where cider meets condensed milk: CCF and Stoeng Meanchey

where cider meets condensed milk

Thursday, May 04, 2006

CCF and Stoeng Meanchey

We went straight from the killing fields to CCF (Cambodian Children's Fund), an orphanage in Phnom Penh run by a former Sony bigwig named Scott, who retired from the Californian corporate life and now lives in Cambodia. There are a ton of orphanages all over Cambodia, and many of them are exploitative, unclean, or no better than the situation from which the children came. CCF is clean, beautiful, and stylish, and it is a fantastic organization that is doing amazing things for the abandoned kids in the city. Granted, CCF has a larger operating budget than most, but it is founded on the idea that all children have a right to a safe home and education. It gives kids the chance to be healthy, educated, well-rounded children, with all sorts of cultural and language education opportunities (one little girl is sponsored to learn Japanese because that is her dream), and has the ability to have a huge impact on the population of street kids. It is expanding into CCF2 (as of May) and CCF 3 for later next year. The kids are clean and so polite and happy, and were a joy to be around. They did a dance and drama performance that would have been phenomenal for kids of any training or guidance, and even more so when you understand where they are from.

This was a comedy skit: with the boy in drag, he'd fit right in at culture day in Japanese schools! However, this kid has a geniune flare for the stage and we were all cracking up despite not understanding anything he said.

Joysey boy Josh (or rather "Joss", as is it pronounced in Khmer) with his chatty and precocious buddy.

My hotel roommate, Emma, learning Cambodian dance moves. Notice that we're wearing the same shirt? It kept happening all through the trip-- twins of different continents!

The not-yet-acquired art of the assisted self-shot...

Eighty-five percent of the kids at CCF are from Stoeng Meanchey, the municipal garbage dump in Phnom Penh. All were working, trying to eke out a living for themselves or for their family, by searching all day, every day, for anything in the trash that could be sold back for profit, and many lived in shacks or shelters right amidst the trash and waste. For a family, earning $1 a day would be a good day, but most could not make that much. Kids as young as 3 were expected to work, and most did not go to school. Drug use is huge for those living at the dump, and many kids were forced to try local stimulant drugs in order to make them work faster, but in turn they become addicts. Many of the girls were sold into prostitution by their parents, or were forced into the sex trade. In the Stoeng Meanchey community, rape is a huge problem, since police will not bother to file reports without being paid, and there are no medical resources to deal with the consequences. Any medical problem you could imagine from living in those conditions is present, though many are derived from severe dehydration, as there is no access to drinking water. Not all the kids there are orphans, as some were simply abandoned, and many were seriously abused by their families or other caregivers. So, seeing these happy, well-adjusted kids made the next day even more shocking, when we went to Stoeng Meanchey with a group of kids from CCF.

This little girl at CCF (with Natalie Glam and Emma) was friendly and adorable with a lovely smile, and can't be more than 8. She was taken in by CCF within the past month, because her stepmother sold her to a Stoeng Meanchey pimp, and she was working as a prostitute.

We went to CCF on Sunday morning, and from there headed out to Stoeng Meanchey with Scott and a group of kids from CCF. Some of the children with family relations will live at CCF during the week, and either go home on the weekends, or for short visits. They have to sign a behavior contract that says they will not work, though, since by becoming a part of CCF they are full-time kids. The dump is about 15 km out of town along roads that turn from pavement to potholes to red dirt and mud. It is 13 acres of any type of trash you can imagine, with garbage trucks constantly bringing in new loads.

The dump is surrounded by falling-down shacks that form the villages where the dump workers live, though some people live in cloth/wood/cardboard/tin shelters right atop the rubbish piles. Several small fires burned, turning the air to turn to greasy smoke. Scott gave us a few instructions: watch out for glass, nails, syringes, and sinkholes. The hospitals dump their waste here, too, which includes used syringes, medical supplies, and body parts. The CCF kids were all casually strolling by in flip-flops, whereas most kids living there were running around barefoot. You walk around and just feel your heart breaking to think of these families breathing in the stench all day long, lucky to even make $1 combined off the things they can find to sell back. Kids on their own don't have a chance of survival. Most of the workers here are from the outlying provinces, and would say that working here is better than starving to death out where they came from, and that it's a better life.

My CCF guide for the day-- her name was something like Sroy Leay. (Khmer is hard to romanize!)

Cute kids living at Stoeng Meanchey.

Scott checking up on a girl that was home with her father for the day. She was working when we arrived, and was so ashamed to be found out by Scott that she huddled over a magazine, crying, and wouldn't talk even with her friends all around her. There are 3 families living in this house, and one is well-off enough to own a pig and piglets.

Dane and a CCF girl in the village around the dump where most of the workers live. It started to pour rain just as we were leaving, so we had to race out or else our bus would have been stuck in the mud.

posted by Raychaa @ 12:14 AM

1 comments:

At 9:30 AM, Anonymous said…

OH MY GOSH! I am shocked to read this! The part about the hospital dumping body parts, etc... OH MY GOSH! What kind of volunteering are you doing at the dump? *B*