Brita Miko worked as a Women's Community Worker in the East End
of Vancouver. These are a few of her reflections and impressions of
people she met and those who befriended her in that community. Names
have been changed for privacy reasons.
For an article that futher investigates the world of Vancouver's missing women, see http://www.missingpeople.net/the_hidden_world_of_hookers-june_8,_2002.htm
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Joe was born three blocks from where he now works. Both his parents
are heroin addicts. Now at seventeen he is a male prostitute. He's been
a heroin addict for a year, and sells his body for money to feed his
addiction. He told me he doesn't want to be like this forever. He tried
quitting once and he was able to last eight days. The drugs were out of
his body, but not his mind. He couldn't get the thoughts of it out of
his head, so he shot up again. Sometimes he comes down to Granville
Street for a free meal before he heads off to shoot up.
Shaun's a street kid. He's lived on the street for three years. It's better than home.
Brenda is a beautiful girl about my age I think. She has two
children. She worked at an agency as a prostitute for years underage,
and a week ago started on the street. She hates it and wants off. She
knows it's dangerous. I talked to her about God and she said she went
to church until she was about twelve. She said she used to often pray
to God and he never answered her prayers.
My first night out on the street I met a girl named Chris. She had
no shoes. We gave her shoes and her boyfriend Bill, juice and watched
him puke it all up, cup after cup. Ran into her again and she said they
were trying to clean up so that they could get their daughter back. She
said she was working so that they could get money to fly away to
Saskatchewan. I told her about an airline that had cheap flights. Saw
her again a few nights ago. She had been hit and left on the ground. By
the time I saw her she was fast asleep and covered in tremendous
amounts of sweat. Bill said, "Yeah, I'm the asshole." He told me she
had not slept for six days... working for him. He told me he loved her
and had called her mom to come get her out of here. She is dying. She
is twenty-three and HIV positive. He can not stand to watch her die
anymore. I told him that if her mom does not come and she wants out
that she can call me. I know the way out. I told him God loves him,
more than he loves Chris and God doesn't want to watch him die anymore.
He nodded. I prayed over Chris.
I saw Deanna a few weeks ago. She had two black eyes. I told her I
was sorry about her eyes and asked if he did it often. She said no, it
was just some guy that didn't like her very much.
Jean is nineteen and has been working the street for six years. She
wants out but says it is really hard because whenever she is out and
gets low on money she thinks, how can I get more money? An hour later,
she's two hundred dollars richer. It's so hard to get out, don't ever
start, she told me.
There was a resident that never spoke much in Bible study, but when
he did I always appreciated his words, for they were sincere and true.
He was humble and quiet, and to me he shone like a star. When talking
about how we are as people he once said his bikes always looked shiny,
but needed an oil-change. I laughed and recorded his words.
Another time he said, "I kept putting prayer and meditation on the shelf, until I went through years of just not making it."
Two days before he was to graduate from the program he had to leave.
He had failed a urine test. On the weekend he had gotten too high on
cocaine and took heroin to bring himself back down. I pray God would be
close to him wherever he is.
On the corner of Oppenheimer Park a couple weeks ago I was out with
Streetlight. A prostitute saw the blue jacket and came running across
the street to me and began to cry, "I'm so scared. I'm so scared." I
held her as she cried and though most of her words were incoherent I
understood snatches. "I don't want the devil to get hold of all of
me... Thank you Jesus for sending this girl to me... I'm so scared." I
prayed with her, and I told her that I knew the way out. "I can help
you," I said. "I know somewhere safe we can go." She wasn't clean and
she was terrified. And then another woman was there yelling at her and
five or six people that had been on the hill behind me, came close. She
began to run away asking for me to come with her. "I can't!" I yelled
and then everyone was swearing at everyone and there was so much
tension and rage. She ran crying away and I was left watching the
aftermath, praying for the Spirit to come down on that comer and bring
peace. And He did. I never saw that woman again.
Adrian is one of our many Granville Street regulars. Saw him
yesterday and he said he had been reading the Bible that I had given
him (that was so many weeks ago I had completely forgotten giving him
one). He said that he sold his soul to the devil when he was in his
mother's womb but he put in a clause that at twenty-five he could end
the curse if he wanted to. He said that before he was born he told God
that he did not want to be a human but a killer whale. He said he had
millions of dollars in a bank account that he could not access until he
was twenty-five. He said he hated himself. He said he wanted to save
the world by going to hell. I told him Christ already did that. He said
he loved Mother Earth more than God, and then he littered. He asked if
I thought he was crazy. I said no, but that he had been told many
lies... and he had believed them. He said he knew some of it was lies.
I told him I would pray that confusion wouldn't bind him and he might
know clearly what was truth and what was lies. He told me that he was
praying for me too.
I met Elaine last night as I was waiting for the bus. She has AIDS
and is dying. She started hooking when she was thirteen--that was
seventeen years ago. She is going back to B.C.C.W. next week and is
looking forward to it. But, she says I should come and play softball
with them; bring some people from my church. It's lonely in there,
never seeing people from the outside. People that smile, and are real,
and have hope. I said I would love to come. She said just to play
softball, volleyball or sing choruses, whatever… the women love
visitors. She said lots of women from East Hastings are in and out
there. I wonder what it would be like to be thirteen and turning
tricks--or thirty and having AIDS. I asked her if she wanted out ever,
and she said all the time. She said that she would be getting out soon
though, by dying. She said, I know, it's the easy way out. I told her I
knew another way. She knows there's God and there's heaven. She doesn't
understand Jesus. She believes God can forgive us without Jesus. Just
by His mercy. She needs to understand that the wages of sin is death,
BUT the gift of God is eternal life. She needed to work, I needed to go
home. She left and I sat there waiting for my bus. A man named Jeff
began talking to me; he was a lonely bachelor looking for a date. I
began praying that my bus would come soon. Jeff told me I better
get--on the next bus and get out of here, because if he had his way I'd
be going with him in his car. East Hastings is dangerous. I prayed the
Granville bus would come soon and it did. I was wanting out so much and
I had only been sitting there for three quarters of an hour. I can't
imagine how much Elaine wants out but can't. It's no more dangerous for
me there than it is for her. It's just Jeff had mercy on me because I
was young and naive and protected by God. He might not have the same
pity for Elaine. People think they get what they deserve. She doesn't
think she deserves better, and he doesn't think she deserves better.
That's the miracle about God. He gave us what we did not deserve. It's
hard to accept because we're used to thinking all we deserve is
nightmares and hell and death. And we do. And that's what Jesus got,
was my nightmares, hell and death. And I got abundant life. It's not
what I deserved. It was grace.
I had heard a lot about Arlene before I met her... that she was in
an abusive relationship; that he was very sweet, that she did want out.
And when I met her, I understood it to be true. She kept a big smile on
her face for the passing cars as she answered our questions, rarely
looking at us. We asked how she was doing. Smile, nod, "okay." We asked
if she wanted to leave. Smile, nod. I told her that we didn't have a
woman's worker at the mission right now, but until we did we would do
whatever he could to get her off the street. Smile, nod. I told her she
was beautiful, and she was. Smile, nod. She hugged us all and thanked
us, smiled at the passing johns. Andrea told her that if she was ever
awake at 9:00 Sunday morning to come down to her church, we'd love for
her to come. Smile, nod... but now she was close to tears. She said she
needed to be working, and so we left her. She called after us that God
would bless us or be with us. And I looked back to thank her and saw
her one last time, smiling for the johns.
When I met Lesha she had just found out she was HIV positive. She
was in the hospital, her shrunken body was covered in scabs and scars,
and she was trying to make sense of dying. She was trying to make sense
also of living--when her life had gone from suffering at the hand of a
gross and abusive father to years of suffering on the streets of
Vancouver. She was trying to make sense of why, when she wanted to know
God so badly, she could never feel His presence. Where had he gone?
Then she began to get frustrated with herself, saying that she didn't
know what suffering really was. She had seen a special on Mother Teresa
and she was ashamed because she had never suffered as much as Mother
Teresa's children in Calcutta had or as much as Jesus had, and she
began speaking of the agony of Christ. She said she hated it when she
became self-pitying and she began apologizing to God for not being more
thankful and thanking Him for all she had. She was so grateful and
thankful for her life--her pain-filled and ending life. "Thank you,
God. Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus."
I've long believed Jesus is in disguise in the homeless, the hungry,
the sick, but this is the first time I felt like Isaiah, "Woe to me. I
am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of
unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."
I received a letter from a girl who used to be down here. She had
gone from prostitution (at maybe 15) to an abusive boyfriend, to an
exploitive lesbian before she finally returned home, at age nineteen.
She wrote from home, "I feel a very small feeling of happiness for the
first time in awhile. God cares for me."
There is a common thread here among the prostitutes. They wash up on
these shores after years of tragedy, poverty and abuse. Drugs are
everywhere and getting high or stoned on them gives momentary freedom
from their broken world. Their existence soon becomes a never ending
hustle for a few bucks for more drugs to forget. They will pay for this
freedom with their bodies, their dignity, their self-respect, their
minds, their hearts and their lives.
I met a fellow named Larry who became a Christian in these woods.
God had given me a message about the woman caught in adultery--il1egal
sex, on death row, waiting to get stoned. I explained how getting
stoned in those days was different from "getting stoned" nowadays and
how these streets here are death row, too. I've never been around so
much death in my life as I am here (suicides, murders, drug overdoses).
Afterwards Larry said to me, "People are still getting stoned to
death." I had never thought of it that way before, but he is right. In
the downtown eastside there are 300+ deaths a year from people getting
stoned to death by overdosing.
Two thousand years later Jesus is still working with women caught in
adultery--illegal sex, on death row, waiting to get stoned. Their hope
remains in Jesus who is no more condemning now than he was then; Jesus
who knows the cost of their sin and then takes that cost upon himself.
He already paid for their freedom with his body, his dignity, his
self-respect, his mind, his heart and his life. It’s real easy to throw
the first stone. Oh God help me to offer them your freedom and not to
cast the first stone.
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