Red Lights.

I've been back in Copenhagen for a couple weeks now and I'm only a week away from my next couple big trips to Portugal and then the Czech Republic. I'm taking surfing lessons while I'm in Portugal so I met up with a girl named Rachel from my core class last week to do some swimming practice. For some strange reason I've always had this fear of water that I completely forget about until I'm actually out there swimming/jumping into the water and I realize that I'm terrified to get in it. It sucks. >.> But surfing is something that I've always thought would be a really fun thing to learn and I want to grow past this fear because well... it's lame and swimming is great. Never let your fears hold you back people! Rachel used to be a swimming instructor so we met up at one of the pools downtown and she made me realize how much I actually don't know about swimming. She was really sweet about it and I had a great time laughing at myself even though I felt totally stupid sometimes. I plan on getting a little more practice in before I go so I should be okay I think. Here's to not drowning in Portugal! Hahaha...ha!

Over the last two weeks DIS has continued to pile on essay after group project after midterm. It's been insane and overwhelming even though I really do love how much I'm learning. One day I was at school from 8:30am to 11:30pm because of extra classes and field studies and homework and... bleh. We just had the two biggest field studies of the term that I had been really excited about. One was a trip to the red light district and the other was going to gay bars to interview homosexual Danish people about their views of homosexuality in Danish culture.

On the night of the red light tour for my human trafficking class we all met up at the school for a little debriefing first. We had a guest speaker along with our professor because we were divided up into groups. As they prepared the powerpoint slides, this grungy looking man suddenly came up from the back of the classroom. He started playing a small guitar and telling us that we were such beautiful girls (there's only two boys in the entire class so I guess they didn't count) and then proceeded to ask for money. We were all really taken aback, giggling nervously at first, unsure. Was this a joke? Various thoughts ran through our heads as we tried to figure outh ow the heck he got into the class or if he was another guest speaker actually from the streets who was high/drunk or if the situation was even real and what the heck we were supposed to do. The professors just sort of stared at him also seeming unsure as they continued to set up the slides. Everyone kept refusing to give him money and the situation started esculating as he moved from person to person, insisting that his mother was sick, pleading that he was so hungry, how he would get beaten if he didn't bring enough money back and he promised to play us a song if we would only spare five kroner. We all sat in a tense silence, shaking our heads in refusal awkwardly.

Finally, a woman walked up to the front of the class and told him to sit down. She slapped him across the face and then turned to look at us defiantly. After another moment of uncomfortable silence, she went off into a monologe. I think the entire class let out a little sigh of relief despite the intensity and skill of their acting. This woman was his trafficker, so to speak, forcing him to beg for money in exchange for the "shelter" and "food" she provided. It was a very interesting storyline-- and example fairly common in the gray areas of labeling victims and perpetrators human trafficking.

Afterwards, at around 10pm, we all ventured out into the cold night to the streets behind Central Station. Splitting up into two groups, I joined the guest speaker's group. I'm pretty sure his name was Jasper. He told stories about how during WWII the Danish just kind of gave into Germany without much of a fight except the red light district had refused to shut down. In turn, the nazis drove tanks down Istedgade and began shooting at anyone who dared peek out of a window let alone step outside. Jasper also took us into one of the several sex shops that lined the main street of the red light district. It was pretty funny to see some of the reactions of people in the class as a few had never been to one before (ex: "Omg is that a silicon fist?!"). Denmark was the first country to legalize pornography (and same-sex marriage!) so the sex shops are kind of a novelty.

The area outside was pretty quiet and fairly empty as it was a tuesday night, but I did spot a woman across the street walking up to a guy here and there. Our group continued through, discussing the the types of hotels that tend to cater to prostitution, the clubs and the various aspects of street prostitution. The government has been having a difficult time with some hotels in the area because people will give the "rent a room for two hours for really cheap" kind of deal and so it makes it easier for organized crime to thrive and it's also harder to keep track of who's trafficked/illegal and who's not.

Eventually, we met up at a cafe to have some warm drinks and discuss what we saw before we headed back. Overall I believe I saw about 13 prostitutes, four of them African and two Thai. Honestly I can't really explain what exactly it was that gave it away and made me believe they were prostitutes. I mean, it's too cold in Denmark to run around in fishnets and tanktops, but on of the things I noticed was that most of them wore tight jeans that had a different look to them. When I mentioned this to my professor she said questioned me, asking if that meant that all women wearing tight jeans were prostitutes, but I insisted that they were just... different. After a moment she said that I was actually right because the jeans are different. They aren't from Denmark-- they're from other places like Eastern Europe where many of the trafficked women come from.

I'm pretty sure that around ten of the thirteen prositutes were trafficked... which I know sounds hard to believe, but after everything I've learned so far, it's just not likely that that these women would come here to work in prostitution "legally" (you can't really do that and Denmark's immigration laws are some of the strictest in Europe) and could be independently secure on those streets (most women have to pay up "rent" for the sidewalk they stand on). This is especially because of the poverty stricken countries they come from. Either way, it's a scary thought.

I think I may have mentioned this before but the area I'm from in the States pretty much has one of the worst human trafficking rates in the Country and I think I've found something that I would really like to work to make some sort of difference in. So when I get back I plan on starting out by volunteering at the Sexual Assault Resource Center just to tip my toes in. I'm really nervous about it, but I think I could do it. A couple days ago I actually found out about internships abroad involving human rights and trafficking and that got me super excited. I found one that's based in Bangkok for four months and you get to learn about various NGO's and work with them and do research too! It sounds incredible! I'd love to do something like that!

Alrighty, time to do some homework. More soon!

- Jenn