MOSAIC

December has turned out to be a bit of a whirlwind month. We had some bad luck with cars in the first two weeks; first our programme director was knocked off her motorbike and broke her collarbone. This was succeeded within a week by a drunk driver crashing his car right through the wall of the girls’ house. Luckily no-one was hurt in that incident, though there was a certain amount of hysteria on the girls’ part (understandable when someone drives a car through your bedroom wall while you’re sleeping). The driver was apprehended by two policemen, whose arrest was slightly ironic given that they were almost as drunk as him at the time.

So that had everyone a bit twitchy for a while- the screech of car tyres made us all flinch for a week! Luckily we all pulled ourselves together in time for the launch of COSA’s newest project, MOSAIC (Medical Outreach and Social Aid in Communities). As I’ve said before, COSA aims to create solid relationships with disenfranchised hilltribe communities; it is essential for the work we do. With mutual trust and respect, it is far easier to prevent trafficking, as villagers are more willing to co-operate and come to us if they feel children are at risk of being trafficked. In an effort to bolster our relationship with them, COSA and the various village heads held meetings to discuss what help COSA could bring to the villages. The unanimous opinion was to address the pressing need for proper primary healthcare. Many of these villages are, quite literally, off the beaten track, and are time-consuming to get to. As a result, one village hadn’t received proper medical aid for three years. They receive 800 baht’s worth of medical supplies monthly from the local health office; with 700 people in the village, this amounts to just over one baht per person, which would barely buy you a single Paracetamol. The villagers are often reluctant to go to hospitals as they tend to be treated badly given their hilltribe status, and can’t afford the treatment. Thus MOSAIC was developed, with the aim of providing free primary medical care to those who need it.

So we set off on the 12^th of December to the same village where we intervened in the trafficking of twenty-two children back in October (see October update for details). We were accompanied by Bronwen, a highly competent nurse from Australia, who brought with her an arsenal of medicine and equipment donated by the New South Wales ambulance service (even the defibrillator made it through customs, despite concerns it could be used to zap the pilot into unconsciousness). We were a bit apprehensive as to what to expect, given the tendency for villagers to distrust medical professionals, and had a bit of a restless first night (though that may have been partly to do with the cold- I didn’t know you could feel freezing in Thailand!). However, as it turned out, we needn’t have worried. The first morning we drove to the town hall to set up our makeshift medical practice, and were greeted by a long line of people eagerly waiting to be seen. We registered about thirty people in the first hour alone; this consisted of filling out a card with their details, as well as taking a photo to identify them with, as many of them don’t know their exact birth date. The medical process was slow, as Bronwen was our only medical professional, and communication with her patients was hampered by the translation from English to Thai to Ahka hilltribe dialect and back again. By the end of the day, though, we had managed to see roughly forty people, an excellent start considering we weren’t sure if we’d even see that many in the whole three days!

The next day we paid a visit to the local school, and examined the children that the teachers had expressed concern over. Those healthy enough not to be seen took part in some impromptu English lessons from yours truly and another volunteer. Most of the children examined had serious ear infections; as Bronwen put it to us in medical terms, “I’ve never seen such festy ears in my entire life”. Many of them were almost completely deaf, but didn’t complain of pain; apparently they’d had the infections so long they’d become used to it. On our first day, when driving past the school, we saw small boys up to their chests in a stagnant brown pond, fishing for crabs- no mystery as to where these infections sprang from!

On the last day, we saw the remaining patients registered on day one, and managed to squeeze in a few more who trailed in over the course of the morning. Overall we saw 100 people out of the 700 inhabitants of the village. A few people stood out from the crowd, including a man with a massive dent in his skull due to being hit by ‘something’ (he was very vague about the cause of this injury!) while working out in the fields a couple of years ago. He never sought medical attention and as a result had lost his ability to speak. Another was a three year-old with infectious sores all over her body. The most common problems over the whole trip were back pains and breathing problems, the former due to a life of hard labour, the latter from breathing in insecticide while working (the majority of the villagers are farmers). For many people, these problems have been going on for years and there wasn’t much we could do for them other than give them a mask to use while spraying. Despite this, the atmosphere in the waiting room was less that of a doctor’s surgery and more of a social gathering; those who weren’t being seen were laughing and gossiping, and eagerly watching the defibrillator measure their neighbour’s heartbeat; children ran around clamouring for stickers, exclaiming over our ‘beautiful’ white skin and playing with our hair (to the detriment of my scalp). The positive effects of the project were already clear to see by the end of the first day alone; we were no longer the strange bunch of ‘farang’ (foreigners), but friends that people recognised and waved to on the street. In the future, this trust will be invaluable for our work in preventing trafficking in their area. Already we have a young girl on our watch list; parentless, she is frequently moved from household to household. Often children like this are at high risk of being trafficked, but in coming to our attention early on we will be able to step in when or if the need arises.

However, the success of the project also highlighted the need for us not only to continue the good work we’ve started, but expand on it. This village is one of many in the area in serious need of the most basic healthcare, and we only just managed to reach demand this time round. We were asked by a teacher from a neighbouring village why we hadn’t visited their school too, where they have some children who have to walk ten kilometres to school and back again every day, some without shoes. The simple answer was that we didn’t have the capacity or resources to tend to them as well. In the future, once the project is more established, we hope to be able to go on monthly trips to numerous villages, with at least three or four medical professionals as well as translators. For now though, we just have to go by the adage of ‘Do what you can with what you have’; which, unfortunately for small NGOs such as ourselves, is not exactly a treasure trove.  Still, judging by the smiling farewell we got as we drove away, it was evident that the relationship we now have with this village, at least, is priceless (I'll allow myself that little bit of shmaltz seeing as it's the Christmas season!).

The shelter(ed) life

Time goes strangely at Baan Yuu Suk shelter: I’ve only been living/working (lirking?) here for about seven weeks, but it feels more like months. At the same time, I’m shocked to find that it’s already the end of November! Wasn’t it September just the other day? This is probably the effect of having your workplace double as your living space, which makes for a rather unique experience. Yes, sometimes it can feel like you’re never entirely off the clock, as it can be difficult to find the line between work time and play time (having attended meetings in my pyjamas I don’t think I’ll ever wear formal gear again). More often than not, though, it’s like being part of a very large family; after all, it’s hard to remain purely professional with someone who’s seen you in your jimjams. So we function as every family does, each person carrying out their specific tasks to ensure the smooth running of the household. For me and my colleagues-come-roomies, these responsibilities involve things like keeping up to date on sponsorships, volunteers and outreach programmes, as well as organising the girls’ activities and schedule.

The girls themselves have a list of duties; they follow a hefty weekly chore rota on top of going to school and homework. It’s a long, busy week for them, and it’s little wonder that one of our jobs includes chasing them up on their tasks. There has been a crackdown in discipline recently, as the girls have received poor grades for their last semester, so the socks are now being pulled up. Mickey has steadily limited their access to computers, as they seem to spend most of their allotted time on Facebook or Youtube, leaving homework to the last minute. Typical teenage behaviour, of course, but the problem here is that while most households have one or two teenagers to slap on the wrist when they procrastinate, this one has twelve. It’s hard to keep track of them all. They are generally good girls, and do a hell of a lot more than I ever did at their age, but they occasionally need pushed. As Mickey keeps reminding us, we aren’t here to be the girls’ friends. We are, in fact, acting ‘in loco parentis’, as COSA holds temporary guardianship of the girls. This means that we are not only responsible for making sure they do their homework and attend school; we have to teach them the life skills that will help them become responsible, independent grown-ups.

This is especially important when it comes to the Baan Yuu Suk girls; getting them a good education and making sure they grow into adults with minds of their own is essential, because there is always the possibility that they could fall into the life that COSA works hard to keep them from. We try to give the girls as normal a life as possible; it’s one of the reasons that we don’t bring new girls into the shelter until the start of a new school year, to ease the transition. However, the fact remains that these girls are still viewed as ‘different’ by society at large. At school, many other students know them as the ‘shelter girls’; they also come from hilltribes, which brings with it its own stigma. To give an example of a predominant opinion of hilltribes and Northern girls, a well-known Thai businessman recently wrote this on his Facebook wall:

“I really don’t want to say this because it will seem like I look down on women… but the truth is… Northern girls who are uneducated or lazy and intellectually retarded will look for an easy job that normal women won’t do… Mainly it’s prostitution … Therefore, the Northern woman who is devoid of intelligence and extremely stupid yet thick-faced enough to take up the position, you should know what profession suits you.’

This comment drew a lot of attention from women’s rights groups in Thailand, and outrage in much of the north. However, it still represents a substantial chunk of the Thai public’s prejudices against those from hilltribes and the Northern region. It is an image that the Baan Yuu Suk girls may have to struggle against as they get older; after all it’s easier to do what is expected of you than fight against it, especially in Thailand, where you are taught never to question the status quo from day one at school. Add to this the fact that prostitution is still by far and away the fastest way for a poorer girl supporting her family to make money, and you can see how strong a temptation this lifestyle is for young women here. 

And the danger of them slipping into prostitution is not just a problem when they grow up; there is a constant possibility that these girls could leave us at any moment. After all, they are only here through their family’s consent. We do not have the right to keep them here against their will. A while ago, COSA had a girl who had been rescued from trafficking and had been living at the shelter for some months. During this time, her sister was sent to work in a brothel down south. The sister phoned her parents begging to come home, so the father started smuggling drugs to pay off her debt to the brothel. He got caught, and was thrown in jail. The girl wanted to leave the shelter at this point in order to help support her family; Laura and Mickey begged her to stay and finish the last few months of the school year, but she was adamant to leave. If she had finished the year, it would have given her qualifications that would have allowed her to go on to vocational school; as it stands, she now has no qualifications that will get her an even half-decent job, and if she wants to go back to school she will have to start right back at a primary level, thanks to the rules of the Thai education system. The last COSA heard of this girl, she was down south with her sister, working at a ‘bar’. Many people and NGOs make the mistake of thinking that rescuing a child from trafficking solves the problem; it isn’t. It’s only the beginning of the road.

Sometimes, then, the balance between giving the girls a normal teenage life and making sure they don’t head down that dark alleyway is hard to get right. We occasionally have trouble with one of the girls here, who insists on walking home with boys after school, rather than walking home with the other girls. Now, it’s perfectly normal of course to see a fourteen year-old flirting with the opposite sex. However, when you know that the fourteen year-old in question has a mother who is a sex worker, and that she has spent her childhood surrounded by such a lifestyle, you can’t help finding yourself admonishing her just that little bit sharper than perhaps you should. 

You can't save them all....

My first week working with COSA is an eventful one, due to an unexpected occurrence a few days before I start. Mickey and some volunteers were visiting hilltribe villages 4 or 5 hours’ drive away, intended as an information-gathering mission on possible trafficking routes; however, when they arrived at one village, they were informed by the village head that a group of twenty-two children were being held there temporarily before being trafficked down south. After a quick discussion, the guys decided to take action and intercept them.

Now – before you’re carried away by visions of a muscled Arnie lookalike bursting in and carrying away five children under each arm, firing off a machine gun with his teeth, I must tell you, rescues rarely involve actual raids. In this case, the village head told the traffickers to leave town, which they did; the villagers rounded up the children and brought them to the chief’s house, where they were documented and photographed by our guys, before being temporarily installed in houses around the village. When I first heard this, I was very surprised; I may not have been expecting an Arnie showdown, but I certainly would have expected some form of protest on the side of the traffickers, seeing as their precious merchandise was being snatched away. There are two reasons for this lack of conflict: firstly, Thais as a general rule dislike confrontation. When a figure of authority tells you to do something, you do it. The second reason is darker; as Mickey points out to me, for every one kid rescued, there are ten to take their place. For the traffickers, supply is never a problem.

This leads me to a crucial point: trafficking is widespread here because it is viewed as normal. Officially by law, it is illegal, but there are deeper, far more ancient cultural factors at work that say otherwise. To give you an idea of just how everyday this is: the children’s current temporary homes in the village are the very same places they were being kept in transit before COSA intervened. The traffickers, rather than working secretly under cover of darkness as I had imagined, were working out in the open, paying people to keep the children in their homes. It is not illicit – it’s just business, one that everyone has a share of. As I said before, the majority of the time it’s families that sell their children. I don’t want to send the wrong message here; yes, for most of us, the idea of willingly putting one’s own child into such a situation is unthinkable, heartless, cruel. But as Laura, COSA’s programme director, told me a few days into the job, love and trafficking do co-exist; it’s not that parents don’t care about their children, but that they view things in a very different way from the West. We come from a culture where the role of a parent is to protect and provide for their children at all costs. In Thailand, the reverse is true, and it is seen as the child’s duty, even honour, to do anything they can to help their family. Add to the fact that sex work is seen as an acceptable, and more importantly, lucrative way to make money, and you can perhaps begin to see why this has become such an enormous industry.

This was something I found difficult at first; in battling trafficking, we’re talking about changing fundamental aspects of society, and who are we to come in with our ‘West is Best’ mentality, telling people that their way of life is wrong? However, as my very clever friend Mishal pointed out to me, ‘normal’ doesn’t mean that people automatically think it is right. After all, it’s ‘normal’ in Scotland to get paraletically drunk every weekend, and yes, while there’s no doubt it’s loads of fun, nobody who’s experienced a hangover could say that putting gallons of alcohol into your body is good for you - but everyone does it, so it's fine, right? Similarly, while there may be some here who find nothing troubling with trafficking children, there are many who know it is wrong, but considering its normality, do not know of any other way. This is why the work that COSA does is so important: we focus on preventing trafficking through educating communities about alternatives to this way of life.

So, as I was saying before my little aside – the first week at work is dominated by the rescue of these twenty-two children. I spend Monday settling into my new home, and on Tuesday make the journey up with Mickey to the village where they were found. The journey takes a long time, five or six hours, the road winding through jungley hills. The last stretch to the village takes us off the beaten track, literally – we’re jumping around like fleas in a blanket trying to navigate the bumpy path that’s been eaten away by the rainy season. The purpose of the visit is to conduct the first of what will be many interviews with the kids. In the early stages of rescue, it’s important to get details of the children’s origin and family circumstances, for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, it’s to get hold of their families and documentation like birth certificates. This is so we can register them as Thai citizens; being hilltribe children, they often aren’t registered, which creates problems when enrolling them in school. Since we aren’t a law-keeping force or government agency, we need the parents’ consent to take over temporary guardianship of their children. We can also keep an eye on any siblings and step in to offer aid if they seem at risk of being trafficked. Later interviews will focus on more personal information to provide to sponsors (one child sponsored for a year comes to just under £1000, which goes a long way here).

Right now though, the priority is to get them registered and under our custody, as we have emergency funding to tide us over until sponsorships are arranged. The group consists of about fourteen boys and eight girls. A few of them seem quiet, shy and wary, others fairly at ease.  We find out that many of the boys were intended for Chiang Mai as labourers, though one had already gone down to Pattaya for an ‘interview’ at a gay bar. When asked what he wanted to do (believe it or not, sometimes children don’t want to be rescued, feeling an obligation to their family), he replies, ‘I don’t want to work. I just want to go to school’. The girls are more subdued than the boys, and Mickey suspects that a couple of them have already worked in brothels. The way it usually works is that a family will take out a loan from the brothel owner, and the daughter works until it gets paid off. A lot of the time the family, used to the source of income, will take out a bigger loan once the first has been worked off, continuing the cycle.  Contrary to what you might have heard, brothel clientele generally aren’t Western sex tourists; they are usually local men or Asian tourists. Because of the huge rise in AIDS here over the past few years, there’s a growing demand for younger and younger girls, in the belief that they will be less likely to have STIs. Some even believe that having sex with a very young girl or a virgin increases your virility. Usually, however, the children we find are young teenagers, as with this current group, all of whom are above twelve.

Once the interviews are over, we sleep at the village head’s house, after being treated to some amazing food and home-brewed white whiskey - let's just say it's an acquired taste! The next morning, before heading off, we are told by the village head that there has been word of yet another group of kids being trafficked through a neighbouring village. I look at Mickey expectantly, but he just shakes his head. On top of the twenty-two children we have just interviewed, we have another fifty on the waiting list for spaces at Baan Yuu Suk and other safe houses; we have neither the resources nor the capacity to do anything about it. So we have to leave them. This is something I know I’ve got to get used to, or I’ll go crazy; but as we drive home, I remember Mickey’s pronouncement about there being ten children to replace every one rescued, and rather than focusing on the twenty-two children who are now safe because of us, I can’t help thinking about the two hundred and twenty who weren’t so lucky this time round. 

Welcome to Baan Yuu Suk

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of the work that goes on here, you’ll need to know a bit about COSA’s history. It was started in 2005 by Mickey Choothesa - a veteran war photographer and a bit of a legend I might add. Twelve or thirteen years ago, he was covering the drug routes running through Southeast Asia, mostly around Burma, and became aware that a lot of human trafficking was also going on. This piqued his interest, and he began to research and document the trafficking industry, in particular child trafficking. He gave photography exhibitions around the world, and donated a lot of the money from these to various organisations, before deciding to start up his own NGO. At first, it was a project spanning the whole Mekong region of Southeast Asia, but due to the bureaucracy and corruption of local authorities (more on that later), his work became focused on Northern Thailand and the hilltribes that inhabit the region. Hilltribes traditionally have a low status in Thailand; there are six major tribes originating from China, Tibet, Burma and Laos, each with their own dialect and customs. They usually make a living through farming, and are among the most impoverished of Thailand’s population. Here, school is only free up until the age of twelve, which means that a large proportion of the hilltribes have no higher education; and in Thailand, even working in your local 7-11 supermarket is impossible without high school qualifications. Hilltribe children, then, are at an especially high risk of trafficking; selling your body pays a lot more than harvesting rice.

So COSA began to work with these communities, focusing not only on rescuing children being trafficked, but trying to prevent it happening in the first place; this involves educating the communities on anything from English lessons to sustainable agriculture, and providing free medical care and social services. If a child is seen to be at risk of being trafficked, we step in and offer families an alternative; that we will feed, clothe, shelter and educate their child. Most of the time, they accept. This is where the Baan Yuu Suk shelter comes in; at first, COSA worked with another organisation that provided a safe house for the children. However, it quickly became clear that a lot of the money COSA was giving towards the children wasn’t being spent on the kids and that they weren’t being well cared for, quite a common problem with many NGOs here (there have also been cases of paedophiles running shelters). Well, if you need a job done properly, best to do it yourself it seems. So a couple of years ago, COSA opened its own shelter, Baan Yuu Suk.

The shelter, whose name translates as ‘House of Peace/Happiness’, and my home for the next six months, stands on a large plot of land on a quiet road just off Mae Rim. It has a big veggie patch, a mushroom hut and a chicken coop with chickens that…well, are pretty useless, they never lay eggs, I think they might end up in our dinner sometime soon.  There’s a recently built house for the girls that stay here – thirteen of them in all, ranging from five to seventeen. Their old house is in the process of being renovated to make a home for the volunteers and long-term employees. Which means that currently, we’re all crammed into Mickey’s house, which has an office, a large kitchen and living area, and a room that will soon be a library, but right now has six volunteer beds in it. Three of us sleep out in the living space, with some boards put up to give a semblance of privacy. We’re so close together that if I wanted to I could flick the nose of the person in the bed next to me; if you’re not a people person, this place would be a nightmare.

Which brings me to my fellow inmates; we have Mickey, previously mentioned boss/founder/legend. His wife Anna I haven’t met, as she’s in Australia, and will be for a while as she’s pregnant with their third kid and is going to give birth to the baby over there. There’s Laura, the programme director from Colorado, who’s been here about 7 months, and is great; very laidback with a dry sense of humour.  Fah, a local woman, is probably best described as the mother of the house; she cooks, cleans, and makes sure the girls do their chores and stay out of trouble. Rahel is from Germany and is volunteering here for a year. Finally there’s Esther from Holland, who’s doing her social work internship with COSA for the next five months. Luckily we all get on, because if we didn’t, this community living would result in murder: living where you work takes some getting used to. Aside from us long-termers, we also have a constant flow of volunteers coming in and out; they're here for weeks or months depending, and do various workshops and projects with the girls, ranging from art to yoga.

Finally, and most importantly, there’s the girls themselves. I’ve only been here for three weeks, so don’t know all of them that well (the language barrier doesn’t help; we communicate in a mixture of broken English and Thai, which I’m trying to learn and is a slow process due to the fact that one word can have five different meanings!). However, here’s what I do know so far; that you could never get a bunch of teenage girls living in one room in Britain without a daily tantrum/kittenfight/any other silly drama. With these girls, there is virtually none of that; they’re all very close and help each other out. Some of them COSA managed to intercept before they were trafficked, but others have already been sex workers; to look at them, you would never know what they’ve been through. They’re very well adjusted, cheerful, friendly, normal kids. On one of my first days, Laura explained that, culturally, Thais don’t tend to linger on the past; they are very much focused on the present, which I think accounts a lot for their remarkable resilience. She told me about one art therapy project they did with a volunteer, where they were supposed to draw something that depicted sadness. One girl (who has spent time working in a brothel) couldn’t think of anything to draw. They asked, ‘Well, anything from the past that made you sad?’, and she replied, ‘Well, yes, but right now, I’m happy’. Don’t get me wrong; from what Laura has told me, they have their moments, as it is only natural that they would. For the most part though, they are impressively stoical. Interestingly, Laura tells me that boys have a much harder time adjusting once they are rescued, and need a lot more professional psychological care, which is one of the reasons we don’t take in boys.

So- the setting is set. To come: the first week, including the unexpected rescue of twenty-two kids being trafficked through a hilltribe village, and a grim reminder of just how widespread this problem is.

NB: I realise this is a pretty cursory overview of the organisation: if anyone’s interested in learning more about it, the website is www.cosasia.org. You can also make donations on it, hint hint. 

Getting started despite writer's blog (see what I did there?)

Getting started is always the hardest part of any piece of writing. After scrapping quite a few first drafts of my intro, I’ve decided to just tell you all the truth, which is that, up until recently, I had a pretty low opinion of blogs. They struck me as self-absorbed, waffly diatribes of people who believe their every thought is a stunning revelation about the meaning of life. Thanks, but I don’t want to hear about how trekking through Tibet helped you find your inner peace, or what you did from the moment you got up to the moment your inflated head hit the pillow. So I’ve steered clear of them, until a rather wise friend pointed out that, while some people may use blogs like this, more often they are used to serve a purpose akin to journalism, albeit perhaps less professional; they can be a valuable tool for broadcasting information. Now, whether that information is important enough to warrant attention is up to the reader; so I’d better let you decide by telling you how I ended up writing this first difficult paragraph….

So, I arrive in Bangkok just over a month ago, with the intention of finding work as an English teacher in Thailand for a few months before exploring Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and doing some voluntary work here and there. After a week of Bangkok madness (and Bangkok belly but I’m sure you don’t want to hear the details), I get the night train up to Chiang Mai, known as Thailand’s cultural capital. Sadly it doesn’t seem to be its employment capital, as after a few days of cycling the streets looking ridiculous in my formal interview gear, it becomes obvious that teaching jobs are thin on the ground. Shame on you, misleading websites assuring teaching jobs galore! To distract myself from the potential failure of my plan I try and make at least some of it happen, and start looking for volunteer work. I hit upon an organisation based just outside Chiang Mai; the Children’s Organisation of Southeast Asia (COSA), which works to prevent child sex trafficking. Score! This is just the kind of work I’m interested in. I’ll be able to get some good experience volunteering for them a couple of times a week, even if it’s only a short while before I’m forced to return home penniless.

However, when I get to the shelter, it's even better than expected. Mickey offers me a volunteering position working as a liaison between COSA and a well-known Australian organisation they work with, and will get to live and eat at the shelter for free.  My job will involve writing reports on the children we take in, dealing with sponsoring, and documenting how we spend our funding. Because of the strong community-based nature of the organisation, it will also involve a lot of fieldwork, going up to interview hilltribe families in the surrounding area and gathering information on those who are at risk of being trafficked. In other words, the most amazing job I can possibly think of doing here. Needless to say, I accept without trying to hyperventilate with excitement, and just over a week later I’m installed at the shelter they run on the outskirts of Mae-Rim, a small town half an hour’s drive from Chiang Mai.

So there you have it. I’ve been here at COSA for three weeks now, and have learned a lot already: so much, in fact, that it’s impossible to just keep it to myself. My own assumptions about trafficking, which I know are shared by many, have been challenged and overturned in a mere month. Myth buster number one:

Nine times out of ten, it is families who sell their children to traffickers and brothels. Contrary to what you may have expected, it is not because they are starving to death and sacrificing one child so that the others can live. Instead, many (though by no means all) do it to acquire material goods like televisions or a car, in order to ‘make face’ (earn respect) within their village. In an impoverished community like that of the hilltribes, material wealth often comes to matter more than the wellbeing of an individual.

This is the type of thing that I think is crucial for people to know; for it is only through understanding the culture behind the sex industry and the reasons behind people selling their children into it that we stand a chance of changing it. Over the next six months, I’ll be giving regular updates of my life here at COSA, in the hope of giving a glimpse into the true reality of the trafficking situation.  It’s only a small start to combating such a many-headed hydra, but still, it’s a start. And if I start spouting anything about how the orange glow of the sunsets here reflect the growing spark of knowledge within me, tell me to shut it.