June 22nd part 3 – To add to the day of thought provocation, our last visit was to a brothel. When we arrived, there was only one friendly aspect: the ebullient girls. The brothel was housed in a U-shape with an open concrete courtyard. The individual rooms were cinder-block shells. When I took a moment to peak inside all I saw was a dirt-speckled bed without furnishings, unless you count a mosquito net.
The tone was especially somber. For me, it felt a bit like I was a Nazi-sympathizer meeting with a group of Holocaust survivors. Looking at the faces of the other males in the group, it looked like the shame expression of awkwardness and shame. We were the default enemy in a vicious battle of the sexes.
The prostitutes looked at ease and were giggling among themselves. They appeared to have built defense mechanisms long ago. To break some of the obvious tension felt by males and females alike, we played a game in a circle of throwing a tomato in the air from one person to the next. If dropped, we had to start from the beginning again. It was a good trust exercise and everyone laughed when I missed my catch. After playing the game again with an egg, the mood seemed more congenial. Nonetheless, group members lost no time in asking some very probing questions.
The first question asked was how old were the girls. It seems like an innocuous question, but it received some fairly reserved answers. Down the line answers from 19 to 24 appeared, most of which seemed plausible with a margin of error of 2 years. In the middle of the semicircle sat a very young girl. Her face seemed to lack the depression and sullenness that the other girls wore behind their false happiness. She smiled, looking to the other girls for an answer. At first it sounded like she tried to say 17, but changed her answer to 15. When we left the brothel, the general consensus was that she was closer to 12 or 13, no older than 14. Throughout the entire conversation, it was difficult to avoid staring into this young girl's face. It was captivatingly sad to imagine the life that forced these circumstances.
Around the table again, the girls answered that they were all doing this as a means to make money to send back home. When asked how much money they would need before leaving, they answered about 10,000 baht (300 USD), which would take four to five months to save. When asked how long they had been there already answers varied from one month to five. One fresh-faced girl, who was quite popular with clients, had been there only 15 days. When someone asked if the ones who had been there for several months would be heading home soon, the idea was not immediately jumped upon. “Yes,” a couple said reluctantly, perhaps based on the fear that the families they hadn't seen or spoken with would not accept them when they returned.
There were many more questions asked. Given that they went through two translations, English to Thai then Thai to Karen or Mon and back, it was about an hour and a half of questions. However, when the time came for the prostitutes to ask questions to us there was a void of interest. One of the older girls, who had acted as a spokeswoman for the group, asked if there were people in America who did what they did. Somewhat matter-of-fact we said “yes” without much explanation of contrast. Later the group would discuss how the statement we made was very dream crushing. There's was a question of hope; “Is there anywhere in the world where such unpleasant things do not exist?” Our answer reflected a harsh reality, “No, nowhere.”
Perhaps a lie would have been better. A lie to maintain hope.
As we ready to leave, the faces of the other guys in the group looked like mine: depressed from everything spoken and unspoken, weary from the general tone of distaste toward me, but overall relief from a place that was awkward and unsettling for us all to be around. However, before we could leave the women wanted to take pictures with all of us, pictures that kept dissolving into smaller groups and different permutations of people.
It added an additional layer of bizarreness to the entire day. None of the other migrant workers were interested in having much to do with us, but these women were very enthused about these pictures. I would like to think that they wanted us to take a part of them with us, away from this place.
The opposite side of the relief of walking out is the pain of empathy in knowing that none of the prostitutes get the same luxury. While we get to go back to comfortable beds and friendly surroundings to hash over all the days events, the women stay to see the few clients that gathered to lounge in the courtyard during our discussion.
There is a responsibility bestowed when you hear and see stories like the ones we hear. The challenge is knowing what to do with it.
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