This month has been quite eventful for me, but in some instance compared to previous years it has not been the busiest month yet. I will not mix the stories in this post, just thought I needed to write tonight's event down immediately, and I'll share more in a separate post.
It's been a year, since I started volunteering at the women's counselling centre. And though the stories of the women you meet there are seldom Cinderella or Mulan stories, I think what I encountered tonight was the worse that I had seen for myself.
Very shortly about the centre; it is the international part of the organisation. Women who come during the day or night are foreign women active in the sex industry on the streets, these women are mainly East European and African women.
The "night cafe" is open on Thursday and Friday nights between 12 midnight until 5 in the morning. Funding has been granted from 2014-2016, which covers running costs of all the free tea, coffee, food and snacks that we provide for them, and also the salary of two social workers per night.
Usually we are four people per shift, but it can be hard to keep regular volunteers in these hours of the "day".
When we are four, we try to take 2 walks during the night, to scout the area for new people, whom we will then inform and invite to the café, or to invite regulars to come down for a warm drink or food.
Tonight when we walked the first trip, there was a lot of activity in the streets, it is payday and lots of customers for our dear women. We took the more "mandatory" walk of the typical streets where you are sure to find the women, and the one street where most non-African women stand/walk, we met two East European women standing in the freezing cold.
The older one of the two greeted my colleague very warmly, was very nice and friendly to us, and not rejecting our approach. Because my colleague and her knew each other, my colleague could ask her a few questions, whether she was still staying were she knew she did before and mentioned she had seen her a lot on the streets again.
- It should be mentioned here, that East European women are allowed to work in the country legally and at "decent" jobs. The pattern is just, that either they do not earn as much money as they do on the streets without "killing" their bodies, with all the hard work, or also the fact they have fallen into addiction. -
In this case I learned from my colleagues when we got back to the centre, that the older woman did have an addiction, the other woman or girl if I may, whom she was with, was her daughter!
And that! was horrifying to me! At first when I heard it to my face, I guess I kind of ignored this fact. One thing is that she, the mother "defended" her being back on the streets again, because of the "economical challenges in her life", her kids needs to eat, and she kept saying "she needs to eat" pointing at her daughter with both her hands, while repeating that life is hard. Her daughter, very young, stood there with an innocent expression agreeing with her eyes, to everything her mom was saying.
I just could not grasp this piece of information.. How can anyone even comment on this?
Hows and whys, and very hesitant anger was going through my mind.
I just became an aunt a week ago, I witnessed my baby sister give birth to her first child. She became a mother in front of my eyes. We are children of parents who come from an immigrant country, where thousands everyday leave their families behind to make a better life for themselves and their children, first of all.
How can a mother actually get her child to live with her in a foreign country and drag her into the streets to sell her body - and even to teach her this?! In a place where chances for a better life are bigger than in most places? I am adding this, as I am well aware that there are countries where mothers directly "sell" their daughters' bodies especially if the body is a virgin.
I know it is not easy to find the "better life", and when "easier" is the way most of these women choose to go as the bucks are the grounds for everything, you on some level get it. But I do not get how you would want to introduce your child to this life, drug addict or not!
We even discussed briefly amongst my colleagues whether or not this girl was a minor.
I went home an hour earlier today, as it had not been super busy during the night - my two social worker colleagues stayed, as the other volunteer had left before 3 am.
I don't even know how to end this post.
Some last words from one of the African women before I left tonight, was a vague conversation with my colleague about going to church and believing in the Divine, and "His" forgiveness, "His" purpose, "His" will and "His" plan for these women...
It's saturday morning, on the last day of the first month in 2015, I should go to sleep, I should sleep in, wake up late, enjoy my day, my weekend. And all of sudden Monday and a new week starts again.
Habits. Routines. Life...
It's been a year, since I started volunteering at the women's counselling centre. And though the stories of the women you meet there are seldom Cinderella or Mulan stories, I think what I encountered tonight was the worse that I had seen for myself.
Very shortly about the centre; it is the international part of the organisation. Women who come during the day or night are foreign women active in the sex industry on the streets, these women are mainly East European and African women.
The "night cafe" is open on Thursday and Friday nights between 12 midnight until 5 in the morning. Funding has been granted from 2014-2016, which covers running costs of all the free tea, coffee, food and snacks that we provide for them, and also the salary of two social workers per night.
Usually we are four people per shift, but it can be hard to keep regular volunteers in these hours of the "day".
When we are four, we try to take 2 walks during the night, to scout the area for new people, whom we will then inform and invite to the café, or to invite regulars to come down for a warm drink or food.
Tonight when we walked the first trip, there was a lot of activity in the streets, it is payday and lots of customers for our dear women. We took the more "mandatory" walk of the typical streets where you are sure to find the women, and the one street where most non-African women stand/walk, we met two East European women standing in the freezing cold.
The older one of the two greeted my colleague very warmly, was very nice and friendly to us, and not rejecting our approach. Because my colleague and her knew each other, my colleague could ask her a few questions, whether she was still staying were she knew she did before and mentioned she had seen her a lot on the streets again.
- It should be mentioned here, that East European women are allowed to work in the country legally and at "decent" jobs. The pattern is just, that either they do not earn as much money as they do on the streets without "killing" their bodies, with all the hard work, or also the fact they have fallen into addiction. -
In this case I learned from my colleagues when we got back to the centre, that the older woman did have an addiction, the other woman or girl if I may, whom she was with, was her daughter!
And that! was horrifying to me! At first when I heard it to my face, I guess I kind of ignored this fact. One thing is that she, the mother "defended" her being back on the streets again, because of the "economical challenges in her life", her kids needs to eat, and she kept saying "she needs to eat" pointing at her daughter with both her hands, while repeating that life is hard. Her daughter, very young, stood there with an innocent expression agreeing with her eyes, to everything her mom was saying.
I just could not grasp this piece of information.. How can anyone even comment on this?
Hows and whys, and very hesitant anger was going through my mind.
I just became an aunt a week ago, I witnessed my baby sister give birth to her first child. She became a mother in front of my eyes. We are children of parents who come from an immigrant country, where thousands everyday leave their families behind to make a better life for themselves and their children, first of all.
How can a mother actually get her child to live with her in a foreign country and drag her into the streets to sell her body - and even to teach her this?! In a place where chances for a better life are bigger than in most places? I am adding this, as I am well aware that there are countries where mothers directly "sell" their daughters' bodies especially if the body is a virgin.
I know it is not easy to find the "better life", and when "easier" is the way most of these women choose to go as the bucks are the grounds for everything, you on some level get it. But I do not get how you would want to introduce your child to this life, drug addict or not!
We even discussed briefly amongst my colleagues whether or not this girl was a minor.
I went home an hour earlier today, as it had not been super busy during the night - my two social worker colleagues stayed, as the other volunteer had left before 3 am.
I don't even know how to end this post.
Some last words from one of the African women before I left tonight, was a vague conversation with my colleague about going to church and believing in the Divine, and "His" forgiveness, "His" purpose, "His" will and "His" plan for these women...
It's saturday morning, on the last day of the first month in 2015, I should go to sleep, I should sleep in, wake up late, enjoy my day, my weekend. And all of sudden Monday and a new week starts again.
Habits. Routines. Life...
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