SPEAK UP

A Day in the Dalit Villages

Just got back to my guest house in Khulna after 11 hours visiting 7 different Dalit villages riding on the back of a friend's motorcycle.  Visited most of the 20 girls in our Girls Leadership Program; that's what I think I'm going to call it rather than a sponsorship program since I want it to help develop girls in poverty in many ways to equip them to serve as well-equipped citizens in their communities. 

An exhausting, exciting day.  So fun to see the girls with their new books and school supplies, huddled together with friends in their makeshift schoolrooms, doing their homework and just being kids.  The last three girls we visited were sitting together doing their homework under a single, bare lightbulb, the only one that I could see in the village area.  Really fun to see.  They were all proud to show me their new books, read a bit to me in English, and laugh at my feeble attempts to read even the most basic Bangla.  I reminded all the girls of the three things I've told them to remember:  put in honest hard work at school, be courageous in doing difficult things, and know that an educated girl can do whatever she puts her mind to doing.  That's my three-prong mantra to them - study hard, be fearless, and believe that you can do so much more than your culture tells you that you can achieve or be.  So much fun.

Bangladesh - Behind the Numbers

When I was a kid growing up in Yemen, my Dad and I would challenge each other to name as many countries and capitals as we could, naming countries back and forth until we couldn't name any more.  I thought I was competing with my Dad, but he was probably just training my young mind to think globally.  For some reason I was always fascinated with Burma, a country that today is showing positive signs of change and freedom after a long, difficult history.  I'd get upset if my Dad named Burma before I did.  But a country that fascinated me in another way, and which I never visited until December 2010, was Bangladesh.  As a kid, all I knew of Bangladesh was that it was one of the poorest countries per-capita in the world; was the most crowded large-population country in the world; was predominantly Muslim, which limited opportunities for poor women in particular; and that the country regularly experienced terrible cyclones and flooding.  I thought it must be the neediest place on earth.

Pimps in Dhaka - We're Coming For You

It's beyond disgusting when grown men approach me on the street and offer me minor girls for sex.  It's happened in many Asian cities - in Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Mumbai, among others - and now in Dhaka.  Last week I was in Dhaka for a few days, continuing with some meetings to lay the groundwork for our office there, and walking out of a hotel I was approached by a 40-something man who asked me if I needed anything.  I knew instantly what he was offering. 

Scholarships for Dalit Girls

As I discussed in an earlier post, there are thousands upon thousands of Dalits in Bangladesh, some would say several million.  Dalit is the term given to the descendants of the formerly so-called Untouchables, the lowest of the Hindu castes.  While the caste system is officially illegal in both India and Bangladesh, and much of its formal problems have been eliminated, Dalits in both countries still face discrimination, and many are caught in an endless web of poverty spun by years of oppression.

Many Dalit girls drop out of school after the 4th grade, at ages 10-12, and many are soon married off while still young teenagers.  Without an education, an undervalued by a society that tends to see poor girls as a burden rather than a treasure, these girls are essentially destined to lives of deep poverty.  It's been the same cycle for hundreds of years and is unlikely to significantly change anytime soon.  Girls drop out, get married, have kids early, their daughters don't get an education, and within 15-20 years an entire new generation is mired in the same poverty.  If girls stayed in school,

The Untouchables

I spent the day yesterday with my friends from Dhruba, a Bangladeshi NGO based in Khulna which serves the needs of the Dalit community in southwestern Bangladesh. This area is home to at least 50 Dalit villages, communities of 200-400 people each, extremely poor farmers and laborers. Mostly Hindu. We must have spent 8 hours on the motorcycle yesterday, going from village to village meeting with entire Dalit communities who had gathered for the occasion in the flimsy bamboo structures that serve as local schools. It was an incredible day, filled with stories of both abuse and discrimination and the ever-present, hopeful smiles of young kids, the future of their communities. They have an uphill battle, because in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, the Dalits are at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder, kept there by a combination of discrimination, poverty and injustice.

It’s often hard for people in well-developed countries to relate to the mindset created by the past caste system, but

A Place to Call Home

As I roamed around Khulna on my daily walk this morning, my mind raced with a few simple, haunting questions – in a city with so many residential schools, so many majestic, old houses and businesses, why isn’t there a beautiful place for girls who have been removed from the brothels to call home? 

Why do the 17 girls who were removed from the brothels and live in the Alingon Home have to live in a home which, while a thousand times better than their shacks in Banishanta, barely functions to serve their needs?   Why isn’t the most important thing in Khulna

Serving the Brothel Girls - What Could be Better?

I can't think of anything better than what my friends with Light Bangladesh and others like them do: build relationships with sex workers through humble service, provide a safe home for their daughters to grow up and get and education, and empower brothel girls to live lives free from forced prostitution as a minor.  There is little in this world more disturbing than girls being raped for profit, and nothing more beautiful than seeing girls-at-risk living lives of freedom.  Girls who were destined for the hell of being a sex worker are growing and thriving and becoming young women with a future - what could be better than that?

I came to Bangladesh about three weeks ago, the start of a 4 month stretch where I will be looking for opportunities for Speak Up to have an office here.  My time has been spent in Khulna, the third largest city in the country and capital of a southwestern district of the same name.  I've done a lot in these three weeks - met the leading politicians and bureaucrats of the region, visited a bunch of NGO's and schools and orphanages, connected with tons of people intrigued with an American roaming the streets - and there is so much good work that we could be doing here.  But nothing moves me more

Coming to America

I've only ever been able to speak to my Nepali friend Daya** through twin metal fences that separate visitors from detainees at the Immigration Detention Center here in Bangkok. That might soon change. We've just received word from the US Embassy and immigration officials that Daya is in the last stages of being approved for refugee resettlement in the USA, and if all goes well he'll be heading to America in 3 to 4 months. Coming to America! In 2011 it's still a big part of the refugee dream, a dream that may soon come true for a man who over 4 years has suffered a refugee nightmare.

Though Thailand is for the most part a welcoming country, refugees here are not recipients of the country's legendary hospitality. Thailand has not signed the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, meaning that

Baniashanta: One of the Worst Places on Earth

AT OUR MAY 7TH BENEFIT FUNDRAISER IN PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, I WILL BE SPEAKING ABOUT OUR PLANS TO WORK IN BANGLADESH ON ISSUES OF CHILD PROSTITUTION AND SEX TRAFFICKING.  HERE IS A REPRINT OF AN EARLIER ARTICLE ABOUT THESE ISSUES. 

BANIASHANTA. Some places are almost too sad for words, and the Banishanta brothel area in southwestern Bangladesh is one of those terrible places.  Situated on the muddy banks of the River Posur near Mongla, Bangladesh's busiest seaport, the brothel is a row of shacks which house at least 200 Bangladeshi women and the children born to them in prostitution.  These women, and likely many young girls, sell their services to dockworkers, sailors and hordes of other men who stream to Banishanta for sex on the cheap.  In the most densely populated and one of the poorest countries on earth, this is what semi-legalized prostitution has come to: scores of young women living in meager shacks on a polluted riverbank, reduced to selling themselves day and night for a few dollars to a never-ending stream of lustful men.  Sadly, Banishanta is not the only place like this on earth.  But in an age where life is cheap and sex is a commodity, Banishanta, and places like it, are the inevitable result.  

 THE MUDDY SHACKS OF THE BANIASHANTA BROTHEL

In December I visited Bangladesh on an exploratory trip for Speak Up to connect with a group of organizations who are playing a part in bringing justice to the most vulnerable and exploited people in the country, particularly girls born into brothels or trafficked into prostitution. 

Three Million Sex Workers?

I've received several emails and fundraising pleas and prayer letter updates over the years that refer to an estimated three million prostitutes in Thailand.  For two significant reasons, I plead for anyone involved with these issues to be careful with the use of this dubious, unhelpful statistic.

First of all, it is not helpful to describe someone working in the sex industry as a prostitute, to reduce your description of them to merely this role in life.  Though it is common to refer to someone by their job, I don't think we should do so when people are reduced to working in the sex industry.  For most women in such work (yes, I know there are men and boys involved, but females make up the vast majority), this is not a profession chosen freely or willingly but one made under force or economic duress or because of a lack of other options.  To reduce someone to an epithet is unfair and undemeaning.  I think it is more helpful to use a term such as 'sex-worker' and be careful to be as hopeful and visionary and positive as possible when talking about this work.  I'm not asking people to be pollyanhish about this.  I just think that mature people can treat people caught in difficult circumstances with respect, and the term 'prostitute' to me is inherently degrading and ugly.  We can do better. 

My Urban Refugee Friends

Two years ago, the term 'urban refugee' would have meant very little to me.  Like many, I had always associated refugees with rural camps in Ethiopia or Afghanistan or the Balkans, people internally or regionally displaced due to war, famine or natural disaster.  My 18 months in Bangkok has given me quite an education on the reality of modern refugees.  And a lot of dear new friends.

My Vietnamese friends have fled their homeland either for their religious or political faith.  Some are Christians and missionaries brutally persecuted by the government for their evangelical faith.  Others are democracy activists oppressed for their opposition to Vietnam's Communist government.  A few were targets of persecution because of their past ties to the US military in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago, including middle-aged men who face discrimination as AmerAsian children of US servicemen.  A common factor among my gentle and fun-loving Vietnamese friends is their kindness and generosity - and their love of pho.  If you've never had a tasty bowl of Vietnam's national dish you're missing out.