Girls at risk, Rescued. A Day in the Village.

Today I went to the village with Joy and Julia, two of the workers with ADRA. I met a little girl named  Phone, she is from Mong, one of the hill tribes in Chiang Rai. Girls from the Hill tribe region are especially vulnerable to trafficking since many of the girls have no education and live in extreme cases of poverty. Also since they are hill tribe they tend to not have any Identification, so if they go missing, or if they are kidnapped no one will come looking for them.

Phone is the one to the far right. 

Phone is 12 years old and she currently is living with her grandmother and attending one of the rural schools. She was sponsored by ADRA 10 Baht a day so she could attend. Her grandmother shared with me that her mother and father used to live in the bamboo house next door but eventually separated cause the couple could not get a long. Phone used to witness her father beating her mother often. Eventually the father left the two of them behind, and then the mother abandoned the daughter to the  grandmother. She is now working prostitution in Chiang Mai. It wasn't hard hearing the facts of the story so much as it was hard looking at Phone. She never smiled, not once, and when I spoke with her teacher she said the same thing "Phone never smiles, she has a sad face all the time." While spending time with her, it was like her sadness was just emanating towards me. I just wanted to cry but in Thai culture that is seen to be a sign of weakness.

Nam, even though we are not supposed tot have favorites was probably one of my favorite girls in the children's shelter at KGS. She would always wake me and hug me and grab me around my waist. She was also the one who taught me most of the Thai words and sentences that I know. She helps me confuse people on the street who expect me not to know Thai. She is absolutely beautiful. She was brought to the home because he father and her father's friend, are heavy into heroine and other kinds of drug abuse. They used to watch porn with the kids and Nam was often left alone with her father's friends unprotected. She doesn't share much about what happened to her but we assume sexual abuse.

Nam is center with the purple attire.