Jan 14, 2010

What Happened?

On August 8, 2009, the New York Times Magazine provided a special issue called Saving the World's Women. The stories shared were incredible, hard to believe, gut-wrenching, but inspirational. One particular article, written by authors Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristoff, was The Women's Crusade. This long and informational article was adapted from their book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, published later that week. This book is currently a part of the Influence/Focus and Bringing Spirit to Leadership Bibliographies.

Also on August 8, 2009, we were counting the days until we were in India, offering our program and experiencing a new culture. The NYT Magazine is a long-time favorite and this subject is a meaningful one in our work. Though we did not know it at the time, this was the beginning of our commitment to Prajwala.

The location of our program was to be in Hyderabad, India! The name of the City was key in our brains, imagining how it would be, what we would find there, how our program would be accepted and so on. When Carol saw the name of this city in the article by Kristoff and WuDunn, she came to life. When she read more, she suggested an additional destination while in Hyderabad: Prajwala.

The specific part of the story was that of Abbas Be, a lovely young Indian woman who at age 14, due to her family's poverty, moved from Hyderabad to the Capital of India to take a job as a maid in order to earn money to send back to her family and younger sisters. When she arrived in New Delhi, she went to her destination where she was immediately locked up, beaten savagely and gang-raped. This was the beginning of her imprisonment and forced prostitution as a 14 year old! Three times, Abbas Be was forced to watch as the pimps made examples of other girls by beating and humiliating them in ways I will not describe to you, before brutally stabbing them in their stomachs while they bled to death in front of the other innocent and previously naïve, imprisoned girls. This was the warning to Abbas Be and the other children/women, "Do not cause us any trouble! You are nothing to us, but a commodity. There are more of you where you came from!"

Thank God, in Abbas Be's case, the Police did somehow infiltrate this brothel. The remaining girls, emotionally and physically scarred, were taken to their home cities.

Impossible to believe; disgusting and heart-breaking to read. And yet, we must know about this. And, thankfully, at least for Abbas Be, we know the end of the story to date.

Because of the shame of the situation, Abbas could not return to her family home. She found the loving rescue and shelter of Prajwala. She found a new home, a healthy home, a place where she could be safe, learn job skills and have a new life.

In Hyderabad today, Abbas Be has become an excellent bookbinder through the job training skills we have described to you at Prajwala. She was not only rescued, but rehabilitated and now also counsels other girls to help them avoid being trafficked. She also works side-by-side with other young women who have endured the same horrible experience as she did while being enslaved. Today Abbas Be is earning a decent living in the Prajwala printing and bookbinding business. Because she now has earning power, Abbas Be is putting her two sisters through school.

Tim's Learnings

When I think of myself at age 14 and imagine being imprisoned in a cage while watching others of my age being tortured and murdered, I can't imagine how I would have reacted. But I suspect I would have done what my captors wanted me to do, rather than suffer the torture and death.

And what about a 14 year old girl? My parents taught me that girls were special because they became mothers and because they were not physically as strong. They taught me that I must give them more respect than boys. Some of their teaching probably came out of the sexism of their age. But the messages stuck. So when I think of Abbas Be and millions of young women and girls, my hair crawls and I get sick to my stomach.

When I have thought about sexual slavery, I have found it intellectually infuriating. When I see photos of the torture and murder of girls and women, it feels like an assault on my own family and others I love.

Carol's Learnings

How in the world, after all of these years of traveling the world, reading and sharing information and current news events, asking people to go deep and keep learning, could I have stayed so naïve? So ignorant?

What in the world did I imagine sexual slavery and human trafficking really were?

I guess I must have seen sexual slavery/human trafficking as a thing. Something.

Now I see it as a young girl being tortured and held against her will, experiencing things I had never before really known could happen to women, let alone little girls. Now I understand sexual slavery/trafficking is about some one, thousands, no millions of real children and women.

My eyes, brain and heart are awakened!