This is a captivating, beautiful and terrifying city. We saw many of those faces today.
One of the first things you notice when arriving here is that all traffic laws are optional, traffic lanes do not exist and the horn is used more often than the steering wheel. You think you're going crazy because you start hearing horns everywhere you go until you realize: you're actually hearing horns everywhere you go. Trucks actually say "Horn OK Please" so they won't hit you when they swerve around and can't see you. If you saw Ice Road Truckers when they went to India, it is EXACTLY that. I could not drive on these roads here.
The first place we went to was the Bombay Teen Challenge, or BTC, clinic in the red light district. In the daylight, this huge expanse of brothels known as Kamathipura definitely takes on the feeling that it's hiding something. It seems too quiet. It causes you to raise your awareness to what's going on around you. You become suspicious of the buildings and people around you. It's pretty unsettling.
The clinic is both a medical and dental clinic. They offer free services and have an ambulance for the women in the brothels. They regularly visit the houses here and other brothel sites around the city. The goal is to get the ladies to use the clinic and hear about Jesus while they're there. BTC then tries to get them out of the brothels and into a permanent home called Ashagram, where we will be staying later this week. We met the clinic doctor and a pastor working with BTC there and heard stories about their lives and the women they come in contact with.
We then went to a feeding program, also run by BTC, out of a bus. The bus travels around the city to different sites and feeds those who are nearby. Today, the bus was by the train station (which happens to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Due to the recent bombings that happened in the city, security was high. We almost didn't end up going because the person running the ministry didn't want our presence to create a scene with security forces. We finally did, however, and this was a great experience.
When we got there, we met several girls who told us all about their lives. One girl was begging on the street because her father was an alcoholic who had no job. They have been trying to get her to Ashagram for a while now. Also, another young teenage girl was there with her baby. She desperately wanted to get to Ashagram, but needed her husband to sign the papers to let her go. He still has yet to do this, so we prayed for her and her small family. We told the girls that the only thing that could change their lives is Jesus. We got together and prayed for the girls and did our best to encourage them to keep coming to BTC and to their church.
We spent a little time driving around the city, and what we saw was amazing. There is a lot of evidence left over from British rule. There are several old government buildings around the train station that look like Gothic cathedrals. If you look a little closer, you notice that the column toppers are fruits and flowers, the gargoyles are lions, the relief sculptures are peacocks and the arches are distinctly Indian. It's amazingly beautiful. We mixed up the High Court with a church because it resembles a Gothic cathedral-style mosque.
Next, we went to a children's home called Jeevan Jyoti. Translation of the name: Life Light. Most of the kids here have mothers in the brothels. The center has about 50 kids that live on the 4th story of a large building that is actually still inside 'the district'. When we arrived, the girls came up to us and greeted us in well-spoken English. They asked for our names and our favorite colors.
Being a tall, fair-skinned woman with red hair and green eyes, I have been on several mission trips where one or two things about my appearance are different from the people I'm serving. It this case, it has proven that all four of those things put together make me stick out like a sore thumb. The kids came up and played with my hair and commented on the color of my eyes. Several of the girls took my hands and walked me around with them. We taught the kids some songs with motions, made construction paper crowns to remind us to store up treasures in heaven and played duck duck goose. I had a great time! The little boys loved my camera and the older boys threw crumpled up pieces of paper and tried to throw them into the crown on my head like a basketball hoop (not unlike what the kids in my own youth group would do).
By the time we left, it had gotten dark. I had known that we were still on a narrow side-street off of the district, but it hadn't occurred to me until then that we had walked in when the van couldn't make it down the narrow street . . . and now we would have to walk back to where they had parked the car. Several of the older boys and male staff members came with us down the stairs and met our driver. Our group leader told us to stay close together and walk fast. I had heard that this happened to the first team that was here a few weeks ago, and they walked down the street for less than a minute. I wasn't worried, so I started to take a look and tune into my surroundings as we made our way down the narrow road.
This was a scary place. It looked like many slums I had seen before, but instead of simply the heaviness you feel while seeing people in poverty, this felt oppressive. There is a very specific kind of darkness there, and you see it on everyone's face. It was heavy, and I felt like I was breathing it in like smog. I found myself physically recoiling and tensing up from this unseen darkness. I almost regretted tuning into my surroundings, but I realized that this darkness would have made itself known even if I hadn’t. I wasn’t like I needed to look for it. It felt hopeless, destructive, listless and at the same time, frantic. It was like everyone in the area had the same experience: caught in a horrible trap and wanting to be free from it, but ultimately seeing no way out. This was pervasive, from the 3-year old sitting in the ditch to the girls standing outside their shacks, preparing to go into the district itself to do 'the work'. People stared at us as we walked past, and I could feel these stares. This was not someplace I wanted to be.
We reached the end of the side street and walked onto one of the district streets. I expected to see the car here, but we turned onto the street and kept walking. The old streetlamps cast everything in a really eerie shade of yellow. I got the ugly kind of goosebumps - the ones you get when you just know that something is terribly wrong with what's going on around you. I was looking at evil in action. The girls stood in brightly colored clothing right next to where we were walking. The guys walked in huge clusters down the street - and we were right there, walking between the girls on the sidewalk and the cars in the street. I was almost afraid to look up, but I found that I couldn't look away.
These girls looked like me. They looked like my friends. They looked like the students in my youth group. These were not pictures in a book, they were real people. I would make eye contact with some and it was jarring. I saw two very distinct things in every face: paralyzing, numbing hopelessness . . . but also a burning deeper in. A challenge. It was as if they were saying I wasn't any different from them. It was wrong that I was walking through and they were bound there, and they knew it. They were being held against their will, trying to get out of this horrible life . . . and I just tear down their street, trying to get out of there as soon as I could and back to my life of family, friends, love and security with my piles of clothes and abundance of food and secure room behind a locked door.
This is wrong.
This is more wrong than I can even put words to. These girls did not choose this life, it shackled them when they were sold by their own families or friends for their purchase price. Some were promised work for their families and were pulled into locked rooms and tortured until they would 'do the work' to supposedly pay back for what their purchase price cost the brothel.
We turned down another street and came up to some men coming into the district. They had the same trapped, oppressive, hopelessness on their faces. All of them, all down the entire street. It was then that I realized . . . this darkness was bigger and more ugly than I thought. It's easy to point the blame at these men, but that's not the whole story. The same darkness that held those girls is the same darkness that eats these men alive.
When we reached the van, we drove down the main avenue and saw hundreds of girls and hundreds of men, all with this horrible darkness written all over their faces. I could feel it, creeping up on me as well . . .like hooks in my back . . . and I was thankful that I carry the power in me to cast it off of myself. I realized that all the smiling, joyful kids I had just seen at Jeevan Jyoti had been here once, and had been rescued. I was so amazingly thankful that I was there to help the source of life and light in this district. I was there to help the force that rescues the girls and brings them out of this terrible life and into the life that God intended them to have in the first place. And I was also helping the force that rehabilitated the addicted men that come to the district. I am helping to create change in this dark and dangerous place, and that is the only real comfort I can give myself after seeing something so scary . . . it could have been me standing on that street night after night, if not for the grace of God in my life.
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