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Selling an 11-year-old virgin turned out to be even easier. At the first place they came to in Thailand, less than a kilometer from the bridge over the Nam Ruak, a brothel owner bought Pim.
Pim now suspects her mother knew her true destiny. Lek and Tip, on the other hand, appear unaware, or unable to admit, that their mothers sold them into sexual slavery. Lek says she came to Mae Sai because she wanted to earn money to help her widow mother buy their rented house. A friend approached her in a market near her house in Rangoon, she says, and asked simply whether she wanted to make money in Thailand. She jumped at the chance. Tip, like Pim, was recruited by an agent but insists her mother thought she was going to be cleaning houses. Both girls say they can never tell their families they are prostitutes. They would be too ashamed.
The price that Kentung's daughters pay for their parents' poverty can be found in its graveyards. The idyllic-looking hillside hamlet of traditional wooden houses and carved balconies brimming with mountain flowers is four hours north of the Thai border by car. In a town of perhaps 5,000 people, the AIDS epidemic imported from over the frontier reached the point in the late 1990s where someone died every day, according to one Western aid worker. The rate has since fallen, but it's not a sign of improvement. Rather, it's a reflection of the earlier devastation. World Vision is one of the few nongovernmental organizations to brave international condemnation for working under, and inevitably sometimes with, Burma's military junta to try to counter trafficking and its effects in the area. One of its workers says that since 1997, out of 400 AIDS patients it registered in the nine village districts around Kentung, 380 have died. The government tries to hide the reality, but even where deaths are counted, the embarrassed Burmese authorities fudge the true total — listing complications brought on by AIDS as the cause of death. "No one will ever know how many people have really died around here from AIDS," the aid worker says.
But even though the terrible price of prostitution has become evident by the sheer force of numbers, the flow of girls has not slowed. The economic imperative is such that for most families, sending daughters illegally to Thailand is a must, says Cherry Waing of World Vision's Kentung office. And with no education or training, girls have little earning power outside the flesh trade. "Every village has a broker for sex workers," says Waing.
Little thought is given to the girls' return. Many simply don't. But for those who survive with their health intact, the journey home can be fraught. Most lack the requisite identity cards, which are issued solely in the district of residence and only to people aged 18 or older. "Either the girls have to bribe their way home, if they have enough money, or more usually they need to be sponsored by their parents or the village head," says Waing. Such arrangements, she adds, are extremely rare. "Generally these are the very people who sent them away in the first place." Since starting up a repatriation program early last year, World Vision has managed to bring only three girls back from Mae Sai.
Taking Lek and Tip over the border turns out to be easy. Both girls insist they want to go to Kentung to live with Tip's family. They would feel safest there. With trepidation, we agree. While we arrange visas for ourselves, they pick up a pass to Tachileik, the Burmese border town opposite Mae Sai. With the heavy traffic across the bridge, the four of us cross unnoticed. Fearing problems with checkpoints if we go by road, we buy the two girls flights to Kentung. It is with relief that we watch the plane take off.
Only later do we learn that Lek and Tip never made it past the departure lounge. Minutes before the aircraft is to take off, as we wait obliviously outside in the parking lot, the airport authorities throw them out. By the time we hear of their missed flight, we have discovered something even more wrenching: the mothers of both girls have been receiving regular payments from Mama San.
Lek and Tip are still in Tachileik, where they have taken shelter with an older friend. Perhaps it's better that they didn't return home. Their mothers sold them once; would they have tried again? It's not a happy ending. And many could argue that we did the wrong thing, that by paying money for the girls we were only perpetuating the trade, that helping them take only one step toward freedom was not enough. But unlike Pim, Lek and Tip might, at least, have some choices this time.