The stories unravel as I spend days and days at Korsang- looking around, watching them play domino, waiting for sick patients, reading. Everyone gets there before Korsang opens, at 730am, ready for a day of hanging out together. I think more than anything, my role here is to talk to the staff, to get their stories, to be a friend, to understand them as Americans, to pass no judgment and to listen. The staff at Korsang are all former felons granted permanent residency and refuge from the Khmer Rouge in the United States but deported back into Cambodia after they got into trouble- mostly gang and drug related. The drop-in center is just as much a space for the staff as it is for the injection-drug user community of Phnom Penh.
One told me about his two years in prison, how he spent $600-700 on heroin a week, how easy it was to obtain the drug in prison. He said he only hit the drug 3 times a day though. He lived in Greenville, North Carolina for a while and also in Lexington. Apparently there is a beautiful Khmer Temple in the woods outside of Lexington where he spent all of the Cambodian holidays. He was separated from his Cambodian family during the Khmer Rouge (all the kids were sent off to labor camps), and he was sent from Thailand to California when he was ten. When he turned 18 he got a private investigator to track down his family. Most of them were in the states. I asked how often he sees them now and he says its been a while. They move around a lot. His mom might come back to Cambodia one day to visit him, but his dad will never return. He's scared of Cambodia. He was tortured by the Khmer Rouge in a bamboo cage.
Another guy was born and raised in Memphis. He told me about his first love, their daughter and how much he misses her. She's nine years old now. He got deported 4 years ago. The immigration officer came to his door and told him to get his shoes. He was taken away from home and within a week he was shackled and thrown in a van to be carted all around the country picking up other deportees. Yesterday, as I was helping him put together kits with Korsang's address and services, shampoo, toothbrush and condoms and also putting together clean needle packets with sterilized water and alcohol swabs, I told him about Eve. I talked to him about who she was, how I'd known her, and how she'd been killed. He started talking to me about his friend who committed suicide when they were 18. He talked and talked and talked about it, as if it were yesterday. Only later would I learn, in a conversation overheard at my bar, that he had been convicted of murder in the US.
As our conversation finished he spoke about how important it is for him to be able to talk about things and that he can't talk to anybody here. His Khmer isn't that good (he was 3 months when he came to Memphis from the Thai refugee camp) so that also makes it hard. He genuinely thanked me for listening. I asked him about the tatoo on his hand. He wouldnt tell me who it was at first. He hesitated. Then he told me it had been his gang. So I dived in and asked him all about it. This silly white southern girl asking him the size of the gang, if it was an all Asian gang. He perked up when I talked about it. He said they had Lao, Thai, Khmer, and even some black and white guys. I asked him if he missed the. He misses them a lot.
One guy gives me rides all the time and is always getting me to go with him to give blood tests at the hospital. He told me about his gang, Asia Boy. He came to America from a Thai refugee camp when he was ten.
My first day back from Thailand, just after hearing about Eve, I was talking to one guy about her murder. He said, "its always the good ones." I asked if he'd had friends killed. He said "Oh yea" and told me about drug deals gone bad, and murders unsolved. We talked about racism and the inequality in our justice system. He gave great detail about the time he was shot at- the speeding blue car, the squeal of breaks, the cock of the shotgun. He had just enough time to dive behind a trashcan as the guy fired three shots.
He told me that when he was one year old his mother carried him out of the killing fields. His brother had been forced to work with the Khmer Rouge and his sister was so malnourished she went blind every night.
He was the first to be sent back to Cambodia. And his case was the test case: Ma vs. Reno, Ma vs. Ashcroft. He said ten deportees came over with him, the third shipment. They took a leer jet that cost the United States $250,000.
One guy told me he doesn't like it in Cambodia. Hes been here a year and he has money problems and he can't have fun like he used to. He has no relationship and he's sad. I told him it takes time to adjust and asked him how long it took the other guys to adjust? He said he hasn't asked anyone. I told him most of them have grown to love it, but it takes time. I asked another of the guys how long it had taken him to adjust, and he said it took 6 months, maybe longer. They need to talk to each other about these things.
Another guy was pretty bitter. He talked about missing his mom and his son and said that he got dumped in Cambodia, in the second shipment, even though he was a citizen because his dad got citizenship. A lawyer helped him get all of his charges dropped except one from when he was 16 and had been tried as an adult. If you serve a year with an aggravated felony, you get shipped back.
And what am I to do with this information? I listen and we talk and talk. Then Eve is murdered and it all is right in my face. How complicated our lives are. How closely each interaction relates to something much bigger. All the guys I am with all of these days could just as well have been Eve's murderer. Or were they wrongly convicted? Its easy to accuse, blame, prosecute someone who has little protection in America. Did my friend really kill someone? If he did, what were the circumstances? Do the circumstances even matter? Most of all, who is to blame? Maybe we are all to blame.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Rats
There is a rat that lives on our staircase at night. The stairs are so steep he is hard to see. Often I am right upon the rat before it scurries down the steps and into the street. A few nights ago it stood stoic on the top step and refused to move. Finally Sarah took initiative, forced the rat to move down the steps and we jumped on the handrails, shrieking at midnight as the street sweepers looked up and laughed when the rat ran past them.
On Wednesday I went on Outreach with Shy at Korsang. Twice a day HIV prevention and medical teams are dispatched into the area surrounding Korsang, in the Boeung Trabek neighborhood. They offer medicine, HIV awareness and clean needles. We went to burning house where heroin addicts spend their days and nights barefoot amongst dirty needles. I saw a 15-year old boy, HIV positive, sleeping in the street, infection all around his nose. I watched one man pull blood from a needle in his hand, after fiercely scratching his irritated legs, only to pass out face down in the street before he could shoot up more heroin. Slashes lined his forearm. We talked to one teenager who recently quit taking his ARV treatment medications and shoots 5-6 times a day. He's a garbage collector and makes just enough money for his addiction.
On Wednesday I went on Outreach with Shy at Korsang. Twice a day HIV prevention and medical teams are dispatched into the area surrounding Korsang, in the Boeung Trabek neighborhood. They offer medicine, HIV awareness and clean needles. We went to burning house where heroin addicts spend their days and nights barefoot amongst dirty needles. I saw a 15-year old boy, HIV positive, sleeping in the street, infection all around his nose. I watched one man pull blood from a needle in his hand, after fiercely scratching his irritated legs, only to pass out face down in the street before he could shoot up more heroin. Slashes lined his forearm. We talked to one teenager who recently quit taking his ARV treatment medications and shoots 5-6 times a day. He's a garbage collector and makes just enough money for his addiction.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Settling into the City
I bartended at "Talkin to a Stranger" on Wednesday night. Lisa Fitzgibbon, a folk singer from Australia who has performed with Ani DiFranco and is quite captivating on stage performed that night and there was a good crowd. Between sets a group of kids in KORSANG danced and rapped.
I've been living in Phnom Penh since January 24th and I plan to be here a few more months. This is how the story started for so many westerners who have now been in Phnom Penh for years. Its true, I love the city a little more every day. Now I even have a fondness for the grotesque, phallic Independence monument in the park near my house. I love scooting around on the back of a motorbike and I'm hoping to rent my own soon. I've met people that I really enjoy. I have some routines. Sarah and I run in the park every morning. We go to the market and get fresh produce for dinner. Every afternoon I buy an ice coffee with condensed milk in a bag. We start Khmer lessons next week with a guy named Rawling that Sarah met volunteering with Open Book. This city is complex. A horrific past, but such hopeful people. A lot of people from outside are here to help but a lot of people are here exploiting the need.
I'm volunteering now with two organizations. I am working with Jeanine and Billy's Children's foundation on their home-based care project for families affected by HIV/AIDS. Last week I visited a family of 8 in the Toul Kork slums. In the midst of the gaudiest mansions owned by Cambodian ministers are tin and tarp shacks. I took notes on the family that receives aid each month-their names, income, other organizations helping, ages, gender, school report cards, number of kids who are positive. The files I put together will be used for potential donors.
Today was my first day visiting KORSANG (www.korsangkhmer.org). I met the founder, Holly, at Talkin to a Stranger two weeks ago. I told her that I just finished university and that I'm thinking of nursing school when i get back to the states. She told me about the doctor in her drop-in clinic and said I should come in and check it out. Listening to her talk about her organization I was very impressed.
This local, grassroots organization started in 2004 and now has funding up until 2016through USAID, WHO, and UNICEF. Korsang was developed in light of the HIV pandemic in Cambodia and the reality of limited services to those at the greatest risk for HIV and other drug related risks. Korsang delivers risk reduction education, case management and health related services to injection drug users, sex workers and incarcerated persons. The staff of Korsang, about 30, were granted "permanent status" in the United States as refugees from the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and 80s. Following an agreement in June 2002 between the US and Cambodia, they were handcuffed, shackled and deported back to Cambodia. Most left behind partners and children. They have now been trained in harm reduction philosophy. Harm reduction, sometimes known as risk reduction, is an addiction-care philosophy based on working with users in a compassionate, respectful and non-judgmental way, thereby building solid relationships that can become the basis of further treatment. Harm reduction works to minimize the negative effects of risky behaviors, rather than eliminate them, and recognizes the impacts of issues like poverty, racism, social isolation and past trauma on people.For example, rather than try to persuade users to stop injecting heroin, harm reduction workers might help a person reduce their intake gradually, teach them about safe injecting techniques and suggest services that might stabilize their lives.
Mr. T lived in Denver, North Carolina for many years and he still has one son there who should be 17 or 18. He showed me around KORSANG, introduced me to people. Three men were asleep in the rest area. They come in to rest during the day because they spend the night in the street. There is an area for them to shower. A TV was playing a bad American movie and many Injection Drug Users (IDUs) were doped up watching the television, in and out of sleep. I hoped on the back of Mr. T's motorbike and he was friendly and chatty. He wanted to know why the hell I was in Phnom Penh and he wanted to make sure I understood who he was and what Korsang was doing. He seemed surprised a young goody goody American white girl would want to work with injection drug users. We went through the heroin street and he pointed out all of the dirty needles in the grass alongside of the dirt road. I saw about 5 groups of one or two men asleep in the dust, needles dangling from their veins. One was awake and distracted by our passing moto, he lifted his eyes just enough to catch our dust as he shot heroin into his groin.
After the tour I met Vannda, the doctor. While I was there he treated one addict with an infection on his neck and another who might have to go to the hospital for TB. Just before I left a drug user, Srey Mal, who was trained last week to save people from overdosing, brought in a young guy who had overdosed on opium. Srey Mal gets a stipend for bringing in those who overdose and this was the first life she has saved. Her legs are the size of my arms, but she carried in this guy. I don't know how old she is. Maybe shes 16. They treat street kids as young as 8 with drug problems. Maybe, by making Srey Mal an active agent in change, and showing her another option, she'll recover. Many recovered young drug addicts are now apart of KORMIX, another part of Korsang that trains kids in break dancing and rap. They are pictured above, performing at Talkin' to a Stranger.
I'm going out tomorrow with some of the staff on outreach. They warned me to wear tennis shoes.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Corn Gold
From the rooftop of our Phnom Penh apartment, I can see the strange Picasso shapes of the Psar Kapko market by the lighting of an early morning, through the thorny trunks of the cactus plants lining the edge. Cambodia awakes reluctantly, curled in a ball under the nubby colors of someone else's old sheet.
Nearly every morning I walk down two-flights of stairs from our apartment to browse the market for fresh produce. I pass women and men frying bananas and sweet patotoes or muffins with peppers and capers. The sun is rising and umbrellas protect them from the heat. Some people are shucking corn on mats in the street. Women are pushing out their sugarcane juice carts. Monks robbed in orange and maroon walk barefoot down the street carrying their silver alms bowls. The market is the first to wake up in Phnom Penh. And its excited for the new day, for the prospect of making a dollar to return to a home outside of the city. Crabs crawl on top of each other, trying to reach the top of the blue buckets, to welcome the day in their own manner, to make their escape into the streets. I throw one back into a woman's bucket. Around her head is wrapped the traditional plaid Khmer scarf. Her face is an amalgamation of every agony she has likely endured.
When Pol Pot took over Phnom Penh and declared the date, April 17, 1975 year Zero, his army, the Khmer Rouge, meticulously began organizing the country into a Maoist, peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. The day that the troops stormed through the city, families packed up what they could carry and many walked, some drove, out into the countryside. When those who had driven ran out of gas they started walking. At Khmer Rouge check points, those who understoond the workings of the revolution proclaimed that they were poor barbers or street vendors. The new government was on a mission to execute all of the educated, to stop all art and end all culture. In the four years that the Khmer was in power, thousands of people died of starvation, dehydration and exhaustion. Thousands more were tortured and exectuted, often by children forced to become soldiers and kill or be killed. The population of Cambodia at the time was 7 million and as many as 2 million may have died because of the Khmer Rouge.
This means that no one living today was unscathed. The tuk-tuk and moto drivers on the corner, playing Tinglan and betting money, holler at me in a comical tone as I walk down from my apartment, "You want a moto lady, come on give me a job, you know you want to give me this one job." They laugh with their friends when I acknowledge them and reply, "I'm walking" and they say, "It's too hot to walk!" But I just shake my head and they laugh and I find them so pleasant, so ready to joke and laugh and make light. But many are in their 30s or 40s. And I can't help but wonder who they watched, in their youth, walk away from their huts with 2 guards in black uniforms to forever disappear; I wonder how many mothers holding children they were forced to kill, to kill by busting their skull with a blunt farm tool in order to save bullets for the revolution.
Cambodia is one of the poorest places I've been. Along the riverside, barefoot children plead for food, middle-aged men crawl in the street suffering from the landmine that maimed them, destroyed their chance of making a living on the farm, or as a carpenter, destroyed their families. And I imagine that perhaps their wife has started to commute to the city, to sell a few measley, green tomatoes. Perhaps she's more strapped for money because her child is bloated from malnourishment, close to death with the potential of one small infection; she's at one of the restaurants blaring bad karaoke that sounds like screams and shes stroking the arm of a fat, white-man, pleasing him to make a few dollars to feed their children. It's hard to blame those who beg when there exists little infrastructure from the government to help these people.
But Phnom Penh is starting to thrive again. Only ten years ago, gun fights broke out throughout the city every few minutes, men with AK47s cruised the streets and the guns were on sale for $30 in the Russian Market, alongside kilos of marijuana. A few mercedes, owned by government officials navigated around oxen carts on the only paved road leading to the Independence Monument. Now there is a sense of hope, of intrigue, as English schools pop up all over the city and tvs that are even in the dirt floor living rooms of some of the poorest across the country replay old episodes of FRIENDS and Sienfield. I hate tv more and more.
There is a resurgence of culture and pride as Khmer restaurants line the tourist streets and everyone asks the foreigner, "Have you seen Angkor Wat Temples?" I love being in this atmosphere. I love the woman in the market with the bucket of crabs as she smiles at me with two front teeth protruding out above her bottom lip. I love the kids that run up and grab my hand and say in their best, most formal English, "Good morning, How are you? What is your name? Where do you come from?" The corn that is steamed in movable stands in the park next to my apartmentment is the juiciest, most perfectly gold corn I've ever eaten.
Nearly every morning I walk down two-flights of stairs from our apartment to browse the market for fresh produce. I pass women and men frying bananas and sweet patotoes or muffins with peppers and capers. The sun is rising and umbrellas protect them from the heat. Some people are shucking corn on mats in the street. Women are pushing out their sugarcane juice carts. Monks robbed in orange and maroon walk barefoot down the street carrying their silver alms bowls. The market is the first to wake up in Phnom Penh. And its excited for the new day, for the prospect of making a dollar to return to a home outside of the city. Crabs crawl on top of each other, trying to reach the top of the blue buckets, to welcome the day in their own manner, to make their escape into the streets. I throw one back into a woman's bucket. Around her head is wrapped the traditional plaid Khmer scarf. Her face is an amalgamation of every agony she has likely endured.
When Pol Pot took over Phnom Penh and declared the date, April 17, 1975 year Zero, his army, the Khmer Rouge, meticulously began organizing the country into a Maoist, peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. The day that the troops stormed through the city, families packed up what they could carry and many walked, some drove, out into the countryside. When those who had driven ran out of gas they started walking. At Khmer Rouge check points, those who understoond the workings of the revolution proclaimed that they were poor barbers or street vendors. The new government was on a mission to execute all of the educated, to stop all art and end all culture. In the four years that the Khmer was in power, thousands of people died of starvation, dehydration and exhaustion. Thousands more were tortured and exectuted, often by children forced to become soldiers and kill or be killed. The population of Cambodia at the time was 7 million and as many as 2 million may have died because of the Khmer Rouge.
This means that no one living today was unscathed. The tuk-tuk and moto drivers on the corner, playing Tinglan and betting money, holler at me in a comical tone as I walk down from my apartment, "You want a moto lady, come on give me a job, you know you want to give me this one job." They laugh with their friends when I acknowledge them and reply, "I'm walking" and they say, "It's too hot to walk!" But I just shake my head and they laugh and I find them so pleasant, so ready to joke and laugh and make light. But many are in their 30s or 40s. And I can't help but wonder who they watched, in their youth, walk away from their huts with 2 guards in black uniforms to forever disappear; I wonder how many mothers holding children they were forced to kill, to kill by busting their skull with a blunt farm tool in order to save bullets for the revolution.
Cambodia is one of the poorest places I've been. Along the riverside, barefoot children plead for food, middle-aged men crawl in the street suffering from the landmine that maimed them, destroyed their chance of making a living on the farm, or as a carpenter, destroyed their families. And I imagine that perhaps their wife has started to commute to the city, to sell a few measley, green tomatoes. Perhaps she's more strapped for money because her child is bloated from malnourishment, close to death with the potential of one small infection; she's at one of the restaurants blaring bad karaoke that sounds like screams and shes stroking the arm of a fat, white-man, pleasing him to make a few dollars to feed their children. It's hard to blame those who beg when there exists little infrastructure from the government to help these people.
But Phnom Penh is starting to thrive again. Only ten years ago, gun fights broke out throughout the city every few minutes, men with AK47s cruised the streets and the guns were on sale for $30 in the Russian Market, alongside kilos of marijuana. A few mercedes, owned by government officials navigated around oxen carts on the only paved road leading to the Independence Monument. Now there is a sense of hope, of intrigue, as English schools pop up all over the city and tvs that are even in the dirt floor living rooms of some of the poorest across the country replay old episodes of FRIENDS and Sienfield. I hate tv more and more.
There is a resurgence of culture and pride as Khmer restaurants line the tourist streets and everyone asks the foreigner, "Have you seen Angkor Wat Temples?" I love being in this atmosphere. I love the woman in the market with the bucket of crabs as she smiles at me with two front teeth protruding out above her bottom lip. I love the kids that run up and grab my hand and say in their best, most formal English, "Good morning, How are you? What is your name? Where do you come from?" The corn that is steamed in movable stands in the park next to my apartmentment is the juiciest, most perfectly gold corn I've ever eaten.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Working in Phnom Penh
Sarah and I came to Phnom Penh by bus from Angkor Wat on January 3rd. We stayed at the Top Banana and started looking for jobs, for local haunts, for an apartment, for the feeling of whether we should settle here or keep moving.
During our first week we got our bearings, met Sabina and Isaac and learned how to play Tinglan, the local card game. Isaac is a second year med-student who was adopted as a kid orphaned by the Khmer Rouge and raised in California. He's high-energy, motivated and involved. Through him I'm in touch with a few American nurses. He also got me connected to Billy.
Billy is tanner than the locals and they pick on him and love him. This is what I like most about this man. He has built up a repoire with the locals, unlike most internatioals here. He's unassuming and contemplative, or just quiet, I haven't figured him out yet. He's balding but a black cowboy hat hides the top of his head. Long, black curls protrude from the rim, whipping me in the face as he drives wildly on dirt roads outside of Phnom Penh. I've gone with him twice now out into the slums or to relocation sites outside of the city.
As Phnom Penh becomes gentrified, the ghetto is sometimes burned out by the government and people are forced to leave, planted capriciously in unwanted areas. He works with people affected by HIV/AIDS to build schools, jobs and centers for orphanages and vulnerable children. The man is an enigma, but I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued to work with a grass-roots non-profit, excited for the opportunity to work for people, immediately and directly.
I met two of the families I will work with in my first project here. They are part of a home-based care program that Billy started through the Jeannine and Billy's Children Foundation many years ago. There are six families in the Bora Khela slum. Vena is an 18-year old whose family was helped by JBCF and who is now attending university on a four-year scholarship from an Australian NGO. She will be working with me during the home visits and also be serving as a translator. The first family we went to visit is headed by a grandmother raising four grandchildren orphaned when their parents died of AIDS. Billy provided the family with $150 start-up and now the family is much less vulnerable, running a small gocery stand out of their home. He has put a children's center nearby and hired a teacher who he had found close to death, soon after her husband had died of AIDS. Now she is healthy and her daughter has pink toenails to match her mom.
We took the moto into a different area, down alleys between tin houses, an alley so small that my knees nearly scrapped along. We went to Lekhana's house, another grandmother raising her child's children. She tells Billy that she's not having trouble with her oldest now and points to her yellow and black sarong. He gives her clothes and some money everyday. Everyone is laughing and talking in Khmer, we're sitting on tables and stools near the kitchen, which is dark and covered in flies. The floor is hard-packed mud and swept clean. Billy tells me that one of the children in the family was close to death several years ago. When Billy got her started on ARVs, she began to get stronger and he told her that if she got stronger and stronger still, he would take her somewhere. She wanted to go to the beach. They are laughing about the trip. Billy wanted to go up some hill and Vena couldn't go because of her handicap, unless Billy carried her. They are all picking on the way Billy walked up the hill.
For years Billy has worked with these families, but there is no documentation or files and with funding troubles, its important to be able to present information to potential donors. My job is to build up trust with the families, ask lots of questions and put together a file for each family--with report cards, pictures and medical information.
To get a better sense of Billy's projects, he wanted to show me some other work that HPHAO (Hope for People Living with HIV/AIDS organization) is doing in villages outside of Phnom Penh. I borrowed a helmet from Wendy, the owner of our local bar, and held on tight as Billy took off into the dust. He knows the shortcuts, he navigates and I'm encouraged. So much money gets poured into the throngs of international NGOs in Phnom Penh and often only the internationals reap the benefits, traversing the streets in cushy landrovers. And I imagine that many of these people move from one air-conditioned office to the next and never see what they're proclaiming to help.
I went to a 5-roomed school and the English teacher showed me around, introduced me into classrooms and told me about their days. I threw the little kids into the air and they all grabbed my arms and rubbed at my skin. The older kids practiced their English with me. One girl looked western and the teacher told me her mother sells fried bananas and sweet potatoes in Phnom Penh and her father is a German that shes never met. Most of the kids are barefoot. The youngest kids dont wear pants. But they get breakfast, lunch and a snack, ad thats more than some kids I've seen. Fifty percent of children in Cambodia have stunted growth, which also affects their IQ level.
We visited a second school after lunch where about 20 kids from the village have classes. This is where I saw the hungriest child I've ever seen. And I wondered why he wasn't in the free school. Just after passing the child in the street we passed a half million dollar German orphanage with no children. The resort orphanage is looming, empty and haunting. Why is that man rubbing his belly in Germany feeling satisfied that he built an orphanage, not knowing the place, the country and not realizing that no one is benefiting from his ostentatious orphanage?
During our first week we got our bearings, met Sabina and Isaac and learned how to play Tinglan, the local card game. Isaac is a second year med-student who was adopted as a kid orphaned by the Khmer Rouge and raised in California. He's high-energy, motivated and involved. Through him I'm in touch with a few American nurses. He also got me connected to Billy.
Billy is tanner than the locals and they pick on him and love him. This is what I like most about this man. He has built up a repoire with the locals, unlike most internatioals here. He's unassuming and contemplative, or just quiet, I haven't figured him out yet. He's balding but a black cowboy hat hides the top of his head. Long, black curls protrude from the rim, whipping me in the face as he drives wildly on dirt roads outside of Phnom Penh. I've gone with him twice now out into the slums or to relocation sites outside of the city.
As Phnom Penh becomes gentrified, the ghetto is sometimes burned out by the government and people are forced to leave, planted capriciously in unwanted areas. He works with people affected by HIV/AIDS to build schools, jobs and centers for orphanages and vulnerable children. The man is an enigma, but I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued to work with a grass-roots non-profit, excited for the opportunity to work for people, immediately and directly.
I met two of the families I will work with in my first project here. They are part of a home-based care program that Billy started through the Jeannine and Billy's Children Foundation many years ago. There are six families in the Bora Khela slum. Vena is an 18-year old whose family was helped by JBCF and who is now attending university on a four-year scholarship from an Australian NGO. She will be working with me during the home visits and also be serving as a translator. The first family we went to visit is headed by a grandmother raising four grandchildren orphaned when their parents died of AIDS. Billy provided the family with $150 start-up and now the family is much less vulnerable, running a small gocery stand out of their home. He has put a children's center nearby and hired a teacher who he had found close to death, soon after her husband had died of AIDS. Now she is healthy and her daughter has pink toenails to match her mom.
We took the moto into a different area, down alleys between tin houses, an alley so small that my knees nearly scrapped along. We went to Lekhana's house, another grandmother raising her child's children. She tells Billy that she's not having trouble with her oldest now and points to her yellow and black sarong. He gives her clothes and some money everyday. Everyone is laughing and talking in Khmer, we're sitting on tables and stools near the kitchen, which is dark and covered in flies. The floor is hard-packed mud and swept clean. Billy tells me that one of the children in the family was close to death several years ago. When Billy got her started on ARVs, she began to get stronger and he told her that if she got stronger and stronger still, he would take her somewhere. She wanted to go to the beach. They are laughing about the trip. Billy wanted to go up some hill and Vena couldn't go because of her handicap, unless Billy carried her. They are all picking on the way Billy walked up the hill.
For years Billy has worked with these families, but there is no documentation or files and with funding troubles, its important to be able to present information to potential donors. My job is to build up trust with the families, ask lots of questions and put together a file for each family--with report cards, pictures and medical information.
To get a better sense of Billy's projects, he wanted to show me some other work that HPHAO (Hope for People Living with HIV/AIDS organization) is doing in villages outside of Phnom Penh. I borrowed a helmet from Wendy, the owner of our local bar, and held on tight as Billy took off into the dust. He knows the shortcuts, he navigates and I'm encouraged. So much money gets poured into the throngs of international NGOs in Phnom Penh and often only the internationals reap the benefits, traversing the streets in cushy landrovers. And I imagine that many of these people move from one air-conditioned office to the next and never see what they're proclaiming to help.
I went to a 5-roomed school and the English teacher showed me around, introduced me into classrooms and told me about their days. I threw the little kids into the air and they all grabbed my arms and rubbed at my skin. The older kids practiced their English with me. One girl looked western and the teacher told me her mother sells fried bananas and sweet potatoes in Phnom Penh and her father is a German that shes never met. Most of the kids are barefoot. The youngest kids dont wear pants. But they get breakfast, lunch and a snack, ad thats more than some kids I've seen. Fifty percent of children in Cambodia have stunted growth, which also affects their IQ level.
We visited a second school after lunch where about 20 kids from the village have classes. This is where I saw the hungriest child I've ever seen. And I wondered why he wasn't in the free school. Just after passing the child in the street we passed a half million dollar German orphanage with no children. The resort orphanage is looming, empty and haunting. Why is that man rubbing his belly in Germany feeling satisfied that he built an orphanage, not knowing the place, the country and not realizing that no one is benefiting from his ostentatious orphanage?
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