When Things go Wrong

Our team was in the middle of a rescue operation.  This time, as often happens, there was a tip off.  The girls and the perpetrators scattered before we reached the building, and the rescue fell apart.  It was crushing.

An operation is an exercise in patience.  Investigators spend countless nights undercover gathering information.  These courageous individuals risk their lives every time that they are in the field.  Our legal team ensures that every single technicality is followed in order to create the best possible chance for a conviction.  Without perpetrator accountability, rescues are empty; they only leave vacuums that will be filled by others, essentially creating a market for new girls.  Our aftercare team scrambles to arrange immediate support for the victims.  If not, these girls are so traumatized that they may become uncooperative, try to return to a brothel, or refuse to tell their stories and allow their abusers to walk free.  Planning can be frantic, but it is always aims to be meticulous, because the stakes are extremely high.

When it goes wrong, it can be devastating.

I was listening to a sermon online when I got the news—a text message explaining that our rescue had failed.  It was just then that the speaker began talking about times when God may allow even the best of plans to be thwarted.  He talked about how God, in his loving sovereignty, will sometimes say ‘no’ to who he uses and when, but never to what.  His mission is always the same: rescue. 

My heart needed that reminder.

The next day, we did not have our regular morning meeting.  Instead, putting any differences aside, we just sang and were reminded that God loves those girls more than any of us do, and that He is infinitely more committed to their rescue than we are.

I would be lying if I said that this makes it easier to sit with the result.  It does not.  It is so difficult to grasp God’s purpose in face of this kind of injustice, but I do not want a faith that closes its eyes to seeming incongruities, or fails to ask questions that lack trite answers. 

I want a faith that is deep enough to wrestle with the truth of God’s goodness in the reality of suffering.  Anything less would be delusion.  But I am thankful for a God who draws near in our questioning, and who is big enough to answer.  

- Lauren

Anecdotes and Pictures

We feel incredibly blessed to have been a part of the rescue operation Lauren shared about in her last post. This post is a little different, and has nothing to do with our work. I (Mark)wanted to put up a few pictures (below) and give a few anecdotes about life in India -- how, despite the fact I am really enjoying myself, it can be  frustrating, entertaining, difficult, and just really time consuming.

Grocery Shopping – Not many Indians can afford to shop in grocery stores. But there are enough to make “picking up a few things after work” a full evening affair. After my rick-shaw driver battled traffic for twenty-five minutes to get me the kilometre or two to the store, I came to realize that traffic here is not confined to the streets. It spills into the grocery stores, where the aisles are jam-packed with miniature-Indian shopping carts. There were busy intersections, one-way streets, turning lanes, wider aisles that served as high-ways, opportune u-turn places to avoid heavy congestion—all the standard traffic features. I forgot to get milk near the entrance of the store, but I quickly realized I was better off cutting my losses and continuing my forward progress through the store. And then, of course, to round out the analogy, there was the big traffic jam. Gridlock. A one hour plus line-up just to check out my groceries. After playing every single game on my cell-phone, I finally emerged, drenched in sweat, only to line up again just to have someone check off my receipt and let me exit the store.

E-mail – Checking your e-mail should take a few seconds. When we arrived at the office, however, the Microsoft Outlook server was down, and the internet was on-and-off. We tried to use the web-based version of our e-mail. When it worked, about 20% of our e-mails came through, and they were often up to a day late. Some never made the harrowing journey through cyberspace. Even when we could access emails online, it could take up to twenty minutes to switch from viewing the inbox to the sent items folder. I assumed the problem would be remedied within a few hours. I quickly revised this expectation to within a day or two. Two weeks later, Outlook seemed to take heed of my silent, mouthed, screams, and decided to return to us. I don’t know why, but I will never take it for granted again.

Critters – We have a lot of roommates, and they like to eat our food. Dozens and dozens of ants roam around our house searching for anything edible. Lauren had a rather unfortunate experience with these guys. We didn’t realize that all food must be sealed. One morning, Lauren realized that her cereal seemed rather alive. It was crawling with ants, but it was too late—she was already several mouthfuls in. But, please don’t get me wrong. I’ll take the ants (Lauren may beg to differ). So far, the cockroaches I’ve seen in my neighbours’ garbage are yet to make an appearance. And the rats that terrorized the previous intern (she swears it wasn’t the reason she gave us the apartment) seem to have been successfully vanquished.


[I (Lauren) have this to add: Mark has, unfortunately, been shocked out of the idyllic childhood cocoon that is created by growing up in a rat-free province (Alberta). He saw his first rat the other day. I, on the other hand, have been amazed at his capacity for selective blindness until then. Mark and I spend a lot of time together here, and I've seen PLENTY of rats. I'm fairly confident that he has been mistaking them for small cats all along. From a distance, it's an easy mistake to make. They are impressively large.]

Water – We get the water for a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours at night. From about 10:30 to 6:30, there is no water. Unfortunately, it’s not actually that predictable. A lot of times, running water will just disappear in the evening, right before you were going to take a shower, wash your face, or do the dishes. We never know if these are scheduled or unscheduled turn-offs. Back home, you’d need a month’s notice to turn water off for a couple hours. But here, you are expected to have a bucket filled for such times. We, however, can never remember to fill it. But we’ve got it much better than the people in the slums, where, almost incomprehensibly, close to 80% of Mumbai’s twenty million call home. Often, they’ll get just an hour or two of water from a community faucet. And during the monsoon, when flash floods cause sewers to overflow into the water supply, the slum-dwellers are sometimes forced to drink water that is mixed with their own sewage.  

     -Mark

PICTURES

                 

                                     Market just ouside our apartment

                       Back Alley Cricket

 

Sachin II (No idea what I'm talking about? Common, only the greatest cricketer of all time)

 

                            Catfish

                         
                                     Fruitstand near our apartment, self-help seminar is tempting

Pani Pura -- famous street-food. You find one every block or so, a bit like Starbucks in Van (we haven't tried it yet -- during the monsoon season, eating street food is a bit like playing Russian Roulette with your digestive system).

Some slum-ish dwellings bordering the five-star Grand Hyatt that is just off the picture.

I'd like to think he goes to school during the day, but who knows.

Some relatively civil garbage cans, by this city's standards. At night, rats would join the mix.

British architecture in the South of the city. A good example of the traffic volume. But 99% of the city looks nothing like this.

 

A National Geographic shot from one of the world's most famous slums. Around a million people live here.

Rescue

The other night, we had a successful rescue. 


The stories here are both horrific and terrifyingly familiar, like some sick variation on "once upon a time."  Usually, they go something like this:  A girl meets someone while waiting for a train.  They talk, often about how the girl is seeking work in the city to support her family.  They board the train, but it is sweltering, and when the kind stranger offers her a sip of water, she gratefully accepts.  A few moments later, the world turns black, and she wakes up in a brothel.  She opens her eyes in Hell. 


It happens all the time.


Once in a brothel, these girls are beaten, threatened and abused until they break.  Then, their lives become an endless stream of serial rape. They are beaten if customers' appetites are somehow unmet. Most girls do not retain their earnings, and what they do get, they are often forced to spend on condoms, or on food to supplement whatever meals their brothel keeper gives them.


Many of these girls do not know where they are - what street, what building, what floor - because they are never allowed outside the brothel walls.  Any life or ambition they once had dissolves into an existence spent in filthy sex rooms from 6 pm to 3 am.  And no one comes to save them.


But the other night, four girls imprisoned in a brothel got to come out, and we are so thankful that tonight, they can sleep in freedom.  That said, it really is only the beginning.  The rescue itself is the product of hours of meticulous, patient, thorough work, but the road ahead is much harder.  Like so many other girls, they will now have to deal with the trauma of what they suffered, from deep psychological scarring to lifelong disease.  For many, medical tests will reveal HIV.


The trial will take years, but that is another story for another time.


We are amazed at the courage, skill, and enormous faith of the team.  In a week that has not held a lot of personal good, we have felt deeply blessed to have been witness to and a very small part of what God is doing here.


If any of this is even remotely interesting, I have a book for you. I'll lend you it when I get home, but if you want it now, get in touch with any of my family (I left them a stack) or Mark's parents, and they'll be more than happy to let you borrow it.

- Lauren