After
two and a half years in this country, we have yet to find a solution for
eradicating poverty. We certainly have ideas and a sense of how to help a few
people around us, but Cambodia is teeming with people who experience various
levels of poverty all the time, and we simply do not have the blueprint for
meeting their needs.
We also don’t always
know how to help even just one person, because the issue is much more complex
than handing out resources. Seeing young children, the old, and the disabled
begging on a daily basis burdens us deeply and we are always looking for ways to
be of more help to them. In this update I’m going to share some stories of things
we’ve seen, ideas we do have to help the poor, and situations where we really
don’t have the answer.
One evening we sat at a
gas station waiting to get our moped fixed, and we began to notice people
driving by handing out money to very young children. Every once in a while they
would run back to the side of the gas station where there was a woman sitting
in the shadows collecting what the children had earned. One person gave the
children a sandwich and we watched in disbelief as a child took it to the
woman, who then sent the child back to the street and consumed the food by
herself. I thought about going to talk to her, but at the time I was so angry I
was not in a good place to talk to her.
Usually when people
give food I do see people eating it right away, so this is something Ryan and I
do try to do. We feel giving child beggars money keeps them in that position
(more on that in a bit), but we don’t feel quite that way about food. We have a
supply of water bottles and snacks right by our door ready to grab when we head
out the door or when someone walks down the street. Initially we only gave
snacks, but we were moved by one experience that reminded us that, amid the
heat of the day, people need to be hydrated. One day we saw two boys, probably
between age 10-12, walking down our street with a recycling cart. We started
chatting with them and gave them some Christmas candy. One of the boys asked if
he could have some water and he handed me a dirty, used bottle out of his cart.
I ran in the house and filled it up for him, but felt bad we didn’t have any
new ones. That was the day I decided we needed to have plastic water bottles on
hand.
While it is nice to
give water and snacks out to meet an immediate need we are looking to see how
things could become more sustainable. At the organization where Melissa works the
staff are able to build a relationship with many poor families who make their
children work. In interactions with the kids the staff try to teach them, love
on them and equip them so that they can . Sometimes those interactions go well
and one of the staff is able to convince a child’s parents to take better care
of the child. Other times those conversations don’t go so well and the
organization’s staff aren’t able to convince the children’s parents of doing
much of anything.
For example, the
hardest case Melissa has been dealing with lately is a little girl who was hit
by a car and broke her leg. The family initially took the little girl to a free
clinic where they put metal on the inside of her leg and connected it to the
outside of her leg (It is quite weird and I have never seen anything like the
thing protruding from her leg). At first it seemed to be going okay, but more
recently the metal has started bending, she limps on the leg, has been having
some bleeding and oozing out the places where the metal inserts, and has had
increased pain because of it. The staff have gone to talk to her parents
several times and so far they refuse help for medical care and always say they
will take her eventually. We were puzzled as to why the little girl’s parents
were so complacent about taking her to get her leg taken care of; and then,
this past week, I learned that the parents are making her beg for money.
We mention all these
things because we hope you can see some of the complexities of the issues and
better understand how to lift up the situations. We ask that you would remember
us as we seek to serve in the best ways possible. We are so thankful for the
Khmer staff at The Hard Places Community that work so tirelessly to help so
many children, but there are so many more. Even though we don’t know how to fix
all the problems, we do see that if we can challenge and empower the locals to
take charge, so many more can be impacted. Ask that the believers in Cambodia
might be able to shine their lights to the least of these and know how best how
to help them.
PC: Kestrel Bailey, 2014 HPC Intern
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