38 Days to Freedom. It sounds like a story out of a movie, doesn’t it? Well, sadly for two young women, this story was all too real and it was a horror story.
I’d like to share the story of these two young women with you.
Trang and Hien are from Vietnam. They were offered a good job in a factory in China. That can be a game changer for a family living in poverty. So they happily took the position. What they didn’t realize was that they were not going to China, and that the recruiters they were with, were in fact traffickers. So instead of being taken to China, they were taken to an isolated corner of Myanmar.
Where they were horrendously brutalized, and they were forced to work in a brothel. You can imagine the nightmare existence that they had. So somehow they managed to get word back to Blue Dragon in Hanoi, which is a phenomenal organization that rescues people in situations like this. And when I say rescue, I mean, they go in and they rescue them.
So, Blue Dragon then launched a rescue to get the girls back. Where they were was so incredibly dangerous, they couldn’t even leave the brothel. So they had to mount the rescue from inside, which they managed to do. Now they got the girls out, but of course they couldn’t be seen because people were looking for them and it would have been catastrophic had they been caught.
So there was no transport option, no roads. The Blue Dragon team actually helped the girls to navigate the path home through the mountains and the jungle. And it took them 38 days over 2000 kilometers. Trang and Hien can be seen crouched in the jungle on their way home, which thanks to Blue Dragon, that’s exactly where they are now.
So at the moment there’s been so much chaos around the world. My own city has been under floods.
We’re a couple of years into a pandemic, that’s been so difficult for all of us. You know, businesses have gone under. Family members we haven’t seen for years. Just the craziness that’s going on in the world at large and the terror in parts of the world. There’s just so much despair.
I really believe that the antidote to despair is to take action and to do something.
And it’s also International Women’s Day. So to all the women out there, and of course I was thinking about the women who are vital in my life. And thinking about the women throughout the world who are facing challenges and, fighting for their survival. And of course the brave people who are there fighting for the safety and survival of women. People like Blue Dragon.
There are women out there waiting to be rescued, just trapped in a nightmare. So I really do want to take action. And I spoke with Blue Dragon. It costs about $2,000 to rescue a woman who has been trafficked. Interesting because they walked 2000 kilometers. A dollar a kilometre, go figure. I’m not going to walk 2000 kilometers, but I am going to walk 200. And I’m going to do a over 38 days, like Trang and Hien.
I hope to raise $2,000 at least. It’d be great if I could raise more because of course every single dollar will go to rescuing traffic women. So I’m going to start this walk today because it is International Women’s Day. It averages out at about five and a half kilometers a day. I hope to do bigger chunks on the weekends. But, by the end of 38 days, I will have walked two hundred kilometers.
I’d love to have you along for the journey. I’d really enjoy your company, even if it’s just five an hour. If you just go for walk for an hour and think of these young women and the treks they have to make to escape a nightmare and get home. HERE is the link, which will take you to the page where you can make a donation if you feel moved to do that. That would be absolutely wonderful.
Wherever you are in the world, I hope you’re having a good week and I hope all is going well for you.
Take care. Bye-bye