22°35′15″N, 88°21′35″E- Journal Entry from 07/18/08

These are the g.p.s. coordinates of the largest red light district in Kolkata, India and the home of injustice and heartbreaking cruelty so great it has left me absolutely gutted in it's wake. Every morning in the Sonagachi region of Kolkata 10,000 women and young girls wake up in the gripping hand of the oppressive hell that is the sex slave trade. These women are prostituted, in many cases against their will, and given in exchange poverty, shame, disease and the label of worthless by the society that failed to protect them (the greatest poverty of all).
I will never forget our first trip into Sonagachi. As you cross the intersection of Chittaranjan Avenue Sova Bazar and Beadon Street, like walkiing through a curtain, you pass into a city within the city and you can feel the atmosphere change into an uneasy heaviness mingled with underlying ill intent. As you pass further into the district you can't help but notice the emptiness in the eyes of the women you pass on the streets, the bars attached on the outside of the windows (obviously meant for keeping residents in, not protecting them from what is out), and then there are the children; the precious, beautiful, lovely children. As soon as they see our team, they come alive with smiles, they welcome us and offer up their best attempts at English conversation in a heartfelt effort to connect. Secret handshakes soon follow and before we expect it, they are climbing on our laps and showing us magic tricks involving disappearing fingers and thumbs, the kind of magic that children all over the world employ at family reunions and birthday parties to impress grandmas into giving them quarters. That, however, is where the simalarites cease. These lives are incapable of normality, this place would never allow it, these streets demand survival and the simple joys of childhood are not tolerated. I will not go into details of the horrendous stories of abuse, violation, and depravity many of these children have suffered. The little boy arm wrestling me in the moment of this thought is missing a thumb and has severe scarring from burns up his right arm (in this place you don't have to look hard to see the signs of such atrocities). Instead, I would have you know this about these children: Their quickness to receive and ability to love was unlike anything I have ever seen before. In their short lives they have had every excuse to reject and refuse the world that has broken their lives, but instead these children still posses the desire to reach out, to give of themselves, to dream that there could be something other than Sonagachi.
This hope challenged me. It dared me to believe that even in the face of how massive the giant of slavery and trafficking is, how hopeless and powerless I felt as I walked the streets, how desperate the situation is, that things can, will and must change. That transformation is not impossible, and though the evil is great, it is not unshakable. If these children, who are born in the midst of struggle, who have only known the weight of the sex trade and have witnessed unspeakable things on a daily basis can still hold on to hope then I must be willing to do the same. I must have the courage and the strength of heart to see the reality of what goes on here and not succumb to the despair that presses upon this team each step of the way.
The challenge is so great, greater than I ever imagined when I boarded the
airplane on July 16th, but in my own battle with hopelessness I found
one resolve: For the children who live at 22°35′15″N, 88°21′35″E, I would ask that we would all believe and stand and fight with them in the struggle for freedom. For the hope that these little ones posses, for the hope that they live for every day, I ask that we would join our hearts with theirs and believe that there is a way, though we don't see it yet, that they can be free to live the lives they have always dreamed of. I believe that in the same way that we endeavor to give our children the very best education, opportunities, and paths to success, we must simply do our best to give these unseen ones the same freedom to persue the dreams of their hearts in whatever way that looks like for us. There are so many ways to help like supporting a non-profit, buying quilts from Sari Bari or hand bags from Freeset Bags, pressing the government for policies to protect and defend the helpless from slavery, or maybe through adopting a child rescued from slavery. In any expression, helping these women and children is not a burden or a weighty matter, it is a honor and a joy to stand for those who are in need and it is a gift to give your life for the unwanted.
So I am just thinking, processing, and wondering after all I have seen what it will take to turn the tide and end the traffick.
What are your thoughts?

so the poor have hope
and injustice shuts her mouth,
joelkhouri