Phil@Stop the Traffik

I just got back from sitting with a man called Jeff, while he showed me pictures of the home he’d been building for his retirement. Jeff is grey, and thin, but there is an assurance in his manner, which somehow reflects the experience of a man used to being in control. He had his computer on an ordinary desk next to his kitchen. While he carefully made us tea, we watched the snow outside his window, and listened as he complained about the robberies that had happened at the café and sports club he runs, and about the amount of tax he has to pay.
On the wall are pictures of his family, his wife, stepsons and stepdaughters. He has been married for ten years, and is proud of it. He’s sixty now, and soon he’ll be able to move with her to the house he’s built and relax a little.
It would have been a cosy and comforting scene, if it wasn’t for the fact that the room next door was full of half naked Thai women and that we were sitting inside an erotic massage parlour. It was from the exploitation of these women that Jeff was building his retirement home in Thailand. Pimping young women had paid for the beautiful garden and the terrace. The only disruption to his plan so far has been raids by the police checking that his women have the right papers. So far he’s got away with it.
Quietly during the conversation, we found out more about how this secret world operates, but what was most striking was just how banal and ordinary this evil is in his mind. For him, it was no different from selling drinks, or hiring out a tennis court. In his own eyes he was just a hard-pressed businessman trying to make a living, so he could retire with his wife and pass his remaining days with her family in Thailand.
The human mind is very adept at rationalising the wrong that we do, seeing it as normal, or “the way the world works”. Although we might not do what Jeff does, to a certain extent we rationalize the life we live, not buying ethical products, not caring about the homeless person in the street, not visiting an elderly neighbour, just seeing ourselves as too busy, or finding an excuse as to why the way we live is fine. We are hard-pressed, just trying to make it through the day; it’s the way the world works. Just like Jeff.