How (Not) to Start an Orphanage

by Tara Winkler

  They explained that getting SKO shut down would be a very complicated process, but they could help facilitate a transfer of the kids to another registered orphanage. But until we found another orphanage that was willing to accept the kids (and risk making an enemy of Rath), there was nothing we could do.

  I was badly disappointed by this response. After they left, I turned to Jedtha. ‘Wasn’t that the craziest thing you ever heard? Removing the victims instead of the perpetrator! How can they let a person like Rath look after children?’

  ‘Cambodia is different to your country,’ he said, his tone placating.

  I stared gloomily at the bowl of curry I’d barely touched. Cambodia seemed to be so hard to navigate. Leaving the kids in a dangerous situation until another NGO agreed to step in just didn’t make sense to me.

  As it happens, the Cambodian government did (and still does) have a sound policy in place on alternative care for children. It was developed with the support of UNICEF and adopted in 2006. But even today, the government still says it feels powerless to implement its policies at the local level. They don’t have sufficient resources or training to ensure even mediocre governance.

  Jedtha was unfazed by all the obstacles raised at our meeting with DoSVY.

  ‘We can start a new organisation,’ he said. ‘We can give the kids a safe home by ourselves. We not need other NGO!’

  I thought: Are you serious? Where were we going to find the money and staff and knowhow to set up an NGO? This is all so crazy!

  ‘Loak Khrew, we can’t do that,’ I objected. The past few months had given me a reality check about how hard fundraising is, let alone how much it costs to look after a group of kids in Cambodia. And that was in an existing organisation, with grounds and buildings and staff already in place . . . The prospect of setting up something on our own seemed ludicrous.

  Jedtha nodded and looked at the table glumly. I could see he’d been clinging to the hope that I could somehow put him and the kids into a new organisation. Now he was jobless, with family who were depending on him, and he would have to find a way to move on and accept the horrible injustice of it all.

  I excused myself to the bathroom to get some fresh air. A voice inside me was screaming: THIS IS NOT RIGHT!

  I have a very particular reaction to injustice. It begins with a small ball of heat in the pit of my stomach. Like an infection, it grows and the heat enters my chest and begins pulsing through my veins. While infected with this rage, I feel no fear; I feel calm and focused, strong and totally unstoppable. Symptoms can last for days . . .

  I have a tattoo across my torso that reads Fiat justitia ruat caelum, a Latin phrase meaning ‘May justice be done, though the sky may fall.’

  Standing outside the bathroom, staring up at the night sky, I realised there was no way I was going to be able to move on and go back to my life and forget about the suffering of those kids.

  I sat back down at the table opposite Jedtha.

  ‘We’re not going to give up!’ I told him. ‘I know you want to start a new orphanage but that would take a lot more money than we have. So as a first step, let’s just see if we can find another orphanage who would be willing to help us.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jedtha nodded. ‘We will try!’

  Jedtha picked me up on his moto the next morning, both of us determined to persevere until we found a solution. The kids’ school had some boarding options for poorer children, so we headed back there to discuss this with them. On the way, Jedtha warned me that proposing that the school take the kids would be a big ask.

  And sure enough, he was right. The head of the school didn’t even entertain the notion for a moment before apologetically explaining that they were at capacity and wishing us the best. We met with two other orphanage directors in Battambang and the response was the same—it was all too hard, too risky and they didn’t have the funds to take on so many children at once.

  It was disappointing but also understandable. If Rath had acted as badly as people were saying, then getting involved would pose too big a risk to their organisation and the kids they already had in their care.

  ‘What now?’ I asked, hoping Jedtha had started thinking about a plan B.

  ‘Let’s find a powerful friend to help us,’ he suggested.

  He dropped me off at an internet cafe and told me he would go and meet some friends who he thought might be able to help. I sent a long email to Sally Power, letting her know what was happening. Half an hour later Jedtha burst into my booth at the internet cafe. ‘We have a meeting with the assistant governor of Battambang! Quick, we have to go now!’

  We met the assistant governor at his office in the Battambang Provincial Hall. He was a lovely man and very sympathetic to our plight. He told us he had no power to close SKO or to make another NGO accept the kids, but he could help us with the application to set up a new local NGO. He said he thought this would be the fastest way to help the children, because he could help speed up the application process.

  ‘See, Tara?’ Jedtha said after the meeting. ‘I told you before, it is the best way.’ His face was alight with hope.

  By now, I didn’t really need much more convincing. It seemed that the assistant governor was offering us the only way forward and I couldn’t shake that sense of urgency to get the kids away from Rath.

  ‘I only have twenty-five thousand dollars from my grandmother. How far will that get us?’ I asked Jedtha. In that moment, I took my first step down the path marked ‘no return’.

  ‘Twenty-five thousand is enough. We can start a new NGO and support the kids for a few months. And we will find more donor to support us, the same like I do for SKO.’ He was so sure, so totally convinced that we could succeed that his certainty was infectious.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it!’

  STEP 2

  Start an orphanage. Find out that’s a bad idea

  9

  Jedtha was now a man on a mission. He arranged for us to meet with the assistant governor again the following morning. We came away with a long list of things to do.

  Having a registered orphanage meant we had to apply for registration as a local NGO with the Ministry of Interior in Phnom Penh and sign an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Cambodian Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, known as MoSVY (pronounced ‘moh-sa-vee’), the governing body that oversees DoSVY. This involved an unbelievable mountain of paperwork.

  We had a big job ahead of us. As well as drafting the registration application and all the supporting documentation, we had to find an appropriate and affordable new house for the kids, fit it out with everything necessary to turn it into a home, hire new staff, open a bank account and so much more.

  And I was going to have to let my family know that I probably wasn’t coming home for a while . . .

  I emailed Peter, Sue and Noni and told them our plans. Their reply was fairly supportive—they all said Jedtha and I had made a good and brave decision, but Peter and Sue pointed out, as kindly as they could, that they couldn’t afford to financially support me or the kids. They told me later that they were worried that if they did, they could end up being CCT’s sole supporters, which wasn’t an unreasonable fear at the time. They said they would do what they could to help, but I would need to find a way to raise enough funds to support the kids.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what else was being said around the dinner table that night. I can only imagine how they must have really felt about it all.

  One of the first things we had to do was find a home for our new orphanage. There were no real estate agents in Battambang, so the only way to find a house to rent was to jump on the moto and trawl the streets in search of ‘for rent’ signs, all written in Khmer, of course.

  After what felt like days, we found the perfect place. It was a typical Cambodian house with a wooden upstairs, a tiled brick downstairs and cute blue window shutters. It had a room on the upper floor for the boys, a room on the lower floor for the
girls, a big yard for the kids to play in and a public school just around the corner. It was clean and tidy with lots of natural light and cost only US$80 a month. We put down a deposit and signed the contract immediately.

  When we told Savenh, Reaksmey and Davi about our plans, they were over the moon. They immediately offered their support and allegiance, even offering to work for free to help us fill out all the paperwork needed to register CCT as a Cambodian NGO.

  It was a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by such a great team of enthusiastic people all working towards a common goal. In Khmer they call it Sammaki—solidarity.

  A day or two later, we met with the two men from DoSVY at their office. The assistant governor also joined us. They seemed pleased to hear that plans were in motion to register our own NGO. At the suggestion of the assistant governor, the men from DoSVY agreed to help us by expediting the rescue process. Even though the signed registration papers and MOU wouldn’t come through for another few weeks, as long as they had proof they had been submitted and accepted by the Ministry of Interior and MoSVY, they would facilitate an offer to the children to leave SKO if they wanted to.

  In hindsight, this plan was probably pretty dodgy. But as far as we knew, we were following the advice of the local authorities. In Cambodia, it’s often hard to know if you’re going by the book, or by the dodgy book.

  Two days later Jedtha, Savenh, Reaksmey, Davi and I were sitting around the table at Jedtha’s house, tearing through all the paperwork.

  I got stuck on the part of the application that required us to submit our ‘vision’ and ‘mission’. I put down my pen and pondered. A mission, yeah, we were on a mission all right—to rescue the kids! But a vision, that was another story . . . I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet! All this NGO lingo was doing my head in.

  Suddenly I heard someone call my name from outside. ‘Tara?’

  I looked up. Vibol, one of SKO’s older boys, was standing at the gate.

  The sight of him paralysed me for a moment. The kids weren’t supposed to know I was back. He hung there, a ghost of his former self, so gaunt and frail I barely recognised him. His clothes hung off his skeletal frame.

  He looked at me, wide-eyed. ‘Tara?’ he called again softly.

  And then I was at the gate, hugging him. His rib bones jutted from his back. He managed to muster a faint smile.

  ‘Sok sabai te?’ I asked. ‘How are you?’ Before he had a chance to answer, a shady-looking guy called him back to his moto. He was watching Vibol intently. Vibol pressed a piece of paper into my hand before they drove off down the road.

  I took the message back to Jedtha. It was from Rath—just something about Jedtha’s severance. The four of us sat looking at each other with forlorn expressions. So Rath would now definitely know I was back in Battambang. The others started speculating on what Rath was going to do next in intense, dramatic tones.

  I broke down in tears. Vibol is so frail! How could anyone let this happen? I can’t believe this is really happening. It’s so surreal . . .

  I tried to dry my tears and get back to work but I couldn’t concentrate. I looked at Jedtha with pleading eyes. ‘I need to see the kids,’ I said.

  His expression softened as he looked at me. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘Rath, he will know you’re back now anyway. So we can go now.’

  We jumped on his moto, just as thick sheets of rain started falling. SKO was only a short trip from Jedtha’s place, but we were drenched by the time we pulled up at the orphanage gates.

  ‘Tara mow veng hai!’ I heard young Khmer voices calling out from inside their dorms. Tara’s come back!

  Kanya and Maly, two of the pre-teen girls, ran to me. We hugged in the rain for a minute, all of us sodden to the bone. They didn’t have an ounce of fat on them and looked just as frail and unwell as Vibol.

  Then Rath’s relatives, the new SKO staff, came out. They said nothing, but they were looking daggers at us. The girls pulled back and took a step away from me, eyes darting towards the new staff nervously.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ I told the kids. ‘Don’t worry.’

  We left, without speaking a single word to Rath’s relatives.

  We had several more meetings with the assistant governor and the men from DoSVY to discuss the logistics of rescuing the kids. These men moved mountains for us. On 16 August 2007, we had our last meeting to sign off on the final plan.

  We would hire a bus and meet the DoSVY officers out the front of the new CCT house at eight o’clock the next morning. The officers would escort us in the bus to SKO. They would then present a list of names to whichever staff member was on duty. Unfortunately, we could only offer the opportunity to fifteen of the twenty-four children. Rath and his family had legal custody of the rest. The fifteen kids would then be informed that, if they wanted to leave SKO and come with us to CCT, it was now or never . . .

  My biggest fear was that the fifteen kids would be too intimidated to speak up and say they wanted to leave. So when Jedtha and I happened to see Sineit, Vibol and Veasna hanging around the Psar Nat market later that night, I practically bounced off the back of the bike. I had to talk to them.

  Jedtha was shocked to see them out on their own so late and tried to tell them to go back to SKO. But Sineit just fell into my arms, sobbing.

  I stroked her hair, just about ready to break down and cry myself.

  ‘What happening?’ I pleaded in my clunky Khmer, looking at Veasna and Vibol. ‘What’s happening at SKO?’

  But the boys just shook their heads and looked at their bare feet.

  Jedtha told them gently that we had a new onga (NGO) for them to live in, if they wanted to leave SKO.

  Hearing this, the kids just shrugged and murmured in Khmer: ‘I dunno . . .’ They looked upset and scared.

  Jedtha spoke to them very gently in soft, reassuring tones. In moments like these, he goes into ‘social worker/counsellor mode’ and it’s a remarkable thing to see. I have always been impressed by how good he is with kids.

  I found out later that Rath had caught wind of the plan (of course) and had sat all the kids down and said: ‘Put your hand up if you’re planning to go with Jedtha and the barang?’ (Barang literally translates to ‘French’ but in this context just means foreigner.)

  In an act of defiance, Sinet put up her hand. At this, a sea of hands shot up.

  This enraged Rath. He threatened them with terrifying repercussions if anyone tried to leave SKO. And he played on the kids’ insecurities, telling them I planned to traffic them.

  But Jedtha managed to reassure them a little. We didn’t want to try to persuade or convince them to leave SKO—that was ultimately their choice—but we wanted them to know that if they did decide to leave, they would be safe and everything would be okay.

  ‘Want to come see new onga?’ I asked the kids. Some instinct told me this might help.

  They agreed and followed us on their bicycles to the new house. It was just a few blocks from the markets.

  In the light of the moto’s headlamp, the three kids looked into the pleasant yard, filled with palms and coconut trees. They could see the quaint little house, with its blue window shutters and red-tiled roof.

  They smiled faintly, but they were still not saying much.

  Eventually, we said goodbye. Jedtha insisted we escort them on the moto. ‘It’s so bad SKO allow them out so late. It’s too dangerous,’ he said.

  In that moment, I felt much more certain of the trust I’d put in Jedtha and the decision we’d made together. He genuinely did care about those kids.

  ‘Jedtha, do you think they will come with us tomorrow?’ I asked.

  ‘I think they want to, but they really scared,’ he told me. ‘I not sure they will come or not.’

  That night I lay awake. This must be exactly how Alice felt as she tumbled down, down, down the rabbit hole into a strange and unknown world.

  The next morning Jedtha and I stood outside the wrought-iron gates of the new CCT house,
waiting for the government officials who had promised to escort us to SKO. I kept looking back at the house, wondering if it really would become home to fifteen kids.

  Soon I would know. My heart thudded in my chest.

  A cream-coloured twenty-seater bus pulled up. I climbed aboard. Jedtha waited at the bus doors and made a call to see how far away the convoy of officials were. He hung up the phone, jumped on the bus and sat opposite me.

  ‘Mow hai,’ he told me. Coming now. It was the first time he’d ever communicated with me solely in Khmer. He was probably nervous, too.

  Soon enough, the police truck appeared. The bus driver started the engine, and we were lumbering down the narrow bumpy roads that led to SKO. We certainly weren’t going to be able to make a quick getaway. I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure the officials were still behind us.

  After an incredibly tense fifteen-minute journey, we pulled up at the SKO gates. Jedtha and the officials weren’t mucking around. They jumped out immediately and strode into the orphanage compound. I stayed on the bus, biting my nails and watching through the window as they spoke to a staff member, one of Rath’s relatives. Documents were produced along with some fairly assertive body language.

  I stood up and moved down to the open door of the bus where I had a better view of the action. The staff member was now on the phone. Rath’s sister, the cook, appeared in the yard, her normally impassive eyes now darting around the compound.

  One of the officials headed off towards the kid’s dorms with the list in his hand. He stood at the doorway and called out each of the fifteen names.

  A bunch of kids burst out through the door, clutching a few belongings to their chests. Rath’s relatives stepped aside, powerless, as the kids bolted past.

  Makara and Nimol, the littlest boys, reached the bus first and flung their skinny arms around me. Their pre-teenage cousin Rithy called, ‘Tara!’ and, without pausing, crashed up the bus stairs like he was running from a stampede.