Mim

Friday was a day of Outreach to the girls that we had met at the Christmas Parties. We headed back into the bars to "follow up" if you will with some of the girls that we had connected with or that seemed interested in Beginnings. There is one girl in particular, her name is Mim. She is from Sao and has a daughter, age 7. Her mother has been very sick and has been in and out of the hospital for a while. A few years ago her mother had open heart surgery and has been on medications ever since. Just recently she was admitted back into the hospital and was put on medications that were just to expensive to keep up with, that when Mim decided she would sell her body to help pay for her Mother's medication. She has been working in the bars for 3 1/2 months. We played a couple rounds of pool and just hung out and talked, then it happened, a customer came in and sat down at the bar next to our pool table. Mim's coworker called out to Mim to let her know her customer was here. She barely acknowledged him and urged us to strike up another game. He ordered his beer and sat and oogled her as she made her shot, I would be lying if I told you that ill feelings didn't rise up on me. We tried everything we could (Sherie,Christine and I) to shield Mim from his line of sight and play as many games of pool as we could to make sure he knew tonight Mim was not his date. Frustrated, he finished his beer and left, we knew he wouldn't be the only man tonight though, but what could we do??? We decided that by "purchasing" her for tonight we could at least buy her freedom one more time and she could go home and rest. But since our Thai is not good at all and her engligh was very broken it was hard to communicate to her what we were trying to do. She knew we were saying "buy her" and "bar fine" but after that it was a little grey. To our surprise the same man returned, determined to claim his "prize." Mim pulled close to Christine and said "BUY ME" and thats all it took. We paid for our sodas and her "bar fee" and we headed out the door. As we left there were many other girls that we knew hugging us and holding our hands and taking pictures with us, it was intense. Intense to know that we couldn't take them all with us, Christine and I looked at each other and said "One at a time!"