Dancing toward Freedom

Article published on the IJM website

KOLKATA, INDIA – The crowd stirred in their seats, eager for the dance performance to begin. A police officer from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), a major police force in West Bengal, India, stood to address the room. While a law enforcement officer seems an unusual emcee, this show was an exceptional one: The 19 dancers about to perform were all sex trafficking survivors.

The officer explained that the CID was hosting the dance performance as a way to honor these brave trafficking survivors, and to support the thousands of other girls like them, still waiting for rescue. The heavy red curtains rolled back, and the girls danced onto the stage. Each girl was adorned in glittering red and gold fabric. Triumphant bells hung from their waists and ankles. For the next half hour, their dance told a story from the epic Indian tale of Mahabharata, a love story about a warrior princess.

Over 300 people clapped and cheered as the dancers exited the stage. Proud staff from IJM and the aftercare homes where the survivors live were joined by friends, family members and other police officers from the CID. The girls excitedly hugged one another and posed for pictures. The real celebration was just beginning.

It was a pivotal moment for many of the girls, who have battled feelings of shame and the deep effects of trauma since they were rescued from exploitation. After the performance, one girl explained that once girls like her have been sold for sex, "our families won't take us back." Proudly, she added: "But even we have talents and positive qualities we can show people. It's my favorite part: being on stage and showing them my talents."

The concert had been months in the making, with many practices and rehearsals. But as Smita Singh, director of Mahima aftercare home for trafficking survivors explained, this was much more than a performance. "It truly shows that encouragement, love and the correct guidance will allow these survivors of the worst kind of abuse to bloom and take a confident stand in the community."

Another housemother from Transition Home beamed as she helped the girls in the green room, as if the trafficking survivors had become her own daughters: "I felt so proud," she said, "It is a dream come true."

Images have been obscured for the protection of these IJM clients. 

Mosquitoes

It’s amazing how our bodies and spirits can adapt to almost any circumstance. It’s as if God designed us to persevere and to survive. 

After three months of living in South Asia, my body has finally started to acclimatize. My lungs have learned to process through the pollution, and seem to be functioning normally again. My ears have begun to block out the constant honking. My nose has created a new scale on which to judge clean versus dirty. And my feet have detached themselves entirely from the rest of my existence.

But there is one thing that I will never get used to, one part of my body that can’t seem to adapt. It’s the thorn in my side, the enemy’s atomic bomb.

It’s those frickin mosquito bites!

One thing you need to know about my city, is it used to be one, big swamp. In many ways it still is. Basically it’s Mecca for mosquitoes. They all flock to my city to breed, multiply exponentially, and then die from blood overdose.

Now comes for the anecdote. Why am I telling you about the mosquitoes three months into my stay?

We were on our way to an aftercare home. Our office decided to host Christmas programs for every home with an IJM rescued girl. So, naturally, as the office photographer, I got to attend them all. :)

Local churches performed skits, our teams passed out gifts and lunch. And I got to sit with the girls, laugh, tell them my name over and over and over; and shower them with love. (I definitely have the best job in the world.)

But one of the homes didn’t have space inside for the dances we had prepared. So we moved outside. On our way out, I noticed the ground looked permanently damp. Some of the sewage from the bathroom was running into the concrete, right where we were going to sit.

But as a foreigner, I am instantly on probation. I am guilty until proven innocent. I am fighting such an uphill battle, that any motion to move the blanket would have been detrimental.

So I sat down, albeit reluctantly.

Zzzzzzzz bite. Slap. Kill: One mosquito down, 80 billion katrillion to go. Another bite. Another slap. I look around me … O my gosh, we were sitting in a fest pool of mosquitoes!

I kid you not. They were swarming. If mosquitoes had nests, we would have been inside it. We had threatened the queen mosquito, and they were coming for revenge.

The little kids sought solace in my lap, hiding themselves from the outside world. I had two girls on each knee, one hanging on my back, and another grabbing my arm. My free hand was swatting frantically, while my brain fought to stay focused on the performance that forged ahead. It was a battle of the mind. It took every ounce of self-control and will power to stay put, knowing blood was being sucked out of me every couple of seconds. 

Why did we stay? Because South Asia is a shame-based culture, meaning you do whatever you can to save face, and your friend’s as well. To stop the performance and move inside would have been practical but potentially embarrassing. So we stayed sitting.

Dead insects started to collect on the outside of my leggings. I felt like Legolas counting orchs, but not as intense, or as cool. 

The bites stopped itching and instead just starting hurting. 

I don’t think I remember a single thing from the whole program. All I remember is packing up our stuff at record speed, racing the children into the house, and sitting down only to realize that my legs and arms were tingling from insect poison running through my veins.

At home that night I counted an average of 20-30 bites on each limb.

And while I’ve had consistent bites since arriving… no amount of assimilation makes them any less annoying, painful or frustrating. I hate mosquitoes just as much now as I did when I got here.

They are truly in partnership with the evil one. Because they both suck the life out of you.

That’s it. 

The whole point of this story was to make you feel sorry for me. I want your pity!  :) 

Diwali

The Hindu festival season has finally come to a close, and Christmas has begun, which is significantly less impressive. So instead of telling you about Christmas in South Asia, I will backtrack to Diwali. Confession: it was about a month ago, so I am writing this off of memory alone.

Diwali is technically a festival of lights, which also happens to fall on Kali Puja (Kali is another version of Durga, (the Goddess I talked about earlier). But like everything in my city, things are taken to the next level. A festival of lights turns into a festival of sound, which turns into a war zone.

For a week we walked the streets, always one step away from being blown up by fireworks or being burnt by flame torches. It was what I imagine Berlin to have sounded like in the 1940s.

You know the illegal firework stands on the streets of LA? Well imagine if each person in the city bought out his or her own stand … every night.  Imagine the chaos, the danger, and the insane tension of such a situation.

That's how I felt. 

Still there was one night that topped them all. A couple of the interns and myself went to a local aftercare home to celebrate with our girls. We entered the house, climbed the stairs, and walked onto the roof. They of course, had their own mini firework stand as well. Hundreds of fireworks were stuffed into a corner. The girls were running to the pile, grabbing fireworks as fast as they could, and lighting them from the candles lining the wall.

That’s when things started exploding. Sparklers, poppers, flame torches, and spinning firebombs, all going off to the haphazard sound of screaming teenage girls. One would light her flame torch thingy, realize soon after that she had just lit an uncontrollable fire, squeal and subsequently fling the flaming stick into the air, always just missing another girl’s head. Another would light, what I like to call, a spinning flame of death, and girls would run up to see who could step on the flames without dying.

At one point I just stood back to take it all in. I couldn’t help but laugh. My mother would have had a heart attack. It wasn’t just mad chaos; it was mad chaos with fire. 

And this was happening on every roof. It was in the middle of the night, but the sky lit up like it was day. A layer of smoke had settled in the air as well as in my lungs.  And, of course, people everywhere gathered to dance, sing, randomly bang instruments together, and eat.

So as we danced, screamed, and joined in on the near death experience of lighting hazardous dynamite sticks; I realized something truly profound. You don’t need words to speak a teenage girl’s language. You just need to hold her hand and laugh together. A night of genuine and pure laughter does more for friendship than any amount of language training.

It was definitely a night I will never forget.

That may also be because of the ringing forever in my ears from the constant bombs exploding into the night sky.

Nevertheless, I have also concluded that Diwali is way cooler than The Office makes it out to be.