All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [62]
The guy glanced around the room for help while Kate and Papa Jack sidled closer to me.
“Think of how many sick mothers you could help for the cost of those waterfalls!” I said. Now Kate was tugging my arm. “Or better yet, you could have given that money to PSI to prevent a bunch of at-risk kids from becoming infected in the first place.”
I had more points to make, but some GSK security guards came over and basically threw us out. Kate had to struggle to keep a straight face.
“Ashley, what was the point of that?”
“I don’t know, but I feel better now!”
When I phoned my mother and told her of my antics, she told me she was very proud of me and my actions would no doubt resonate.
Later on I went to the plenary hall to open a session on “cross-generational sex” (a now common term coined by a PSI researcher), a practice that is deadly and alarmingly common in sub-Saharan Africa. Basically, younger, vulnerable women—often children—are taken in by older men, used for sex, and frequently infected with HIV. Girls have to be educated about the dangers and empowered to say no to the sugar daddies. The speakers were so impressive, and my mind kept drifting to thoughts of Africa. It was the continent most affected by HIV/AIDS: Twenty-five million people were already living with the virus, and 95 percent of the world’s twelve million AIDS orphans lived there. I had heard so much about it from Bono, its ravages and its dreams, its elegance and its despair. I had not yet finished this journey in Asia, but I already knew where I had to go next.
Chapter 9
EURYDICE IN AFRICA
In an odious brothel, holding the sweet and sad Shola.
Our recovery can be measured by the ease of our comings and goings.
—VIRGINIA SATIR
he sights, smells, and customs of Thailand and Cambodia lingered with me for weeks after my return. With each person I greeted, I naturally put my hands to my heart in namaste. If I saw a Buddha, I placed my hands in prayer at my third eye. I could feel the presence of my farm friend in the fabric of the grubby linen pants that I wore in Bangkok, which I folded and stored away without washing as a precious physical reminder of the trip. I could be transported back to the pagodas at the sound of a wind chime on the porch. Kate had warned me that I might have some trouble with reentry, and she was right. It was lovely to be home again at our farm in Tennessee, but I felt uneasy. I was shocked by the opulence in America, overwhelmed by the colossal shiny trucks on the highway, the towering stacks of produce at the supermarket, the fifty choices of breakfast cereal, the trash bins overflowing with casually wasted objects that would have been treasured by my friends the wat grannies or the orphans of Phnom Penh who have so little.
Day after day I sat at my desk, attempting to write letters to potential donors, trying to reduce the story of my journey to a few attention-grabbing anecdotes that would compel them to send checks to organizations like PSI and grassroots programs that save lives.
How could I tell them that Ouk Srey Leak was real, that she needed us? That the exploited women in Pattaya were not strangers, but our sisters? The only way I could express my thoughts was in a diary, just like the one I wrote in hotel rooms in Southeast Asia:
August 2004
And now, once again, I am home, and at a loss.
I am surrounded by beauty, and I have my routines—whether it’s drinking tea in bed or baking fresh peach pies or laboring over a dinner table to bring it to its ultimate high summer perfection. Some days I go through my roses, plant by plant, and devise the demise of hundreds of Japanese beetles, then gather baskets full of botanical glory and fritter away hours making them look just right in little vases all over the house. I read scripts lying in the sun and in the steam room. We go to Sister’s for supper. I occasionally help looking after