While out in the fields, we met a woman who explained that she owed $150 to a loan shark. When she couldn’t pay it back, he took her daughter… She looked over at me and held up the phone number of the loan shark, and said, “Will you buy my daughter back?”
So here’s the story…
A woman owed money to a money lender she had borrowed for rice and small medical bills and when she couldn’t pay, the lender came and took her daughter… He then sold the girl as a housekeeper (slave) to a couple in a town about an hour away… The common practice at this stage is for the family to then sell the girl for more money in Phnom Penh after they’ve worked her for a while, most likely will sell her to a brothel which will pay more for her.
Now, since the girl was still in the local area and hadn’t been transferred to the city, we were able to quickly get her back. The couple who had bought her were informed that an organization was now involved, and they must give her up for the sum they paid… So, two days later we got her back, and prevented her from being trafficked even deeper than she was…
***Note - trafficking is a huge issue in Cambodia, and shouldn’t be treated lightly… Many stories are fabricated, many organizations are corrupt, so I don’t encourage just handing out money when someone says they need it for their daughter… This case was vetted, had three organizations involved, as well as involving the local police to make sure it wasn’t just a scam of some sort.
Thank you to John Gidding, Bob Kasunic, and Jeremy Blacklow who contributed - Vichet is currently making arrangements for us to get her back.
On a more personal note to all you cynics out there… Even IF the mother actually sold her daughter or even IF it was a scam (which it wasn’t), I feel that if I am to err in my thinking it will be towards the side of hope for the child, not the cynic who says I shouldn’t do it.. If the $150 I paid for this young girl saved her from even ONE night of being locked in someone’s house with the fear of being sold even further - well it was worth ten times over for me…
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Guerrilla Aid is a style of volunteerism - simply go somewhere and do something,
while teaching others to do the same.
