Word: kentung
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Once free, Lek and Tip appear unable even to consider that their mothers may have sold them into sexual slavery. They insist they want to go to Kentung, in Burma's eastern Shan state, to live with Tip's family. With trepidation, we agree to try to get them there. With traffic heavy on the bridge into Burma, the four of us cross unnoticed into the border town of Tachileik, which is a good thing, since the girls lack the requisite ID papers to enter their homeland. Fearing problems at checkpoints if we go to Kentung by road...
...Like Tip, Pim comes from eastern Burma. A member of the Akha minority, one of the hill tribes that populate that region, she was born in a settlement outside Kentung, an area of wild jungle mountains that doubles as rebel country and forms the heart of the Golden Triangle opium and amphetamine production zone. Pim remembers a tough but happy childhood raising chickens and working the rice fields on her parents' land, which clings to a steep ridge above a clear rushing stream...
...price that Kentung's daughters pay for their parents' poverty can be found in its graveyards. The idyllic-looking hillside hamlet of traditional wooden houses and carved balconies brimming with mountain flowers is four hours north of the Thai border by car. In a town of perhaps 5,000 people, the AIDS epidemic imported from over the frontier reached the point in the late 1990s where someone died every day, according to one Western aid worker. The rate has since fallen, but it's not a sign of improvement. Rather, it's a reflection of the earlier devastation. World Vision...
...even though the terrible price of prostitution has become evident by the sheer force of numbers, the flow of girls has not slowed. The economic imperative is such that for most families, sending daughters illegally to Thailand is a must, says Cherry Waing of World Vision's Kentung office. And with no education or training, girls have little earning power outside the flesh trade. "Every village has a broker for sex workers," says Waing...
...Taking Lek and Tip over the border turns out to be easy. Both girls insist they want to go to Kentung to live with Tip's family. They would feel safest there. With trepidation, we agree. While we arrange visas for ourselves, they pick up a pass to Tachileik, the Burmese border town opposite Mae Sai. With the heavy traffic across the bridge, the four of us cross unnoticed. Fearing problems with checkpoints if we go by road, we buy the two girls flights to Kentung. It is with relief that we watch the plane take...