It was during the last week of my month-long volunteering stint in Cambodia that I finally accepted an invitation from Sue to join her and Chhunly to pick up a kid who would join the Honour Village family. She had asked me to come along a few times before, but I had always made excuses, wanting to go home in the afternoon and relax after a long day of being pulled in a thousand different directions by the kids. Finally I went along with her and Chhunly on the day they went to pick up Ty from his village.
Ty was a fourteen year-old boy who had quit school at age 12, his mother deceased and his father "in the military" (?) for the past ten years. He was living with his aunt and grandmother. His 27-year old aunt had three babies of her own, all under age five. He worked a very dangerous job of cutting coconuts from tall palm trees, earning 25-50 cents (in US$) per day (probably chopping the same coconuts that are sold for $1 each to tourists in town). I don't remember how Sue had found out about him, but she had spoken to him and his relatives about the possibility of coming to live at Honour Village. He expressed interest and his guardians agreed, so on December 17 we went to the village to fill out the paperwork and bring him to his new home. I had never been out to the villages before, and it blew me away. It was only a 20-30 minute drive from HVC itself, and also relatively close to the 'bustling' small city of Siem Reap.
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| On the way to Ty's village |
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| A kid returning hope from work in Ty's village |
Noticing my shock, Sue reminded me that once the kids come to HVC and put on clean clothes and start playing games, it's hard to imagine that they have all come from places like this. Most villages are a group of 'houses' made of thatched hay. Their beds are slats of wood. The elders (probably not as old as they look) are missing teeth and can't read or write. They collect their own firewood. They struggle to be self-sustaining, doing agricultural work and raising their own livestock. Many travel to town or farther distances to work for pennies a day.
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| Ty's family signing the paperwork |
Like my first time Cambodia, my mental world came crashing down. Meeting Ty's family and seeing where he was from and what life here was like was a watershed moment in my personal history. These are truly the 'forgotten people'.
On the ride to HVC, Ty was utterly silent and seemed scared and a bit suspicious. When we arrived, all the kids swarmed the tuk-tuk, the older boys leading him by the hand to introduce him to everyone and show him everything he needed to know and help him get settled. Two days later, I saw the change had taken place - he seemed right at home.
I realized that the day we went to pick up Ty was exactly a year since I had met Sue at the other orphanage where she had been volunteering in 2009. And that same day, December 17, I decided just like in 2009, that I was going to return next year. No matter the nature of my graduate program's schedule, I was going to make it work to come back, at least to spend Christmas with the kids since I wasn't able to in 2010. I had learned so much there about the meanings of life and love in just a few short weeks. I fell in love with Cambodia all over again, thanks to Sue and the kids. December 17 was a turning point in my life, an experience of which the memory will always remain with me.
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