Here in the darkened back room she sits like a stone- hands shoved under her small thighs, eyes fixed on the worn floor.  The muffled noise of the other children playing drifts in like waves through the slatted window– but in this room everything is still.  I sit with my hand on her back reminding myself that I am the adult and strong one here– it is not my turn to cry.  I watch as the tears run down her nose making perfect circles of darkness on her dirty pants.  “I just don’t like it when they look at me while I’m in the shower, but it only happened once”…”It mostly happens to the other girls”.  I hear this from all 6 of them….”The boys here hit us”….”we are worked from morning until night and I’m tired”….The room spins as I hold back the choking sobs that are clawing their way up my throat.   A knock at the door and a bidding from the house mother and she’s gone– off to the kitchen to prepare lunch for the 23 other orphans.  I watch as she pulls herself together, she is 9, she should not know how to hide pain like this.  All 6 girls have claimed abuse over the past two hours and here we are left – 2 shells left shocked into silence.  I can not show emotion, I can not allow the owners of this hell to see that I know what kinds of evil the night brings here.

Our allotted time is up and we are escorted out under a the watchful eyes of those in charge searching our faces for any sort of recognition “do we know?” “How much did they tell”.  The girls pull at my arms as we leave… am I coming back, when, when, when?  “Bye Sky, Bye Sky, when are you coming back”?  I can see the pleading behind their words… don’t leave me here, please don’t leave me here.  I promise them I will do everything that I can.

We get into the car unable to speak , unable to file away what we just saw and heard, left stricken by what people are capible of.  They will not allow me access to the girls, I asked to take them once a week– for the first time on this trip there is suddenly “proper procedures” that take months that have to be followed before I can spend any time with these forgotten no named little girls. There is no one for us to turn to.  A barrier put in between that has been so far impossible to traverse around– they are money makers who have been taught to shut their mouths for if they speak they are given up to the streets and the ugliness of the sex trade.  I have fought to see them, fought to come back… they have my phone number and they call still pleading asking for my return. At night I think of them laying stone faced in their pathetically pink painted bunk beds scared of any noise in the night and what it will bring.

This is the ugliness of humanity-  I see it as I toss and turn in my own bed- their hushed tones narrating the visions of their experiences haunting me into wakefulness………..