Food while traveling can be the best of times or the worst of times. A mystifying yet necessary item in your day to day life which can either make your day as you delight in the food and community or suffer miserably while it wrecks havoc (we will leave the rest of that to the imagination).

I’ve been lucky to have experienced some amazing dishes and flavors. Some were more palatable than others. And I’ve had a few funny moments along the way.

Ingredients waiting to be cooked at a food stall.

One night while I was living in Thailand and tired of noodles, rice and coconut milk concoctions we usually made and craving something our taste buds knew of old, Heather, Michael and I decided to make tacos. Heather had been delighted to come across taco shells at are our market and in honor of that find Michael and I set off to find additional ingredients for meal. I picked up sticky rice and laab moo (a delicious Asian flavored version of ground beef). We chopped up fresh chilis, tomatos and onions for salsa and a special trip into the city center was made for cheese and hard to find sour cream.

Setting the table and after exclaiming over how excited we were for tacos, we all settled into silence for our first bite. I picked it up off my plate. I breathed in the smell of spices, cheese and vegetables, the fresh salsa dripping from the tortilla shell. I took a bite.

The taco bent in half.

I pulled back to look at it. The shell was so stale, my dinner looked like the leaning tower of Pisa. I couldn’t even chew through it. We exchanged stunned glances around the table.

Later, as we cleaned up, Heather noticed the expiration date on the box was from 2008.

The best way to drink coconut water!

Khao Soi! One of my favorite dishes ever

There was another time I was on the bus between Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. Stopping at a roadside market along the way, I got out in search of food. Noticing a green sliced fruit covered with what looked like sugar crystals I asked the man what it was. His Thai was so rapid fire I could only understand the word for “mango”. I indicated I’d like some. He handed me a plastic bag stuffed full of the fruit with a spiked wooden pick to pull it easily out of the bag. Climbing back into the bus, I popped a large bite into my mouth. And nearly spit it out with shock.

What I had thought were ‘sugar crystals’ were actually chili flakes. And the mango was pickled.

Hadn’t seen that one coming.

Mango! Unpickled.

Jellyfish. Pickled.

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.

He who is devoid of the power to forgive

is devoid of the power to love.

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.

When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Two years into working as an advocate and abolitionist, the words and work of MLK are more poignant and personal than when I first read them; sitting in a elementary school room likely preoccupied with when recess was going to occur.

MLK was a figurehead for a movement which faced incredible odds with what many said was an unrealistic goal. The amount of change necessary to achieve his dream was breathtaking and all encompassing yet he and many others never backed down or let the dream falter. That’s true courage.

What’s even more courageous is the call to face down adversity with love and forgiveness. It takes much more strength to forgive than to hate. As a friend of mine once said “When you are fighting against something, you become that. Anger and strife only bring more of the same.  When you are fighting for something, only then are you in the right place.”

Today is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.  You can help restore a life. Research local organizations in your area which pertain to Anti-Trafficking and sexual exploitation. Know the signs, know the resources. If you see something, say something.  National Human Trafficking Hotline: 333-8787-333

“Fighting slavery is a shared responsibility.

We can and must end the most serious criminal civil rights violation”

End Human Trafficking.

Right outside the gate at the end of the driveway, the kids were playing hide and seek behind banana leaves the size of them. As I walked towards them, Tipsuda pulled a leaf over her face covering the majority of herself while she was at it.

As I neared the girls I could see figures heading down the dirt road in the sunlight. One was wearing white (normally worn for funerals or for Thai holidays) and was bent slightly at the waist, something I’ve noticed to be common among elderly Thai (I am not sure if it comes from nutrition or from working in the rice fields).

Distracted by the game of hide and seek I didn’t realize one of them was Cat until she called out a greeting. As I turned to say hello, she gestured to the white bedecked figure at her side. A tiny smiling elderly lady who was covering rapid ground on her way over to me.

“P’ Dara, this is my grandmother,” Cat said proudly and carefully in English.

I lit up. As I wai’d a hello, she drew level with me. It’s the tallest I have ever felt with another adult; she had to be about 4′ 7″.

Clapping her hands to my cheeks to cup my face, she beamed up at me. Her grey hair, held loosely at the top of her head, was falling girlishly around her face and her eyes nearly disappeared into her cheeks.

We stood grinning at each other and then she released my face. Gripping next my hand, she nodded at Cat, nodded in the direction of the Resource Center and then looked at me again nodding and patting my hand over and over. We smiled again at each and with a squeeze, she released my hand and continued on her way up the road to the village.

Some things don’t need words to make themself understood.

A classic Christmas gift is a journal. I have so many of them (spanning from rather melodramatic yearnings of a pre-teen to lovely little moments I would have otherwise forgotten from my early years in NYC or while living in Dublin, Ireland). Over the past year plus, I haven’t kept a handwritten journal as much and I wish I had. But- I do have this blog which has certainly captured some of the most remarkable two years of my life.

And I’ve shared it publicly with anyone who wants to read along. Or Google me. This possible over-sharing seems in keeping with our current culture.

In keeping with a recent post receiving encouragement and answers to prayer has been happening fast and furious over here. I am writing this from NH where I’m working on a project at my parents company. It came out of the blue and when I needed it the most.

The year is fast drawing to a close— although in some ways it’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since I came back and this year has held all that it has.

I’ve also been reminded how fast things can change and to never take love and the ones you love for granted. I lost both my grandmothers this year, my dear friend Michelle was diagnosed (and is kicking in the butt!) “boob” cancer and had a bit of a family scare early in 2011. I was able to be near enough NYC for the first 4 months of 2011 so that I was able to see my dearly missed friends every weekend, realized the love and support (and calling!) I have which enabled me to move to the Southwest, I’ve been writing tons (although… I think I have that feeling every ‘artist’ has where it never feels like you are doing enough of it or doing it well enough). I believe I am where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be.

And what more can one ask for?

So Happy (early) New Year everyone. May you take life by the hand in 2012 and do with it what you know you can. Trust yourself.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Lord Tennyson “In Memoriam”

Early in December, a UVM fraternity (which has since been closed) circulated a survey asking its members generic questions regarding music, favorite pastimes and nestled among this innocuous list was the question “who would you like to rape?”.

I felt outraged and sick. I couldn’t fathom how this was actually legitimate. Don’t any of these men have sisters? Or girlfriends? Or female friends? I am sure the majority of them were raised by mothers (and fathers) who would never have allowed a line of thought such as that to be considered acceptable or funny.

Why use the word “rape” as opposed to “hook up with”/ “sleep with”/ “score”. In that case, the question is not so shocking in it’s lack of regard. Why can’t it be a consensual fantasy and not a criminal violent one? You trivialize the word, you trivialize the idea of it. It’s not a joke.

Personally I believe this mindset stems from the “good girls” vs “bad girls” which still exists in our society. Perhaps, if truly forced to articulate the thought which went into the surveys question, the author would admit he doesn’t think of rape as something which would happen to any of the women in his life as they are “good girls”. So thus the question is not that offensive. Or vile.

Our culture of victim blaming convinces some men and women dehumanizing rape is acceptable. Sadly and sickeningly, the ‘she was asking for it’ mindset still seems to hold some weight. If you look at the way date rape cases are tried, the line of questioning towards the victim makes it seem the fact you said “yes” before makes it silly and suspect you would have said “no” when you say you did. “Innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t always extend to the victim: ”you should have known better, what outfit did she have on or was she drunk?”.

No one says (or is allowed legally to say) an African American deserves to be attacked for being black no matter what was going on at the moment; so why does there sometimes seem to be this underlying thought a woman deserves being attacked for being a woman, wearing a shorter skirt, walking home alone? Why is the thought process not “men should have more control, more regard, a sense of what is right and what is not?”. As asked by one blogger: Why isn’t the default mindset for all to blame rape on rapists? 

As a friend of mine said, “Whole slandering the rape victim phenomenon, in terms of movies for instance, the amount of dramas centered on a man falsely accused of rape by some total bunny boiler…….I think is probably disproportionate to how often that actually happens, versus how many hundreds of thousands of real rapes go completely unreported in real life and I would say there are more films perpetuating that bunny boiler idea. That is one thing that bothers me a lot. That if you report a rape, society defaults to being suspicious of you, so you just keep quiet and deal with it alone. That gets me.”

I wholeheartedly agree. I remember standing in PJ Clarke’s in NYC one St. Patrick’s Day surrounded by what felt the whole police force of Philadelphia, PA. Somehow I got into a discussion about sexual assault with one of the officers.  I remember him hesitating and looking away before saying “A lot of times those rape calls are fake.” I asked him how he knew. He shrugged as a response.

This victim blaming mindset ties into sex trafficking- how it continues to occur at such enourmous rates and the stigma the survivors (particularly American survivors) face as they try to rebuild their life. 

Often the humanity of the woman behind the prostitute is dismissed due to a drug problem or to a lack of understanding (how did she get there, why didn’t she just leave?).  In many cases we have a legal system failing it’s own citizens; ‘Low-income girls and girls of color are at an increased risk for sexual exploitation, and thanks to societal bigotry, the justice system looks at a young black girl from the Bronx and sees a typical juvenile delinquent instead of someone in desperate need of help…  young sex workers — even those who were minors, even those who were beaten and forced into prostitution — were arrested and treated as criminals. Unless, of course, they were from another country, in which case they were considered trafficked and were given access to help and resources. Try that logic on for size’. (The Daily).

Often the women, not the pimps or the johns, are arrested and bear a criminal record along with all of their other scars. In Nevada (where the sex trade is high due to Las Vegas)  figures from 2009 showed that 3,555 women were arrested statewide for prostitution, compared with 459 men apprehended for prostitution-related crimes. (Las Vegas Sun).

The stigma which follows a woman who has been prostituted is immense. “Victims of human trafficking face major problems being reintegrated into their home communities when they are freed from the situation into which they were trafficked. Social stigma and personal emotional scars must be overcome during the process of reintegration. Victimized women may have been treated by law authorities as criminals, either for prostitution or illegal migration, and, therefore face additional problems of employment or other forms of reintegration.” 

Women who have survived sex trafficking often end up with criminal records stemming from “prostitution” arrests (even if the arrests occurred while underage or when they had black eyes) and are unable to get jobs.  In September of 2011,  a new law was finally put into place where ‘any survivor of sex trafficking can try to have their record expunged if they prove the conviction obtained was the result of having been trafficked …’ ( The Daily).

The law resulted from the case of a young 22 former ‘prostitute’ who had been under the violent control of a pimp from the age of 13. Having finally broken free from her pimp, she was unable to move forward in life due to her “criminal” record from prostitution arrests. Legal Aid attorney Kate Mogulescu told Reuters, “The law says any survivor of sex trafficking can try to have their record expunged if they prove the conviction obtained was the result of having been trafficked … This is the first case that involved pimp-controlled prostitution.” This young woman now has a job and is rebuilding her life.

Hopefully advancements like these in terms understanding, the public’s education and services to survivors continue to occur.  Let us, as a society, force the men who create this horrific trade (whether as pimps or as the customers) to answer for their actions and bear the shame instead of perpetuating the exploitation of the victim.

Dear Me (and You),

Sitting in the cubicle your fingers twitching with the monotony as you pen repetitive emails over and over and over again; “please let me know of your availability for a meeting/call with so and so…”. Boredom scratching at every moment of your day.  Or to me (or you) arriving at a final callback for a show which you’ve devoted untold hours to, having prepared a monologue for the original audition which was over an hour from your house on the train at 9am on a Saturday, done the same again for a callback, having left your pay by the hour temp job early to arrive on time. You finally receive the script to realize a ‘quirky comedy about the holidays’ involves an orgy scene between the ‘Jews’ and the ‘Christians’. To you (or me) walking 16 blocks from the subway to your apartment in the absolute pouring freezing rain only to have the bus fly by and splash you.

Or, you know, something like that.

You lay in bed tired of your day before you have even left the bed, trying to figure it all out. You find your wheels spinning and spinning. What to do? What to change? How to do it?

There were hours and many long weary nights picking at the edges to the question of what truly is it that makes life matter and how do I live a life worth living; giving to my life and giving with it? I reviewed, researched, prayed, obsessed and discarded many different ideas. Two top plans of mine in the running were forgotten (as I had been struggling to make them feel right) when I was presented with an opportunity to move to Chiang Rai, Thailand and work with The SOLD Project.

It was one of the best decisions of my life.

Now nearly two years later after that choice- I am on a path I would never have thought of and it’s better than I even imagined.

When you are where you should be in your life things happen. And if you are at a point where you just know something is waiting/has to changed, keep the faith and keep your chin up- it will happen. Be open, be active, believe. If an opportunity is presented to you- don’t feel you have to know the big picture before you have tried the little pieces of it on, just say yes. Don’t cling to the idea you had of your life; if it doesn’t feel right, isn’t working out right then it isn’t right. Living is about growing.

The worst thing which can happen is you ‘fail’. And failing, whatever that word means to you, could hurt; maybe a lot, maybe not. And if you have planned it (because choosing to take the leap can be spontaneous but the physicality of that does not have to be) then you will be fine. You didn’t fail, you tried. You aren’t failing, you’re trying.

Give yourself permission to try. You’re staring down the barrel, one ready to be colored in and filled, of a new year of your life. Do with it what you what you know you can.

“I have learned that faith

Means trusting in advance

What will only make sense in reverse.”

Philip Yancey

~~~~~~~~

I hate goodbyes. Even when goodbyes are “see you again’s” I still dislike them.

I’m sitting in Chiang Rai’s tiny boring airport surprised the trip is over (all that is left is the horrendous flight back in economy). I am waiting for my 9:30pm flight to Bangkok (which will board at 9:20), get some sleep and up early for my flight back to Oklahoma City. OKC which has apparently endured 2 earthquakes and tornadoes since I have been gone (I hope you’ve gotten it out of your system).

Cat gave me a huge hug on the porch before I left. I told her I was so proud of all she has accomplished over the last year.

Wonderful, my flight is delayed 30 minutes which prolongs this even more.

It’s hard to leave a place you love.

Traveling can bring out your best self and, in some people it brings out your worst. When in transit on my own moving from place to place; I often feel the most aligned within.

I find when I discover the life I worked so hard to create (be it in Ireland or Thailand or even New York) is still accessible it’s so much harder to leave again. It’s strange to revist a place where you had a life and be only a visitor. It’s a blessing and a sadness.

It’s almost a year to the day from when I moved back home to the States from Thailand. Then I had no idea what life would hold, where I would go and how I would feel. Life in America after Thailand felt like this huge, looming, exciting and scary outline just waiting to be filled. I can’t say I have it all filled out and figured out, but that’s OK. Maybe you never do. Perhaps that is what makes life an adventure and worth living. But I do know I am on a great path, am happy, am thriving and working as an advocate, in whatever capacity, is what I am meant to do.

Faith has carried me far on this leap and it will carry me farther still.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go,

but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”

Douglas Adams

(via: beautifultype.net)

Faith.

When doors are opened, opportunities waiting and adrenaline flying because you know you’re on the right path and the dots are connecting; it’s very easy to keep the faith. It’s harder when the fields lie fallow and the bank account dips lower and the temp jobs are hard to find. But God is not a means to an end. He isn’t someone you ask things from so that your life is what you want it to be and when you want it to be.

Two years ago today, I wrote my first post for this blog. A year following that post I was sitting in a hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand having finished up some of the most powerful months of my life, wondering what life in America held for me. And trust me, if you had given me a list of 10 cities to write down where I could see myself living, Oklahoma City would not have been one of them. But here I am and it is where I am supposed to be.

There have been moments when my faith has faltered or I have had the frozen borderline panic; “What is the big picture exactly and how the heck am I going to get there?!”. But then I breathe and remind myself faith is the evidence of things unseen. And the only way I ended up in OKC is because this is where I should be and it will all be revealed in its own time.

In those moments of panic I have had reinforcement show up in the most unexpected ways. I had just spent a hard honest hour with my finances one day when I received a note from a new friend asking me if I had time to get together before I left for Thailand. Without getting into the details, my friend made a very touching and encouraging “investment” in me and in the work I was doing. The other day I was feeling a bit down and wondering if I was writing into a vacuum when I received an email from a popular local paper requesting an Op-Ed on trafficking in Oklahoma. Then the other day I noticed I had a very high number of hits on my blog and realized an anti trafficking org. in the U.K had retweeted one of my posts.

Encouragement is there. It can just be there in the small things which are easy to overlook if you expect living life on faith is easy.

And following my heart, doing what I believe I am called to do, is a blessing no matter what the circumstances.

So on this Thanksgiving week – I am thankful for so many people and events. For all the support, love and belief in me, for new friends in OKC who have welcomed me with open arms, for old friends on the East Coast who call and Skype with me, for an apartment whose rent is under $1,000 (for the first time in years) and for constantly receiving affirmation when I need to be kept afloat the most.

Thank you.

I may not have gone where I intended to go,

but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

Douglas Adams.

There are a lot of white men in Bangkok. Old, young, married, single, fat, skinny, ugly and handsome. Ones who look you in the eye as they notice you watch them ‘flirt’ with Thai women and ones who don’t. There are some who stare belligerently and dangerously back, daring you to say something as they paw at the women around them.

For something which is not legal in this country- prostitution sure is out in the open.

Rachel (the President of SOLD) and I are staying in Nana Plaza, otherwise known as the Red Light District. SOLD’s partner Home of New Beginnings (an outreach home which provides income and housing to women who choose to leave the sex trade. Their focus is on education which would allow these women to sustain themselves outside of the trade) is located down the street from here.

The stories of the women who live there are even worse than you would imagine. One girl recounted being snatched off the back of a motorbike and thrown into a van where several other young crying girls sat. It was all she saw until the bag went over her head too. In her case, a policeman saw this and actually intervened. He saved her but allowed the truck to continue. She was rescued from that situation to only end up trafficked several years later by her ‘boyfriend’.

Last night as Rachel and I wove around the loud bars, drunk men and heavily made up women heading towards dinner. At a crowded intersection a short, old, grizzled drunk foreign man stopped in front of the two women in front of me. Breathing heavily into her face, he was muttering under his breath looking her up and down as if she was an object and not a human being. As I continued to cross the street I turned around to watch. And realized she wasn’t a woman at all but a young girl, her cheeks round with baby fat. She wriggled her hand into his, shooting a sideways look to her friend for support. The light changed and they were gone, disappearing into a taxi.

As a woman I could just sense that man would be mean.

Being in this area has provided me with an up close and disturbing insight into the mindset here. Early yesterday morning as I slouched around the hotel lobby sipping on my coffee, I watched a stunningly beautiful tiny Thai woman stride towards the doors. Her stilettos clicking hard against the tile. She turned giving a smile to the middle aged frumpy British man whose beet red face smirked into a moony grin. He gazed at her long after she left and then turned and caught me staring. He was one who couldn’t keep eye contact.

I see women sitting on bar stools in daylight hours, waiting for a client and calling to men as they pass: “Massage? Massage?”. I see men who are old enough to be my grandfather, drunk at midday, pulling women onto their laps and fondling them. I see preteen girls, their eyes heavily coated in bright blue eyeshadow, buying juice in 7-11 and then walking down the street responding to any man who calls to them. I see cute young backpackers wearing T shirts which mimic McDonalds logo. As in the “M” is actually a woman spread eagle with the words “I’m Loving It” written underneath.

Despite these womens smiles and solicitations and laughter they are not here by choice. ‘“Choice” implies active enthusiastic consent. It also implies multiple alternatives. Prostitution in Thailand is circumstance-created sex work. If poverty is a choice, then, yes, they have a choice. While most workers are “free” to leave the trade and are not bound to their bedpost, they are bound by lack of education, gender inequality, family debt, and poverty. One of our English students was the sole support of ten members of her family: Her mother and grandmother, her three children, her younger school-age brother, her sister who had been paralyzed in an accident and her husband and their two young children. She needed to take one customer a day in order to support them all.” (Home of New Beginnings).

To anyone who is under the misguided impression partaking in the sex trade in Thailand helps these women economic position please read here. To give you the cliff notes and succinctly drive the point home-”having women rent out their vaginas has never been a path to economic prosperity for any individual or a collective nation.”

I wonder if the men who perpetuate this slavery and exploitation, men who have to pay women to have sex with them; think about the life these women lead and where it ultimately ends for them (1 in 100 people in Thailand is HIV positive). I don’t understand how so many males discount the humanity of a women simply because she is a woman. I don’t understand how so many hundreds and thousands of men are under the impression being bought for sex by sweaty, smelly, and drunk ‘faruang’ men is something a woman would genuinely want to do with her life. I don’t understand how they can tell themselves their behavior is acceptable and honorable.

And day after day, night after night these women wake up, put on their dresses and make up and smiles and go out to endure it all again.

“ I am haunted by my past every sleeping and waking hour. I want to sever my mind from my body…If there had been an alternate path for my survival, I would have jumped for it. My country intentionally provides no other path. All other roads lead to poverty.”

Former Sex Worker (began at the age of 13)