Week 13

A fair amount of my time here in Bangkok has been spent reading. As a whole, the five of us were required to bring along six books to read and discuss while here. I've spent a lot of the last week reading the remaining two: Sexually Exploited Children and Sex Slaves. As I found out four months ago in Dallas, these are awkward titles to have on your office desk if you aren't a social worker or something close.

Sex Slaves, at one point, refers to Bangkok as "the world's brothel." When people ask me what I think of Bangkok, I usually say something about the food, mostly because "the world's brothel" is often what first comes to mind. I recognize that this thought is unfair to Thai people in general and citizens of Bangkok in particular, but for half a week every week, it's what I see of the city.

Women are trafficked here from all over the continent, but Sex Slaves asserts that the majority are from Burma and North Thailand. These women arrive under varying levels of coercion, from outright, drugged kidnapping to a conscious choice, albeit made under the duress of poverty and a familial culture that emphasizes concrete, financial indebtedness to one's parents. These are the girls lining the street that I walk down three times a week at night.

In the daytime, Bangkok offers me the chance to tour scores of intricately constructed wats--temples--all dedicated to a seemingly innocuous, peaceful dogma that fatalistically assigns a prostitute her lot in life with no hope to save.

What do I think of Bangkok? The food is excellent.

As usual this week, we had outreach on Monday and Wednesday. This week we prepared food packets beforehand--two chicken sticks, an orange, and bread. Nearly all the faces this past week were familiar, so our awkward Thai conversations were longer and more awkward, with lots of pauses, but with much grace. When someone we know allows us to sit with them, they are always happy to forgive our linguistic shortcomings.

The police were out in force both nights, apparently running off child beggars after "confiscting" their earnings and taking their shoe-shining kits. This meant that many of our friends were gone or hiding by the time we made it to Nana.

This week, Jeff and I participated in our first, and unfortunately second-to-last, week of partner ship with the MST--Men and the Sex Trade--project. The project seeks to humanize the men who visit Nana plaza and Soi Cowboy as broken sinners in need of grace as opposed to much more one-dimensional labels like "pervert."

Next week, we will actually approach men for discussion. This last week, we joined MST on a very eye-opening prayer walk through Nana plaza. I had seen the entrance to the plaza every week during outreach, but was unaware of the structure within. I found it disturbingly procedural. I needn't go into details here--you can always ask me--but the place is every bit as orderly as I imagine any Old Testament cult's fertility temples would be. The men there are not just out-of-control tourists on a bender, they are pious adherents of a religion.

At home, I've taken up yoga with Bethany leading the way. It was my idea, which should stricke anyone who knows me as odd. Thankfully, Bethany never lets me escape my committment. I'm getting sore in places I didn't know existed.

As I post this, there's only one week of English teaching left at Klong Thoei. I think I'll miss those kids, even the really loud ones.