I have been reading in the New York Times, and on their site online, about Nicholas Kristof’s purchase of two girls in a Cambodian brothel. One costed 150 dollars, and the other 203. The one pictured above is named Srey Neth. She costed 150 dollars.

Can you believe that such a thing goes on in this world. It is one thing to read this in the newspaper, “…a teenager finds a path out of the sex trade…”, and another thing entirely to go online, and see her picture, and discover that she is not some strange person, but rather someone who could have been my classmate, or my sister, or my daughter… A kid that looks like any other kid.

Kristof points out that Srey Neth is only one out of ‘hundreds of thousands of teenagers who are enslaved by the sex trafficking industry worldwide.

You should check out his story on your own (just type “Nicholas Kristof brothel” into google) — but I will write a little more about it…

Kristof planned to give her money to build a shack and stock it with food and clothing, to start a shop in her little village, near Battambang. For a few months, everything worked, and she had plenty of business. But then her family stepped in, because her family couldn’t understand why they “should go hungry when their sister had a store full of food.” So they simply came and took food from her store, until she got mad…

And then everything was over — no one listens to a teenaged girl, and they kept taking her food, until everything was gone, and she had no more money to buy more.

Her father was coughing up blood from tuberculosis, and her older brother couldn’t afford to get married, and the family was in debt enough that they might lose their land.

In 2003, the same situation had led to her selling herself to the brothel.

Kristof finishes the story by telling how he intervened again, and everything has worked out… Srey Neth is now working to become a beautician… But the other story he tells in the NY Times, of the other girl is different… She is somehow ‘dependent’ on the brothel, though she hates it, and she always comes back… And she is afraid that she, like 30 percent of the women in the brothels, will get AIDS.

The world is so awful in so many ways. But what can we do? Can we all spend 250 dollars and buy two girls? Is that possible?

I wondered, when I lived in Palestine, what it would be like for me to take a little boy from Gaza and bring him to the fields of Minnesota where I grew up…

My beloved puppy, as a child, named Freckles, was a loving little chap — but my cousin kept berating him and beating him around the ears while we weren’t looking — and my puppy bit my cousin… and everybody freaked out — and we ended up having to send Freckles to another family in the country — so that he could chill out, and have a better life…

I guess it’s not really supposed to be that way very often with little kids, or people — you mostly just get the cards you are dealt — but it is so shocking to think that a kid would choose, herself, to sell herself into sexual slavery. Really awful, and it makes you think about how the world works.

I wrote a piece of music for the string bass — you can listen to it at www.kentgustavson.com/providence — based on a quote from Garrison Keillor… “It is a wicked world in which the power of any individual to cause suffering is so great and the power to do good is so slight; but here we are… and signs of loving Providence are everywhere around us.”