 sex workers, and each one of them has a painful past and severe issues with trust. Bonita and her team go to some of the bars early in the evening and just talk with the girls - a woman in this industry will need to see the same person over and over again, consistently expressing care and concern for them, before they would every be able to trust enough in that person to leave their job and go to HoNB. Sometimes Bonita encounters young women who are anxious for the first opportunity to leave, and will come to HoNB as soon as they see the heart of the women who work there who desire to help, and others will build relationships for months and years, but never be able to see the benefit of leaving over continuing to make enough money to support their families back home. Sometimes a girl will experience a reality check about the industry that will scare her into leaving, such as a woman who ended up at HoNB after being gang raped and made her way there knowing it would be a safe place.
Once a woman has left and gone to HoNB, she receives an allowance of $1000 baht/week (about $30), which is far less than she would have made in the bar, and most of which she will send home to her family. They have a safe place to live, and they learn to bake, sew, craft and take English classes. Many of the girls who come to HoNB have as little as a 6th grade education, and so they are put into classes or GED programs to finish their high school education. Some go on to college, such as one girl who just graduated at the top of her class in chemical engineering, and another who is about to finish fashion school and launch her own handbag line! Ultimately the goal of HoNB is first to help them begin to heal their hearts, but also to give them choices for the first time in their lives - if they have a way to support themselves, an education, then they will be able to leave HoNB and continue to work and send money home without earning their money on their backs.
Right now, Home of New Beginnings is home to around 15 young women, and as I'm sure you could have guessed, their biggest need is funding. Home of New Beginnings is currently at capacity because they can only take as many girls in as they have funds to support. They take on all of the girls living expenses, education expenses, pay the girls their allowance (without which girls would be unable to leave the bars), and then have the everyday expenses of running their foundation and paying their two Thai employees. Most girls need only about $150-$250 in American dollars per month in order for their schooling and other expenses to be covered - it is so much less than the cost of living in America. If you feel led to contribute to the Home of New Beginnings ministry, donations in the US can be sent to:
International Foundation
Beginnings Acct. #125.004
P O Box 23813
Washington, D.C.
20026-23813
Home of New Beginnings also asks that you pray for their ministry - pray for healing from past struggles and addictions for the girls, for their hearts as they are integrated into a new environment. Pray for Bonita and the Thai women who work for the ministry as well - that their hearts are fortified against the harsh environment in which they work, and that they would be encouraged by the grace the God has shed on their own lives. For more information on Home of New Beginnings, check out there website by clicking here.
Wow - that was a long blog post! I'm going to reward myself with a delicious cupcake. :) Love from Thailand.
No comments:
Post a Comment