a day at NightLight

Today I got to spend my first day with the women at NightLight. I was of course a little shy at first. Annie introduced me and then had other business to attend to and I was left just sitting there feeling silly. Not knowing whether any of the women spoke any English and not feeling competent enough to try out Thai. So I busied myself with observing and beading. Then someone came to give an English lesson. This helped me out incredibly because I got to mingle with the women, see who spoke English, and work on my Thai all at the same time! After that I felt much more comfortable and began working by the side of one of the women. She was really nice and knew quite a bit of English and I got to practice some of my Thai and ask questions about more.

I didn’t really have expectations of what NightLight was going to be like. (For those who don’t know what NightLight is…they reach out to women in the bars and offer them an alternative. They offer them a job with a livable wage, making jewelry, as well as other education and support.) But the women there seemed much more cheery and normal then I expected. Perhaps because I’m such an outsider, I haven’t seen the pains of the women. As I looked at each women I could only imagine what lie in their past. I’m filled with hope for their futures.

The sobering thing is, though this room was filled with 10 women who were making it out of prostitution…there’s thousands more. There’s a bar/club not 100 yards away that had 5 girls sitting outside dressed like schoolgirls waiting for their next clients…and Bangkok is filled with hundreds more of these clubs. While talking to Annie the other day about the whole prostitution issue, I realized that it’s just like the myriad of other looming social issues. It’s just like the kid from Oakland getting pulled into dealing. It’s just like the transient farm worker not earning a living wage. It’s just like people starving all over the world. It’s just like children going blind for want of medical care. So many factors. So many structuralized patterns.

Where does one start in the fight against these issues? The only answer that seems reasonable is: one person at a time. Whether I win or lose is beside the point…it’s in the fighting that matters. It’s about love. I would rather die miserable, knowing I had loved – then live contented, knowing I could’ve loved more. The cool thing is though…loving never leaves you miserable, it leaves you with joy.