Sometimes I wonder if I would do it again.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the funny thing about life. Experience comes in random, sporadic servings. It\u2019s only years later that the story takes shape.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t intend to spend more than a year covering human trafficking. It ended up taking a decade. I didn\u2019t intend on reporting in more than two countries. So, how did I end up in nine?<\/p>\n
Before my trips, my mum used to ask: \u201cIt took us so many years to get out of poverty, why do you keep returning there?\u201d I would sit in her kitchen and the only answer that would come to mind was: \u201cIt\u2019s so damn familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n
I can say the same about the Balkans. Each time the plane landed, I was home. It could have been Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria (my birth country), or Macedonia \u2013 I wasn\u2019t an outsider. I understood the culture, the rawness of our ways, the dark humour of our days.<\/p>\n
But there is one thing I couldn\u2019t understand. What had happened to us? How did we start selling our own girls? How did we make profit from deceit and violence?<\/p>\n
At first, I was a photojournalist. I saw the world through the camera. And my idea was to return to my origins and find girls who had survived and escaped their traffickers and pimps.<\/p>\n
I knew about the shame and stigma in our culture. I knew that once a girl was forced into prostitution, she could never return and expect her village to understand her ordeal. She was judged, trashed, discarded \u2013 even by her own family.<\/p>\n
The \u2018break down\u2019\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n