The Gach

"the gach" is our "nickname" for Sonagachi, one of the largest red light districts in Kolkata. Sonna means gold, and gach means tree...so its "the golden tree". there are 8,000-10,000 women working in the Gach (20,000 sex workers in all Kolkata, based on 1996 data). and the Gach has existed since at least the 1860s...so its an area of strong holds...and a long history of injustice. we have a nickname cause we don't want to draw attention to ourselves when we're in conversation throughout the city. the attitude of mainstream culture towards women in the sex-trade is very condemning...even within the church. there is this misconception that the women want to work in the sex-trade...that they want expensive things, and so they choose to work there, and if they wanted to they could just as easily choose to stop.

this is simply not the case. women...and girls are tricked into the trade, offered jobs as maids, cooks, in factories, sometimes its under the guise of marriage...brought from villages, or trafficked from Nepal or Bangladesh...and then stuck. They are in debt to those who "bought" them, and would not be accepted by their families anyway if they were able to escape, and their families knew what they'd been forced to do. women are made vulnerable in some way (either husband leaves them, dies, becomes ill, or a father, or their sons refuse to care for them). These women aren't educated, and are raised in a society where they are taught to be dependant on men...first their father, then their husbands, and then in old age their sons (at least that's the way it supposed to work) so when the system breaks down, and they have to provide for themselves, they become vulnerable to the deception of trafficking, and the lure of a "good job" in the city.

i'm currently reading "Guilty without Trial" and the book has made me angry over and over again...not at the authors...but at the reality that the book details. angry that the image of God in a woman can be so violated, that greed abounds and destroys, that systems (governmental and otherwise) support the rape and abuse of the innocent, that hope and a future are so foreign a concept to so many women...and that it is their own abuse and bondage that motivates the abusers and oppressors...

i've decided that the gach isn't necessarily a hard place to be, but it is a hard place to have been. while i was there, it wasn't as hard as i expected it would be...rather, it was in many ways like talking with any other woman i'd meet...in some ways its easy to forget why the women are standing in a line on the road...and to forget the reality of their lives. i'm used to talking with teenage girls...it's normal for me to respect people, so i can do that in the gach a well...but in the time since i went to the Gach (Tuesday evening) i'd say that the Gach is haunting. it sticks in my mind...the reality and injustice of forced prostitution is no longer faceless...as i read about girls being trafficked...there are faces in my mind...and sweet girls that i've met who are living in that hell. and my heart is broken over and over.

God is definitely using my time in the gach to motivate me to prayer...and to stand in the gap on behalf of the women...to be broken for the owners, and police - and to plead for change - on the surface, and in the spiritual realm.

The sheer enormity of the Gach can be paralyzing...but Sharon Cohn, who works for IJM is quoted as saying, "While there are millions of girls and women victimized every day, our work will always be about the one. The one girl deceived. The one girl kidnapped. The one girl raped. The one girl infected with AIDS. the one girl needing a rescuer. To succumb to the enormity of the problem is to fail the one. And more is required of us."

In the book "Terrify no more" Gary Haugen says, "And of all the areas of the world where IJM is working, i personally find India the most overwhelming. The sheer scale and relentless intensity of human suffering are, at times, almost suffocating. And yet, the beauty and brilliance of my beloved Indian friends are even more powerful, and we have found unrivaled opportunities to bring transforming help to people and to experience the joy of God." and i can identify with the how the need here can be suffocating, as i walk down the street, but also as i walk through the Gach.

In Kolkata i need to be reminded over and over that Light triumphs over darkness, that in the end there is freedom and hope and justice...and there are a couple songs that God is using to do it...over and over. the first if by Andrew Peterson...
"I believe in the Holy shores of un-created light
I believe there is power in the blood
And all of the death that ever was
If you set it next to life
Well, I believe it would barely fill a cup
Cause I believe there is power in the blood."

the other is the hymn, "This is my Father's world" in the third verse it says,
"This is my Father's world. O let me ner forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet"

so i have this hope...i NEED this constant hope that this is God's world - and he is still the ruler...and that in the end there is life and love and hope!