Ultralight Beam

I woke up this morning overwhelmed by all the things. I check my email on my phone and a dozen emails remind me that it's #GivingTuesday. Ugh. There is so much to care about. Too much. I'm gived out. I go back to bed.

·

I eventually get up and walk five minutes down the road from my house to the Immigration Detention Center. I've gone about every week for the last two years to visit detainees. It's different now, though, cause my friend got detained four weeks ago. She's a 19 year-old Somali who loves Beyonce and Game of Thrones and is working on a screenplay. But she lives in IDC now. Her refugee status, which means the UN recognizes that she has a valid fear of persecution and should be protected by international law, does nothing for her in Thailand. They do not provide refugees protections or visas. Without them, asylum seekers and refugees are susceptible to being held in detention to wait out either resettlement to a third country through the UNHCR refugee process or self-fund and self-elect for repatriation back to their country. Some wait years. In the case of most refugees, returning to their home country is unthinkable -- both financially and politically. The Somalis I know left behind deceased family members and war and human smugglers. There's no home to go home to. For my friend, this is the possibility we have been dreading and actively trying to avoid, but now, it's how she will live out the remainder of her time in Thailand. In jail. 

I can tell she is more tired than last week. They leave the lights on all night and there is no bathroom door. There are between 80 to 120 women in her room on a given day. We talk about news from the inside and the outside world. Life inside is rife with conflict and disease and three meals of rice a day. Since that's all there is, we laugh about it. When I ask if she has been in any fights, she replies, "Are you kidding? I write it all down! It's great material!" Ever the storyteller. I brought her conditioner and a watch and Oreos, and she tells me she would love a KFC sandwich next week. We run out of things to talk about after 45 minutes; I'm not sure if I'm entertaining her or if she's entertaining me. We say goodbye. I am guiltily aware that the best I feel all morning is when the gate opens and I step outside in the fresh air and sunshine, feeling both on my face as I leave that place behind.

·

After that, I take a moto taxi to Starbucks to meet these Afghan guys I've known for almost two years. Six men share one room in Bangkok. I used to teach them English, but mercifully for them, they are spared my "teaching" as they found a free daily class. This is the second year in a row we've gotten together when the holiday drinks come out to toast Christmas; they indulge my enthusiasm even though they don't celebrate the holiday. Like my friend in IDC, they are also awaiting the refugee resettlement process, hopeful that they can soon go to a country where they will be allowed to go to school and work and vote and love. The waiting is killer. I am only a secondary waiter, and my nerves are shot. I didn't really understand how debilitating waiting is for refugees is until living in Thailand these last few years. It's a near suspension of identity and meaning. Without legal rights, without a community that recognizes your human-ness, talents wither and potential fades. This NY Times piece on Manus Island refugees was a chilling reminder of how separate, how other refugees are made to be as they wait. Here in Thailand, the isolation is coupled with the constant fear of being thrown in detention. My Afghan friends have handled the waiting as well as can be expected -- learned English, done a few small part-time jobs (which is illegal) and even taught their language to Thai neighbors. They've tried to keep the spark of their lives going despite the harshness of their reality. I give them around $300 USD a month (some of which was been donated from my kind friends and facilitated through a local NGO) and that's what they live on in addition to other earned and donated funds.

They tell me about a UNHCR meeting recently where a representative politely explained to them that it's probably their best long-term option to return home. To Afghanistan. This signals to me that the resettlement process is a near impossibility at this point. The internationally upheld mechanisms that I so believed in, that have offered hope to so many fleeing persecution, have ground to a near halt this year. With the U.S. effectively cutting their resettlement by 75%, with millions fleeing Syria and North Africa, there are thousands and thousands of people that have been approved but will never be resettled. The system that was already at capacity now can accommodate even less people than before and there are more people than ever before applying. 

I ask them what they will do now. The advice to return home weighs heavily on them, but they still hope. There's nothing else for them to do but hope. Thing is, I don't know how to help them or prepare them for the future. All the things I used to know -- resettlement will happen in 3-5 years, learn English, prepare a resume -- don't matter anymore if they can't find a country that will accept them. It's so unfair that the tyranny of war and violence in their lives has been replaced by the dull absence of belonging. Without it, what is possible? Our stupid red Starbucks cups mock me as I sit there trying to force a holiday on them they don't celebrate with drinks that, let's be honest, taste terrible. 

·

I've been struggling for some time to answer the question What do I think is possible? I have worked for the last 10 years with trafficked and refugee people, but I don't really know what I'm hoping for anymore. The sad truth is that I don't actually think that my friend will be released from IDC. I can't promise the Afghans that they will ever be resettled. I don't think that trafficking will end in my lifetime, or in any lifetime for that matter. And yet, here I am. This is how I spent my day today. I must believe something is possible, right?

If it's not obvious by now, I'm a very conflicted hopeful person. I'm, as Jon Stewart self-identifies, an angry optimist. I believe that change is possible, I work towards it, I yearn for it, but I'm impatient as all hell. This year every. damn. day. has felt like #GivingTuesday. Resist. Persist. Give. Repeat. If there is a single person out there who isn't already giving, I encourage you to give today, give every day. If you don't know what you care about, just ask me and I will tell you. 

Perhaps my refugee friends have the ability to hope because they gave up the illusion of control a long time ago. Or maybe they never had it because, as people from Afghanistan and Somalia, they were never spoon-fed it as a child. As a person of privilege, I get stuck on the unfairness of it all or the lack of durable political solutions. I've stopped hoping. I don't dare hope unless I know the outcome will be favorable. (Wow, that's the saddest, most type-A thing I've ever said). That's not even hope, that's just playing the odds. I guess the act of hope, in the same way as the act of giving, is best and purest when you expect nothing in return.

So give freely. Hope freely. 

I'm going to bed. Giving Wednesday is tomorrow. 

All We Got

Today, on #WorldRefugeeDay, it's hard to feel hopeful. This morning I visited with a friend in the Immigration Detention Center who has been waiting there for a year for his refugee status. He's decided he's had enough and is going back to West Africa. He's not sure if the people who were after him for political differences are still around, but he's gonna try to blend in and hope for the best. Another of my friends was rejected and is going back to Congo soon, but she has no idea what she will find there. No family. No connections. She has been in detention for more than two years. Whenever I'm in IDC, the arbitrary and ridiculous nature of their incarcerations reminds me of this scene from Parks and Rec. You came to find a dignified life? Jail. You came expecting to work? Jail. Trafficked here against your will? Jail. As they wait for their cases to be processed, sometimes for years, refugees can't legally work or be formally educated. In many countries (such as Thailand) you risk imprisonment as you wait. From my ant's eye view of the refugee crisis, since the U.S. halted refugee acceptance and reduced financial contributions to the UN, the needs have grown but the hope has dimmed. 

Look, the refugee process isn't perfect, but UNHCR deserves credit for the thorough investigations in sometimes failed or uncooperative states and the care they try to provide for the thousands of people applying at their offices around the world every day. The background checks and interviews understandably take time. I'm not saying the waiting could or should be shortened, though that would certainly be nice. In the meantime, as the process moves along, sponsor states and third party countries have a role to play. If the unprecedented 65.6 million forcibly displaced people continue to be denied access to travel, work and and be educated in transitional countries, the dependency that so many sponsor states worry about will only be perpetuated. Somali children in Kenya go uneducated. Syrian doctors in the EU can't practice or keep their skills current. More personally, I know six Afghan men losing years of productivity while being forced to depend on others as they await their resettlement. I continue to argue that it's in everyone's best interest to welcome, assimilate, employ, educate and befriend refugees, be it on a personal or political level. 

I met Alex Betts when he was a visiting professor at UT Austin a few years ago. He argues on the world stage (and in this Guardian piece) that the current refugee camp strategy employed since the 80's "undermines autonomy and dignity. It also erodes human potential by focusing almost exclusively on people’s vulnerabilities, rather than on rebuilding their lives." While the concept of refugee connotes a neediness, "the truth is that refugees around the world lead complex and diverse economic lives. They are consumers, producers, buyers, sellers, borrowers, lenders and entrepreneurs." Many refugees I know are more capable, motivated, speak more languages than I do and have skills that are more marketable than mine (hello my B.A. in History). I wonder sometimes, in my more cynical moments, if more people don't respond more hospitably to refugees because they are competition. Refugees continue to be punished for their nationality and the accidents of disaster or violence that have befallen their countries even as their abilities and intellect are worthy of all the things I take for granted. 

As more and more people are moved/smuggled/trafficked across borders, unless there are fair employment systems set up, migration will get more and more dangerous and resources will become even more competitive. Things I've read recently put this in sharp, bleak focus. If you want your guts ripped out, read these New Yorker pieces on refugee children migrating/being trafficked from Nigeria to Italy and living in "The Jungle" in France after leaving Afghanistan for the UK. The stories have haunted me for months. Or read Exit West, a prescient tale of magical realism by Mohsin Hamid, that similarly left me thinking about what is both possible and the worst case scenario in a world in which nations keep turning more and more inward. The convenient nationalism and cowardly protectionism that infects so many Western countries can only continue to weaponize patriotism and divide people for so long until they realize that they rely on the global majority/"emerging markets" to source their iPhone minerals and make and buy their products and services. Like I said, I get pretty cynical. 

The political and practical realities of employing and educating refugees are certainly difficult. But, as host countries become less willing or able to resettle refugees and there are more and more people displaced every year, we have no other choice. Also, I truly believe it works. I'm just one person, and I have helped enroll kids in school, secured jobs for teens and adults and taught basic English. None of this was hard, but it did take time and effort. Two former refugee kids I worked with in Austin graduated high school this year. When I was in the States in April, I visited newly purchased homes and saw backyard gardens of formerly-refugee friends. The refugee students I have worked with here for the past year are speaking and writing in English more confidently. They actually recently welcomed three people from their country, and the authority and the tone they took as they bossed the new guys around cracked me up. They are getting the hang of things here as they prepare to be uprooted and sent somewhere else, where they will eagerly start the process of learning the customs and language and expectations of that place all over again. As I sit here on World Refugee Day, I don't have very much hope in the system, but I do have an infinite amount of faith in my refugee friends and their resourcefulness and resilience. 

We Should All Be Feminists

International Women's Day brings with it a bit of an eye roll effect -- both why do women need a day? and, inversely, oh, wow, thanks so much for our ONE day, totes grateful. One could argue, as I plan to, that the day, the label and #IWD are helpful and unhelpful, necessary but insufficient in reminding people that gender inequality is something we still have to fight against. I'm going to a IWD happy hour, so it's at the very least a good excuse for a cocktail. UN Women is hosting events and screenings in cities around the world. There's lots going on that are both marketing opportunities and pure celebrations of sisterhood. 

In the same way that the day is necessary but insufficient, the labels used to define women that I work with and know often hide the truth of who they really are, the challenges they face and how bravely they meet them. As someone who lives abroad, I get to meet the women behind some of the rhetoric of International Women's Day and media headlines and awareness campaigns. These loaded terms represent friends I have and women I meet in my day-to-day work in Bangkok, which, most days, feels like the intersection of migration and the rest of the world. 

REFUGEE. I recently met a Somali refugee teenager who knows exactly who she is and will tell you. She is a refugee, yes, but she really wants to be a screenwriter. She taught herself English by watching movies and now works as a translator. She is a passionate advocate for gay rights because she saw people killed in her country for mere rumors of their sexuality. Additionally, when she was growing up in Somalia, she taught herself Arabic so she could read for herself what the Quran said about women. She didn't believe that the barriers for women -- lack of access to education, to healthcare, to maternal health services -- were prescribed by her holy scriptures. Sure enough, it was her culture and not her God that limited her and even threatened her livelihood. So she left. Her confidence and her self-determination are so inspiring, I was left wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. For now, she is a refugee because it allows her to apply for services and hopefully resettlement, but one day, you will see her film and it will be brilliant. 

TRAFFICKED. I visited with a woman today who was trafficked from Congo to Bangkok for the purposes of sexual exploitation. The thing that so often gets lost in the labeling of and especially religiously motivated handwringing about "trafficked" and particularly "sex trafficked" is, in the specific context of African women I've met here, the women that leave home are incredibly brave and capable. They willingly take on unthinkable debt in the form of a (sometimes) forged passport and plane ticket to a land where they don't know the language or know anyone so that they can work in (what many are told is) a restaurant to work hard to feed their families and put their kids through school. Then they get here and the work is different than they thought, but their kids still need food and school uniforms. The women I've met don't ask to be rescued, they don't want pity, they just need a job. The woman I know is facing deportation and will hopefully be back with her children soon, but she is susceptible to being trafficked again. There are simply no jobs where she is from. Her story, her struggle, is far from over. 

ILLEGAL. While I know lots of people who don't have documentation or visas, I don't know anyone who is illegal. Can we just not use this word anymore to describe humans? No one person lives wholly inside or outside of legality. I paid a bribe to a policeman last week that he demanded (not turning left in a left hand lane, nothing more exciting). That makes us both illegal I think. Women who leave Central America for the U.S. or Burma for Thailand could qualify as refugees or as trafficked depending on technicalities of their migration, the particulars of their journeys. I know children born between countries, with no hope of a birth certificate or passport. They are no less human or no less 'legal' than I am by accident of my birth in a hospital in Dallas. 

These labels are sometimes a necessary classification to allow women to apply for services or to rally the troops around fundraising and advocacy, but they are not inclusive. I know women who currently have refugee status who were trafficked as children. I know women who were almost trafficked while crossing a border and remain undocumented and somehow aren't eligible for any services because they walked across the border. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (my patron saint) said, "Nobody is ever a single thing." These political labels allow us to partition out gender based discrimination and violence as discrete things -- REFUGEE, TRAFFICKED, ILLEGAL -- like women or people are defined forever by something that happened to them. They also allow us to pretend that each of these happen in isolation. In reality, these are symptoms of the same disease, and some women suffer from them all at once. Women are not equal, and because they are not equal, they are not safe. Not in Somalia, not in Congo, not in Thailand, not in Texas. When women are not safe, they flee. When women are in transit, they are even less safe. Heck, when women are in the same place, they aren't guaranteed safety, but particularly women moving from place to place are vulnerable to forces that take advantage of their desperation. All of the above terms describe women on the move, women submitting themselves to or getting caught up in forces they cannot control in order to make a better life for themselves and their families. Women I know have left kids behind to send money or brought kids with them across borders or given birth along the way. They are fighters and survivors. Bangkok is just one phase of their fight for economic, political and personal justice. 

As trite as International Women's Day sounds, I choose to celebrate it and intentionally reflect on the stories of brave women I know caught up in the labels and systems of oppression because of this simple fact -- women are not safe. This isn't an attempt to create hysteria (which is derived from the Greek hysterika, meaning uterus, meaning even this emotion has been unfairly gendered) or make you hide yo kids hide yo wife. Some of us women experience inexplicable privilege and relative safety. As one of these women with access to choices and privilege, I try to understand the women behind the labels and help them fight for access to education or childcare or a job, whatever they want to come next. Because the labels don't define them. 

Stereotypes also marginalize male allies of women. I come from a conservative Christian culture where there are men trying to elevate the voices of women and girls above their own. I know many Muslim men who are deeply protective of the rights of their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. Men are welcome at #IWD. Men are welcome at Girls Impact the World Film Festival (I'll be there! Come!). It's also true that the binary male/female system is exclusionary and that men and boys also experience violence. But cisgender women and those that identify as female the world over experience discrimination and violence at much higher rates than men. International Women's Day isn't perfect, but it's as inclusive as you want it to be. Have a cocktail, tweet, resist, celebrate, cry, call your mom, listen to the stories of women and men around you who believe in equality or have suffered for lack of it. We can and should all be feminists, even if we can't all wear the Dior shirt (though I did ask Phillip for it for my IWD present). Happy International Women's Day.  ♀

Alright

The day of the election, the very hour that the results came out, I was with women from Uganda, Nepal and Thailand. Each listened to my shock and disillusionment, politely and sympathetically nodding their heads. There was also an undercurrent of world weariness, a reaction I've come to recognize in people's faces while I'm talking, usually mid-sentence -- I am listening to this white lady, and I will try to make her feel better, but really I do not understand what she is complaining about. So many, many times, I have been the recipient of incredible kindness and empathy from women and men living under extreme inequality, poverty and even violence when I'm trying to voice my own discontent or disillusionment. 

My Thai friend said, not unkindly, "It was the same for me under Thaksin, but you get up every day and you go to work." The Ugandan woman has known the same president her whole life, elections there being largely a formality at this point. She was almost confused -- you get to have a reaction? My Nepali friend told me where she was when the Crown Prince of Nepal killed his entire family at a dinner party (yes, that really happened). Through dictators, violence, gender discrimination and so many forces beyond their control, my friends just carry on with their lives. Go to work. Feed the kids. Come home. I was chastened and disabused of my exceptionalism once again. It's not that I don't believe that America or Americans can't be exceptional -- it's that I see so much bravery no matter where I go in the world, that it is not a quality that can be possessed by any one country or any one type of individual. 

Even my reaction to this election has been steeped in privilege. I can't escape it. I felt like I need days off to process, but who gets that, really? What about the realities of the world around me -- friends persecuted for being Christian, persecuted for being Muslim, friends living in sexual exploitation -- make me believe that I, as a woman, as an American, deserve or will be able to deliver any higher standard of justice? There is nothing new under the sun. I can hope for healing, I can pray for restoration and I can work towards justice, but I have so much to learn. 

I don't say this to any further bemoan the election or predict the future of American democracy. I only hope to show that there is so much we can learn from brothers and sisters from other countries and other faiths about just about anything. Their societies are older, their interfaith dialogue and understanding often richer and their interpersonal dramas and struggles the same as ours. This NY Times video of comedians around the world giving advice was so heartening to me. People have gone before us, people have thrived and laughed in the face of political disappointments or even danger. There is much work to be done. I think it's also okay to give up. To peace out. It's not the reaction that anyone promotes on a tshirt (if one more person tells me now is the time to care more, to lean in, to run for office, I SWEAR TO GOD...) but, good grief, just stay safe and sane out there. Sleep for four years and wake up refreshed for the next fight. There is so much dignity in the act of carrying on, living your life as you would live it. 

It also softens the edges of judgment you feel when you evaluate other countries, economies or people when you feel the burden of something you can't control. I have friends who have left the sex trade who feel compelled to return -- not for themselves, but for their families. For their child's education. For their sister's school fees. My judgments on sexual morality or hopeful protests against the commodification of bodies doesn't really hold up when women love their families so much that they are ready to sacrifice for them. Similarly, my own faith is strengthened by asylum-seeking Muslim friends who have been persecuted for their faith. If they can believe so strongly and fight to worship freely, to be what they were born into being, then so can I. My refugee friends have a world of knowledge about belonging and abuse of power and the divine -- I need only to listen.

I don't mean to elevate the poor or the lives of refugees or women in sexual exploitation to a position of greatness or suggest that I should feel guilty for my emotions as a person of relative privilege. It's taken some time (hello, decade of my 20s), but I now know that I can hold my suffering alongside theirs without condemnation of myself. This is the gift that my friends have given me. They listen to my disappointments and grief and encourage and pray for me in Somali, Arabic or Nepali. They have set me free from the idea that I am special, and yet they have reclaimed it with their support and love for me. I mean, I try not to go overboard with how bummed I am that I can't get American Netflix with my new VPN to my friends in jail, but you get the idea. Their grief is my grief. My tears are their tears. They have accepted me as I am, ignorant of so many things of the world, and still they give me hope. I am grateful.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Turns out I'm not really a blogger but just a person who writes when she's mad. I've actually written many blogs over the last several months, trying to make sense of things I've seen and stories I've heard, but all of it felt like whitesplaining or material more appropriate for therapy, so they remain unpublished. But now I'm mad. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ever the voice of civilized discourse (also, I could just listen to her read the phone book), spoke quietly but powerfully at at the UN's World Humanitarian Day about how labels limit our ability to see others clearly:

"Nobody is ever just a refugee. Nobody is ever just a single thing." 

This is certainly true of my refugee friends I know. I have friends from Burma, Iraq, Sudan and who came to Texas through the refugee resettlement program. Once labeled refugees for legal purposes, they are mothers, fathers, caregivers, students, sons and daughters. A few years after resettlement, they now own homes, pay taxes, send their children to community college. They are probably better citizens than I am. Some stand out in their exceptionality. Two Sudanese brothers, high schoolers I know in Austin, are kicking ass, helping their soccer and track teams excel, winning scholastic awards and working all the while. The American dream holds far more allure for them than it ever did for me. I totally took for granted, and do to this day, that I would get educated and get a job and that things would just work out. These boys are actively pursuing the promises of America. Their black African bodies embody American values. Don't even get me started on what America offers young black men. One tragedy at a time. 

Now my home state of Texas has opted out of the Refugee Resettlement Program, which feels like a punch in the gut. It feels like we Brexit-ed. It feels like I have to explain it apologetically to all the refugees I'm working with. I realize that my refugee friends and their success stories aren't representative of each and every of the almost 30,000 refugees that resettle in Texas every year (Texas being the largest re-settlement refugee program in the US). Obviously anecdotes don't counter real threats. But what are the real threats? MORE AMERICANS HAVE LEFT TO JOIN ISIS than refugees who have come to America and been found guilty of committing an act of terrorism. By this calculation, MORE AMERICANS ARE TERRORISTS THAN REFUGEES IN AMERICA ARE TERRORISTS. Is, then, opting out of resettlement truly a security concern? An economic argument? Xenophobia? Thirty thousand people written off just like that because they *might* be a security risk. Tell me what it is and I will try to fix it. 

If they were doctors or lawyers, would you take them? If they were campaign donors, would you take them? What if I told you each and every one has the potential to become just that - doctors, lawyers, donors, Texans. Instead you define them by a single thing. Instead you play politics with the lives of 30,000 potential Americans. 

If they are running from ISIS or the Taliban, would you take them? I can personally vouch for three young men from Afghanistan who are running from the Taliban and waiting in Bangkok in a single room day after day to be resettled. They just want to finish their university classes and move on with their lives. Trust me, their life goals never consisted of coming to my shoddy English classes once a week. One of the guys even asked me, haltingly, about security in America when he's heard that "just anyone can get a gun." HE LIVED IN AFGHANISTAN AND IS CONCERNED ABOUT HIS SECURITY IN AMERICA. This isn't an isolated concern. I've had many friends from other countries inquire about their safety in America. "But is it safe?" "Just how many people have guns?" "Do you have a gun? I thought every American had a gun."

I'm not trying to pit one against another. America is relatively safe. Refugees want to be resettled in America, and my Thai friends want to vacation in America and go see the Hollywood sign and Disneyland. America holds promise for so many. But if we hold the rest of the world at arm's length because of our supposed exceptionality, if we claim security concerns when we ourselves are dangerous, we only further point out how unexceptional and cowardly we are. Living abroad, you can't tell the signal from the noise. The rest of the world hears that America is building a wall and black men are being killed by police. And now, rejecting refugees lets the world know that we are sticking to our guns, digging in our heels and being stubborn assholes. As a Texan, I am not threatened by refugees. I am threatened by complacency and fear. Because that's what threatens my refugee friends. 

What a time to be alive

As part of my volunteer work here, I have been spending time with women who are current or former prostitutes -- some of whom have been trafficked, some were coerced and some whose realities were so bad it didn't make a difference to them one way or another. Some choose sex work to pay their way through school or support their family. I visit women in brothels, in the Immigration Detention Center and on the street. Some are mothers, some are orphans. Most are cisgender, some are trans. A few are from as far away as Madagascar. Evidently, it's not the singing lemur paradise I thought it was. The Bangkok money-for-sex scene unfortunately appeals to such diverse groups of men from around the world that you meet women from just about everywhere. 

Sometimes I'm amazed at the access I have to vulnerable people, but then I realize it's because no one else wants to hang out with them. I show up on day one and they tell me their whole story, perhaps because no one has ever showed up before, or because they know their story is the only currency they have left. I am not a social worker or counselor -- I'm barely even a compassionate person (just ask my husband when he's sick how compassionate I am). My brother recently visited and I gave him a tour of the redlight area near my house where some friends I know work. He asked why I do this, why I visit with women and children in and around the redlight areas. He asked if it's one of those making-a-difference-to-that-one-starfish kind of thing. My answer surprised me as I said it, "I just can't look away. I can't not be here." I guess that's why. I am the weirdest bystander ever.

There are very real constraints that make any grandiose ideas of progress in anti-trafficking work, particularly in Southeast Asia, seem almost laughable. President Obama just last week signed an anti-slavery bill that will hopefully limit Americans' access to imported goods produced by slaves, which is great. But was anyone else kind of eye-rolling that this hadn't been done already? It's a complex problem, sure. The women I know tell stories brought to you by such deep-rooted, intractable problems as... WAR! GENDER INEQUALITY! RACISM! OIL PRICES! Trafficking is oftentimes a problem of migration or crumbling former Soviet or post-colonial, post-war African economies. Does anyone feel like taking on colonization and sex trafficking on any given day? Hell no. In terms of living in Bangkok specifically, an article came out last week that helped me to contextualize my angst. The New York Times Southeast Asia bureau chief wrote about living in and covering the area for the last nine years:

I despaired at the venality of the elites and the corruption that engulfed the lives of so many people I interviewed. I came to see Southeast Asia as a land of great people and bad governments, of remarkable graciousness but distressing levels of impunity.

Trying to make anti-trafficking headway in this atmosphere of impunity is like trying to save raindrops from drowning. So... why am I here? How dumb am I, really? Technically, I am a philanthropy and communications consultant. Reading Gloria Steinem and Eve Ensler's accounts of women they've met is the closest I've ever come to recognizing myself. They are Women (with a capital W) who listen to other women and tell their stories, elevating their voices. This is what I've ended up doing by default, in my desire to just do something, to bear witness. I sit with people, refugees and women in sex work, and hear their stories, creating a space for their past traumas and future selves to co-mingle. I don't even share the stories anywhere; It's just letting people be themselves. I hope that every woman I meet recognizes her inherent worth and value and feels accepted down to her very soul. A shortcut would be to use the word empowerment. Empowerment is so hot right now. As a tagline, it's nice and concise and tells a story. But I try really hard not to use the E word when I am the subject of the sentence. I empower women or this organization empowers women reveals a dangerous subtext. Utilizing my privilege (time, money, and safe, quiet spaces), I try to be with them in their grief or triumph and hope that they begin the process of empowering themselves. Listening is a quiet revolution. A woman I visited with in IDC thanked me for listening and said it helped her feel strong. Empowerment is, if you're doing it right, a spectator sport. You can create the space and be present. I'm amazed by how strong these women are who are in the process of saving themselves. 

"Power can be taken but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself."  -Gloria Steinem

Once I've heard and listened, the temptation is to use the stories to draw attention to myself or to "the cause." But I've struggled time and again with telling the stories of the women I meet. It's just not up to me. I'm grateful for Eve Ensler traveling to Congo and Gloria Steinem working alongside Native American women and telling their stories. But I hope that we are moving towards more women telling stories for themselves and the rest of us LISTENING. There is so much to be learned, so many women who are capable of claiming their own power. This can be relational, one-on-one sharing, or public or, sometimes, if she so chooses, not at all. Sometimes it's just too painful to deal with and what's done and the pain is best left in the past. My greatest accomplishment here will not be what I say, but what I'm trusted with hearing. 

On Wednesday, I go back to the States for work, carrying the stories of these women with me. I'm hoping to come back in a month with fresh ideas for how to help these women tell their own stories and move on and through and up. Perspective and distance will hopefully help. Also, queso.