IN the red light district of Toul Kork, at the intersection of three roads where
usually nobody gathers, the place is packed tonight. Families, women, curious boys
and soldiers surround a stage, watching a play "This Is My Life."
Twelve girls are re-enacting their own lives, with a common thread. It's a story
well-known in this area, a story of being sold into sexual slavery, of beatings and
rapes.
Saem is one of them.
At the age of 18, she was freed last August from a Battambang brothel where she was
held prisoner for six months.
Today, she recounts her story the same way that she acts it in the play, with great
attention and a willingness to testify about her experience, to try to prevent the
same thing happening to others.
The play tells the story of two orphan sisters who live with an uncle and aunt. The
uncle dies in an accident and the aunt is ill.
The younger sister runs away to look for work to earn money for the family. She gets
a job at a soup shop.
The play is a mixture of the stories of the 12 actors. Saem's story also started
at a noodle soup shop.
"I left my family in Kieng Svay and came in Phnom Penh to work. I am the oldest
child and I had to help my mother, who is a widow, try to earn a living for my two
brothers," she explains.
"I earned 30,000 riel ($12) a month. I worked there for nearly two years. Then
I went to work raising my aunt's children.
"A friend of hers came to offer me a job selling beer. She came several times
and was very kind to me. She promised me the salary would be $50 a month."
In the play, Saem acts the part of that woman.
"It's quite easy for me to act as the pimp. I just have to do what the lady
did with me. I just say what she told me."
Pausing for a minute, she stresses: "It wasn't me who sold someone. I was the
one who was sold."
On the stage, Saem walks with a determined stride, and speaks loudly.
"As I am acting, I close my eyes and I think what I actually lived through in
the brothel."
As the play progresses, it's evident that it's a familiar story to many in the audience.
People gather in groups and talk about similar experiences.
"Near my house a family sold their daughter last week. She was 15-years-old
and she was sold for $400," says a woman watching the play. While several men
argue about how truthful the actors' stories are, another woman in the audience remarks
that she herself was sold to a Stung Treng brothel, escaping when her husband rescued
her.
On stage, the older sister who stayed with her aunt has just been sold by her boyfriend.
By chance, she meets her younger sister in the same brothel.
Saem remembers how, in real life, she arrived at a brothel after being sold. "The
first day I arrived at the brothel, I did not know where I was. I just saw six other
women.
"The man told me that I had to put on make-up and find customers. 'If you earn
a lot of money then you can go, because you will have repaid the money I used to
buy you'," she says.
"I did not know anything about men at that time. I was very shy. The first customer
tore my clothes and forced me. He raped me."
Then Saem had to have five to six customers a day.
"The pimp wanted me to have ten men. I never wanted that. I wanted to take care
of my health. He beat me to make me earn more money."
In the play, a pimp beats the prostitutes. There doesn't seem to be much acting -
the punches look real, and painful, as does the grabbing of the girls' hair.
In the audience, men erupt into laugher as they watch the pimp beat the prostitutes.
Asked why, they don't say much.
"It's not funny," says Borey, a teenager who was laughing, adding: "But
the play seems to be a joke, even if I know that some girls are actually sold."
In the play, the two sisters' ordeal finally comes to an end: the police arrive at
the brothel to investigate the death of a girl and allow the sisters to leave.
In reality, that was what happened. A prostitute died, at the hands of her pimp according
to police, in the brothel next door to Saem's.
Spurred into action and supported by NGOs, the police raided 40 Battambang brothels,
freeing some 200 prostitutes.
Since then, life has picked up for Saem and many of the others. She joined a vocational
training program run by the International Catholic Migration Commission, which also
supported the production of the play.
Saem is taking a hair-dressing course and hopes that her new skill will allow her
to open a business. She chose not to return to see her family until she had started
her training, so she would have some good news for them.
"I was very afraid of my mother. I did not tell her the truth. I do not want
her to know where I was during the six months I was away from home.
"Maybe she will know because of the play. Now it doesn't matter because I have
a skill and I can settle in my own business."
Saem will soon finish her training, and intends returning to her home village to
start afresh.
"When I left the brothel, I was very pitiful of myself and sad. Today, I have
a skill. I have my eyes, my legs. I can start a new life. I am no more like a blind
person," she says.
As for the play, Saem hopes it will help prevent other people from "living the
same story" - but worries that, in reality, more girls and women are destined
for brothels.
Of the audience, she says: "I think that half of the people understand but if
they need money, they will sell their daughters anyway. The other half are not even
listening."
Says Borey, the laughing teenager: "It will be difficult to stop the sale of
girls. You know, brothels are always looking for virgins."
