By Vanhlee Lattana, World Vision Laos communications

“I wanted money to buy a cell phone and some money to help my family. I heard one of my neighbours talking about working in Thailand,” says Khamta*, 16, one of many girls in a district of Laos that found themselves trafficked.

Khamta’s village is conveniently located by a main road, and she sometimes dreamed about opening a small shop selling refreshments for hungry drivers. However, the location of the village also makes its residents more susceptible to traffickers.

Khamta dropped out of school after Grade 3. Her parents separated when she was a child and she has lived with her grandparents ever since she can remember. She left school to help her family with the housework and rice farming. When it wasn’t the rainy season, the family would make charcoal to sell, but there was not enough money in this to cover the basic needs of the family, let alone Khamta’s desire for a cell phone or new clothes for her cousin.

Khamta heard that there were jobs available which anyone could do, earning 3,000 baht (a little under US$100) a month. Interested, she went in search of a broker who could take her to Thailand. She didn’t know that she was breaking the law.

“Two of my friends crossed the border with me. The broker guided us along to Paksong Village and we crossed the border at night to Kemarat,” remembers Khamta.

Crossing the border was not as easy as Khamta had thought it would be. She, along with two of her friends and some girls that already been waiting to cross the border were put in a small wooden boat. They had to lie down on the hard floor while covered with a layer of black plastic.

“It was so packed that I could not move and we were not allowed to talk. It was horrible,” says Khamta.

Locked up and abandoned

When Khamta and the other girls reached the other side of the river, a man was waiting for them. They had to run to keep up with the stranger who led them through the thick dark forest with only his flashlight. Khamta remembers the difficult climb uphill and the tree branches scratching her skin. They stopped only when they reached an old broken down house.

“They put us in a small room and locked the door. We were not allowed to make any sound.”

Once the broker who took them from the village got his money for sending them, he headed back in the direction of the boat and disappeared.

After three days in the small room, Khamta and the girls were picked up in cars and taken to Bangkok. “The people I met in the small room were separated to go work in different places and I didn’t know where they were taken,” says Khamta.

Khamta and two of her friends were taken to work in a three-story house, where they were required to do all the work that the owner of the house asked of them.

“I was so dead tired after cleaning the house,” says Khamta, adding “One of my friends was beaten when she couldn’t do what the owner of the house asked her to do.”

The owner of the house would use rude words and shout at them when she was not satisfied with their work. Khamta and her friends were not treated well at all; she says they were treated like slaves.

After one month working at the house, Khamta inquired about receiving her wages. She was told that the broker who had taken them from the village had already sold them to the owner of the house. “When I heard it, I tried to find a way to escape,” said Khamta.

Escape and rescue

Not long after knowing that they were sold to work in the house, one of Khamta’s friends escaped through the back window of the house and while the owner was out and ran to find the to the police. Some officers came to the house with Khamta’s friend and helped the three girls out of the house.

“I don’t know what they did with the owner of the house after that. I don’t know if they received any punishment or not.”

Khamta was sent to Thailand’s Kredtrakarn shelter for illegal workers and people who have been trafficked, a safe place to stay while social workers searched for her family.

Khamta, who lacked life skills and an education, had no idea at that time what her life would look like after she left the shelter. “I stayed at the Kredtrakarn shelter for four months, doing very little – every day, we just did household work like cooking and washing dishes,” she says.

With the assistance of World Vision, Khamta’s family was identified, and she was helped home to Phalanxay District.

However, life after returning is just like it was before. Khamta still has no job. “I still want to work and earn some money,” said Khamta, who spends her days doing household work for her family. “I want to open that shop by the highway, but first I need the skills, training and money.”

Traffickers will still likely come to the village and try to convince the girls to leave with them, cause trouble and leave.

Even though Khamta knows the dangers of trafficking, there is a high chance that she and other girls like herself will end up pursuing work on the other side of the river again. The chance of earning easy money sounds better than struggling to earn money through other means. Even though they know the truth, they still run the risk of falling into the same trap as before.

“I am aware of the trafficking situation in my community and I am sharing my life experience in Thailand to my friends and hoping that they could learn from it,” she says.

* Khamta's name has been changed to protect her identity as a trafficked survivor.