Take
a trip with me.
Come
with me into southern Nepal, to a city called Birgunj.
It’s
a place where Nepal and India meet and meld, where people freely cross between
the two countries. The city is dirty, it’s chaotic. There’s a sense of darkness
that’s thick and permeates everything. We came to refer to this city as
“Beer-grunge” because of the unsettled, unsafe, dirty feeling that seemed to be
always lingering.
But
Birgunj is more than a hot and uncomfortable city, it’s also where I finally,
truly saw the reality of trafficking. It’s no secret that this is a city where
girls are trafficked daily. The busy bus stations and dance bars and the stares
of the men around us are proof of that. Daily, women and girls all throughout Nepal are
given false promises, lies, and even threats that convince them to leave their
home. They cross from their homeland to a place where immense pain waits for
them. These women are brought from their villages, promised a job or a
marriage, and then get to India to find that it’s all a lie and they’re
actually now being forced to work as a prostitute in a brothel. It’s a hard
reality to swallow. But I was there for just this moment, this day of coming
face to face with the reality of trafficking. I was there, not as a tourist, but as part of a team working with Tiny
Hands International. In the months leading up to the summer, we’d heard about trafficking,
we’d heard about Tiny Hand’s border monitoring, we’d prayed for these
people—and now it was time to open our eyes and really see.
We
step outside and are immediately hit with the suffocating heat and humidity. People
stop what they’re doing and gather to stare at us, our pale skin affirming that
we don’t belong here. We look around for our van driver, who is supposed to
take us to see the border. Except, he’s gone. He disappeared into the sea of
people that we can’t understand or communicate with. So if we want to peer into
India, we’re going to have to take rickshaws.
So
rickshaws it is. Six of them, to be exact. And then we become a spectacle, a
parade of twelve white people driving down the middle of the road.
Fully
experience this drive: It’s hot. Like, sweating-through-your-clothes kind of
hot. The roads are dirt, and the swirling mess of trucks and rickshaws and
buses and cows and vans and bicycles mean that you can barely breathe or see
through the thick clouds of dust. And then there’s the concern that you might
get hit by a truck at any moment. After all, they keep making sure you’re fully
aware of their presence by blasting their horns as your rickshaw driver is
peddling in and out of traffic.
The
main question is: at what point are we actually in India? Because when I think
“border monitoring station,” the thing we are here to see, I think of a nice,
neat little building right along the border that watches as people flow through
a gate in a nice line. I picture kind men looking for red flags that alert
danger, red flags that are waving like little lifesavers over scared women and
girls. But being here is so different from the clean picture in my mind.
Actually traveling to the border looks a lot less organized and a whole lot
more confusing. How does anyone spot a
girl being trafficked like this?
As
we approach this large gate-like structure, we think this must finally be
India. But then we cross through and continue parading down the road with the
bikes and water buffalo. Maybe this bridge is the border? Well, no, we just
crossed the bridge, over the polluted Sirsiya River. That couldn’t have been
the border—we’re not allowed to cross into India. We had been warned that this
is serious. We can’t go into India, we can’t even do that neat “one foot in
Nepal, one foot in India” thing. If we go into India at all, we’re in trouble.
But
then there’s yelling and the slamming on rusty bike breaks and frustration and
confusion and the realization that this is India after all. That bridge was the border. We’re in India. At
first, it’s somewhat funny—twelve white people who are very much not supposed
to be in India just crossed the border and kept parading down the road into the
city without so much as a second glance. The only reason we stopped was because
our leader realized what was happening and stopped the parade.
And
oh man, did that parade come to a screeching halt. This became less funny and
more serious as Indian customs officers came out of nowhere, demanding visas
and proof of identification and payment. Arguments and explanations. Bickering
in Nepali (or maybe Hindi?). Confusion and chaos and whispers of concern that
we’ll end up in Indian jail. After sitting in the heat for a while, we were
finally allowed to return to Nepal. The threat of angry tourists was all that
was needed to convince them to let us out without a visa payment.
As
we turned the rickshaws around and crossed back over into Nepal, we grew more
solemn. Those twenty minutes in India actually made me a bit nervous. Not being
able to understand a word anyone was saying, having no idea where in the world
we were, and being stared at in a way that is almost violating and very uncomfortable—it was enough to
shake us up. We rode in silence as Birgunj once again drew closer. I noticed a
garbage dump lining the road, and wondered how I had missed that before. The
heat made the stench almost unbearable. My discomfort was growing, as were the
questions in my mind.
What if we had kept going in India? What
if we hadn’t been stopped? What about the girls who aren’t stopped? How in the
world does anyone stop trafficking in this chaos?
Birgunj
is hard.
It’s
hard, especially when you’re there.
It’s
hard, especially when you realize how easy it is to cross into another country.
It’s
hard, especially when you realize how common it is for a woman crossing the
border to go unnoticed and undiscovered.
It’s
hard, especially when you realize how paralyzed you are in a foreign country
where you feel lost and you can’t understand a word coming from anyone’s lips.
It’s
hard, especially when you look a girl in the eyes as you drive by and wonder if
she’s safe.
Birgunj
is dark. It’s a heavy reality to sit with.
But
Birgunj is also a place of deep redemption. In the midst of thick and heavy
darkness, there’s light that shines brighter than it all. In the face of harsh
pain and messy brokenness, redemption is here. It’s real, it’s beautiful, it’s
fierce.
Though
the reality of trafficking is a hard one to sit with, there are those who do
sit in the mess and they do stop and stoop down and they make a difference.
They breathe life into the broken darkness. They are the border guards, the
people we met that afternoon. As we quietly rode through a neighborhood, we
made our way to a house—a safe house. We stepped through the door and the
heaviness lifted. It was clear, this was a place of life. It was a place full
of hope, a place full of Jesus.
We
met the people who monitor bus stations along the Indian border, in the heat,
day after day. They work long shifts in a job that’s consistently stressful.
Those brave women stand there looking at faces and stopping to talk to girls.
Hopefully, there’s no cause for concern and the woman is sent on her way within
minutes. But if something raises a red flag (like a girl who can’t give any
details or clothes that don’t seem to fit), these women further question her
and separate her from the trafficker. They bring her to their safe house until
a solution is found (hopefully returning her home with her parents). The pastor
works with the police to prosecute the trafficker and to bring needed justice.
It’s stressful, it’s tedious, it’s rewarding work.
That
afternoon in Birgunj, I looked at the pastor and asked, “Why do you do this?
Why do you keep going when the work is stressful and hard?”
And
he looked back and answered, “This is not just a job—it’s much more. We all see
this as a way to serve people. And when it gets hard, we remember the girls
that we have helped and the pain we have stopped before it happens. It gets
discouraging if we think about the big scale and hopelessness of stopping
trafficking—but when you think about the one
you helped, it’s all worth it.” In
that moment, he became the man I admired the most. That man and those women are
my heroes. They work for very little pay, doing a job that demands a lot from
them, yet they’re receiving rewards beyond anything they imagine. Eternally,
there are many who will be grateful for their work and their faithfulness.
When
I came back from Birgunj and back home from Nepal, I was asked a ton of questions. I’ll be honest, it
stressed me out most of the time. What do you say when someone asks, “How was
Nepal?” How do you pinpoint a single moment when someone asks, “What was your
favorite part?” And the worst question, “What was the biggest thing you
learned?” seems, almost always, impossible to answer.
It’s
been over seven months since I’ve returned home. I’m no longer in the intense
heat of Birgunj but in a coffee shop on a chilly winter evening in South
Carolina. I’m sitting here, trying not to forget those moments, trying to
remember the value of what I learned from that crazy day in Birgunj. And
honestly? I don’t think that the most impactful moment was when trafficking hit
me in the face—that happened long before I ever climbed on the rickshaw. The
reality of trafficking hit me in 2013 at a conference, it hit me as I
researched Tiny Hands International, it hit me as I read Half the Sky and watched documentaries in preparation for my trip,
it hit me as I walked around Pokhara and Kathmandu. No, this trip to Birgunj I
was faced with an entirely different realization: these are people.
See,
most of this stuff that I’ve written about, I knew. I knew how Tiny Hands worked
and I knew that trafficking was horrible. I knew that there are border
monitoring stations, and I knew that going to a third world country would change my life. But what I forgot in the midst of it all
was that these are people. These are women that I’ve met, they’re faces I’ve
looked into, they’re real lives. This trip showed me that this thing called
trafficking is real and it’s heavy.
That
sounds odd, I know. Obviously these
are people—that’s the whole problem. Yet somehow, in the midst of my talking
about trafficking and researching and drawing red X’s on my hand, I lost sight
of the faces. I forgot the stories. I began thinking about trafficking as a
cause, as a project and not as a person to be helped.
The
biggest lesson that Birgunj taught me is not that trafficking exists.
The
biggest lesson that Birgunj taught me is to stop for the one in front of me and
to love them as Jesus does. Sometimes, yes, that means looking at the girl in
front of me and taking time to realize she might be in danger. It might be
searching for red flags and fighting for justice.
But
other times (most times for me), that might just mean stopping to really listen
to the person sitting across from me. It might mean bringing coffee before a big day.
It might mean giving a ride or stopping to pray for a hurting heart. It might
be a big thing, but it also might be a small thing to stop and love the person in front of me. Regardless, that’s the thing that Birgunj showed me:
The biggest impact I can ever make is loving the person that’s right here,
right now, right in front of me. It doesn’t take a trip around the world to
make a difference.
And
it’s the biggest thing that Birgunj can teach us all: Don’t get so caught up in
doing the grand and exciting things for Jesus that you miss the small and vital
things in front of you. Don’t get caught up in a cause and forget the faces.
Don’t get so caught up in yourself that you never look around.
Instead,
be like those men and women in Birgunj. Stop for the one, fully pause and love
like the Father does. Be the kingdom, helping those who need it most—those
right in front of you. Wherever you are.
