moderatelyExcessive

So it seems the blog is screwy on PCs with IE6. Guess I’ll get to fixing that at some point, but with the John Olerud-like speed of the internet here, it may take a week or five.
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Today is my second day with Friends, International and Mith Samlanh. As amazing as the organization seemed a month ago, I am absolutely floored by them now. I was given the full tour of their facilities yesterday, and I am still in awe. Their main complex serves as classrooms and vocational training centers for 1,800 children.
Mith Samlanh, the Cambodian branch of Friends, Int., serves three types of street children: 1) those who are orphaned, abandoned or have run away from home 2) those who are sent out into the streets by their parents to earn money by selling drugs or their bodies, and 3) those whose entire families are homeless.
The classrooms are kept for children aged 5 to 13, and these children are provided with basic clothing and meals in the morning and afternoon. They are picked up every morning in motos and buses from all over the city, and those who have families are returned to them every evening. Those without are provided shelter and supervision.
There are separate spaces for each of the vocational programs, and the many classrooms filled with the most attentive, polite, and beaming children I may have ever seen. As I toured the center on my first day, every child placed his/her palms together in the center of their chest, elbows extended to the sides, and greeted me with “chum reep sua” — a greeting of ultimate respect.
Every. Single. Child.
Of course, this obliged me to return the gesture, which at times kept me from continuing my tour for several minutes. Not only the children, but the teachers and mentors greeted me in the same way.
I would love to be able to show you their facilities, but there are strict rules against taking any photographs there. I hope that at some point I am given some freedom in this regard, but for now, I cannot think of asking for an exemption.
My co-workers and I have spent the past two days getting on motos in the morning and heading to known homeless encampments, bringing basic medical care to the children and adults there, playing games with the kids, and trying to get the kids enrolled in our programs. The encampments are among the most dheart-wrenching sights I have ever seen. Often they are in the most disgusting of environments — on the banks of raw sewage outlets, in the empty spaces that pass for Phnom Penh’s garbage dumps, etc…
Somtimes it is a random collection of people living in these places (encampments is a misnomer as different groups will occupy each sight on a daily basis), and sometimes it is several generations of the same family. Some have traveled from their home province to the city in search of food or work. Others have been camping around Phnom Penh for a decade or more. Regardless, there are many young children in each of these groups, and more often than not, babies less than six months old. Clothing is filthy (if there is any), personal hygiene does not exist, and almost everyone suffers from some visible ailment or another.
Despite all of this, there is something amazing to be said: the children are so bright-eyed, so energetic, so curious. I obviously have little ability to speak with them, but that doesn’t keep me from helping some with puzzles, drawing with others, playing street badminton with some, giving over-the-head helicopter rides to others. They are a joy to be around, and they are always greeting me with a “hello” or a “bye-bye”, even if we are just sitting together, as these are the only English words any of them know (if they even know those).
Yes, I’ve also arrived at an encampment to see a 10-year-old girl sniffing glue in front of her mother, but I am told to wait until I see a group of six-year-olds doing it together to show true repulsion.
Again, I would love to show you pictures. I’d love to share both their squalid living conditions, and their incredible spirit to you, but propriety keeps me from even thinking about pulling out my camera. Perhaps when I have a greater grasp of the language, and have the spent more time here, I will be free to do so. For now, I can only hope to give the slightest impression of what I have seen.
Understand that this organization’s efforts are enormous, filling a huge gap created by a selfish and ineffective government, and offsetting some of the damage done over the years of Western sex tourism.
Tonight at 9 p.m. we ride on motos to administer care to drug addicted children and teens. I don’t know if there is any room for surprise left in me, but I’d say the odds are pretty good I’ll again need to readjust my expectations, thank some spirit for providing me so much in my life, and celebrate another beautiful day with a few Angkor beers.