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.
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