The People you meet along the way – Part 1

Charity work does not seem to be about the work or the end result but more about the people you meet along the way.

I’ve now been here long enough that a lot of people around town know or recognise me. There are so many people that I meet on a daily basis, whether it be in a professional or personal setting but most of them I will never know anything about.

I’ve been really lucky to meet an Australian couple that are also involved in the project I’m working on and run their own charity in Australia called Helping Cambodian Children Abroad (http://hccacharity.asn.au/1701.html). Their arrival, for me, has been a complete breath of fresh air. I don’t know if it’s just the antipodean way of communicating but it’s just been really easy and I don’t have to get rid of all of my accent or speak in half sentences just to be understood.

They have been coming here for over 4 years and have kindly taken me under their wing and introduced me to other projects they are working on and the people running them. They introduced me to a Malaysian woman the other day who runs a food programme called Touch a Life (www.touchalife.org.my/).

Every week she and her main volunteer, who is a Khmer guy, along with a bunch of volunteers, cook meals at her house for 160+ on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but on Saturdays cook 360+ meals and delivers them and medical aid to people in some of the poorest parts in and around Siem Reap. I use the term ‘around’ quite loosely as they are actually still within the city.  

She’s been running the same programme in Malaysia for a few years now and saw a greater need in Cambodia so set up a programme here too.

The Khmer guy she works with originally went out to some of the remote areas on the outskirts of the city and found all of these poverty stricken families, interviewed them to find out the need in the community and now provides food to the most needy based on these assessments. Unfortunately, like all projects, they can’t catch everyone but do an amazing job with what little resources they do have.

On Saturday I went to see the project and as soon as I got through the door I was put to work. It was basic cooking, the first I’ve done in 3mths apart from a cooking class I did with my mum. We made omelettes (I have to confess my omelettes were not up to scratch) and rice with a traditional Cambodian soup. All using vegetables and spices I’ve never heard of let alone seen or used. We spent the next 6 hours cooking and packing 361 meals.

I’m not a fan of the old “Poor me. Look at the poor children” approach. You get it here on a daily basis and become quite hardened to it. There is no doubt people are poor and hungry and Westerners feel guilty about their perceived wealth and give money based upon that. But I personally believe that the long term issues that comes from this approach means people are not encouraged to create a culture which empowers people to provide for themselves and eventually step away from charity all together. I always find it a wee bit concerning when people are so dependent on handouts as they never seem to look forward, plan for their own future and take responsibility for their own environment. The response from a lot of people that think and behave like this is “Why bother cos the westerners will come and give us aid.” This I find is a very frustrating approach as I work very hard and would expect anyone that wants support to do exactly the same.

The woman running the show is definitely my kind of woman. I got there and was told what I needed to do, when it needed to be done by and what was expected of me. We had a job to do and she didn’t care how we got there as long as we got there. She not once spoke about the charity without me asking a direct question. She never played the guilt card. There was/is a job to be done and she just gets on with it and lets the experience speak for itself. Any it most certainly did.

When we were nearing the end of the cooking section 2 Danish guys turned up. They’ve been involved in the project for the past 8mths and have supplied a jeep for the project to use. Having seen the deliveries made by jeep I have no idea how they originally made the delivers on the back of motorbikes. These guys are also assisting with basic medical care.

What I think amazed me the most was that all of the people involved were providing medicines and petrol out of their own pocket as well as volunteering their time.

The villages we went to are on a road I travel down everyday to get to and from work and are between the two mains roads to Angkor Wat – The main reason everyone comes to Siem Reap but you would never know that these people were there. I felt like I’d stepped into a new world and felt quite guilty when I realised I’d driven past these villages every day for the past 3 months and not known. There were all of these people just 100ms back from the roadside that no one even knows about and receive no benefit from the tourists visiting their own backyard.

As we went around there were people everywhere with a different story. One woman had two kids by rape, a lot of the kids had aids, 10 year olds were left at home to look after their younger siblings while their parents worked, one partially blind and retarded boy made money by carrying water for people from the well, a woman who was in her 90s was disabled by a landmine and was left in a crouching position for the rest of her life but every single one of them was waiting for us to arrive with a wee bit of food and conversation with a huge grin on their face. No one adopted the poor me attitude.  

Since I arrived I noticed that there were so many kids with reddish hair and bloated tummies, like you see on the TV. I’ve since learnt that the reddish hair, that we all find so cute, is a sign of malnourishment and the bloated bellies, in this area, is simple worms. Things that could so easily be treated if people knew that these people were there.

There were 4 of us in the jeep and we needed to make the last stop. I was told the jeep had to do it as the motorbikes wouldn’t get through due to the rain. We drove around the corner and I soon learnt why the jeep was needed!! The water was so high, covered as far as I could see and it started coming in the jeep and up the exhaust pipe, my side started filling up with smoke and we stopped moving. One of the other guys and I jump out of the jeep, in knee high water, to give the jeep a bit of a push. We just got behind the jeep, my hands don’t even touch the back, the driver puts his foot down, the cloud of black smoke triples in size, blows straight in my face and off they go leaving the two of us standing there in the water thinking “Oh crap we’ve gotta wade through this and we have no idea what’s in here” (the water is a thick brown). To top it off there are no toilets in the village. I’ll leave that one to your imagination as it’s too much for me to think about.

The jeep stopped 200m ahead of us when it got to higher ground and as we walked towards the jeep it speed off again through the next field of water leaving us to walk even further. As we walked through the village a group of about 40 middle aged men were meeting at one house. They had watched the whole event unfold and were in fits of laughter, so was I, when we waded past. Then suddenly the guy that was with me starts screaming and shouting that he had something in his shoe. You can only imagine my reaction and the group of men when a leaf floated to the surface.  

Little did I realise I would be knee deep in water in the centre of the city when the banks for the Siem Reap river broke a few days later.

I most certainly earned my 30 pence pint at the end of the day I can tell you!

Ok so being realistic here, in no way is one two course meal a week going to prevent these people from starving but that’s not really what the project is about. By simply turning up every week these people know that they have not been forgotten. That people care enough to turn up every week to deliver food, medical supplies and a wee bit of conversation. By providing these simple things these people are able to move forward and do their jobs and engage with people.

I suppose the only thing I can compare it to at home is the programmes you see where there is an elderly person who’s all on their own in their house and no one comes to visit. These people are the same. They too just want someone to recognise that they are there.

The whole experience was humbling to say the least. I’ve told Touch a Life that they can have my spare time until I leave Cambodia.

I’d love to say that the people who run Touch a Life and Helping Cambodian Children Abroad are amazing. They’re not. They are ordinary, everyday people doing ordinary, everyday things. They are just living their lives and following through on the things that so many people say they want to do and be. 

Kids playing in the streets a few days ago after the Siem Reap river broke its banks 

A few new pics

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.263051757046092.70027.100000238085236&l=7ac3dcfa35&type=1