How (Not) to Start an Orphanage

by Tara Winkler

  When Chan and I arrived at the orphanage gates, SKO looked just as quiet, just as bleak, as it had looked the first time. I suddenly felt a bit nervous.

  Chan beeped the tuktuk’s horn a couple of times and a tall, serious-looking man came to the gate. He wore clean beige trousers and a white shirt. Wordlessly, he touched his palms together and greeted me with a very formal sampeah. When his hands fell away from his face, his smile was kind, but his eyes seemed to brim over with sorrow.

  ‘Hello, I am Pon Jedtha, director of SKO orphanage,’ he said in very precise tones.

  ‘Hello.’ I hopped out of the tuktuk and shook his hand. ‘I’m Tara—I emailed you . . .’

  ‘Yes, I remember. You will volunteer here and also teach English. We are so happy to have you. Please come in, we can talk more.’

  Jedtha opened the gate wide to allow the tuktuk to enter. The grounds and buildings were even more desolate than I remembered—but there was an extra building now, and a set of shiny playground equipment.

  ‘Oh—a new building,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jedtha. ‘A German organisation help us build it for the children to sleep in.’

  We followed him on foot into an old wooden shed. It was dark inside, except for a few shafts of sunlight that speared in through the ridged edges of the corrugated-iron roof. Chan and I pulled up a pair of feeble cane chairs while Jedtha went to get us some drinking water.

  The room seemed to serve as an office, but there were no shelves or drawers or office supplies. The walls were bare except for a large flowchart displaying the hierarchical structure of the organisation, labelled in Khmer.

  There was a photo of a man with a very round face at the top, and then below that, on the second level, there was a photo of Jedtha. And below that, I recognised Reaksmey from my first visit to SKO. He was on the same level as two women I hadn’t met yet.

  I was puzzled to notice Jedtha was only on the second level—wasn’t he the director?

  Jedtha came back in and handed us each a bottle of water. It was lukewarm.

  ‘We have no ice today,’ he explained. He switched on a rusty ceiling fan and said something to Chan in Khmer. Chan nodded abruptly and said nothing, which meant the three of us lapsed into a long silence.

  I sat stock-still, not knowing what to do next. I’ve since found that Cambodians are comfortable sitting together in silence in a way that westerners rarely are. The fan’s metronomic whoosh filled the room. Bright flecks of dust drifted around in the shafts of sunlight. I thought: Oh dear—I was hoping this was going to be easier. Just to break the silence, I pointed at the chart on the wall.

  ‘Jedtha, you are the director of SKO, right?’ I said. ‘So who is the man at the top here?’

  ‘Oh—that is Rath,’ Jedtha explained. ‘Before he is director, but he can’t speak English so he have problem to find the funding. Then he ask me to be director. You will meet him later. He’s coming with the children.’

  ‘How many children?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘Are they learning English at school?’

  Jedtha looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘not very much English. They only learning French at school.’

  I’d forgotten for a moment that Cambodia still had close ties to France. ‘So, they speak French?’

  Jedtha grimaced and confessed: ‘Also, they not learn very much French.’

  I couldn’t help laughing at this and was happy to see a tentative smile appear on Jedtha’s face.

  ‘Would the children like to learn English?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course!’ Jedtha replied enthusiastically.

  ‘Okay, when would you like me to start teaching English? And where? Do you have a place in mind?’

  I couldn’t help suspecting that there was no set plan in place for me at all.

  ‘Up to you,’ said Jedtha. ‘Maybe today.’ He gestured out the door towards a small open hut across the compound. ‘You can teach them there.’

  The hut was basically just a corrugated-iron roof held up with rough-hewn wooden poles. It had some rickety wooden school desks facing a wall where a whiteboard was nailed.

  ‘Do you have any English books that volunteers have used before?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm, no,’ Jedtha said. ‘We have volunteers come to play with the children only for one or two day usually.’

  ‘Do you have pens and paper?’

  Jedtha shrugged helplessly. ‘No—not enough money.’

  Okay, so that was where I could start, I guessed. ‘Shall I go get some?’ I asked him. ‘And is there anything else you urgently need?’

  Jedtha replied: ‘Up to you. Whatever you feel you help, you help.’

  I was a bit confused by his response. But English lessons seemed to be a good place to start. I was trained now, after all.

  Clearly, it was time to spend a few of those precious Aussie dollars that Caz, Maxine and I had raised.

  Chan headed off for the day to find some work in his tuktuk, and Jedtha and I headed into town on the back of his moto. On the way, I remembered that horrible moment when the young girl with the thick braid had offered me a drink of dirty water out of SKO’s big, concrete urn.

  ‘Jedtha, do the kids have clean water to drink?’ I asked.

  ‘No. If we can buy some water filters too, it would be so good,’ he said, sounding pleased and surprised.

  I expected to find downtown Battambang familiar, but within minutes I was totally disoriented. We made a few stops, and I couldn’t help being amused by the strange way things seemed to be done in Cambodia. The bookstore is also the place you buy your exercise equipment. It’s apparently totally normal for water filters to be sold at the light shop, and the place you buy a hammer is not the place you buy the nails.

  Go figure! But this was life now, ‘down the rabbit hole’.

  We bought exercise books, pencils, pens and the only Khmer English-teaching textbook I could get my hands on (which unfortunately seemed to have been written by someone who learned English from a parrot). We also bought four large water filters that Jedtha assured me were the best.

  Our first shopping mission was a success, and by now I was really looking forward to seeing the kids.

  When we got back from the markets they were home. The youngest kids, all boys, came running up to the moto. They were still ragged and unkempt-looking, but they’d heard a foreigner had come to volunteer, so they were bouncing around with excitement.

  I ran and grabbed the suitcase I’d brought with me that morning, full of stuffed toys I’d brought with me from Australia—mostly my own careworn childhood toys.

  As a little kid I was obsessed with stuffed toys. I loved them, tucked them in at night, and fretted that they couldn’t breathe if they were packed into a toy box. So, for me, it was a real Toy Story III moment to see them being loved again by a new generation of kids.

  The first to be claimed was one of my childhood favourites, a big, lifelike, velociraptor that went to a bright-eyed little boy who seemed about to explode with happiness. The littlest of the boys reached up to pull out another of my favourites—an oversized, bottle-green crocodile. His smile was just as wide as the crocodile’s. To my relief there were enough for everyone. Even the older teenage girls exclaimed and giggled over their new toys.

  Kids are so easily impressed, I thought wryly, as they beamed up at me like I was the world’s best person ever.

  If I wanted to start our first lesson on a positive note, there couldn’t be a more perfect moment.

  ‘Can I do a lesson now?’ I asked Jedtha hopefully.

  ‘Yes! Yes! Please, you do!’ he said, with a wide grin on his face. It’s a lovely thing, the contagiousness of joy.

  I heaved the big bag of books and pens I’d bought over my shoulder. The littlest boy, who had an adorable little raspy voice and a cheeky grin, grabbed hold of my free hand as I walked towards the makeshift outdoor classroom. All twenty-four kids huddled around, giggling
and whispering, while I laid out piles of books on the rickety wooden desks.

  Jedtha appeared at the back of the classroom, flanked by Reaksmey, a tall Khmer woman and another Khmer man. I left the kids peering into the bag while I stepped over to greet them.

  ‘Hello, Reaksmey! I’m Tara. Do you remember me?’ I said carefully, not able to recall how much English he spoke.

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ he replied. ‘I am so happy you come to help us.’ Reaksmey was taller and thinner than I remembered. His pronounced jawline was accentuated by how gaunt he looked. Was he ill?

  ‘I’m very happy to help,’ I told him as warmly as I could. ‘Your English is very good. Where did you learn?’

  He grinned bashfully. ‘I learn at the pagoda,’ he said.

  ‘Reaksmey was a monk, same like me,’ said Jedtha. ‘He is my cousin. He help so much with the kids but we not have money to pay him so he sleep and eat here for free. And this is Savenh.’ Jedtha pointed to the tall, statuesque woman on his left. ‘She is SKO social worker, and this is Rath, SKO accountant.’ He gestured to the man standing to his right.

  Savenh, the social worker, had a stern look on her face, but she smiled and gave me the traditional Khmer greeting, which I hoped was a good sign. Rath followed suit. He was shorter than Jedtha, Reaksmey and Savenh, with a stocky frame and a round, impassive face. I recognised him from the organisational structure on the wall in the shed. He was the man at the top of the chart—the previous director.

  The kids were becoming increasingly impatient to see what was going to happen with all these books. It was show time. I stepped up to the whiteboard, thinking: Crap. Wish I’d had a chance to properly prepare a lesson. I guess I’ll just wing this first one.

  To my delight, the kids were enthusiastic students. The forty-five-minute lesson flew by and the kids went away repeating the phrases I’d taught them. I was amazed by their motivation to learn—and I was relieved to think that I would finally be able to start doing some good here.

  5

  My next task was to find somewhere to live. It would have to be large enough for me and several others, as I had checked my email at an internet cafe in town and discovered, to my delight, that some of my old school friends were flying over to help out. They were coming quite soon, and would need somewhere to stay.

  Chan and I went to look at the house Jedtha had picked out for me. It looked big on the outside, but when we stepped inside we realised it was beyond big—it was massive and completely unfurnished.

  Chan’s boisterous voice echoed off the polished tiles. ‘This no good, P’oun srey! I get you something better. You tell “the Venerable Pon Jedtha” this too big. And too expense.’

  I looked at Chan in surprise. There was something quite scornful in his tone whenever he talked about Jedtha that was at odds with his usual friendly persona.

  But he wasn’t wrong about the house. A day later, he drove me to a much smaller house in his own neighbourhood—a cute little pink villa. It was clean, fully furnished and reasonably priced. I agreed to take it on the spot.

  Chan was over the moon. ‘You see! I get you much better house!’ he crowed. He’d get a small commission for securing a tenant; I knew—and completely understood—that this was part of the reason he was so pleased. He added: ‘And Mina can come and cook for you and your friends and help you with the washing!’

  ‘Oh no, Chan,’ I said. ‘I can’t ask you and Mina to do that.’

  ‘You are my family!’ he protested.

  I hesitated. I only had a little money to live on. But, on the other hand, Chan and Mina really needed some extra income. And I can’t cook to save myself . . .

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ I agreed. ‘But I’ll pay Mina—my friends and I will share the cost.’

  We were both quite pleased with the new arrangement. Having his family around would also make the house feel more like a home.

  After I moved into the little pink villa I was free to concentrate on my work with SKO. I had started teaching two lessons a day. Cambodian primary school kids go to school either in the morning or afternoon, so I had one lesson in the morning with the afternoon-schooled kids, and one in the afternoon with the morning-schooled kids.

  I remembered the Khmer words I’d learned at the museum and was picking up more every day—mostly from listening to the kids.

  Spending time in the company of most Cambodian people is so effortless. Their sense of humour is second to none. They’ll laugh at everything and anything and their joie de vivre is infectious. I was particularly enjoying getting to know the kids.

  There were several teenage girls at the orphanage. Sinet, the girl who had offered me water when I first visited SKO, was easily the most confident and capable of the lot. In keeping with the Khmer custom of giving siblings quite similar-sounding names, her older sister was named Sineit. Sineit was very sweet and motherly but also a very quiet little soul, which I partly put down to the fact she was HIV-positive and not always very well. There was sophisticated Kolab and her sister, gentle, innocent little Kanya. And Kanya’s best friend Maly, who was fiercely intelligent. Many of the younger kids, who seemed to dominate SKO, were their siblings.

  The girls all mothered the younger kids to some extent, but Sinet was definitely the unofficial ‘boss’. She helped and supported me from the start. If I was struggling to get something across, she almost always picked up on it first and helped communicate it to the others. It was clear from the outset that she was quite exceptional.

  By now, I was enamoured with life in Battambang. I bought a secondhand retro bicycle from a shop in town and rode it to SKO early each morning, past soft green rice fields. I loved how the locals, young and old, would wave and shout ‘Hello!’ with incredible enthusiasm as I passed by. I got a thrill out of listening to the meditative chanting and the traditional pinpeat orchestral music wafting from the monastery down the road. I often found myself lost in these moments. I couldn’t remember feeling this content since my days of being on the back of a horse, galloping through the Australian bush.

  I was also starting to get the hang of the English teaching thing. I enjoyed the whole process of drawing up lesson plans and preparing my classes on big sheets of butcher paper, knowing that the kids would eat it up like it was the most fantastic, most interesting thing they’d ever encountered.

  When word got out about my lessons, other kids from the local neighbourhood and nearby villages started appearing at the gates, begging to join in. Jedtha told me they came from a slum community just down the road from SKO. I opened the door to all of them. Why not? I ended up teaching three classes a day, then four—until I was teaching up to eighty kids a day. The days were tiring but so rewarding.

  The kids had such a natural appetite for learning. With kids like this, I thought to myself, Cambodia’s future must be bright! The words of Nelson Mandela kept running through my head: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ In my own little way I thought I was changing the world. Insert face palm here—but it felt good and, at the time, there was really no way of me knowing otherwise. I had a lot to learn about the potential harm that can come from volunteering with vulnerable children.

  Some of the kids from outside the orphanage seemed even worse off than the kids at SKO—dirty and skinny, like they’d come in from the wild. I often wondered about their circumstances. A couple of times, I doubled one or two of them home on the back of my bicycle after the lessons were finished. It gave me brief insight into their home lives.

  The huts in the slums were like cubbyhouses, cobbled together from corrugated iron, barbed wire, tarpaulins and plastic bags. The kids I’d been teaching lived in these ‘cubbyhouses’, often in large family groups with many younger siblings. Piles of rubbish littered the pathways between the huts, spilling over into the waterways. Many of the slums’ inhabitants looked sick, which was hardly surprising. The kids were filthy and all of them were lice-ridden.

  It was awful to s
ee it. Try as I might, I just couldn’t imagine waking up every day with that as my reality. No one should have to live like that. How do they find the strength to keep on going? I wondered. I felt ashamed of all the complaining about ‘first world problems’ that I’d done in my life. It’s amazing how things are put into perspective when you see that sort of hardship. I wished that there was something more I could do for the kids from the slums.

  But at least these kids still had family, I supposed. The kids at SKO were all alone in the world, and that broke my heart in a different way. The way they latched on to me so adoringly—it was nice at first, but they had only just met me. The more I thought about it, the more their implicit trust and indiscriminate affection concerned me.

  Even as I settled into life in Battambang, I couldn’t ignore the voice in the back of my head reminding me of the important lesson I’d learned last time: that this wasn’t to be an exercise in self-gratification. I needed to make sure those funds we’d raised were spent in a way that had a real, sustainable impact. I had to make sure time didn’t slip by without achieving that aim.

  But I was still concerned about just handing over our funds to SKO’s staff. I couldn’t understand why a new dormitory was built and playground equipment installed when there were no water filters, not enough food, and the kids were still dressed in rags. Was it because the German donors insisted on putting the money into buildings and nothing else, or was it some sort of mismanagement of funds? I wasn’t sure. I made tactful attempts to ask Jedtha, but he wasn’t in charge of the money; Rath was. Jedtha said he’d ask Rath for the last annual report to show me, but it never surfaced.

  Rath was always very quiet and aloof with me. As hard as I tried to connect with him, he would hardly even make eye contact. I didn’t know what to make of him. I had met quite a few Khmer adults by this time who seemed a bit disengaged and broken by life. Maybe that was the legacy of growing up under the Khmer Rouge.

  So I just focused on working with Jedtha, who seemed to genuinely care about the kids. I pushed him for direction on the things that SKO needed. At first he seemed to feel quite powerless, just saying things like, ‘I’m not sure, do you have any ideas?’