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I think the classes were also a welcome break from the grueling routine of rice farming. They rose at four a.m., worked in the fields all day, then prepared the meals—always rice, sometimes seasoned with fish—before going to bed at eight p.m. There was no electricity and not much entertainment. But the women told me they loved to sing, and I cajoled them into a song—a haunting, trilling melody that somehow survived the years of killing. Song, spirit, memory. Some things simply cannot be erased.

So my last day in Cambodia, spent with the poor, illiterate, subsistence rice farmers of a postconflict nation, was glorious.

That night, I unfolded my mat in the hotel room and said a grateful prayer:

Thank you for toothless old women.

Thank you for tender young mothers.

Thank you for jumpy kids who don’t trust outsiders but are so quick to laugh and play.

Thank you for wide-eyed babies.

Chapter 7

AVENGING ANGEL OF THE SISTERHOOD

Never underestimate the power and love of grandmothers.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

No hands, no feet but yours,

Yours are the eyes through which is to look out

Christ’s compassion to the world

Yours are the feet with which he is

To go about doing good;

Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.

—SAINT TERESA OF AVILA

y the end of my first full day in Thailand, I had an idea for my next thriller movie: I was going to play an avenging angel of the sisterhood who rescued women who were trapped in brothels. I would work subtly and quietly in the dark, in ways so covert that my movements would go unnoticed until my sisters were safe in my arms and on their way to freedom. Then, in giant, thunderous strokes, I would overturn the operations that kidnap women and children to sell for sex. For the sequel, I planned a full-on superhero turn, upending poverty, banishing ignorance, leveling the land for the light of equality and dignity to shine across.

It was a tantalizing fantasy, but sometimes there are problems that even superheroes can’t fix in a flash. That was the lesson I learned in a grubby, neon-glitzy karaoke bar in Pattaya.

The day had started with a routine visit to the brand-new PSI offices in Bangkok. I was trying to adjust to the modern, high-rise bustle of Thailand’s capital, only an hour’s flight away but decades removed from the economic stagnation, quiet rice paddies, pagodas, and small huts of Cambodia. The office is situated in a gleaming modern tower in the city center. Vibrant, full-color posters showcasing savvy use of media and pop culture to reach young people lined the walls. Slick PSI-generated commercials with positive behavior change messages were playing on TVs.

I loved meeting the field staff, remarkable, dedicated people whose whole career paths are spent serving people in need. Olivier Le Touze, PSI’s then deputy country director in Thailand, at the border with Bangladesh was a young Frenchman whose first job was in Burma, helping refugees fleeing forced sterilization (a form of ethnic control). I had never even heard of such a thing, much less someone whose dream job straight out of college was to tackle this form of human rights abuse. I also met John Hetherington, who was relieved to be stationed in Bangkok after years in Karachi, where he and his family had to be evacuated five times after threats by militant Islamists. Working in the developing world to improve reproductive health, curb the tide of HIV/AIDS, and prevent disease is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes reaching the most at-risk people means putting your own life on the line. It is important to me to spend time with local staff, from the technical teams to marketing specialists, those writing grant applications and those in accounting, the peer educators and the drivers, the demographers, those in research and metrics, all of them, to honor them for their often unnoticed, underrewarded work and indeed the miracles they make happen every day.

Thailand was spared the ravages