welcome to Athens...

Transportation strike

Hi! I made it yesterday after something like 18 hours of travel and three flights. It was a little brutal. Arrived at the Athens airport and took an hour bus ride into the city. Thankfully I had a couple hours to sleep at the hotel before we met up with the Nea Zoi staff for evening outreach.

We did a couple different outreaches last night. First everyone split up and half went to the bars and half went to brothels. I went with the brothel group. In Athens the red light district is actually white lights, so we went to several streets that were lined with white lights above doorways, which means a girl is working there. They are old houses, and in each one there is only one girl working and one madame. Both are employed by the owner, and both get cuts (the madame doesn't own the girl). Men hang out in the living room area, and the madame and girl (when she's not working) sit in the kitchen. Every once in awhile she gets up to go show herself to the men out there to see if any of them are interested. In groups of twos we went inside and talked to the girls in the kitchen areas. Mostly Nea Zoi is just a presence in the neighborhood, offering coffee and tea and their cards in case the girls want to get out. I felt kind of useless in several, not knowing the language. In one there was a girl from Nigeria who spoke English who I was able to talk with. The brothels run 24 hours, in 3 shifts. Some of the "madames" are men, and just like the girls, they can be moved around to different brothels. First time in a brothel for me! I'm not that shockable, and it was pretty much what I was expecting, although it was a lot more impacting when the girl actually spoke English and I could communicate with her.

Later we went and did the hotel ministry. There are hundreds of Nigerian girls, 90% trafficked in, who are in this area. They are probably aged 13 or 14 to 24. Many of them are trafficked by a relative or acquaintance who misleads them a bit about exactly what they'll be doing when they get here. When they arrive they have an enormous debt to their trafficker, no papers, and no other place to go. Last night there was a bit of rain, so there were "only" 60-70 girls out on the streets. They just line the streets, going out to cars and trying to get business. The hotels actually run the business, taking the money directly from the customers. They are mostly receptive to the Nea Zoi team, and last week they actually helped one girl get out, who is currently in a shelter. We talked last night with a girl named Eve, who couldn't be more than 15 years old, who said she had only been here one week. That was hard to hear. She looked really scared and said she wasn't doing too well. We gave her the information about Nea Zoi and told her to come to the office for help, and she looked a little more hopeful. There was a murder a couple streets away and police everywhere, so that might have cut down on business for the night as well (though the police generally don't do anything).

So that's what they do here, primarily. I'm glad I got to go last night. That was the only outreach I'll be able to do here because of a transportation strike. I'm going to go out with another group in Thessaloniki Thursday night. I have heard that the brothels and the scene in Thess. is completely different. Will be interesting to see.

Transportation strike...indeed. Thankfully I'm traveling on Thursday and not today or tomorrow! All the buses and trains are shut down and people are demonstrating in the streets. A lot of our plans have been canceled or changed. There is usually a Wednesday morning outreach which has been canceled because a lot of the staff can't get into town. There is also a garbage strike, so piles and piles of trash sit on street corners waiting to be picked up. I think that one may have ended last night, because we saw some garbage trucks driving around (at midnight!) that looked like they were picking it up. It smells nice...

So today we have an unexpected free day. I'm hanging out with the guys who came in from the International Teams office in Illinois, and we are going to do the Acropolis, etc. It's warm and sunny today. We'll have to go take our pictures and eat our gyros and act like true tourists. I try to stand off at a distance when they get their big huge Athens street map out and stare and it and point in several different directions. ;) Thankfully you can see the Acropolis from almost everywhere, so it shouldn't be too hard to get there! Tomorrow is lunch with the Nea Zoi staff, making my travel plans to Thessaloniki for Thursday, and walking around the Omonia neighborhood, where I am staying and where most of the brothels and hotels and bars are.

All for now.........