The Trafficked (15 page)

They left the wide streets of six-lane traffic, flanked by long low factory outlet buildings and squatters’ villages that had attached themselves to the factory walls and occupied every gap. The roads became congested as they split and narrowed and wove over and underpasses and they neared the city. Beside the roads litter
blew and became snagged on the barbed wire that ran alongside the road. The billboards were old and tattered with flapping grey paper bits peeling away from the images. A woman advertising sanitary towels smiled apologetically out from a big sign.

For Your
Red
Day.

The roads were congested with Jeepneys. Drivers hanging out of the sides all honked at one another. They beeped their horns constantly to communicate with one another, not aggressively, just passing on information:
I am coming out whether you want me to or not. I am a VIP, look at my car. You are an arse.
They had their own language.

‘Things are no better than the last time you came, Johnny. We seem to take ten steps forward and eleven back. There are more children living off the streets than ever before.’

‘How do the children end up on the streets? They must have caring families?’ Becky asked, shouting to be heard above the traffic noise.

‘Poverty is a terrible catalyst for misery. They consider a life on the streets is preferable to being hungry. Sometimes the parents just can’t afford to feed them and the instances of abuse in the home are high here. It’s a mainly Catholic country. The lack of contraception doesn’t help. I have tried to introduce the idea—but it’s not popular. Condoms are still not used much, even in the sex industry girls have to work without them.’

They stopped at some traffic lights and were immediately surrounded by a group of children. Their hair
was matted, their skinny arms and legs emaciated. Their little dark bodies were clothed in just a few rags. Large, desperate eyes stared out from dirty scabbed faces, but lit up when they saw the three westerners. The children were especially delighted to see Father Finn. Their tiny black hands reached inside the car like monkeys after nuts, palms outstretched and begging for change. They peered into the back and beamed at Becky. Father Finn rubbed their heads and talked to them in Tagalog as he fished in his pockets for change. Then they smiled and waved farewell as the lights changed and the car drove off. Becky looked out of the back window and watched the small ragged group as they stood at the side of the road, waiting for the lights to change to red again.

‘Surely the death squads are not killing little children like those?’ she asked, as she watched the children scamper out of the way of the moving traffic. She shook her head sadly. ‘Someone in the world would love one of those children, would give them a home. I would,’ she said quietly to herself.

Father Finn turned off the main road and made left and right turns as he headed down towards the river. Becky was still thinking about the children when they turned down one street. At the end of the road there was a rubbish dump. They were heading straight for it. But then she realised that the rubbish dump had doors and walls.

She leaned forward, between Mann and Father Finn, and stared out of the windscreen.

‘What is that?’

‘A Davao housing estate. That is where eighty thousand of the city’s workers live—the waitresses, the shop assistants, the janitors, the labourers, even some teachers and professionals live here.’

‘What do they do for sanitation? Water?’

‘The government provides them with a standpipe for water. Sanitation? That’s easy. They use a bucket and empty it straight into the water below them.’

They parked up.

‘Please do up your windows,’ said the Father, ‘otherwise our seats will be someone’s new three-piece suite when we come back.’

They followed Father Finn as he walked along the mash of cardboard and rusty tin until he found the entrance he was looking for—the alleyway that marked the beginning of the slum town, on the edge of the Davao River. They left the sunny street and walked into darkness and stench as they entered the Barrio Patay, the Place of the Dead.

33

 

Mann walked behind Becky. He could see that her shoulders were rigid. She kept her eyes straight ahead. They slipped down an alleyway and were immediately plunged into darkness and stench—a stifling world of raw poverty—a living rubbish heap. And yet, children ran past, laughing and playing amidst the putrefaction. A sleeping woman dozed on a platform next to the alleyway. An old man squatted on the ground and washed himself. In the rubbish heap was a normal world.

The slum was a myriad of tunnel roads and windy narrow paths that were built without a plan. They had grown upward and outward organically. Sometimes they opened out to allow the sky in, other times they delved into a dark hole. It had areas where more care had been taken to keep the dwelling smart. It had festering places that housed the near dead, who lay in their doorways and had not the energy to even blink as they watched the strangers walk by. They wandered deeper and deeper as Father Finn wound his way through. Becky followed one step behind him. She was
glad she had trainers on; she’d hate to slip and fall on the walkway. There was a hollow sound as they crossed over narrow planks, anchored in the water by bamboo posts. Below them the river appeared, seething with garbage, refuse. Methane bubbled from the untreated sewage that fermented at the water’s edge and settled as black sludge. Two-storied dwellings hemmed them in on either side. Precarious planks were bridges and ramps to the upper storeys. A rope ran beside them to hold on to.

‘Don’t touch the handrail,’ warned the Father, and Becky could see why. It was covered in excrement that had come directly from the windows above.

Becky wanted to cover her mouth to avoid the overpowering smell of sewage, but the look on the children’s faces as they ran past her told her that this was their home; they didn’t notice the smell and neither should she.

They turned left and headed down a narrow path that took them along the water’s edge. Each dwelling was no more than twelve-foot square, rising up in layers of corrugated iron and cardboard. A thin stream of sunlight came through the six-foot-wide lane.

‘Wednesday lives here alone with her daughter. She takes in washing for a living.’

Father Finn stopped outside an entrance crisscrossed with washing lines. They were strung across the alleyway and ingeniously hung from every available point. T-shirts, pants, shorts and sheets hung down and blocked the path in places. He pulled back a yellowing piece of net at the door and called out.
There was no sound from inside, and it was dark. He called again. A woman came out from behind the neighbouring curtain. She looked at the three Caucasians with surprise and suspicion, but at the same time she gave the obligatory smile. Father Finn addressed her in Tagalog. She listened, staring curiously at Becky and Mann, and then she turned her head, pointing in the direction of the river and one of the paths that led to it. A young woman was making her way back along the planks carrying bags of washing. Her sinewy arms looked used to carrying heavy loads. She had a thick blunt fringe; the rest of her hair was tied back from her face and caught in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore a red T-shirt and shorts. She was barefoot. She looked up and saw the Father and gave a sad, grateful smile. Her large eyes were set in a triangular face. Becky saw that she was mixed race. When she saw Mann her face looked puzzled for a few seconds, before it lifted into a bigger smile and tears came into her eyes.

‘There she is.’ Father Finn went forward to help her with the washing. He took the heavy baskets from her and set them down near the entrance to her house.

‘Hello, Wednesday. Do you remember this handsome man?’ He nodded in Mann’s direction. Wednesday smiled up at Mann, and then she quickly looked away as her eyes immediately spilt the tears she’d been holding back. ‘And this lady is Becky—a policewoman from the UK.’ Wednesday looked from one to the other, her eyes shining through the tears. She wiped her face and then her hand on her shorts.

‘Thank you,’ she said, clutching Becky’s hand. ‘Thank you, sir, ma’am. You come find my baby?’ Her eyes were black-rimmed, bagged below from sorrow and lack of sleep.

Father Finn spoke to her in Tagalog. She listened and bowed her head respectfully at the Father’s words. He finished in English.

‘Johnny here, and his colleague, Becky, will help us look for her. We will do our best, Wednesday, you know that. You must hold out hope. Be brave, be strong…’

‘Please come in…’ she said as she pulled back the net curtain for them to enter. Inside she switched on a light. One bare bulb hung down. The wire ran along the ceiling and disappeared. The walls were made up of flattened cans and pieces of plywood. A piece of plywood on bricks served both as a sitting platform and a bed.

The Father spoke to her again and she nodded her agreement.

‘She thinks her daughter was being watched by the DDS. She thinks that she was targeted by them. Other children have told Wednesday that they saw the men in black several times before Maya disappeared. She has been to the killing field, where the bodies are usually dumped. Her daughter is not there. She says many young girls have disappeared recently. No one knows where they go, but there is talk of them ending up in one of the sex resorts.’

Wednesday started to cry. Father Finn hugged her again and spoke softly. She took a photo from her pocket and handed it to him. He passed it to the others.
The little girl sat, hands in her lap, school uniform on, and smiled at the camera. Her oversized front teeth were slightly crossed, which gave her an elfin look. She looked a lot like her mother—same big eyes, triangular face. She was a pretty child.

‘Can we keep this?’ Becky asked gently.

Wednesday nodded and smiled. A small spark of hope entered her eyes. She looked at each of them, then she took Becky’s hand and held it with both of hers.

‘My little girl—so small.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes.

Becky put her arm around her.

‘We will do our best to find her, Wednesday.’

Father Finn spoke to her again. She listened, but halfway through the conversation she lowered her eyes and looked at the floor as she shook her head.

‘She has heard that her little girl has been taken to Angeles. I told her she must stay where she is. I will go there myself and look for her.’ Wednesday nodded and looked at Becky and Mann—dread in her eyes.

‘The Father is right, Wednesday,’ Mann said. ‘Stay here where she can find you. We will look for her for you.’ He turned the photo over. On the back was written Maya’s name and her age. ‘We will look for Maya for you.’

34

 

Maya looked at the bed next to her where Perla had been. The mattress had been washed by the women and laid on its end against the wall to dry. Maya had watched them do it. The Kano had spread the blanket over the floor and pulled Perla onto it. Perla had been left in the middle of the room whilst the women washed the floor. Maya had looked at Perla for a long time. Perla’s body was stiff and strange-looking and she lay awkwardly. The Kano had shouted at them and he had hit her when she looked at Perla, but still Maya had not been able to take her eyes from her. She could not help thinking how uncomfortable she looked.

Now, three days later, Perla was gone, but her blood crept back out of the cracks in the floor and formed a black ragged line. Maya could smell it. Like bad meat. She kept staring at the line. It was as if every time she took her eyes from it, it moved closer.

35

 

Back on the street, Father Finn started the engine and turned the car around. Mann insisted Becky sat in the front this time. He knew she would want to ask Father Finn a lot of questions, he could see it in her face. She might have seen poverty on a backpacker’s trip to India but there was nothing like having this kind of real insight into a world that most would never want to know.

Mann opened the windows in the back and looked long and hard at the slums that they were all so grateful to leave behind.

‘Has she lived there since she left the refuge, Father?’ asked Becky.

‘Yes, she came back here when she found out she was pregnant, and she brought her daughter up here. She lives for that little girl. It’s not easy on your own, but Wednesday has done a good job with Maya. I talked to the teachers at the school and they say Maya’s a bright little girl and always clean and tidy. Wednesday’s own mother sold her to a bar owner when she was seven. He was, and still is, a known paedophile in the
Angeles area. He promised he would send her to school and that she would grow up in his household. I don’t for one minute expect the mother believed a cock and bull story like that—but it eased her conscience, no?’

They headed towards town. The city began to build up around them.

‘Wednesday has done well to make it, once the girls are broken it is very hard to make them whole again—they often run back to the bar owners when they are rescued.’

‘I know all the reasons on paper but I will never really understand how a mother can sell her own daughter?’

‘Poverty Ignorance. It’s hard to understand, but it goes back further than one generation. It isn’t easy bringing up any child, especially an Amerasian. Wednesday’s father was an American sailor who left when the Clark naval base shut down and he deserted her and her mother.’

‘Doesn’t she have any rights?’

‘The American government ruled that they were the children born from prostitution, but it isn’t true—lots of these women were common-law wives.’

‘But the children, can’t they find their real fathers now?’

‘I have helped some track their fathers. I have helped them write letters. Of the dozens we have sent, only one has come back and that was because the man wanted to put his affairs in order as he was dying of cancer.’ Father Finn was clearly moved and angry as his voice climbed in pitch and his face reddened. ‘The men who
abandoned these women and children simply don’t care.’ He banged his palms on the old leather steering wheel and caused a volley of beeping horns as he veered to the left. Mann sat up in the back and moved forward. ‘The American bases did untold damage here,’ Father Finn continued. ‘I believe it also ruined the men themselves—they came over here as young, impressionable lads, they witnessed the demeaning of women, the rape of children, and they became desensitised. In those days it wasn’t uncommon to witness spectacles such as boxing matches staged between the girls. You have to ask yourself what that would do to the mind of a young man, no?’ Father Finn shook his head sadly.

‘What do you think has happened to Maya, Father?’ asked Becky.

The father sighed. ‘I know it’s an odd thing to hope for, but our best scenario is that the child is a victim of traffickers and that she is still in the Philippines. The alternative is that she is already dead, killed by the DDS or has been trafficked abroad.’

‘But, if she’s alive and still in the Philippines, she could be anywhere by now, couldn’t she, Father?’

They came to a standstill in the rush-hour traffic heading through the city. Exposed bunches of black cables hung down like destroyed spiders’ webs and crisscrossed the street above their heads. All around them workers were hanging out of the side of Jeepneys. Becky no longer needed to shout, but her chest felt tight with the fumes coming in the open window. People smiled at her as they watched her from the traffic jam. She couldn’t get over how friendly they were.

Mann bought a breadfruit from a man walking along the rows of stationary traffic selling a variety of goods from fruit to feather dusters and fishing rods.

‘Luckily…’ he leaned in between the two front seats ‘…it does not affect the whole of the seven thousand islands—there are distinct sex tourism areas. I think Angeles is where she’ll be—it has the seediest reputation.’

‘I agree,’ said Father Finn. ‘There is one man there worse than the rest; he calls himself the Colonel. He is the man who pimped Wednesday all those years ago and he is still there.’ Father Finn shook his head in disbelief. ‘He has set himself up as a God in Angeles; it should not be allowed to happen.’

Mann turned the breadfruit round absent-mindedly in his hands as he spoke.

‘I know the Colonel. I’ve been watching him over the years. His network of paedophile businesses has been allowed to continue for so long that now he believes no one can touch him. But he’s made a mistake siding with his new friends—the White Circle—they are a new trafficking group who are muscling their way in. The kidnap of the girl in the UK is linked to them and their power struggle. He might think he’s about to hit it big, but he’s wrong. His time just ran out. We will find Maya, find out who has Amy Tang, and then we will shut him down, Father, once and for all. If the locals won’t do it—we’ll do it for them.’ He looked at his hands—he had ruined the breadfruit.

‘If Maya is alive then she could well be hidden there, no? She will probably be being seasoned.’ Father Finn
glanced over at Becky. He did not want to have to explain the term—he didn’t need to.

‘I know what “seasoning” is,’ said Becky. ‘It’s a softening-up process preparing them for the ordeal, making them ready to be sold for sex, to accept it and not give any trouble. It involves different stages: intimidation, isolation, disorientation, bullying and violence. Then, when their spirit is broken, they are sold. Who would be most likely to buy her?’

‘A wealthy Asian or Caucasian,’ answered Father Finn. ‘She will be kept under lock and key and used for a week by him exclusively. Their virginity is the premium. It has all sorts of beliefs tied up in it: of course you’re not going to get AIDS from a virgin. Some of them even believe it can
cure
AIDS,’ added the Father, shaking his head incredulously. After a week their price drops, but they are still valuable. For the next two weeks they will be offered to select customers who can pay. After that they go into a brothel, chained to the bed like all the others. She will be servicing eight or more men a day and kept in nothing more than a cage. They get very sick. The life expectancy of a working girl in Angeles is not good, it has been reported as being twenty-five but no one can be sure. They don’t get enough food and they get beaten. TB still kills many, as do untreated STDs. AIDS is just starting here, but everyone is in denial about it. No one wants to admit to being HIV positive because that is the end of their working life then, and there is no help for them.’

All the time the Father was speaking, Becky held
Maya’s photo in her hand and stared at it. ‘How will she survive all that?’

‘What is your plan now, you two?’ Father Finn changed the subject abruptly. He never liked to dwell too long in melancholy. He had lived with the poverty and degradation for so long that he knew it would break him if he didn’t hang on to hope.

‘I suggest we stay here tonight, Becky. See if anyone at the refuge can come up with anything to help us. Then we make our way up to Angeles.’

‘Thank the Lord!’ Father Finn crossed himself and flashed a mischievous look at Becky in the mirror as the traffic freed up and they were able to move slowly along the road. ‘My life wouldn’t be worth living if I came back to the refuge without you. When they knew Johnny Mann was coming it started them all off. It’s all the girls were talking about today. Where is Johnny? What time will he get here? How is my hair? Does my bum look big in this? They’d started bickering and fighting over who was going to wear what by the time I left.’

Mann started to protest. Becky laughed.

‘I bet they had.’

‘So, spend the night with us. I have a friend with a plane. He is at your disposal. You will like him. Remy was a priest, now married with too many children for me to count and a small airline business. He helps keep the mosquito population down by spraying insecticide now and again, and he is also the flying doctor when needs must. I will ring him now and organise for him to fly you up tomorrow. I have a few more days’ work
here, then I’ll be heading back to Angeles to continue the search for Maya.’

They passed a sign on the road: a young girl in a tight white bodice was holding a bottle of whisky:

Have you ever tasted a fifteen-year-old?