Post Two: Post-arrival

This should probably be spread out into a few with more detail, but lack of sleep and a little stress has succeeded in persuading me to postpone this latest post…please don’t be too perturbed :-/
Upon Arrival…the house was asleep as we came in late. The anticipation of this moment had built itself into a surreal fulfillment…it was almost dreamlike to arrive and be shown around the facility they’ve named the “New Home,” though far more exciting than our arrival would be the following morning where we met all the girls. We couldn’t help but wonder if it would be awkward with a sort of forced excitement to meet the new foreigners or if we’d be welcomed with as much anticipation as we’ve had building up to this day. As it turns out they had been looking forward to our arrival at least as much as we were. Kuya Cliff and Ate(awtay) Heather are what they call us. To this day, one of the girls will start yelling “Kuya Cliff, WELCOME!” at random and at the top of her lungs…it is freaking hilarious and so is she; I love it.
And one can’t help but love these girls. There are, or I suppose were, 7 girls in total, all with incredibly distinct and beautiful personalities. Some speak English really well, others not so much but the miscommunications lead to a lot of laughter. Their ages range from 14 to 18 with interests ranging from dancing and singing to computer technology. There’s almost always a song filling the house as one or more of the girls are practicing their skills and more often than not one of the girls that’s interested in computers will come and sit next to me as I enter items into our financial spreadsheet. She says she wants to be an accountant one day and I think she’ll be great at it. Their stories differ widely but one thing they all have in common is the extreme poverty that has led them to this place in their lives. They have and still face so much and yet they continue to move forward. It’s inspiring to say the least, but with the good also comes the sad. Recently one of the girl’s mothers came demanding that her daughter be returned to her. Like so many others, the family has no money but plenty of mouths to feed. And though we send them funds and have tried to set them up with a small business to help sustain them it wasn’t enough. The mother, if you can call her that, wants her working, preferably in the bar where she knows she can make a good wage. It’s absolutely terrible. We’re working to get her back and still have hope, but we’re fighting more than just poverty, we’re fighting twisted cultural norms that dilute the moral errancy of child prostitution and that’s a hard thing to do.
And the sadness doesn’t end there.

My primary role here is as a rescuer. Our job is to pose as customers and infiltrate establishments offering the “services” of underage girls. The trick is identifying the ones that look to be under 18. This is easier said than done, but once you think you’ve found one, you pay a fee to sit and talk with her. Many patrons are shooting for more than just conversation; we of course are aiming for something else entirely. I’ve talked with quite a few girls now and though many of them have not been underage I can’t help but feel a deep yearning to rescue them also, unfortunately though, I can’t. The majority of them have a genuine and apparent need for affirmation and love, but if they aren’t in the target range, often my job requires me to snob them off and find the ones that are. You can tell that it really hurts them; it might be the saddest thing I’ve ever had to do, and unfortunately there will be a lot of it to be done.
There’s quite a lot of other work to be done here as well. Seeing as how this is a brand new project nation all the systems and procedures for this particular context have yet to really be set. Along with assisting in rescues and overseeing child sponsorship, for the time being I’ve been put in charge of finance and administration. It’s taken a couple of weeks but I think I’ve finally gotten the last few months of financial disarray put into reasonable order. My next set of tasks will be to create some efficient systems with regard to administrative functions like the processing of intake forms and other day to day items. On top of that we have a few building projects that we’re going to be tackling over the following few weeks. A couple of them are here on the rescue property but another is at the home of one of our rescued girls where we plan on building some retaining walls to hold back the flood waters when the river behind her house rises suddenly whenever it rains within the city. I also need to straighten out my diet, get on a steady exercise regimen, start self-defense training, start regularly practicing my Tagolog, update this blog more often, start entering my expenses every week and call home to mother more regularly.
Pray for me.

We also need to plan for the house warming party. About 10 days after we arrived we were able to settle on a house to rent in a ‘relatively’ nice section of town that has a gate with a ‘guard’ at the main entrance, though I don’t think he’s ever stopped a single soul, and then yet another gate to enter our small section of homes. It was important for the girls to have a safe place to live. It’s actually pretty dangerous being a foreigner here, especially a female one. The rent is pretty cheap at just over $150 each, and the house is one of the nicest houses I’ve ever lived in…sans A/C. It’s so nice that I’m a little ashamed to live here. I went on a home visit for two of the girls where I worked as Heather’s body guard and their houses were essentially shacks. I’ve heard it said that the majority of the world lives in houses that I wouldn’t keep my tools in…that was definitely true in this case. I also had the opportunity to visit one of my fellow rescuer’s homes. It was one room about the size of our living room where I think 6 people lived. It just doesn’t seem right to me, but if we wanted to have a safe place for the girls and be anywhere near the rescue home it was really the only option available to us. According to Google it’s only about 7 minutes away from the home, but if there’s traffic you’re looking at about 25 easy and let me just tell you about the traffic.

Manila is fairly well known for its traffic, foreigners will be the first ones to complain about it but I find it interesting mostly. In fact, I thought I had found something beautiful about the culture while observing the local’s behavior in regard to it. People are constantly cutting one another off, stopping in the middle of the road to pick up passengers (yeah, not on the side of the road, not even in the far right lane, usually at least one lane in and right in the middle. I guess it’s easier to merge back in to traffic if you never leave it), driving extremely slow for no apparent reason (and when I say extremely slow, I mean much slower than the already absurdly slow speed limit of 60kph[37.3mph]. This is the speed limit of the main 14 lane hwy that we travel on), driving in two lanes at once and breaking pretty much every traffic law possible (I’ve actually never been in a situation where I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be following the laws or not; happens to me regularly here). But with all that it seems that the people don’t really get too angry, it’s just the way it works on these streets. “They don’t have road rage here like they do in the states. These people are full of nothing but warmth and love for one another as they share the roadways with their fellow countrymen.” I thought to myself. Disillusionment came my way during my second day of driving our brand new Mitsubishi L300. I was driving the rescue team home after doing some ops at several local bars and had to make a U-turn and quickly make my way across 5 lanes of busy Manila traffic. As is necessary here, you just have to kinda force your way in. As I crept over, expecting the others to give way, as is done here and as I have had to do so many times now, a certain driver in a dark blue late 90’s Toyota sedan FREAKED and started wailing on his horn. “Fine, fine,” I thought to myself as I drifted back into my lane to let him pass, but he wasn’t done yet. The blue devil pulled up next to me and started swerving over as if he were going to ram into us. “Ha! I won’t be dissuaded, I’m going to hold my ground and…” SMASH! He rams into the front of the van and drives away down a dark side street. Luckily the damage wasn’t too bad. Welcome to the streets of Manila.

And the streets aren’t just filled with traffic. Everywhere you look, down every ally, byway and highway there are vendors selling anything and everything. There are people selling food not just on every corner, but every few steps with others selling sunglasses, t-shirts, toys and everything else in-between. Vendor after vendor after vendor, and when you’re stuck in traffic (which you will be) there are people walking up to your car to sell you snacks or flowers or seat cushions or even hat racks, yes, I have seen at least 3 people walking in the middle of traffic trying to sell full sized, standing hat racks…fascinating. But vendors aren’t the only ones in the streets. Everywhere you go, along with those selling, you’ll find those with nothing to sell because they have nothing at all. Little street children, I would say as young as 7 years old but I’ve seen several 7 year old girls holding their 2 year old sisters watching over them as they go from car to car in the congested smog filled streets begging for change. You see them in groups of two or three oftentimes late at night. It’s a sad sight to say the very least.

All this of course stems from the abject poverty in this nation which is extremely apparent everywhere you look but in my opinion has its most evil outworking in the sexual exploitation of underage girls. And that’s what I’m here to fight.
The problem is so big and there is so much work to be done and I have so much to learn and so much that I need to grow into but God willing I’ll be able to make an impact; I need His help more than ever. Though, if I’m honest, it’s hard to see Him here; so much pain, so much brokenness, and even in our own efforts to do His work and see the innocent saved there are so many problems and setbacks that we face. It may all sounds quite immature but lately I can’t help but think about the army of Israel and how when God was with them there was no stopping them. I want to see God work like that, to be truly active in an unstoppable and apparently miraculous way. Maybe I will…maybe I won’t; maybe I shouldn’t question His ways and will for the world. In any case, I know that I simply need to keep working and hopefully I’ll see Him soon, I’ll let you know if I do.

If you would like to support me you can find option to do so at the end of my support letter…also, you can pray for me as well ☺