Wednesday 22 June 2011

First Impressions


Here we are, finally in South Asia. We travelled for about 24 hours stopping off in London and eventually arrived on Sunday afternoon. We were picked up by two fellow IJM interns and took a taxi-cab into the unknown. The very next day we started at the office.

I’ll start with the office. It is truly incredible to be in an IJM field office. Advocates are in and out of Court, investigators pop in and out of the office. Each day prayer requests, and praise reports, and also reports of setbacks and frustrations come in about the young girls and ‘forced majors’ (over the age of 18 currently, but still forced into prostitution, often as minors). I found reading one of Gary Haugen’s (Founder of IJM) books really brought home how horrific the experience of these girls is. But to be so close, to read actual reports – it is almost numbing. I really can’t even imagine. Tricked or kidnapped away from isolated towns, locked in cubicles, servicing 15-20 daily, beaten and threatened, tortured for not performing their ‘duties’ perfectly. I can hardly fathom a more hideous manifestation of evil.

As for the office itself, well, it’s actually a converted apartment building. It is nothing to write home about, although I suppose I am writing home about it. I should provide pictures, but I’m still a little reluctant to brandish my new camera outside. Apparently, everyone has been praying for new office space for five years. There are plenty of shining sky-scrapers marked with corporate logos rising out of the rubble. But we aren’t located there, and probably never will be. Our city is the economic capital of South Asia, and every bank in the world has an office here.  But rent is out of control. Lauren and I pay close to $600 a month for a very humble one bedroom, partially air conditioned apartment. Nobody knows when this ‘promise land’ of a new office will arrive.

How to describe South Asia? It’s hard. The city is completely insane. It’s the population of Australia crammed into one city. Something’s gotta give. It’s out of control in every way. Not enough power (it’s not atypical to just lose power for a couple hours because the power company intentionally rations you to provide power somewhere else), not enough drainage, not enough real estate to accommodate the 20 million people in the metropolitan area. It’s not all bad, though. There’s an incredible energy to the city, that I’m sure I will appreciate more as time goes by. And there are also, apparently, extremely nice areas that we will I’m sure visit at some point.

To get to work, we ride in rickshaws on busted up streets that are jammed with taxis, other rickshaws, people, cows, and many other things. I am convinced we are going to be in a head-on-collision about every 20 seconds. But apparently, because there is so much traffic, everyone is forced to go slow, and there are actually surprisingly few serious accidents. The constant blaring of horns stops only from about 1:30 AM to 5 AM (and I know this because the first jet-lagged night I had little to do but observe the frequency of horn blasts as I lay wide awake in bed).

The air is actually not as bad as I expected. The heat is certainly not as bad, as the Monsoon season is actually relatively cool. But the craziness is about all I could have anticipated, as is the dirtiness.  Some places there are no strange smells. And then you’ll approach a giant heap of garbage --  a public dump right in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, and your sense of smell just gets inundated with nasty. Nasty that just doesn’t exist back home. The first night I was a little reluctant to even venture out to buy water (I did, eventually). Everything was just SO foreign. I’ve experienced Africa, Nicaragua, Thailand, Cambodia... but never this.
-Mark

2 comments:

  1. woah sounds exciting and a bit crazy. nice blog post. it really brings it to life. will be thinking and praying for you guys.
    derek

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  2. Eloquent prose. Thanks for sharing your day-to-day and your conclusionsé

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