How can this be? (pt 1) - Day 16

"Warning the content of this post may cause distress*

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How can it be that a daughter here is sold purely for her virginity?
That the life of a prostitute does not occur out of necessity,
but to fund their parents lifestyle of luxury.
Rape, aids. STD's 
Slavery.... in exchange for alcohol, drugs and a new tv?
I wonder cant anybody see,
the girl behind the make up crying out "please help me."
Why is she ignored and condemned by society,
when she was sold to this lifestyle by members of her own family
 Someone.... Please tell me, how can this be?


I think this blog is the hardest thing I have ever written in my life ever. Not in the actual construction, but in trying to honestly convey what I see here, what i think, what i feel.

Before I left London, part of the prep i had to do was think about how i would handle stress out here and honestly at that time i didn’t think it would be stressful, i get along with most people and i was prepared for the poverty so stress wouldn’t be a big problem. But what ive found is that I’m not stressed, I’m in distress. two completely different things. What goes on here, what has gone on, the things I’m being exposed to - its seriously distressing me. I haven’t been able to write because i haven’t wanted to remember what ive heard or process what i had seen. I wanted to crawl away and hide and most of all forget. I wanted to go back to my life in London where things made sense. I thought i wanted to know the truth, but the more i find out the more i realised i don’t want to know.

Here, in Cambodia, parents sell their daughters mostly for 4 reasons

- Materialism

-Alcoholism

- Gambling

- Laziness.

Less than 5% sell them because of poverty, and even less than because they were tricked.

So absorb this, that is nearly 90% of prostitutes in brothels were put there by their mothers, fathers, uncles, or cousins. These people willingly gave their daughters away and mostly they know where they are, what is happening to them, and still they do nothing. All my images of mothers crying at night looking for their lost daughters is actually quite rare. Children are expected to look after their parents so good families work hard to send their daughter to university so she can get a good job and look after them. But others cannot wait that long so they strike a deal with a brothel owner and send their daughter into a life characterised by rape, aids, std's, drug addictions, unwanted pregnancy and abuse in exchange for money used not to buy rice or meat, but jewellery, TV’s, drugs, motorbikes and alcohol.

Someone please explain how this can happen?

Tell me how someone can take a 5 year old girl and sell her virginity to the highest bidder, then take that same girl and sow her back up and resell her virginity, repeating the same process over and over again.

How can someone find pleasure with a child sex slave aged just 2... 2 years old. Tell me how her mother can sleep at night knowing that she is the one that put her there.

Explain how when these girls find a way out of the brothels and come to work in places like Daughters, their own mothers will come and insist their girl goes back to the brothel because they are not bringing home enough money. Some of the girls i work with have to plead with their families to let them stay at Daughters and get an honest day’s work.

Tell me how someone can send their son out to work the streets and tell him not to come back until he has made $10. If he comes back empty handed he gets beaten and starved and sent back out to make money, so he sells himself on the street the only way he knows how just so that he can go home and eat and sleep in peace.

These are the stories of some of the boys I work with, the ones i teach music to at the centre or some of the girls that i help out with in the cooking class. These are the stories of many children across Cambodia.  This is their brutal reality. This is their life. Stripped of basic rights and the things we in the West take for granted -  the right to education, to healthcare, to safety, to love, to freedom.

The right to choice.

This is the young generation of Cambodia.