Hope -- Toph

So our time in Svay Pak is done. It is likely that I will never again visit this village, even though I would very much like to return to Cambodia. There are big issues I am still working through, however.

What did the trip achieve? The task of renovating Rahab’s House is done. The building is no longer a brothel, but a great, beautiful open space with bright yellow walls which will be a tremendous resource for the people who work there. Since the building was raided in 2003 and the girls working there liberated, the shell had remained. Though some of the girls have had the courage, tremendous courage, to return and to begin community outreach from this building, work was confined to the front room. This was a renovation that was needed, but which always fell just below the funding threshold for Aim4Asia. We were able to provide that service. All of Rahab’s House is now clean, functional, and able to be used by these women in their work: teaching, providing food, providing medical outreach, serving the community. In time, someone will live there full time, in the upstairs rooms. In a real sense our work was to provide a better platform for these people to do their ongoing work. On that level, I am confident that the trip was a success, and that we will see it as such in the future.

From the start, however, we have asked ourselves why it was necessary for us to do the work; wouldn’t hiring local workers be more cost effective? What did it mean in Svay Pak to have ten white faces there, day in day out, for something other than sex? I hope it meant something: we were seen to be giving; we were friendly; we were polite; we were asking for nothing from the village. Many of the kids, and some of the adults in the village, seemed genuinely touched by our presence. But…

The last day working was difficult. Some of the kids were especially rambunctious, even rude, and some new faces appeared, children we’d not seen before. Children were excited to have their pictures taken, but were wild, taking anything they could. Abouot two minutes before we left, one of the new children, a boy with a scratch on his chest that he bragged had been caused by a machete (this seems unlikely!), held out his hand and asked me for a dollar. So not everyone saw us as different, and though this was the only time it happened, it did sour things a bit.

In contrast, some kids showed real generosity. Paul, my wheelbarrow helper on the first day, had been given a hat by Richard as a memento, and then he offered it to me, almost immediately. Genuine generous reciprocity, even if it did miss the point of being given the hat. I encouraged Paul to keep the hat, so he could remember “Tom”.

But again, we only see the village during the day. We have no idea what goes on at night, and, the truth is, we are scared of it.

Today, Saturday, Richard and I went to visit an 11th-century temple two hours south of Phnom Penh (by Tuktuk!). It was beautiful – a wonderful reminder of the richness of the Khmer civilization that had flourished for centuries. As we drove along the roads, children waved. They waved from bicycles, from roadside storefronts, from the verandas of their shacks. But there was a politeness, a joy, a desire to try out an English “Hello”, and a look of surprise when we try responding in Khmer. Adults would also wave, as they sat in the shade in hammocks, with a child balanced on their bellies. This is what cultural contact should be like. It was truly happy, sincere, open, undemanding, fun. And it was completely unlike the encounters we have had for two weeks in Svay Pak.

Svay Pak in some ways looks like every other little Cambodian village. But it is also completely unlike every other little Cambodian village. This is a village where a gift of a soccer ball means one child runs home with his treasure, rather than it becoming a source of amusement for all the kids (I think four soccer balls were distributed, though none ever reappeared after it was initially put away. I had always thought a soccer ball like this could be a universal gift, for almost any age, anywhere in the world. Not in Svay Pak, where Yoda says (mimes) that the kids sell the balls for cigarettes.) So I ask myself, can Svay Pak change? Can the suspicion, and the hurt, and the brokenness, and the disfunction, and the corruption, and the perspectives of the West, and the disease, and the greed, and the exploitation, and the violence, and all that is wrong with this village change?

I have to believe it can. I have to believe that there is something redeemable in this village, though I admit my evidence is not strong. There have been two or three mothers with children who show affection. There are rare generous acts by the children. And, above all, there is the courage of the girls who had once been sex slaves in the brothels here, who have been rescued, and who choose to come back. Twice a week, to help the community from which they have been saved.

They see hope for this community. And because of them, so do I.