Ain't no angel

I've been writing a lot during recent months about the work Blue Dragon does in rescuing kids who are forced to work for garment factories in Ho Chi Minh City.

Each time I write, I struggle to capture the feelings involved in this work: the hopelessness and misery of the children, as well as the disbelief and extraordinary relief they show when we tell them they are free to go home.

There's a line from Bruce Springsteen's Philadelphia that's been playing through my head lately (yeah, I'm secretly a bit of a Bruce fan):

Ain't no angel gonna greet me. It's just you and I, my friend.

When we meet trafficked children, whether it's on the streets as beggars, or as prostitutes in brothels, or as bonded labor in factories, this is what the look in their eye says. There's no hope that anyone, even an angel, is going to appear; there's just no hope at all. The kids are lucky if they have someone else their age to befriend them.

I have a video - it's just a few seconds - which I have hesitated to post on the blog, but which I think deserves to be seen. The little guy in the clip has just been told by our staff that we're taking him home. He doesn't believe us, so we ring his mother and give him the phone to let him hear it from her.

He's so shocked and overwhelmed with relief that he can't even talk - the nightmare is over, the unbelievable has happened. And in his silence, you can see a shade of what life must have been like for him up until this moment.




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