Imagine darkness. Imagine poverty. Imagine helplessness. Imagine your worst nightmare. This is Camagayan.
Precious is a daughter of Camagayan; she knows no other home. In time, her own daughter Mary will also call Camagayan home. I was at Camagayan to minister to the women, the girls, there—offer a kind smile, a friendly word, and a prayer of encouragement. It wasn’t much, not to me, but I like to think my presence reminded the girls the world had not forgotten about them.
I met Precious that night. She was back out on the street corner a mere week after giving birth to her daughter. We talked for a bit, the small talk of two strangers with nothing in common yet trying to understand each other’s worlds. She laughed a shy, girlish giggle, giving a false impression of innocence; her surroundings revealed her true story. I don’t know how Precious came to Camagayan. Was she, like her daughter, born there? Was she given away or did she run away? The answers to these questions don’t really matter. Her reality is what matters—that she is the victim of sexual exploitation, of poverty, of a lack of education, of someone else picking her destiny.
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JoRae A. Bishop
Candidate for Juris Doctor, 2009
Student Bar Association, 3L Senator
Regent University School of Law
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