Mission Accomplished, For Now …

And so ends my second stint with New Hope.  This time around was a completely different experience, though equally as rewarding.  My work with the new website, the soon-to-be printed new brochure (thanks to Lisa Peacock and Sylvia from Spacelab Design) and on-going PR will hopefully continue to draw attention to New Hope and raise critical funding.

Sok Kim and baby

Just as importantly, Sok Kim can lie alongside her newborn baby boy each night, knowing that they both have people who care for them and will be there to support them in their otherwise very scary future.  And who knows how far Bon La will go with her new beauty vocation. She loves her training by the way and has a smile from ear to ear. 

Bon La

To my very special supporters out there – those who have supported me emotionally, have sent emails of encouragement, love, and crucial and more often than not entertaining details from home – a huge thank you.  It’s great to know that you’re always there.  For those of you who have made personal donations to New Hope or have sponsored families, you can’t begin to know how much you have positively changed the lives of these truly beautiful people.  Thank you so much.

For now, I can move on with a lighter heart.  I’m off on my next adventure - to perfect my bending and stretching in Goa!

Wasted Lives

Cambodia’s local rag, the Phnom Penh Post is a fascinating read – full of the most gruesome but unfortunately too real stories.  Headlines read “Mother and Daughter Hacked to Death”, “Man Accused of Raping 13 Year Old Sweetheart”, and “No Phone Credit Leads Man to Down Rat Poison”.

There is frequent news of women being brutally hacked to death in rice fields while collecting firewood, others raped and murdered, their bodies, with eyes gouged out and legs broken,  found hanging from trees near their homes, while their assailants walk free.  Corruption is rife here with lazy police and officials opting for cash as opposed to the law.  In the case of the murdered girls (above), officials failed to collect forensic evidence; no finger prints, no sperm samples – Cambodia just isn’t geared up for it.   They let the suspects walk free, despite family of the victims having witnesses.

Three members of one family were killed last Tuesday in a remote district.  The Police Chief said searching for murder suspects “seems like finding a needle in the sea” – which translates to “I can’t be stuffed”.  The value of human life here is beyond woeful.

A local activist attempting to deliver petitions to Ban Ki-moon was beaten unconscious and arrested by police and military police as the UN Secretary General concluded his three-day visit to Cambodia.

Closer to home, one of our long-term Volunteers, Robyn, is fighting her own legal battle to release one of her ex-students, an 18-year old Khmer boy who has been imprisoned for the past five months for having sex with his underage girlfriend.  Believing her to be of legal age, 15, the couple had “Boom Boom” one night.  The following morning he was arrested, the mother demanding US$3,000 as an “out” (bail money of which a large percentage of would go to the police).  Obviously the boy’s family couldn’t afford this and he risks between 7 and 15 years in jail. 

Another wasted life.

Love Songs and Dedications

One of the great things about New Hope’s volunteer program is that it attracts so many interesting people with so many different skill sets and incredible life stories.  For the past week we’ve had a great lady, Lois, who runs her own real estate agency in Lennox Head.  She is also a professionally-trained singer who has performed in numerous plays and musicals in Australia. 

At New Hope Lois shared her talent with the advanced English class – a group of some 15 gorgeous young men ranging from about 15 through to 25.  They belted out Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” with such passion, it bought tears to our eyes. 

At the back of the class, Touen, the gorgeous Downs Syndrome boy who is cared for by the village, belted out his own version, swaying, perfectly out of time, with his hand on his heart.  A complete crack up, it was beautiful.

New Hope Football Teams

Each Friday New Hope’s football teams take to the dusty soccer ground adjacent to the school, resplendent in their Netherlands and Germany jerseys, (with three number 13’s and three number seven’s per side!). 

They begin the match with the Cambodian national anthem and then shake their opponents hands before literally kicking up a dust storm with their bare feet and agile limbs.  It’s hard to determine whether they follow the rules, but referee Kenneth does his best to keep order.

I completely failed in my attempt to get a cheer squad going! 

Career Choices

Ask some of the older Cambodian children what they want to do when they leave school and you will be blown away.  I am amazed and encouraged by their hopes and dreams and pray with all of my might that at least some of them will come true. 

There are dreams of scientists wanting to discover something incredible for mankind, of lawyers, doctors, and those who want to care for Cambodians, so they’re not so sick, poor and hungry.  When you see where these children live, when it’s dark at 6pm at night and there’s no electricity for them to study by and when they get up in the morning, they have to help their parents clean the house, cook or work themselves, or you question how the hell they will find $400 a year to pay for university, you begin to wonder how on earth they will achieve their dreams. 

But sometimes things just fall in place.  This week, Bon La, the 17 year-old whose family I sponsored returned from digging potatoes on the Cambodian / Thai border.  I’d funded her return trip ($30) and worked with Kemsour’s wife, Srey Mom, to find her a beauty traineeship, which she starts next Monday, and a guaranteed job at the end.  She’ll work from 08:00 – 17:00 each day and then study English at New Hope for an hour at 18:00 at night.

Srey Mom and I visited a local hairdresser / beautician owned by a woman called Theary who’d studied to be a beautician in Thailand.  (Check the photos of her training notes which she proudly showed me).  Srey Mom negotiated a six-month traineeship for Bon La which will train her in hairdressing, make-up and nail art.  There’s a huge demand for this here with all the weddings and other festive celebrations, the cost is ridiculously low.  (3,000 riel / US$0.75) to have your hair blow-dried / straightened and around the same for (pretty revolting) nail art.
 

At the end of her traineeship, Bon La will have the option of staying on to work for Theary or for New Hope, which is planning to open up its own beauty training business in the new school in late March next year.

I can’t believe how easily this came together.  One minute this beautiful girl was digging potatoes on the border, risking a life of rape, prostitution, of being kidnapped for body parts or shot by the border patrol.  The next she is ‘safely’ home, but her mother approached by a man offering to find her work in Malaysia, paying her mother $50 for her, and 80kg of rice.  And finally, because of New Hope, she has a new vocation and the opportunity to earn good money to support herself and her family well into the future. 

Meanwhile, we need to find funding for the traineeship ($80) and $60 a month plus 50kg of rice to (approximately $500) sustain Bon La’s family until she can start to earn a salary. 

Dreams of an education become a reality

With the discovery of the new slum area on the weekend, Kemsour, New Hope’s Managing Director, made an offer to the village chief to educate the children in English, maths and vocational studies, providing them with an opportunity that these families could only dream of before now. 

It was with much excitement that some 50 new students of all sizes and ages arrived to register for school on the Tuesday, following the King’s birthday holiday.  It was such an amazing moment to see them arrive on mass, wearing their best clothes, having walked probably an hour to get to the school.  Those whose mother’s accompanied their children were beaming from ear to ear.  Others were accompanied by older siblings or who knows who else.  Can you imagine not turning up to your child’s first day because you had to work so you wouldn’t starve that night?

So, New Hope has another 50 beautiful but completely illiterate children to educate and provide with bikes, exercise books and pencils, let alone the sponsorships that will now be required to feed these people.  

New Life. Wasted Lives.

Last Saturday Kemsour and Kerry visited a particularly poverty stricken family who were living on a rubbish dump behind the Kantha Bopha hospital area.  Their plan was to take the family to the New Hope Farm to show them the house they are offering them, to discuss family sponsorship and how New Hope will fund a small business for them to operate – effectively giving them an entirely new start in life.

The father is sick with heart problems.  The four children are illiterate and survive on the money the mother can raise from selling vegetables while walking the streets.  Their gorgeous ten-year-old son has never attended school, his family is dependant on the rubbish he collects and sells for a pittance.

This family is one of 30 living in absolute poverty and filth and with countless others, are about to be made homeless as the Government evicts them from the land in order to build tourist-worthy bitumen roads throughout Siem Reap.

The family was not able to visit the New Hope Farm and learn about their windfall, their new chance in life.  On arrival to collect them, the father told Kemsour that he had to stay because it was his job to dig a hole to bury a five-year-old girl who had died earlier in the morning of Salmonella – food poisoning from a bad cake.  He took them to another slum area, a few streets away which they had not known about, and came across a small funeral comprising a monk praying for the tiny body who was shrouded by a filthy, flimsy towel. Nearby was the tiny girl’s cement-worker mother, abandoned by her husband who ran off with another woman, now left to raise one seven-year-old daughter.

A little way up the path, two men were smashing a piece of wood to pieces to build the little five-year-old a coffin.  There was no money for a proper funeral.   There was no money for anything.

As Kerry and Kemsour were leaving, an older woman came out to ask whether they could help with a baby that had been dumped at her house the previous day.  

We returned on Monday to check on the situation and learned that the beautiful 20-year-old from the country had in desperation, landed on the doorstep of this caring woman with her newborn baby boy, not knowing what to do or where to turn.  Initially we thought she'd abandoned the baby but I don't believe she has the strength to keep moving and clearly has nowhere to go.  The young mother’s husband had been killed when a truck hit his moto.  She had no family of her own.  No money.  Absolutely nothing but the filthy clothes she was wearing and her new baby. The look of pure grief, exhaustion and desperation on her face was incomprehensible.  

I have never, ever seen such sadness and took every single bit of my strength not to crumble in tears there and then in front of her.  As we stood there, learning her sad story, a stream of blood trickled down her leg.  Why couldn’t this poor woman be in a hygienic, safe, restful environment being looked after by professional health carers instead of lying on a straw mat in the home of someone she didn’t even know, above a mosquito infested, fetid pond, crying tears of grief for her dead husband?

Burning Down the House

Just as there is throughout Asia, here’s an appetite for golf courses in Cambodia, bringing with it wealthy plane loads of Koreans, Japanese and Chinese tourists.  They come to Siem Reap with their fabulous fashion and umbrella accessories, walk all over the sacred temples in the morning, play golf in the afternoon, and most likely visit the prostitutes in the evening.  Of course, that’s a mass generalization but today I’m angry with them.  

With the demand for golf courses and more five star hotels, entire ‘residential’ areas, slum and every day are literally being bulldozed by and ‘bought out’ for a pittance by wealthy developers.  As such, families are being pushed to the outskirts of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap putting an incredible strain on the workforce and food supplies.  (Apparently even the new Australian Embassy is guilty of this).  Also, the demand for water for the golf courses and hotels is raising the water table, causing increased acidity which will affect the condition of the temples. 

I learned of a man whose relatively nice house was burned to the ground by a developer in an effort to steal his land.  The man challenged the developer but instead of receiving justice, was himself imprisoned for two years.  He’s just been released and is now living in a slum area where his children collect rubbish for $0.75 cents a day. 

A story in today's Phnom Penh Post tells of a 23 year old activist who was beaten unconscious and arrested while attempting to deliver a petition to Ban Ki-moon while he was visiting the Kingdom this week.  The man was part of a group of approximately 100 people who gathered outside the Cambodian Russian Friendship Hospital during Ban's visit to the facility to protest against their impending eviction from the Boeung Kak Lakeside in Phnom Penh.  Rights groups estimate that approximately 4,000 families will be evicted from the area to make room for a 133 ha development owned by a ruling party senator. 

Dysfunctional Family Trees

On Wednesday I’d arranged with Katie from the New Hope Outreach Program to visit Kim Heng, the mother of the family I sponsor.  I’d selected this family when I was here last year as it comprised two exceptionally beautiful teenage girls whose livelihood I feared for.  Without an education, it was strongly likely that they would be enticed or even stolen and trafficked to Phnom Penh, Thailand or even Malaysia to work in the “karaoke”  (sex) industry.  I’d made my sponsorship conditional on the fact that the girls regularly attend school.

Bon La (15) and Bon Lee (13) lived with their mother and their nephew whose parents were working on the Thai border, sending back as much money as they could to support their family at home.  They were however dependant on my New Hope sponsorship as the money from the border and the salary Kim Heng earned from washing dishes in a restaurant was not enough to feed the small family.

Just as we were leaving New Hope to visit Kim Heng, she entered the front gate.  She was completely surprised to see me – had no idea I was back in Siem Reap and was in fact there to see Kerry or Kemsour for help.  A classic “Crisis Care” moment, first hand. 

I didn’t recognize her at first, she was clearly distressed and had changed so much in the year.  Her clothes were torn and filthy clothes, her once stylish hair unruly.  As we found out minutes later, it was no wonder. 

In a nutshell, her son who’d been working on the Thai / Cambodian border had been shot and killed, his wife had fled and had hooked up with another man, leaving their two children in Kim Heng’s care.  Bon La, the beautiful 15 year-old had left for the border to dig potatoes, and 13 year-old Bon Lee now cuts grass around the village.  Neither goes to school.  Kim Heng is also caring for another two children whose family history no one can quite work out, though I think they’re also orphans – bringing the “family” count to eight.  And, on Tuesday night, the house was robbed and her dog stolen (probably for someone else’s food), the sum of which was the catalyst for the New Hope visit on Wednesday. 

It’s common for Cambodians to travel to Thailand hoping for work or better salaries.  The threat however is huge; being killed by the Thai army, trafficked into prostitution or kidnapped and murdered for your body parts. With one child already killed on the border, Kim Heng must have been beside herself.

Some things in Cambodia take forever to happen but tragedy here is swift and appears in every single direction you turn.  It seems that everyone you come into contact with has at least one tragic story and yet they continue to astound you with their beautiful smiles, really funny sense of humor, and their generosity. 

Katie, Carol, Seth (from New Hope) and I returned to visit Kim Heng yesterday with a mountain of supplies.  We’d visited the markets to stock up on mosquito nets, floor mats, rice, fruit, vegetables, treats for the kids, and all kinds of personal effects (soaps, shampoos, underpants, sarongs etc.).  Carol also gave an entire suitcase of baby and children’s clothes to Kim Heng which had been donated by a friend of hers in Queensland.

They were thrilled with the supplies and put the clothes on immediately.  But we were worried through the night that we’d gone overboard and that the truly evil looking neighbour who was hanging around making phone calls from her mobile would return in the night to steal it.  (Will check on that!). 

I also gave Kim Heng money to get Bon La back from Thailand.  The next job is to find her a job that will support this growing family.   So much for the education – for now …

New Hope is faced with situations like this every single day.  PLEASE if any of you, your friends or work colleagues can spare any cash, New Hope always needs support for its Crisis Care Program which provides emergency and disaster relief for families in tragic situations. 

Snakes Alive!

Anyone who knows me really well will know of my extreme snake phobia and some have witnessed it first hand; most recently my nieces Polly and Charlie when they gave me a “trick present” for Christmas last year – a rubber version from the $2 shop - or my IMG work colleagues at the Singapore night zoo.  

My phobia is thriving here in Cambodia where the worms are the size of small snakes, where it’s not uncommon to see a snake slithering across a road (in “suburbia”), a local giving one a good whack against a fence, clearly dreaming of her family feast that night or little children ‘wearing’ them as a fashion accessory!   Out at the floating villages, a friend of mine, Carol, saw a woman force-feeding a small-ish python the other morning, obviously trying to fatten it up to get more meat for her starving family. 

In Cambodia, there are more amputations of limbs as a result of non-treatment of snake bites that there are from landmines.  Many of the poor opt to visit a local medicine man than to go to a hospital where they will be charged $4.  Recently one man rocked up at New Hope’s Clinic with a completely black (effectively dead) arm, the result of a particularly nasty bite.  He had to be taken to hospital to have it amputated. 

The best type of snake in my opinion is a dead one.  Many of my more adventurous volunteer friends have dared to try them at local markets and to my horror, New Hope serves it up as an entrée to its Tour groups, alongside crickets and salted peanuts!  (The horror part of this is actually the smell of it cooking in the afternoon which sends me flying from the office I work in!).

Water Festival Celebrations in Battambang

Water Festival - Siem Reap 2009

Our trip to Battambang on the weekend co-incided with the Water Festival, supposedly the most extravagant festival in the Cambodian calendar, though the Battambang version being nothing on what I’d experienced in Siem Reap last year.

Over three days starting with the last full moon day in October or the beginning of November up to a million people from all walks of life from all over the country flock to the banks of Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers in Phnom Penh to watch hundreds of brightly colored boats with over 50 paddlers battle it out for top honors. The boat racing dates back to ancient times marking the strengths of the powerful Khmer marine forces during the Khmer empire. In the evening brightly decorated floats cruise along the river.  

What we saw however was a disappointing effort, further marred by the pure filth – a carpet of plastic, polystyrene and other refuse.

Heading to the Pagoda

The following day however we came across a number of pilgrims flocking to the pagodas and noisy celebrations in gaudy marquees as we passed through villages.  The Water Festival marks the changing of the flow of the Tonle Sap (South East Asia’s largest lake) and is also seen as thanksgiving to the Mekong River for providing the country with fertile land and abundant fish.

A cross between a truck + a plough

Serenity at its best

It is at this time when the river flow reverts to its normal down stream direction. The remarkable phenomenon that is the Tonle Sap sees the river  flowing upstream during the rainy season and then change direction as the rains cease and the swollen Tonle Sap Lake empties back into the Mekong River leaving behind vast quantities of fish. This could however be affected in the very short term with the sell-out of the Laos Government to Chinese electricity companies who are damning the Mekong.  Ultimately this will seriously impact agriculture and the livelihood of not only the Cambodians, but the Vietnamese).  


The Water Festival takes place from 20 - 23 November in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. 

Water Festival - Siem Reap 2009

Water Festival - Siem Reap 2009