In our society of constant visual and auditory stimulation a disturbing thing has happened to the typical media of communication. Words images— they seem to lose their meanings the more we hear or see them the stronger or more startling they are instead of gaining importance and poignancy.
We are bombarded by news of disasters misfortunes and injustices on a daily basis. It’s not news anymore unless someone is upset or dying. And in such an environment the value of human life diminishes. We hear that hundreds of thousands of people died in an earthquake in Haiti but do we ever stop to think about that statement; that so many individual irreplaceable lives are lost and many more are left injured suffering the loss of loved ones?
Or take this number: 27 million. Does it mean anything to you? Maybe it’s the amount of dollars some entertainment tycoon makes in a year. Or maybe it’s the rough population of Saudi Arabia. But I know you’ve heard this one before: it’s the estimated number of slaves in the world today— and that’s more than at any other time in recorded history.
Being an ardent abolitionist I thought I understood the issue well. I knew all the facts and figures.
But then I discovered that I too had been desensitized by all the statistics. I knew every country in the world had been touched by human trafficking. I knew that Los Angeles just minutes away from the safety of campus had more human trafficking victims than any other place in the United States.
And I knew that India with as many as 20 million people in slavery had more people in bondage than the rest of the world combined. I set out on a trip with four fellow Pepperdine students and two students from Jadavpur University in Kolkata to discover the real story about human trafficking in India and those who were working to combat it. But through all the interviews all the statistics— the depth of the issue didn’t really set in until the moment I saw two dark searching pairs of brown eyes.
I had never met a human trafficking survivor. They existed I knew but until that moment they had just been numbers on a U.N. report; numbers we wanted to make smaller by preventing their being trafficked in the first place. Meeting two girls both younger than myself just rescued from a brothel in eastern India I could never hope to describe the feeling I had looking them in the eye or what I saw there.
These girls had been through every woman’s worst nightmare. They had been raped abused and dehumanized on a constant basis. Their souls it seemed had been scarred in that brothel leaving them empty and scared. You could tell they felt the beauty and mystery that made them women had been stripped from them right before their eyes. The realization of what had happened to these girls and the degree to which it affected them made me sick sadder than I had ever been and more sparked with rage than I had ever thought possible. The thought that one human being could do such a thing to another was now frighteningly real and sickeningly true to me. More true than statistics or stories— just one look said it all.
But in their eyes behind all the defeat and sadness I also saw a little spark of hope. Now that they were rescued and talking to students from half a world away who didn’t need to be there who really didn’t need to care about their issue at all but wanted to help; at least a part of them seemed to come alive.
And I knew why I was on that trip. Because even if I only ever make a difference in the lives of one or two people the realization that they are people— with souls and families and dreams— is what makes caring worthwhile.
The image of these girls’ eyes is forever seared in my memory. I regret that my words could never have the same effect. Amidst all the statistics and accounts of injustices in the world these words will probably fall on deaf ears once again. But maybe one person who reads this will take these words to heart realize that all of those things you see on the news aren’t just issues or disasters but people with faces and hearts and eyes that reveal the pain they are suffering. And hopefully that person will strive to do something more something personal and sacrificial to end the suffering that has become so real to them.
