Phil is in Liberia documenting the work of Foundation for Women (FFW), an organization that strives to continually support and encourage impoverished women, both globally and locally, by funding and creating microcredit programs. A longtime supporter of Phil and his work, Kevin Castner is traveling with him and reporting back to us from the field. They are also, along with the WTYSL team, helping young women leaders attending a “Women’s Leadership Conference” put on by FFW make a movie for their community.

“This is the worst day of my life again”  “I’m going somewhere better later”  Two T-shirts I saw today.  I guess they could be a kind of metaphor for life in Liberia.  Today is really bad but things are improving.  This could also apply to the lives of the three young girls and their ‘savior’ that we met today.

Sebastian of What Took You So Long

Our young women decided they wanted to make a film that could help other at risk Liberian women decide against living a life on the street or losing hope and giving in prostitution.  They really wanted to meet girls who were prostitutes or who had been prostitutes.  Sebastian Lindstrom has a contact that works with at-risk girls in West Point, one of the very worst neighborhoods in Monrovia.  He has arranged for his contact to see us today with three of her girls.  The girls did not want to be photographed.

Katie Meyler shows up punctually at 11am at Foundation For Women HQ.  She brings with her Princess (13), Musu (15) and Abigail (12).  What do child prostitutes look like?  These three are waifs, rail thin.  How could they be sex objects?  Really, how could they?

We meet in the conference room and our young women don’t know quite what to make of the three younger girls.  At 15, Musu is only two years younger than ‘our’ Asalyn Browne.  Our girls seem a little unresponsive; I think they were thinking that there’s been a mistake, that Katie had just brought three at-risk girls, but not prostitutes.  I leave to ask Emily Peal a question and come back to gospel music.  Katie has found the universal Liberian ice-breaker.  All the girls join in and Wilhelmina Miller, 24, from Totota in Bong, in particular turns out to have a wonderful, powerful voice.

Asalyne Brown

Phil decides to take everybody out to the gazebo next door.  The gazebo has a conical thatched roof and a round concrete wall underneath.  Everybody will be more relaxed and the light and angles will be better.  The 14 women sit inside with their backs to the wall while their bare feet make a circle in the middle.  They do another round of gospel singing and then Katie speaks a powerful poem she wrote in New York, earlier this year, when she heard Abigail went missing back in West Point.  She holds Abigail’s hand while she recites and Abigail hides her head.

Next, our girls have a lot of pent up questions.  ‘How old were you when went on the street?’ ‘How much did you earn?’  ‘How many men did you have to sleep with?’ ‘What did your parents do?’ ‘Did you feel bad? ‘Were you ever raped?’ ‘How does it feel?’ ‘Where did you find customers?’ ‘Did you ever get sick?’ (Yes) ‘Are you willing to change/do you want to go back to school?’ (Yes) ‘Did you use condoms?’(surprisingly, yes)

These young, pretty, underage girls sold themselves for $1-2US (in her poem Katie refers to Abigail as a ‘$2 hooker’) to whomever wanted their services at a video store where they also slept (on the floor).  They have been beaten.  They did run away from home.  Their lives have been hell.  As stories come out of them, though, they sometimes laugh or point at each other and grin.  I wonder ‘what can be so funny?’ but these girls, sadly wise way beyond their years, are still children.  They deal with reality and find humor or fun where it is possible.  Or use humor as a defense mechanism.  Whatever they tell us, Katie tells me later it is a mix of fact and fiction.  She says after months of caring for them she is only now, she feels, getting pretty much the whole truth.  When the world has abandoned you, uses you and beats you, why tell anyone the truth?

Martha Daniels

Martha Daniels, 31, from Congo Town, Monrovia speaks up.  She says she has a similar history.  She never knew her biological father.  She grew up with a stepfather.  She was beaten.  She says ‘I am not from a rich family, but I do not sell my body.’  Martha just graduated from university, with help from a Foundation For Women scholarship.  But it took her ten hard years.  Lack of money forced her to quit school in 2001.  Then the war forced her to flee to Ghana for five years.  Then she came back, found a job and began to save some money to go back to school.  She persevered.

One of the three young girls (I cannot bring myself to call them prostitutes….to me they were raped, by men and by circumstances) says she needs to get out of West Point.  She says she cannot really change until she is living somewhere else, because so many people in West Point know she is, or was, a prostitute and therefore treat her badly.  Theresa Tyee, 27, from Red Light in Monrovia offers this advice, “Say I was a prostitute, but now I’m not.”  Emily Montgomery, 20, from far away in Sinoe, says, “Get off the streets.  Go back to your parents.”  Both these comments are well meant, but following the advice could be impossible, or dangerous.

Emily Montgomery

We have a few more site visits up next.  Check back to learn more about FFW’s work!