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Bean Popsicles and Prayer Walks
6/21/09
The Kolkata team has spent the last several days participating in orientation with the other Global Urban Trek, Asia teams. Our time is split between eating, devotionals, intensive Bible study, and activities to facilitate an understanding of cultural differences and issues of development, race and class – oh, and more eating. Did you know that chicken and noodles is common breakfast fare in Thailand, or that you can buy a black bean popsicle for less than a dollar?
Last night we visited a Red Light district in downtown Bangkok. The trip was framed as a prayer walk – that means we focused on making quiet observations while praying for the people that we saw. This is a powerful way to confront corrupt institutions and invite God’s love, peace and justice into an area.
However, some of us struggled even to know what to pray. Others encountered personal sins and prayed for a reminder that “I’m no better than any of them.” Still others were reminded of their own experiences with injustice.
Many of us were struck by the details of this system: women numbered instead of named, or advertised as a set of features on a laminated card; children playing games by the sidewalk where women waited for clients; the mini-economy that had sprung up in one of the streets, with a salon and shops to buy makeup and clothes.
The sense of normalcy was one of the most jarring aspects for me. Maybe I expected everything to be very black and white: “You are now entering a den of iniquity.” However, one of the streets was well-lit and filled with vendors’ stalls and tourists. It reminded me of places I’ve shopped before, and I felt uncomfortable seeing my own consumption and consumerism in this context.
In addition to this, women weren’t universal victims, trapped inside dark buildings while men stood outside and oppressed them – some of them took part as mama-sans, the purveyors with whom potential clients have to make a connection in order to purchase services.
It was also hard for me to understand the role of judgment in a setting like this. Shouldn’t the tourists and other vendors be judged for their complicity in the trade? But where do you draw the line between victim and perpetrator? And how are the sins of consumerism, gluttony and lust in our own culture different from the manifestation of sin that we saw last night?
I wanted to know who to blame, but then I remembered that we are all linked to these structures. What is more, we all participate in them to some degree as human beings, and we must all turn to the same Power for redemption. Maybe a good way to pray for “them” is to pray for “us.”
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