Released from bondage

Since I have come to IJM, I have been richly blessed to be a part of three separate rescue operations. The operations to release families living in slavery are conducted in tandem with goverment officials and police, who enter the paticular facility (rock quarry, brick kiln or rice mill) with select IJM staff. The victims of forced labor are briefly "enquired" inside the faciilty by the head government officer. Then we help them pack their simple belongings into large trucks. We travel to the government office where the official "enquiry" is conducted to determine if they are being held there in violation of the Indian law which prohibits forced labor. (Essentially, someone is considered a forced laborer if she/he is: providing labor in exchange for a one-time monetary loan, paid below minimum wage, prohibted from moving freely, or not permitted to sell their own goods freely.)

At the government office, my role has been to photograph the laborers as they are documented by our aftercare staff and as they take turns going in to answer questions with the government officials. Since I do not speak the language, my responsiblities are limited. But even using a laminating machine hardly feels mundane -- as the piece of paper bound between the plastic sheets is a Release Certificate, cancelling all debts and literally declaring that particular individual free.

More importantly than my own involvement, since I arrived in January 2009, 154 Release Certificates have been issued in IJM cases. 43 families have been released from faciilties where they were working illegally as laves. All of these families are part of IJM's aftercare program, designed to support them as they reintegrate into a society which is strictly delineated by caste and plagued by poverty. One IJM aftercare manager is assigned to each family. The IJM staff visits the family's home monthly, conducts group meetings by region and connects these "clients" with longterm resources to ensure a sustainable life in freedom.

To read about our most recent rescue operation, check out IJM's website and read this story I wrote!

Its all business here

The past few days I have been in Madurai, a small city an overnight train ride away. Accompanied by a lovely colleague and IJM aftercare manager, I had the privilege to interview a couple of students in the government law college there. Both are children of former forced laborers, rescued from a brick kiln in 2004. Both are the first in their families to attend college. Both are full of ambition, driven by a desire to excel so that they might fight for their humble communities. Sitting on a rusted green folding chair up on the rooftop of the law college hostel, tape recorder capturing the answers to my questions asked for me in Tamil, moleskine in hand as I scribbled translations, I thought to myself, how do I do this justice? And justice is a word I do not use lightly. His story deserves an audience. His story deserves a truthful telling, neither polished off nor embellished.

I suspect this question will haunt me the deeper I am immersed into this work; how do I do this justice? The more I engage with the culture, the customs and -- mostly -- the people of South Asia, the more I doubt my ability to recount the stories and provide the panoramic view I can barely take in when I'm standing right here seeing and smelling it all in real time. I'll continue to offer simple snapshots of my life and work here...though no more tonight. I am too excited to sleep not in transit, with my backpack looped through my arm on the third bunk of an overnight train like last night, or in the back seat of a car bumping down a dirt road then scraping by buses on the four hour journey back to the city, like my nap(s) today (I got off the train this morning at 7:30, brushed my teeth at the office, had a coffee and headed out on another trip to interview a family very recently freed from a rock quarry).

Perhaps I'll sort out some of the bits and pieces from my whirlwind "business trip" over the weekend. Until then, I send you the blessings I (accidentally!) received from this elephant: