Open for Business

The dream was never a building.

We are immensely grateful for it; overwhelmed, actually. But it was never the dream.

It was a desire, certainly. And a need. My goodness, we grew out of the first La Puerta very quickly. But a space is just a space, and we’ve become pretty good at making things work in any space we have.

The dream was laughter. It was for a place where exploited women felt safe enough to throw themselves onto the couch and fall asleep. It was a dream for the freedom to cry, to rage, and to sit in the deafening silence of grief.

But more than anything, it was a dream for a place where sexually exploited women, prostitutes, the most despised women in any culture, would feel free to praise the god they’ve been told they have no right to even acknowledge.

Dreams come true.

Friday was the official opening of the new La Puerta. I wish you could have been there to see it. I wish you could have heard the laughter and enjoyed the tacos. Most of all, I wish you could have heard them sing.

Our new building has been open for a while now, but Shawn delayed the official opening until I could crawl out from under the weight of therapy and doctors’ appointments to return to Guatemala. I’m so thankful he did because missing yesterday would have been awful.

There were games, encouraging words, songs, prayers, and lots of food. Seventy-five people, most of them women who have known nothing but the injustice of exploitation, came to celebrate with us. For the first time, our architects got to see all their hard work in action. They were thrilled. Friends from a local convent and pastors from the best church in Guatemala =) all came to join the fun. Best of all, women who were once known as prostitutes and felt there was no way out but have now made beautiful lives came back to celebrate with us.

I know, in situations like this, it’s standard to say we can’t thank you enough.

But we can’t thank you enough.

For every one of you who has paid for this, we thank you. For everyone who has prayed for this, we thank you.

It has taken years, and we still have a long way to go. Guatemalan bureaucracy works at its own pace (!), but we have come so far, and we eagerly await the papers that will allow us to build the next phase of this great place.

The ladies of La Linea LOVE the new building you have provided for them. They are excited about all of the classes, parties, and hangouts that will happen. It is stupidly, ridiculously beautiful. It is big and airy and comfortable. It’s a door to another chance, another life, and a renewed hope.

La Puerta is open for business. We couldn’t be happier.

The One Who Got Away

I love this photo. And yes, I realize that for you it is entirely useless since you can’t see the faces. But I can. I know those faces, and I love them.

Two of them are dead.

Both were murdered in acts of unspeakable brutality, and they represent just a tiny number of those who have died on La Linea in the years that we have been working there. It’s part of the horrifying reality of working in that terrible place.

The third woman in the photo, W, should also be dead; shot in the head or tortured to death like her friends. A few years ago we got word that she and her sister had done something to upset the gang that runs this part of Guatemala City. We don’t know what they did. It would be dangerous to ask. But it was serious enough that they both ran for cover, leaving behind their only means of earning a living.

When W visited us all those years ago, she was as terrified as I have ever seen anyone. Her voice shook as she tried to whisper her fears. Telling us nothing as she tried to tell us something. We told her to leave and never come back. Just shut the door and walk away. We gave the same advice to the other two in the photo. Like many others, they chose to stay on La Linea and they paid a terrible price.

But W did leave. She didn’t leave prostitution, but she tried.

Last year she enrolled in a nursing program. It hasn’t been an easy walk with her. Still isn’t, to be honest. We love her, but she’s a lot of work. Destroyed hearts don’t heal with a hug and a few pithy, encouraging talks.

While we were back in Canada, W went wildly off the rails. She hid from us, refusing to answer Shawn’s texts. We knew there was trouble.

Less than two weeks ago, we sat with her in a coffee shop where she finally confessed what she’d done. She’d blown it spectacularly.

There were tears, excuses, and a lot of pleading. It was a really sad conversation.

She also didn’t have a job. There were lots of excuses and justifications. Fear is a powerful reason to justify staying in the place you know best, and she was letting fear dictate all kinds of passivity. Broken hearts and minds are messy. Really messy.

At the end of our hard conversation, we told her she had to find a job.

And she did. Three short words, but oh so powerful. SHE DID. Not only that, but she found a job in a prestigious hospital in one of the fanciest parts of Guatemala City. Fancy matters because it means really good doctors and really good medical services.

It’s staggering.

This week we took her out for dinner; our first chance to celebrate her graduation from the nursing program.

“So, darling, how does it feel to be a professional? What’s that like?”

“I don’t have words,” she said. “I’ll just cry.”

But she did have words, and she did cry. It was beautiful. Snotty, but very beautiful.

Unless you’ve walked La Linea, or sat in these women’s homes, it’s almost impossible to understand what this means for her. This isn’t just a job. She’s gone from the dirtiest, most depraved and dangerous place, where she was abused and humiliated every day, to putting on a uniform and walking with her beautiful head held so high. It’s like climbing out of a sewer and walking into a palace.

It’s still not an easy path. All of the women who leave have to accept an extreme drop in income. She will struggle to pay her bills. She will fight to provide for her children. But she is so deliciously proud of herself. And we are so proud of her.

And can I just remind you…she should be dead. She should have been just another body, dragged away by the city authorities.

I love the photo. I love these women. Always will. Every so often I pull it up on my phone to remind myself, to see their faces and think about how wonderful they were. This week I pulled it up for W. She stared at it for a while.

She understands.

The Boy Who Doesn’t Exist

Y is about to turn eight years old. He’s never been to school, hasn’t had a single childhood vaccine and would be turned away from any and all public health services here in Guatemala.

Why?

Well, once upon a time, his mother (one of our sweet ladies) heard that she’d earn more by “working” in Mexico. While she was there she got involved with a man she thought was great but turned out to be a monster. It’s a familiar story. Their relationship got violent pretty quickly. It was horrible.

When Y was born, things got worse. Daddy told mama that he was going to kill her and keep the baby. He wasn’t kidding.

So mama did what any mother would do. She grabbed her baby, and she ran for the border and home in Guatemala. Trouble is, in all that escaping imminent death that she was doing, she didn’t have the chance to register baby Y’s birth. He has no birth certificate or legal documentation of any kind.

Officially, he doesn’t exist. And here in Guatemala, that’s a big deal.

It’s been bothering us for a long time that this sweet little guy can’t read, write, or count. He spends his days in a dark apartment with absolutely nothing to do. The area his family lives in is so dangerous ambulances, taxis and buses won’t go there. Smart choice, too. It’s very unsafe. His mother is too afraid to take her kids out of the house. So they stay indoors bored, unstimulated, and frustrated. Darling Y just isn’t developing as he should.

What to do? It’s a challenge, that’s for sure. Mama has a paper she received from the hospital when baby was born. It doesn’t include his name (because he didn’t have one at the time), but it does have some information about him, and his teeny little footprint. But that’s all.

Mama doesn’t have a passport. She has Guatemalan ID but that’s all. People in Central America can travel between other Central American countries with just their government ID, but to enter Mexico they must have a passport. Poor people don’t have passports.

Mama (J) was told she could get a three day permission to enter Mexico with just her ID, but she had to take her little guy with her. She needs to get to a civil registry to get him a birth certificate. Makes sense, but not as simple as you might imagine. Sending them both to Mexico for this trip would just be begging for trouble. We’d have to give her masses of cash which would make her a huge target for robbery and worse. So we figured we needed to take her. A quick trip to Mexico and back. What could go wrong? Get them over the border, get the papers, go home, put Y in school. Perfect.

But no.

We headed out on our Mexican field trip almost as soon as we returned to Guatemala after Christmas. Y was so excited. It’s a five hour drive to the border. Y puked spectacularly during the trip. It was a lot of fun. Puking makes Shawn laugh. Puking makes me puke. Fun times.

We got to the border and the nice uniformed Guatemalans behind the glass looked at us with calm derision. No, of course she couldn’t cross without a passport. There’s no such thing as a three day permission for anyone. We had suspected as much, but there was only one way to find out. We were crushed.

And then we met the human traffickers. They’d take them across for $35 each. What a bargain.

It was a long and totally unsettling experience. I’ll spare you the details, but I will say, that in all my years of living in what is officially one of the most dangerous countries in the world, it was one of the scariest moments I’ve ever experienced.

And I hope you’ll be pleased to hear that we had no intention of getting involved with traffickers. We couldn’t get away from them fast enough. It was horrible. (one more installment tomorrow)

So now what? Y still needs to go to school, and he still has no papers. Shawn tried contacting the Mexican embassy, but they are mostly closed. He tried showing up at the Mexican embassy, but you’re only allowed in…if you’re Mexican. It’s getting tiresome.

But we have had a small victory. With the help of a dear friend here in Guatemala, Shawn visited a private school where we already send another student. After much talking, explaining, negotiating and assessment, they agreed to take Y on a mostly unofficial basis. Yay! If we get his papers by the end of this month, he can be officially enrolled. That’s looking pretty unlikely. If we don’t have papers by the end of this month, they’ve agreed to let him stay in class…he just won’t be on any official paperwork. His year of study won’t count for anything with the ministry of education, but at least he’ll be learning.

So for now, he’s in school. Well, he’s sitting on the other side of the tablet we just got him, but you know what I mean. And he’s beyond thrilled. This sweet little guy is just tickled to finally be learning. He gets himself up early every day, bathes and puts on his uniform, ready to work with his teacher. It’s adorable. He’s delighted. His mama is delighted. We’re delighted. It’s great.

For now.

But this won’t continue if we can’t get his papers. Shawn just heard back from the Mexican embassy, bless em. They need all of the father’s documentation, a marriage certificate, and the mother’s documentation too. Well, that just isn’t going to work. So we’re waiting to hear back and figure out where to go next.

Happiest New Year

J is not her real name =)

She is one of our recent nursing graduates and a force to be reckoned with.  A few days ago she came charging into La Puerta just bursting with excitement.  She’d been offered a job.  Amazing!  Truly!

But, wait…it gets better.  The nursing school was so impressed with her integrity, maturity, and intelligence, that they offered her a job as a nursing instructor!  A for real, teaching job.  This is huge.  She’s now a professional.  She has a job that she won’t lose due to her age (a shockingly common problem here).  She’ll have benefits, a salary, and a title.

Just over a year ago, she didn’t believe she’d find a way out.  But she’d always had a dream to be a nurse.  She wanted to have a job that required a uniform.  Uniforms here are a big deal, and they mean you have a real job.  So J enrolled herself in nursing school.  We didn’t know anything about it until we found her on her little bed, sporting her usual uniform of thong, heels and skimpy bra, and surrounded by books.  She had no idea how she was going to be able to pay for school, she said.  But she was taking a step of faith.

That was a good day for all of us.  Thanks to very generous donors, we’ve been able to send several women to school.  J is one of them.  When COVID restrictions allow, we’ll be sending many, many more.  We can’t wait.  But this past year it has been a joy to watch J become who she really is.  She has worked so hard.  It hasn’t been easy.  And, since she had no other means to support her kids, she worked in prostitution the entire time.

But now she’s out.  This, is just a little of her story…

“The first time I was raped, I was just seven years old.  Another school was invited to do some activities with us that day.  Everyone was away from the school buildings, at the sports field.  But I was in a classroom with some friends because we had work that we needed to finish.

“Suddenly a group of big boys came into the room.  We didn’t understand what was happening.  They blocked the door and told us we couldn’t get out.  We were scared and started screaming, but no one could hear us.

“One of them pulled me onto the floor.  He ripped off my shirt and skirt.  My mother always made sure I wore shorts under my school skirt, but he just pulled them down.  There was nothing I could do.  Another boy was doing the same to one of my friends.  I screamed the whole time but no one could hear.  They were laughing, telling us what they were going to do to us.

“There was a window open in the classroom and one of the girls, she was really small, managed to climb out before they could catch her.  She ran to get help.  When the director got into the classroom, another boy was on top of me.  She pulled him off, but they all managed to run away.

“My mother was called to the school.  She said they weren’t going to get away with it.  So the next day they took me and my friend to the other school.  We had to look at all the boys, and we saw them.  They went to jail for what they did to us, but my heart was broken.

“The next time, I was fifteen.  My mother and I were staying at a hotel close to where she was working.  The owner of the hotel seemed like a nice man.  But one day, my mother went to run some errands and he came to the room, locked the door, and raped me.  He was big and I just couldn’t fight him off.  I was screaming then too, but no one came to help.  His wife was in the building, but no one came.  Again my mother pressed charges and he also went to jail.  She always said we had to fight.

“A while later, my mother needed money for something.  She needed a loan.  A nice lady we knew said that she would lend my mother the money she needed, and she also had a job for me in a restaurant.  We were happy because it would really help us if I had some regular work.  I was thrilled to go with her to the town where she said I’d be working.  But it wasn’t a restaurant.  It was a brothel.  I had to work in the bar and go with the men.  I didn’t want to, so I refused.  She got very angry with me and yelled.  She said that I was hers now, that I had to repay the debt owed by my mother; and it was going to take a long time.

“One day I was able to get away.  I ran to the police and I told them what was happening to me.  I told them I was being held against my will, that I was being forced to have sex with these men.  I explained that I never agreed to do this.  They took me back there to confront the owner.  At least that’s what I thought was happening.  But when we got there, the police laughed.  They told me there was nothing they could do for me because the bar owner didn’t lie to me.  They said that since it was his wife, there was nothing they could do.  They left me there.

“After the debt was paid, I was able to leave that place.  When I was seventeen, I got married.  I thought all of my dreams had come true.  He was so kind to me, so charming.  But as soon as we were married everything changed.  If his food was too hot, he’d beat me.  If his food was too cold, he’d punch me.  He’d give me Q5 (75 cents) to buy all of his food for the day – breakfast, lunch and dinner. And if I couldn’t provide three meals for him with that money, he’d beat me again.  So he beat me all the time because it was impossible to feed one person with so little money.  I cried a lot.  All the time really because I just didn’t understand how anyone could be so cruel.  Some people are really terrible.

“Bad things just kept happening, he raped me whenever he wanted to, but eventually he left.  And I had two small children to support.  I tried to find work, but that’s almost impossible here, especially with only a little education.  So one day I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to keep getting raped, I may as well get paid for it.’  And that’s how I came to La Linea.  The real me couldn’t have done it.  The real me would have run away.  So that’s why I became J. (All of the women who work on La Linea use a false name.  J was her false name/identity).  J could do what she needed to do.  She could be very strong and just endure everything.  If it was me who showed up, I wouldn’t have lasted a week.  But I became J and she was able to stay here for fifteen years.

“I know she doesn’t exist.  Well, she doesn’t exist anymore.  But without J I would never had survived all these years.  How was I ever going to provide for my children?  How was I going to survive?  It’s too easy for people to think we have other options.  We have no options.  Nowhere to turn.  I know this is a terrible place and bad things happen here all the time.  There’s so much death here.  So many girls have died.  But where else can we go?  It’s just not easy.  Without J I wouldn’t be where I am today because I would not have survived.  Without her, I wouldn’t have had the motivation and the courage to get out of here.  Being J for all these years, gave me a reason to become myself again.  J is the reason I am able to leave.

“And now, look at me!  Who would have thought this would happen?  I could only do this because God has been so good to me. He has always been faithful. Through everything. But he also made me strong, and I know that my strength got me here.  I’m going to be a teacher as well as a nurse!  I am now a woman with a profession, with a real job.  Now I can live a dignified life.  I can close the door of my room and walk away.  J doesn’t have to be here anymore.”  

Our darling J, real name B, started her new job this week.

Whispers

“He asked for a service, but that was just his way to get into my room.

“I knew something was wrong as soon as I closed the door. He started to look through my things. He wanted to see if I had money hidden in there. I was afraid of what was happening, but I tried to stop him. But he had brought a rock with him. A big rock that he’d just picked up from the ground. He hit me, hard, on the side of my head.

“I don’t know how long it took to wake up. I really have no idea. But the pain was so bad, I screamed, but my screaming was weak. One of the girls heard me, but the sound was so short, she thought it was just a joking scream.

“He searched through everything. He kept looking for more money. Then he found a small bag where I had some beauty supplies. Sometimes the girls want beauty treatments, and I learned a few of those things years ago, so I help them.  In the cosmetics bag he found my scissors, and I thought, ‘This is it. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to use those scissors to stab me, and there’s nothing I can do to save myself.’

“He didn’t stab me. But he used the scissors to threaten me and to make me keep quiet. He searched the room for everything he could take. He found my phone, money, little things like earrings. Worth nothing, but he took them anyway.

“And then he raped me.”

This is when the tears start, and we sit in silence because there is nothing else to do. There are no words of comfort, no pithy self-help encouragements, and no solutions. So we sit in Burger King and silently watch a lifetime of grief drip onto the table.

These are holy moments.

For many, the idea that a working prostitute can be distressed by rape seems a contradiction. They imagine that constant exposure to sexual activity with strangers means that all sexual activity is pretty much acceptable. It isn’t. For these women, there is a sliver of dignity in the ability to say yes or no. There is a thread of self-ownership. When that last choice is removed from them, stuffed years of abuse and trauma spill into everything.

It’s complicated.

And then the stories begin. Stories of childhood, loses and abuses. Of things seen and experienced far too often in the life of a child. But in these compartmentalized lives, where every part of existence is divided and packaged, loss of control in one area often leads to years of secrets being exposed.

“I was one of seven and life was hard, but that’s the same for everyone here. Things are hard but you don’t know it because, well, that’s how everyone grows up. There were bad people that came into our life, into our family. One day, one of my brothers tried to do something bad to me. Something shameful. I told my mother because it was bad. She said, ‘Well, he isn’t really your brother anyway. I was raped and that’s how I got pregnant with him. So it’s not like he’s your real brother.’

“That day I came to understand my mother a lot more than I had before. So many things made sense.” More tears for a fresh agony.

“I’ve tried for years to get out of this life. I hate it. We all hate it. I’ve always tried hard to save money, and I’ve managed to do it. But every time I have enough money to maybe try to leave and make a different life, something happens, and the money is gone. One time, I had saved a lot, but I got really sick and had to use the money for medical care. It was gone in an instant. And then my youngest, she also got sick. She has respiratory illnesses. The medicines are so expensive. Sometimes just one medicine costs me $150 for one week. How can I pay for that any other way? Can you imagine? We all want to get out, but it’s almost impossible.”

Broken lives are precious things. We don’t offer pat solutions. They don’t exist. But whispers of hope. We can offer those. And when the whispers are loud enough…sometimes, a woman will be brave enough to try to leave.

Last week, J enrolled in a high-quality beauty school. It won’t fix everything. It won’t change everything. But it’s a step, and it’s a good one.

It’s also very, very brave.

Mending

How much do we love her? How many of you remember L? Shot 7 times and left for dead. I can never say it too often… she’s a walking miracle. (see 2017 story here)

Pandemic life has been very hard on her. The tiny squatter village she lives in means there are no sales at her little shop. But she smiles and she prays and shares the little she has with those who are hungry. How far she has come. The bullet that shattered her upper arm? Still there. But today she took the brave step to use that always aching arm to learn to sew.

some of the neighbours L shares her food with


Sewing machines are magic. Sit beside a woman as she learns to sew and she’ll tell you all sorts of painful life stories. It happens every time. Part of our conversation went like this:

Me: “Darling, why are you shaking?”

L: “I’m so nervous. I was too scared to sleep.”

“Why are you scared?” (btw, we know why, but she needs to say it)

“I’m scared because I don’t know how to use the machine.”

“Sweetie, you’re here to learn; you don’t have to know how to use it.”  This went on for a while but then we got to the truth…

“When I was 5 my mother sent me to sell in the market. If I didn’t sell anything she would beat me in the street with all the people watching. She told me I was stupid and useless and not fit to learn anything.” In her fifties and still carrying the lies that were heaped on her as a teeny little girl. It breaks my heart.

scars from surgical repair


“Darling, am I going to shout at you?”

Giggles, “No.”

“Will I ever hit you?”

More giggles, “No.”

“Do we love you?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Yes, we do. No one’s going to hurt you. Today you’re going to learn to sew.”

rod, screws and remaining bullet in right arm


She sat at the machine for 4 hours. Did she manage to sew in a straight line? No. But she will, no matter how long it takes. She’ll get there, eventually.

These are moments I wouldn’t exchange for anything. If weeks or months of practice means undoing some of the hurt of a lifetime, dang, totally worth it.

first day at the machine

A Week in a Life – Part 2

This blog first appeared as a series of seven posts in Tamar’s Hope private Facebook group.  For permission to join please click here.  

Post 5

Sitting on the front step she suddenly burst into tears. That makes three times I’ve seen her cry. It’s becoming a habit! Turns out, she, like many of the women we work with, is about to be evicted. She’s been out of prostitution for months, but she hasn’t found any employment. Fear, trauma, illiteracy, pregnancy and a pandemic will do that.

We’ve been told it’s illegal for landlords to throw tenants out during this COVID craziness. Where’s that hysterical laughing emoji when I need it? Illegal means nothing to the poor. The rule of law only applies to the people strong enough and educated enough to fight. Y can’t fight. Y can barely live.

Y’s daughters – age 5 and 3

And if you’re wondering if it would really happen, if a landlord would really throw a heavily pregnant woman and her tiny children into the streets. Oh hell yes! Happens all the time. Some find a cheaper, nastier place to live. Some end up under tables in the public market. Some are in doorways.

Her terror is real.

We were able to help with that for now. But we can’t do it forever. There are too many women, too much need, and far too many awful stories. There are no easy solutions for these nightmares. But for a short time at least she’s able to breathe easier…

Post 6

Who in the world calls at 6.30 am on a Sunday morning?

Irma does.

“Y had the baby.”

Say what?

“Yes, she had him alone. No one heard her screaming. I just found her. The room is covered in blood. She was all alone.”

Volunteer firefighters took Y and the baby to the public hospital. They told her she could deliver the placenta once she got there. Okey dokey.

No one should have to give birth alone in a dark, empty room, but for Y it’s just how life seems to go.

She’s been in the hospital for a few days now. We can’t visit because COVID.

And she can’t leave.

Why?

Y won’t be allowed to leave the hospital with her child until she gets an official document from the volunteer firefighters that she did indeed give birth to this baby.

Yeah.

Illegal adoption and child trafficking have been a huge problem in Guatemala. So laws exist to try to stop that evil. But I think if a woman shows up with a bloody baby still attached to her body by a cord…that should be proof enough that the child is hers. No?

No.

So now we’re in the process of trying to get the paper. We can’t get it. We aren’t relatives.

As if she isn’t dealing with enough fear, now she has the threat of not leaving with her child. It’s too much.

Post 7

If you read part 6 yesterday, you’re just about caught up. That happened last Sunday, Nov 1. And what a week it’s been. Y was whisked away to one of two public hospitals in Guatemala City. If you’ve followed our stories and blogs over the years, you’ll have read about the horrors of those places. Dirty, broken, underfunded…these are not places you would want to be.

And yes, if you’ve been keeping up with the story, the woman with the umbilical cord attached to her body, was required to prove that she had given birth to the tiny, bloody baby she held in her arms. That set off a new level of chaos and stress. Y was told in stern terms that she would not be allowed to leave the hospital with her baby without adequate proof that he was hers. She was terrified. Y knows all about being powerless. It’s all she’s ever known and she always loses. Try to imagine what it would feel like to know a hospital administrator could remove your child, not because of fear of abuse or neglect, but because you are weak and can’t fight.

A relative needed to get a paper from the ambulance service confirming that Y had indeed birthed a baby in that tiny, dark room. It had to be her mother. Her mother deserves a whole other series of stories. Suffice it to say, she’s not big on maternal feelings or care. She reluctantly agreed to chase down the papers…but we had to pay for the taxis to drive her around. Okay. Whatever.

When she delivered the paper to the hospital, there was yet another problem. She’d given Y’s age as 18. She’s 26. Like I said, she’s not big with motherly warm fuzzies.

And then there was the problem with the baby’s birth certificate. He couldn’t get one because Y doesn’t have the official government ID I talked about earlier in the week. No birth certificate, no leaving the hospital.

Again, she was terrified. To Y it looked more and more impossible.

Her mother started creating uproar about who knows what. It wasn’t for Y or the baby. But whatever it was, it was a doozy, and in the end security guards removed her from the hospital. Nothing says welcome to the world little one like a tragi/comic soap opera unfolding before your tiny eyes.

Irma, Y’s guardian angel spent the week battling administrators, social workers and Guatemala’s monolithic bureaucracy until she was, with much signing of paper and money changing hands, able to sign a temporary form giving Y the right to leave with her child. But five days in, there was just one more small detail.

Y couldn’t leave without providing the hospital with hand sanitizer and wet wipes. So basically, give us some supplies or we keep your kid. And while you might think this is a very small thing, the reality is that the majority of people in that hospital cannot come up with the money for things like this. Relatives wander the halls begging from the families of other sick people asking for help with medical bills. The poor begging from the poor is devastating.

Dear Irma came scuttling from the hospital desperate for help with this final hurdle and $10 bought enough supplies to allow a mother to leave the hospital with her own child. Without Irma I don’t think we could not have helped Y at all. I worry about all the people who don’t have an Irma in their lives.

We stood outside waiting. As soon as she was released Y threw herself at us and burst into tears. She hadn’t eaten or slept for five days. She was just too afraid of what they’d do to her and her baby.

It was hard to walk to the car with her clinging on. I think she thought if she didn’t hold on, they might drag her back inside and take the baby away.

But now she’s home. She has her boy, and we are working through the process of giving them all legal identities.

He’s beautiful. Of course. 6 pounds 8 ounces of miracle. He has no name. She wants us to name him. We want her to do it. It’s a standoff right now.

And now we all have to breathe deeply and try to figure out life. Y is just one of hundreds of sexually exploited women we work with. Each one has an equally devastating story. They all need help. They all need a miracle.

Thanks to those of you who’ve taken the time to read Y’s story. She matters.

A Week in a Life – Part 1

This blog first appeared as a series of seven posts in the Tamar’s Hope private Facebook group. For permission to join please click here.

Post 1

When we found her in February, she was a different person. Something huge had shifted in her life. Y has always been one of the most accepting of the women we work with. Accepting of her reality and means of making money.

“It’s just a job like any job,” and then she’d laugh as we told her she was worth more.
But in February it wasn’t just a job anymore. Within minutes she was sobbing and pleading with us to help her leave. Years of denial and acceptance vanished with those tears. Always quietly controlled, she was overtaken by the distress and humiliation of her life.

Sometimes well-meaning people will tell us it’s a woman’s right to sell sex if that’s what she wants to do. So far, we’ve never met one who prostitutes herself because she wants to, because she likes it, or because she’s choosing this life over another means of earning a living. Some hide it well. Some pretend that everything is fine. Some, like Y, insist it’s just a job. But, eventually, the horror of their life breaks through. No one can smile forever.

Y didn’t leave that day. They rarely do. But something had shifted in her thinking, and that was amazing enough.

 

We kept in touch with her during lockdown, sending help as we could, and when Shawn returned to Guatemala in September, she was one of the first he went looking for. He found her sitting on a ledge outside the overcrowded rooming house where she lives with her two little girls. She’s a little girl herself – small, frail, and vulnerable.

And pregnant.

Post 2

The pregnancy was almost as much of a surprise to her as it was to us. She doesn’t know who the father is. Some random man paid pennies to own her for twenty minutes and fathered a child he knows nothing about.

We went back to see her last week. It was my first time seeing her since she sobbed eyeliner and lipstick into my shirt.

“Darling, how many months are you?”

“Maybe four,” she said.

Umm, nope. Definitely not four. She’s an itty bitty thing. Her nickname is Skinny, so she’s never huge when she’s expecting, but that was no four month bump.

Maybe it seems odd that she had no idea when she was due. It wasn’t that she didn’t notice or wasn’t aware that her period had stopped. She noticed. She knew. But here’s the thing about anticipating the future. It requires hope. And hope is something she has never known.

Y’s two girls – age 3 and 5

Time doesn’t mean anything in an abused life. Every day is the same. Every day is a struggle to survive until tomorrow. There just isn’t time or reason for anything else. If you don’t have enough food for your children today, tomorrow doesn’t exist.

Hope is the luxury of the secure. Hope counts days because good things are coming. Hope plans for the future because tomorrow is to be enjoyed. Hope anticipates good things and assumes that things will turn out well.

Hope is for the privileged.

Post 3

We sent Y for a medical checkup. She’s had absolutely no care during this pregnancy. The nice people at the clinic told her the baby was due in the first week of December. See? Not four months! Well, at least we have a working date. Time to get stuff done.

And, it turns out, there’s quite a lot to do.

Y lives in a rooming house. She rents one tiny room and shares a communal toilet and an outdoor sink. Her friend Irma lives in the same building. Irma is an angel. Irma, we’ve begun to realize, is the only reason Y has survived this far.

As we chatted, somehow we figured out that Y has no government ID. She doesn’t really exist…at least officially. And if she doesn’t exist, neither do her children. It’s very complicated. I won’t bore you. But it’s just another miserable layer of vulnerability that means that Y has to rely on others to do the most basic things for her. She has little or no authority over her own life, let alone the lives of her children. She can’t get them vaccinated. She can’t enrol them in school. She can’t get herself any kind of education. Missing that one little card means she sits on the edge of society unable to take any kind of control of her life. That card means a lot. I have one. Shawn has one. But this little Guatemalan has been denied that basic right. So now we start the process to make her real! To give her legal proof of her identity. It’s the first step in making real change in her life.

Post 4

You know what’s hard? Measuring trauma. That’s hard. Statistics tell us that the majority of sexually exploited women exhibit the same level of PTSD as military personnel returning from active combat. So why do they do it? That’s a question with a very complicated answer. Very complicated. But what we know is this – the trauma starts long before they end up being paid for sex work.

Y has known nothing but trauma, honestly. She was sent to sell sex at the age of 12. Twelve! I think I still had dolls when I was that age. Can you imagine? Nope, can’t. But it started before that. Irma casually threw out the fact that Y had first come to live with her when she was only eight years old.

“It was after her brother raped her,” she said. “Her mother didn’t do anything, so I brought her with me.”

And Y sat with her head bowed, as though living with that horror is the most normal thing in the world.

buying supplies with Irma

Of all the things I believe I’ll never get used to, I know I’ll never be able to grasp this throw away attitude to unimaginable horror. Not because no one cares, but because it’s so common, so much of a daily reality that it just doesn’t warrant much of a reaction.

Raped when she was eight, but the abuse probably started long before.

So if you ask why they do it. This is why. Childhood sexual abuse is the boot camp for sexual exploitation. And no, it doesn’t happen to everyone you know who’s been abused. But dang, it happens to a lot. And where you live there are support services, and social security payments, and free schooling, and employment. Here there’s nothing like that to make life more livable.

We know that all of the women we work with have suffered unimaginable trauma. Things that I likely don’t know exist. Yet they keep going. They have to. To us, Y is particularly broken. She lives with the wide-eyed terror of someone who knows that horror is only moments away. It’s like she lives at the worst point of a slasher movie, all the time. It hurts just to watch her live frightened, try to parent, and struggle to survive.

Sew Happy

We sat for hours on her tiny single bed. It served as chairs, cutting board, ironing board and work station. Two years ago we had sat together in La Puerta when she asked if I thought she was capable of learning to use a sewing machine. Classes started that day. She loved it so much that we signed her up for a course and loaned her a machine. It was quite something to sit in her room on La Linea and watch her do her sewing homework between clients.

And then came the day she was brave enough to leave the exploitation she’d been forced into. Life has been hard but she’s kept going, refusing to look back, even enrolling herself in primary school so that she can eventually enrol in an advanced dressmaking course.

So, there we were, sitting on her bed as I showed her how to make some fancy stuff for our friends’ store. It was hot and uncomfortable and she was as happy as can be.

She turned to her machine (still a loaner – we’ll get her a good one when she’s completed her courses). I was pretty much only thinking about my aching back when she let out the deepest, happiest sigh. “Today I am living my dream. I am sewing as a job.”

And again I realized I have the best job in the entire world.

Still Waiting

They call her Skinny.

Guatemalans are blunt and not entirely politically correct in their use of nicknames.

We’ve known her for five years.  On our first day visiting La Linea she sat on her little plastic chair next to her room and the public urinal that perfumed the air around her.  She looked so frail, so sad; and she refused every attempt we made to engage with her.

It took 18 months before she agreed to accept a cup of coffee from us.  A year and a half for that small victory and I danced for the rest of the day.  Success!  She said yes.

From that point on, our aim was to see if we could get her to smile.  That took a while, but not another 18 months.

Skinny finally visiting La Puerta

We asked for a little of her story.  How long had she been in this life?  She started stripping when she was 12 or 13.  Honestly, I will never get used to these throw away realities.  I played with dolls and listened to Abba when I was 12.  She removed her clothes for leering strangers.

Sometimes we’d ask if she wanted to leave.  She’d sneer.  Of course not!  As far as Skinny was concerned, it was an okay way to make money.  Everyone had to survive somehow; this was her way.  It didn’t bother her.  She didn’t care.  It was just a job.

On Mother’s Day almost two years ago, her sister was murdered.  A death likely arranged by someone we know.  Skinny’s sister was a tiny, vulnerable, destroyed child-woman.  Her children had been removed from her care, and she would sit huddled in the corner of La Puerta colouring with a force and focus that was heartbreaking to see.  But one day someone decided they’d had enough of her brokenness and a single bullet stopped everything.

After the murder, Skinny moved to another centre of exploitation in the capital.  Word was, she was the next to die if she stayed on La Linea.

We don’t work in that area yet.  We will.  We have plans, but the plans need people, so as yet it’s just a dream.  But we’ve visited.  It’s one of the most depraved and dangerous places in Guatemala City.  It’s filthy, loud, crowded, and filled with people who believe life has absolutely no value.  At the same time there are fighters.  Individuals struggling to make a living and provide for their families. Good people, brave people, all trying to survive in a festering open wound of human depravity.  There’s nowhere quite like it.

A year ago we found Skinny there.  She screamed when she saw us.  It was a sweet moment.  I still remember the years of refusals and the wall she put between us.  A year ago it was still okay to do what she’d been doing forever.  It was still a way to make money.  It was still worth it.

Yesterday we visited again.  We entered brothels and bars, handing out flyers for next week’s medical clinic.  We chatted with women of all ages.  Some were happy to talk, others were obviously afraid.  Why on earth would these giant gringos want to talk to them.  I sat with a few in a bar.  We laughed a lot and I was reminded again how much I love my job.

On the way back to our car, we turned a corner and there she was.  Skinny…frail and painted and beaming.  After kisses and hugs and more kisses there came a sudden flood of tears.  She misses her sister.  There is no justice in Guatemala.  She will never see her again.  Life is so hard without her.  She has no hope.  Apart from her sister’s funeral, she is someone who has never shown emotion.  She’s stoic.  She accepts her lot.

Sobbing, she beckoned me to a dark corner of the brothel.  She didn’t want the other girls to overhear what she was going to say.

I can’t stand it anymore.  I can’t continue in this life.  I hate it.  I hate it.  Please help me.  Please.  I can’t do this anymore.  This life is terrible.  Terrible.  Please.

Tears poured down her facing, peeling the cheap liner from her eyes.  She cried with a force that was devastating to see.  It was grief.  Grief for everything she had lost – everything she had endured.  But it was also hope.  Hope that there might be something else.  That there might be a way out.

We will talk again next week.  But this is huge.  HUGE!  She was never going to leave.  For Skinny, prostitution was a legitimate way to provide for her children and she thought we were kind, foolish gringos because we aren’t fans.

It took five years to get to this point.  Five years of refusals, anger, aggression and then reluctant acquiescence. Five years of pizza, and games, and jokes, and hugs.  Five years of waiting and being told, NO!

We are often asked what we do all day.  Honestly, it’s pretty boring.  Amazing things happen, but most of the time it’s quite mundane.  When we’re asked we usually say, “we wait.”  People laugh when we say that, unsure of what to do with such an answer.  But it’s true.  Most of our job is waiting.  We wait for the hug to change, for the hand squeeze to tighten, for tears to fill dark eyes, and for whispered questions of escape.

If you’re interested, we have no idea of our next step with her.  We’re heading back to Canada in about ten days and then we won’t be back until the summer.  Until then, we are going to try to figure out something for our precious Skinny.  She is the reason we do what we do.  She is the reason we walk through sewers.  She is a gift.