As we walked the slum, dozens of children began to follow us. They screamed and yelled with so much laughter, you would have thought Shakira had arrived. It was such an incredible welcome and to see the joy and hope in their tiny little faces was mesmerizing. Many of the older folks were kind but their faces expressed concern, perhaps about our nature of business in their territory.
We spent some time meeting Ashu, the child Kirsten and her family sponsor at Sneha. The Dickerson’s have been praying for them for nearly 7 years and it was not only a joy for Kirsten to finally meet Ashu but to see many of the family prayers answered.
Joe and Rod had the privilege of going deeper into the slums and when they got back Joe said, “the smell of death was lurking.” They both said it was much worse than what we had witnessed, which is very hard for all of us to even fathom.
Juliette’s comments regarding the slums were, “I was overwhelmed by the surroundings, and I’m still digesting it.” She also said she was thinking of how to reconcile this with her own life and how the two will coexist.
-Erin
The investigators from this organization thought it best that we stay in our vehicles and only drive through the area. Even still our nice American-looking car and colorful tour bus were give-aways that we were not regulars here. At first it was hard to decipher exactly what we were seeing. The Red Light District is home to 2,000 brothels, but we saw business as usual: vendors selling trinkets, little alleyways that we drove by too quickly to see what was actually going on, people walking along the streets. But that’s just it. We saw mostly men walking the streets. And then we saw women—standing. Standing still, facing the street, with busy-ness surrounding them. Some looked like children, 12, 13, 14. Some looked older. Perhaps the image that most imprinted itself in all of our minds was when the girls saw our noticeable cars—and perhaps the camera in one of them—and drew their hands to cover their faces. Some with their bare hands, others with their shawls, others turning away from the street. Even in such an open, vulnerable stance, the girls began to show a hint of the shame that was inherent in their profession. They did not look happy. They looked like children that unimaginable forces of life had kicked out onto the street. Life had neglected them. Intermixed with these chilling scenes were more bizarre images of a mismatched guru in a makeshift temple, a white goat licking a steel pole in the middle of the sidewalk, bodies sleeping near sewers. It can be painted easily as a dismal, hopeless picture if we did not think of the investigators in the vans with us and the faces of the rescued girls we had met the night before. It was hard to imagine that those 23 girls—our friends—were out on these streets not long ago. And as the investigators explained how they get the girls out of the brothels, the situation turned more hopeful, less hopeless. Before if we would have heard the statistics that 23 girls were rescued out of the thousands enslaved, we would have thought, “only 23?” Now that we have spent a day with them, we realize it was a miracle that even one of those young women was rescued.
And I know that when I return to the streets of Hollywood and Vine, the streets of Mumbai’s red light district will seem like another time, another world. But they are much alike. Swap a goat that licks a pole for somebody walking her jeweled Chihuahua. And just as this organization is responding to Mumbai, we’ll think how to respond to our own backyard, where “massage” and “acupuncture” shops trap girls like our 23 friends. This, above all, is what God is teaching us: to value the souls behind the statistics.