Points of interest from the first two weeks:
- Rode a rickshaw
- Made some friends
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| I also became addicted to pasta. |
- Got pooped on by a bird
- Ate some spicy food that was prepared near the street
- Crushed a clay cup on my forehead
- Got a haircut
- Didn't get giardia yet
- Saw two monkeys
- Saw some cows on the median
- Saw a naked kid playing near the freeway onramp
- Biggest dang spider I've ever seen
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| Made this son of a gun into a big ol' spider sandwich. |
- Got caught in several thunderstorms, repeatedly
- Sweat 4 metric tons
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| Yep, that's all sweat. |
- Saw some crazy buildings like these
I'd say things are going pretty well! I'm in an apartment here with one of the other interns as a roommate, and the office here has been very friendly and welcoming. I've been having a lot of fun and getting to know the work. There is a lot for me to do and plenty of projects that I will be tackling here in the future.
I feel that I am adapting to this country fairly quickly, and I am enjoying it. I have been surprised in many ways by similarities between this city and the city I lived in in Egypt. They are at about the same level of development, and many patterns and systems are similar here. Strange things are the same here, much of which feels very familiar. People eat potato chips with crazy flavors for example. Also, safety isn't really a big deal here, just like Egypt. It's hard to explain, but I feel almost as though I have already been trained to live in a country like this. This has made my first couple weeks much easier.
Now that I have a better idea of what I do each day, I can give you a more concrete description of the work that I am doing. We work with local police to make arrests and rescue minors who are being trafficked for sex. After the girls are rescued, they are placed in aftercare homes that we work with, where they can receive counseling, job training, and a safe place to stay. Finally our legal team processes the cases through to completion and sees that perpetrators are tried and prosecuted. My job is to support the investigators in a variety of ways. I'm also responsible for other tasks like office security and trainings.
My team is awesome. We sit together in a small room and have a blast. It's all guys in my department, and there are a lot of jokes and pranks. Someone called us a pirate band and I feel pretty good about that description.
I feel like the luckiest dude in the world right now. The office feels like a good fit, my boss is great, a real funny guy from the states, and I get to work with some incredible and dedicated people doing the work of Justice in the world. Thank you all for making it possible for me to do this. I can't say how grateful I am to be here.
I just wanted to give you an update on things now that I am here and settled. Prayer wise, there is a massive religious festival here in our city this weekend, and the streets are packed with people and idols and altars and snacks and animals and what all sorts of stuff. I'd ask that you pray for... well everything that goes along with that. But primarily because this is a tense time in the city, and that makes things worse for victims of the sex slave trade. There are a lot of visitors from outside of the city, and many traffickers are desperate for money and hoping to capitalize on this time. Please continue to pray for mercy and for deliverance of these girls.
Thanks everybody, I'll be in touch.
Love,
-Greg
