Last night, we came back to the hotel and went to the restaurant where some of us ate ice cream and drank a little Moldavian wine. We shared some of our own stories. We talked about good blogging practices.
I said that I didn’t feel like I had any stories to share yesterday. Of course, I’m brimming with stories, but some feel like they need to sit and be worked through in my mind before I’m ready to share them. I need time to process. I want to do the stories of the men and women that I’m meeting here justice. They deserve AT LEAST my very best writing.
I sat and listened to two gentlemen speak yesterday about their work in prevention and how they find that people are less likely to support preventative measures because it’s hard to measure success of people who never fall in the river. The stories about saving the broken are way sexier than stories about kids who go to school and do well and go on to live productive lives. “Girl Leads Totally Normal Life” isn’t a very good headline.
And yet I’m the same. I haven’t written about the not-so-shocking parts of my trip. I didn’t write about going to teach in the pubic schools. I didn’t write about the work being done at the youth club. I didn’t write about the singing on the bus. No, those boring, mundane things – who wants to read that?
Except that is the work that is so important. Yes, I am profoundly grateful for the opportunities offered to women who have been exploited here. I am thankful for the opportunity to see beauty from brokenness.
But I also need to let you know that there is work being done to prevent the brokenness in the first place. To keep kids from falling in the river, as we were told yesterday.
I don’t have a story for that girl. She’s just walking in the snow that’s falling over Moldova this morning. She’s with friends, going to school. In a few years she’ll graduate and go on to university. She’ll marry, raise a family, and live a totally normal life.
Perhaps not worthy of headlines, but in this instance, I think that’s okay.
