From Matt Storer: Trip to India to research possible project to help children that have been forced to work and live in rock quarry as "slaves".

The following are my notes (not edited, just my quick typing of notes) for the first few days of my trip. I hope to send the second set of notes on the details of the project tomorrow.

Tuesday Jan 10 – Background and Goal of Trip to India
Left from Colorado Springs at 8 AM, headed for Chennai, India connecting through Chicago and Frankfurt. Why? Main objective to is visit a project dedicated to saving children from the doom of human trafficking. What does that mean? In general, Human Trafficking is the practice of forcing people to work as slaves and the possible trading/selling them as property to do as the owners wish. In our case, nearly 3,000 children are currently under the ownership of rock quarry owners in the state of Andre Prahdesh, India. My job is to research how they got into this situation, evaluate the local Christians on the ground dedicated to freeing the children and then make the following determination: Is this a legitimate partner and will VisionTrust commit to helping transform the children to live freely and live for God?


Wednesday Jan 11 – Almost to India
Ernie Taylor, CEO and Founder of VisionTrust accompanied me on this journey. We Arrived in Frankfurt on Jan 11 at 5:25 AM, then fly to Chennai (used to be called Madras) at 10:05 AM. 11 hours later, we landed at 11:30 PM. We cleared immigration and then wait another 45 minutes for our six bags to come out. Next task was to get through customs without any issues because Ernie and I had our carts stacked with bags and two carry-ons each. One of our bags had two big “C” chalk marks on it to raise the awareness of the customs guys. We had nearly 300 pounds of school supplies for our children – mostly donated through school supplies drives in the USA. I’ve been praying the whole journey that we can make it safely and with no problems. By the time we made it through the line and got to the official, somehow, miraculously a wet wipe had appeared and cleaning that bag. The man just flagged us on through. Praise the Lord we made it through. Our director, Merwin Joshua, was there to pick us up.


Thursday Jan 12 – Still traveling to Final Destination
Instead of driving another hour to our regular hotel called Breeze Hotel that we use while staying in Chennai, Merwin found one called Mars Hotel, just 15 minutes from the airport. I noticed that Merwin locked the doors of our vehicle as drove through the almost completely unlit neighborhood. By the time we checked and got situated in our rooms, it was almost 2 AM. Ernie and I shared a queen bed (better than a double!). The rate for our room that had warm water and A/C was $72. We needed to stay close to the airport because our wake-up alarms needed to be set for 4:30 AM in order to make the next “in-country” flight from Chennai to Vizag at 7:15 AM.

We flew on SpiceJet airlines for about 90 minutes and landed in Vizag around 9:30 AM. This coastal town, North of Chennai, is a port city with a lot of large shipping containers and industry. We grabbed breakfast at the airport, a #1 combo that had 3 chutneys, a dosa, idly and a Vada. $3. Finally, around 11:30 we grabbed a taxi and headed for the train station. Merwin secured us 3 seats in the A/C car for $4 each. We rode on the train for a little over 2 hours to a town called Kakinada. This is the home town of Praveen, the pastor that leads Christian work in the state and has accepted the responsibility of caring for 330 newly released children for their live of slave labor in several slate quarries. Praveen met us at the station and drove us to our hotel called Royal Park. I highly recommend this place as it is clean, good food and service and affordable. Our rooms were $70. I called it an “oasis” at this point in the trip. About 7 PM Praveen picked us up at the airport and drove us to his father’s house were a couple hundred children are staying with them. Upon arrival, we had a grand welcome by the children and connected with Roland Bergeron (President of Water of Life – he invited us to come and knows Praveen) and Jim Moorhead (Executive Pastor in Austin TX and son of my friend Fenton Moorhead, mission pastor at Brookwood in Greenville, SC). We ALL participated in serving food to each child. These children are from difficult backgrounds, some from quarries but most have been abandoned. We didn’t come to work with this set of children….at this point. We still had another 12 hour drive ahead of us the next day to meet them.

In bed by 10:30 PM after an AWESOME hot shower.


Friday Jan 13 – Twelve more hours by mini-bus to Final Destination
We left the hotel at 9 AM and headed for Kadapa area. We stopped about 2 PM for lunch in a town and ate shrimp curry, mutton roganjosh, nan, pollo fish, dal and rice. Good and HOT spicy. Eat with your right hand. We kept driving for another 6 hours. We arrived at 8 PM in a remote area where Praveen has been able to house about 300 of the children since Christmas. The place had five rooms, each 14’x21’. They gave us one of the rooms to sleep on the floor with woven mats, a towel, sheet and pillow. Very nice. However, this means that each child had about 3.9 square feet to use to sleep and have indoor activities. They graciously served us food around 9:30 PM and then we set up our spaces for bed. Ernie and I each brought a super lightweight cot that you put together. We were glad. That night, the temperature had dropped from mid-80’s to about mid 50’s. A sheet was not quite enough. The children had to be cold too. The Ambien didn’t work for some reason…bummer.


Saturday Jan 14 - Observation, Interviews and Quarry Visit
After being up most of the night, I just laid on my portable cot trying to catch a few more minutes of rest. We were all up and outside by 7 AM or earlier, ready to start our day. The 330 children were up closer to 6 AM as I could hear them in the room next to ours, laughing and talking – it was a pleasant way to wake up. This location, called Johnson Campus, was nearly 60 km from the closest town large enough to have a public high school and closest village is named Buttapalli Village. The property has a borehole (drilled well with casing and a pump), but did not have any toilets. Keep in mind that 330 children plus about 20 pastors and widows equals a lot of human waste. This is a huge problem.

Breakfast was cooked on open fire in large caldrons by several widows volunteering from a nearby village. They were cooking millet and sambar (like a broth with a few chopped veggies).We started serving the children the food around 8:30 AM. After breakfast, we prepared to have about 50 of the older girls meet with us and ask three of them to share their story. Ernie did a great job of having fun first and telling the girls about himself and me, all to get them more comfortable with us. We knew that asking them questions about what had happened to them would be very emotional and difficult. Sunitha Johnson helped us get organized and translated English to Telugu. She currently runs an orphanage for about 60 children, but has recently agreed to help Praveen take care of the 330 children with hopes of doing it full-time.

The first girl we talked with was named Aruna(meaning-sunrise). This 17 year old girl has 3 sisters and 1 brother. Her parents have died. When she was 7 years old, her parents had borrowed money from lenders to help pay for things. The lenders were from a rock quarry, targeting families like Aruna’s, hoping that they can’t repay the 5,000 to 10,000 rupees (typical amounts borrowed equivalent to $98 to $196). The interest is nearly double the amount borrowed and the repayment schedule is three months. If the family can’t repay, then one of the most frequent options is to take one or more of the children and force them to live and work until the debt has been repaid. For Aruna, the debt never seemed to be repaid and she lived in a slate quarry for 10 years. The quarry managers forced her to work from early in the morning until sundown – giving her one bottle per day and one meal per day. She witnessed children and other people working in the quarry suffer horrible deaths by accidents. The children were motivated to work by beatings and of course, other forms of abuse were regular. Ernie asked her what she enjoys now that she is saved from the quarry. She said learning new things, playing, singing and being free. Her favorite food is dal rice.

Imagine the tears from everyone listening….

The next girl was named Dhrakshavalli. She is 14 years old and has 5 sisters. Unlike Aruna, her parents are still alive, but they work in one of the quarries and do not want to raise her. Caught in the cycle of working in the quarries for nearly no wages, she was eventually forced to work to cover her parents debt, just like Aruna’s story. Dhrakshavalli wants to become a teacher. One of the challenges for her, and most of the children, is that they haven’t been to school yet…ever….

The final girl was named Priscilla. This 18 year old has 4 brothers and 1 sister – she being the oldest. She worked in a quarry for 7 years. Again, debts incurred by her parents were collected by taking her. She suffered from one particular manager abusing her at the quarry. Her family lived about 15 km away. So close, but no one would come to rescue her until now. Her village name is Madlikadachudrapadu (yes, try saying that three times fast).

As you might imagine, there stories were super emotional and exhausting for everyone.

After a short break, we spent the next 2 hours talking with Praveen, working out some communication challenges and expectations that we’ve experience over the last couple months and the last few days. The main issue is trust – Praveen is not sure who VisionTrust really is and thinks of his past experience for fraudulent non-profits WHILE our team is trying to verify that facts and determine if Praveen can trusted. This is why we get paid the “big-bucks” right? As the evening moved on, we drove about 40 minutes out to two of the rock quarries where most of the children had been slaves. Now, all of the children at these two locations have been released to Praveen (only paid workers are now there as a result). It really was chilling to see the area, touch the rock and see the crude shelters where the children lived. Then we returned to Johnson Campus and spent the rest of the time playing games with the children and eating dinner. In bed a bit earlier, but another long night loomed.


Sunday Jan 15 – Remote Village Visit
Up again super early, closer to 5:30 for most of us. Walked about 10 minutes to a private spot to use the restroom. Washed up with hot water heated by the widows and brushed my teeth using bottled water. No shower now for a couple days…nor a real toilet ;-) For the next couple hours, we interacted with the children and each other – always learning more about the situation and exploring ideas on how best to care for the children now and long-term. We never ran out of anything to discuss.

We left for a village visit around 9:30 AM. The village, called Banavdei (meaning “Arrow Village”) was about 2 hour drive and is the target of money lenders operated by quarry owners. We needed permission to walk this area and permission to enter the village. One of the reason is that the quarry owners control who comes and goes. They have already made nearly 20 loans that are due by the end of February in this village alone. That means that 20 more children may be taken if they are not repaid. After driving down a dirt road, we parked and then walked another 30 minutes or more. All along the road side were signs of viper snake pits and many animal prints in the dirt. As we entered the village, I saw two bore holes (water wells) and thatch huts. This location appears very similar to the villages I’ve visited in many of the African nations. We were welcomed by a small group of children and adults sitting in the “courtyard” area of a family group of huts fenced in to protect against tigers, bears, wild water buffalo and other animals. As we were sitting down to be formally greeted, I saw several children just stop, pee and go, regardless of location. Most of the children under the age of 8 or so were not wearing pants. The adults seemed to be fairly clean but the children were wild and filthy.

The children and adults sang two songs, then we prayed with the people and Ernie, Merwin and Roland spoke a few words, sharing about Jesus. We had a couple people share their stories. Of note, one man named Caleb said he has been the pastor for the last several years and that he is one of two people that have gone to school from this village. He finished 7th grade. The closest primary school, if I understood this correctly, is about 45 minutes by vehicle. At this point we were invited to eat the lunch that we paid for (meaning we provided funds to feed the group)…serving everyone at the meeting rice and Indian gravy – super spicy. No forks…or napkins…right hand….

People don’t have and therefore do not use pit toilets (latrines). Their homes are made from thatch walls made from bamboo strips, thatch roofs and dirt floors. I spoke to a family named Nagana and learned that in their compound area they have 20 people living in 3 huts (one hut sleeps 12). They build their own houses. These 20 people represent a set of grandparents and 3 families. Each family has about 2 or more goats, however all of the goats are in a group and stay in the compound along with some “free range” chickens. This family said that the main medical problems they face are TB, malaria and Chikungunya (an insect borne disease). Regular meal is based on what the children/young adults find in the forest including rabbit, seeds, berries, leaves and they make millet (a grain).

I prayed over the family before leaving and then they asked me to pray for a baby that was ill and they asked Jim to pray over a baby named Grace whose father just recently died. We left around 4:00 PM and arrived back at Johnson Campus at 6:30 PM.

Why did I visit this place? I wanted to see where the children enslaved come from and learn a little more about their life before the quarry and why their parents take the loans. Why do they take the loans? Mostly as an advance to simply survive in hopes they can repay by selling an animal or something.

Merwin, Ernie and I packed up our things and then we all met for another hour to flush out our next steps being: pray and see what the Lord leads us to do and then contact each other on Monday night. So we said goodbye to the children and adults around 8:30 PM and drove back to Chennai. Arrived at 3:30 AM. LONG drive! Praise God we made it safely as the roads are narrow and have flush with bus traffic, animals and pedestrians. Our driver stayed awake!


Monday Jan 16 – Prayer, Debrief and Decisions
Ernie and I checked into the Breeze Hotel at 3:30 AM and I was delirious at this point - ready for a hot shower and a real bed. I think I stayed in the shower for 20 mins. I crawled into bed a little after 4 AM and slept until 10 AM. My first, real, solid night sleep since leaving home 6 days ago.

After another long hot shower (at this point, you can’t have too many), I started working on documenting my trip up to this point. Throughout the meetings, interviews and observations, I’ve been taking notes and trying to draw conclusions as best as possible. A little after 12 noon, I met with Ernie for a meal at the hotel and then got right back to work on documenting and planning.

By the end of the evening, Praveen and Merwin talked on the phone and we agreed to move forward to work together. We will work on a simple short-term and long-term strategy to make sure that the children’s immediate needs are met and that we have a sustainable and proper solution for them going forward. Now we just need to hammer out the details…now the hard part begins!


Tuesday Jan 17 - Back in Chennai
Today I continued to work on the framework of the new partnership, describing ideas and expectations and drafting a new Ministry Agreement that formalizes expectations of financial accountability, beliefs and management expectations. It is 11:36 PM here. Hopefully these documents will be ready to email to Praveen and friends by Wednesday.

Wednesday Jan 18 - Spend day with Staff and Bishops of ECI
Business meetings with our longtime partner are planned on this day here in India called Evangelical Church of India. VisionTrust has an office, director and staff managing 1600 children in 26 project locations at the moment. Ernie, Merwin and I took the staff out to a great India lunch to say thank you for all of their hard work.

Thursday Jan 19 – Heading Home
Left from The Breeze Hotel at 7:30 PM for the dinner near the airport in Chennai. At 11:30 PM we checked in for our 1:45 AM to Frankfurt on Luftansa, headed for home!