Imagine standing at the height of all the earth and seeing the depth of
human poverty.
Journey with me to the middle of the Himalayan mountains, where not
long ago I met men and women striving for survival. Half the children in
these particular villages die before their eighth birthday. Many don’t make it
to their first. Meet Radha, a mom who would have fourteen kids if twelve
of them hadn’t died before adulthood. Meet Kunsing, a disabled child who
spent the first twelve years of his life chained in a barn because his family
thought he was cursed. Meet Chimie, a toddler whose brother and sister
died when he was two months old, leading his mom to commit suicide and
his dad to pass him around desperately to any woman in the village who
could provide nourishment.

Just as shocking as those you meet are those you don’t. Some of the
villages in these mountains are virtually devoid of young girls between the
ages of five and fifteen. Their parents were persuaded by the promises of a
better life for their daughters, so they sent them off with men who turned
out to be traffickers. Most of these girls live to see their eighth birthday, but
by their sixteenth birthday they are forced to have sex with thousands of
customers. They will never see their families again.