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
Over the past few months I’ve been walking, rickshaw-ing and otherwise traveling all over Khulna with my friends trying to find a new building for the Alingon Home. In the not-too-distant future, my friends with Light Bangladesh hope to buy land where they can build a first-rate home for their girls, a place where girls from some of the worst places on earth can come to start new lives away from a hellish future of child prostitution. Preliminary discussions are under way with a few organizations to find the resources and partners to make this happen. In the meantime, we’re trying to find a home for the next 3-4 years, a place big enough for up to 40 girls to live, have a yard to play in, and room to simply be kids. A simple but beautiful place that conveys value and hope to children who come from a background with little to celebrate. A place to thrive.
It’s harder than you might think to find such a place; some places aren’t nearly big enough, some aren’t secure enough, some landlords don’t want to deal with brothel girls, and some buildings are just too old and gloomy to be healthy for kids. The girls never complain about their current home, and in some ways they don’t know any better, but everyday they pray for a new place – in feelings they likely can’t put into words, beyond any hopes other people could have for them, they want to be at home. Every day I tell them that we are looking, and that they should keep praying. Our search continues today.
I just came back from the USA - Pasadena, California to be exact - and one thing that always strikes me upon my return to America are the many gorgeous homes on peaceful, tree-lined avenues. When I was living in the US, this was normal and expected – any one of a hundred peaceful neighborhoods around Pasadena is mirrored in cities around the country, and despite the real pain of our nation’s economic and housing crises this is still true today. The US is blessed with unfathomable wealth relative to Bangladesh, and coming back here to Khulna, looking for a home for girls-at-risk, I’m struck anew by the radical housing disparity between my home country and my new home in Bangladesh.
This isn’t rocket science or anything new. Since my childhood I’ve lived in and seen places in desperate need, and lived the reality that some places are unbelievably more developed than others. What was normal for me in Yemen as a kid was well below the poverty line in America, while the ease and comfort of my life in Norway stood in sharp contrast to the daily economic struggles of my inner-city friends in Los Angeles. Without getting into causes or criticisms, without assigning blame or wallowingin liberal guilt, I still sit there and wonder about it all: How can it only be a 3-hour flight from the luxury of palatial riverside condos in Bangkok to the misery of riverside slums in Dhaka? How can my hotel in Dhaka sit right next to scores of beggars? How can it only be a 5-minute rickshaw ride from the mansions of Khulna to the overcrowded home of my young friends in need? How can luxury exist amidst such poverty? Nothing encapsulates these tensions better than the contrast between poor and rich homes.
All things being equal, no one should feel guilty for the simple fact of owning a home or living in a wealthy country. These facts should even in many cases be celebrated. The healthy parts of the American dream – owningand improvinga place to call home, having a place for your kids to thrive, investingin a promising future – are all things to be treasured. In fact, they even mirror much of what I want for the girls at the Alingon Home. A home is a great thing, a treasure.
Which is why I wish I could find a way to get my friends, and their friends and colleagues, to understand the situation facing my friends in need, 17 girls who call me Uncle and are the main reason I have come to live in Khulna. They live in an unsafe home with poor wiring and plumbing, no place for a good study room, and are soon to be joined by 3 more girls, bringing the home to beyond maximum capacity. The solution is simple – a decent home with a yard and facilities for the next three to four years while the permanent home is in the works. It’s partially an issue of finding the right place; partially an issue of timing and logistics; and hugely an issue of money. Money that I know is within the reach of my family, friends and their connections.
The entire budget of the AlingonHome for 20 girls in 2012 – housing, education, food, teachers and house-mother salaries, clothing, everything – will be about $35,000. 20 girls for a year, removed from the brothels and now living in safety with a future, all for the price of an SUV. About $1700 each. Everyone thinks about money differently, and I know that fundraising can be a sensitive issue, but I wish that for just a few minutes everyone reading these words would dwell on the simple math with me. For the price of an SUV, 20 girls who were destined to be child prostitutes can live with dignity and joy. For the price of an SUV 20 kids can have a place to call home. All for the price of a car.
Estimates are much more varied for the price of land and a new home, but $350,000 might be in the ballpark for purchasing land and building a home that could house 100 girls removed from the brothels of southwestern Bangladesh. For about the price of an average home in Los Angeles County, 100 girls would be able to stay away from the brothels forever. 100 saved from the misery of prostitution in a filthy Bangladeshi brothel for the rest of their lives. 100 lives. All for the price of a home.
When I first started Speak Up, I half-jokingly dreamed that one day a generous donor would be so moved by the need of the poor that he or she would sell their house to fund Speak Up in its early days, helping jump start our work. I dreamed that some person out there would make the calculation that a second home or investment property was a small thing to give up in exchange for empowering the poor. I may have been full of my own sense of importance or of the potential impact of my work, but I knew that to catalyze a new organization I’d need some incredibly generous, visionary people willing to pay the price to make something happen. Every great work is built on the back of personal sacrifice.
Little did I know at that time that one day I would be living in Bangladesh, Uncle to a growing tribe of precious girls in need, hoping to find them a house and one day helping to build them a home. But here I am, living in Khulna, looking at all the homes and thinking about my friends’ and colleagues’ homes, and wondering who will help us to find a home for the Alingon girls.
Writing these words, I’m deeply aware of the sensitivities of fundraising and the treacherous ground I might be walking on. At times in my writing I’ve tried to be prophetic, calling myself and other people of goodwill to the task for our shortcomings. At times in my work I’ve been angry at injustice, angry at apathy, angry at the patent unfairness around me that oppresses the poor. Other times I’ve been struck by the shortcomings of the poor themselves that bind many in self-imposed misery. There’s a time for all sorts of reactions to poverty and injustice: a moral call, anger, systemic change, pastoral insight. All are needed at the right time.
But today I’m just asking for help. Specifically for some of my friends, and by extension their friends and colleagues, to help me find a permanent home for the brothel girls of Bangladesh. As I sit here today, across this country, hundreds of young girls will wake up in brothels, born to sex-worker mothers, almost certainly destined to follow their mothers into this most disturbing profession. 17 of these girls have been removed from such misery, three more are soon to follow, and if we can find a place for them many more can join us one day at the Alingon Home. These 17 girls are like my nieces, and beyond loving them for their individual uniqueness and beauty they also represent to me the endless thousands of girls like them around the world that today will spend their day in a brothel.
We can change these disturbing facts. Against nearly impossible odds and obstacles, we can help end poverty of this most disturbing kind. We can do great and noble things if we put our minds and hearts and resources to work. We can change the world, starting with the few. We can provide a place for all the brothel girls to call home. Please join me in this joyful adventure.
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