by Tara Winkler
I was nearly buried by kids, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Rath pull up on his moto. His face was swollen with fury.
My heart missed a beat. He looked much scarier than I remembered.
Until that moment, I’d never experienced such hatred towards another human being. I felt that small ball of heat form in the pit of my stomach. As the heat pulsed through my veins, my fear was replaced with a familiar rage. The rage that makes me brave and totally unstoppable . . .
I marched through the gates, past Rath and his relatives and Jedtha and the officials. I had to be sure that everyone who wanted to come understood that they could. A couple of stragglers, grasping swollen plastic bags full of their belongings, were on their way to the bus. They stopped quickly to give me a hug.
Then I saw what was causing the delay. The rest of the kids, Rath’s nieces and nephews, were sitting on the steps, and they were crying.
For a moment my rage melted into horrible sadness. I sat on the tiles beside Sopheap and Dara, who had tears running down their faces, and gave them a hug. They were very sweet girls, but there was just no way they could come with us. Of course, they didn’t understand that. All they knew was that their friends were going and they were being left behind.
‘Knyom somtoh,’ I whispered to the girls. I’m sorry.
Perhaps even sadder was the sight of Vibol—one of SKO’s brightest kids—who had first seen me at Jedtha’s house last week, and had come to the new house with us the night before. He was sitting tight, his expression resolute. He wasn’t going to leave.
I was completely blindsided. Why was he taking this stance? Was he scared of Rath? He couldn’t look at me, blinking away tears. I didn’t know it then, but there was a little romance going on between him and one of Rath’s nieces and he was too loyal to leave her. I touched him on the shoulder, so sorry to have to leave him there.
‘Tara!’ Jedtha called. ‘Dho! Let’s go!’ He strode off towards the bus.
I gave Dara a kiss on her forehead and told her: ‘I will help.’
I knew exactly what had to be done. I would do whatever it took to have SKO shut down.
Back on the bus, the doors creaked shut behind me and we started to make a very slow getaway. I stood in the aisle at the front, looking down the two rows of seats. Fourteen pairs of wide eyes stared back at me.
Jedtha was in the front seat to my left, sitting beside a little girl I hadn’t met before. The churning of the bus’s engine was deafening. No one said a word. No one moved a muscle. I held on to the rail numbly, not knowing what to do or think.
A moment later I locked eyes with Sinet, sitting dead centre in the back row. Tears sparkled in her eyes. And then the hint of a smile appeared at the corner of her mouth, and I realised—they were tears of deliverance, of relief, of hope.
We did it. We really did it! I thought to myself, smiling.
Sinet smiled back, causing the tears in her eyes to roll down her cheeks. She laughed a bit as she wiped her face. The other kids were all smiling now too, every one of them.
‘You want to go to your new home?’ I shouted in English.
‘Yes!’ they erupted.
I will never forget 17 August 2007, the day we rescued fourteen kids from SKO.
From the moment the kids poured off the bus into the quiet, shady yard, CCT felt like home. The kids’ ecstasy was contagious and everyone was smiling again.
My gaze drifted from the happy kids to our new team: Jedtha—now officially CCT’s director; Savenh, our social worker; Davi, our nurse; Mina’s sister Heng who was to be our new cook; and Noit, a very sweet girl in her twenties, who would be Heng’s assistant.
Savenh, Noit, Davi and I would work shifts to ensure there were always at least two carers on duty, and at least one other staff member present at CCT.
We put Jedtha’s cousin, Reaksmey, on a small assistant’s salary. He was to live upstairs, supervising the boys. When he was off duty, he would be busy with his university studies.
The party atmosphere on that first day continued into the night and evolved into a slumber party. We had no beds yet, just mattresses laid out on the floor of the biggest room in the house. So we laid out platefuls of the kids’ favourite fruits and for hours they ate, played games and told stories (which I did my best to follow).
I met three new kids: Tula, Mao and Chanlina. Chanlina was Maly and Amara’s sister, and Tula and Mao were their cousins. They had arrived at SKO while I was back in Sydney.
They were bright, sweet kids and had heard a lot about me and were just as comfortable around me as the others. I looked at their happy faces, wondering how on earth they’d ended up at SKO. Whatever the reason, I felt so glad they’d been brave enough to leave.
The next morning the kids woke early to the smell of hot bor bor porridge on the stove, and immediately bounced out of bed like all their Christmases had come at once. I, on the other hand, woke up in my little downstairs room in a cold sweat: reality had set in. I lay there listening to fourteen young voices, all talking and giggling at once. Fourteen kids. I was now responsible for fourteen kids.
I’d made some big promises to these kids, promises that were a lot easier to make than they would be to keep. Raising fourteen children to adulthood was going to cost a lot of money, even in Cambodia. How was I going to do it?
I’d never been responsible for anyone else before. I was just a city girl who had trouble keeping her room tidy. I still felt like a kid myself. And until now, any failures in my life had affected only me, and had resulted in a bruised ego at worst.
Now the stakes were incredibly high. I had fourteen lives in my hands. My life was not just about me anymore.
I rolled over on my mattress, booted up my laptop and opened the spreadsheet I was using to keep track of the money we had spent, how fast we were spending it, and how much we had left over from Joan’s donation.
We needed to cover the monthly fixed costs of food, rent, utilities, and staff salaries; we also needed to replace everything I had donated to SKO, because none of it had been recoverable in the rescue. This included all the medical supplies and medications, school uniforms, casual clothes, textbooks and school supplies, beds, bedding, cupboards, shelves, desks, kitchen equipment, cups, plates, cutlery . . . the list was terrifying. We even needed to reapply for the children’s birth certificates—the SKO staff had told the officers at DoSVY they’d misplaced them. Though it’s quite possible they never had them to start with.
I had to find more money quickly. I got dressed lightning fast and went outside to face the bor bor. My spirits lifted as soon as I saw the kids, all sitting cross-legged around a long bamboo mat at the side of the house, thoroughly enjoying their breakfast.
‘Tara!’ they roared.
I squeezed in beside them. Life can’t just be about work, after all. I allowed myself a few hours to enjoy their company and shower them with love.
But at midday, I prised myself away and asked Jedtha to give me a lift into town.
As soon as we pulled clear of the gates, Jedtha blurted: ‘Tara, Rath might try payback at us!’ His eyes, meeting mine briefly in the rear-view mirror, were clouded with worry.
I thought of Rath’s face the day before, and felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. ‘I hope not.’ What else could I say?
I set up my laptop in the corner of my favourite internet cafe and wrote down the whole story, right from the beginning. I finished by making it clear how badly we needed financial help—and not just financial help for today or tomorrow, but enough to keep us going until the kids were all grown up. Writing those words in black and white filled me with fear. I had taken on mission impossible.
One step at a time, I thought to myself. And then I sent the story to everyone I’d ever known.
10
Here’s what an average day looked like in 2007.
Wake up. (God, it’s hot.) Listen to the sounds of fourteen ravenous kids eating breakfast. Stagger groggily to the bathroom.
Close eyes and grit teeth while throwing buckets of cold water over head.
Call out Khmer phrases. Get ready for school! Brush your teeth!
Help the littler ones get ready for school. Plait the girls’ hair. Check all the kids in the morning class are in uniform. Look around for Sinet. Ask her to remind you how to say: ‘I’m sorry, but I must insist that you wear your shoes to school.’
Help Reaksmey to get the other kids to wash their clothes and do their chores. Remind Davi, the nurse, to give Sineit her medication. Wonder why you have to keep reminding a qualified nurse to do her job, but smile and be nice . . . be nice . . .
Notice that Jedtha is looking stressed out. Savenh is too. Cross your fingers and hope they’ve got things under control. Leave them to it.
Roam around the building tidying up, hoping you’ll find Makara and Amara’s shoes. Why is there rubbish everywhere? Damn. Where are Makara’s and Amara’s shoes? They’ve lost two pairs in the last fortnight. We’ll go broke just buying shoes! Why do the kids prefer to go barefoot? Worry about foot worms. Greet the morning-school kids coming home from their lessons. More of them have lost their shoes. Great.
Sit down with everyone for lunch. Damn. There’s so much meat. You just have rice and soy sauce, which you quite like anyway . . . Tell kids to change out of school uniforms; they need to be kept stain-free as we can’t afford new ones. Get afternoon-school kids out the door. Oh, let’s just forget about shoes today.
Cycle into town. Buy some supplies from your list. Curse the fact that family-sized bottles of shampoo are so heavy. Go to an internet cafe. Spend the afternoon sending emails begging for money. Friends and family are pulling out all stops to help, but it’s still stressful. Try to remember that you’re not asking for yourself; you’re not even being paid. Update the website. Cycle back to CCT with shopping bags dangling from bike handles, getting in the way of pedalling. Ouch. Bruised knees.
Everyone is home from school. Tell them to change out of their uniforms. Watch them play. Aw, they’re so cute! Okay, homework time. We seriously need to get some chairs and tables. They’re on the list. Can’t afford them now, though. The kids are asking for tutors. Add that to the list, too. What is this crap they’re learning? You can’t read their textbooks, but it seems to be all rote learning. You don’t have time to think too much about that.
Shower time. Fill up kids’ containers with shampoo. Far out, they go through a lot of shampoo. At least the hygiene lessons are working.
Have dinner. It’s nice eating with all the kids and staff. Damn, more meat. Oh! Heng has made fried morning glory. Yum!
Tell kids to brush their teeth. Get the little ones to bed. Let the big ones do some reading. Wish them goodnight. No, I promise there are no ghosts. Turn out the lights. Thank goodness they’re safe.
Go back to your own room. Brave another cold bucket of water over the head. Feel content but exhausted. Try not to think about money problems. Read a bit. God, it’s hot. Read a few more pages. Fall asleep.
Every afternoon for that first week I rode my bike to the internet cafe in town, hoping desperately for good news.
And thankfully, just a couple of weeks after the rescue, the good news came.
An email from the journalist Caroline Marcus appeared in my inbox titled: ‘Interview’. It said something like:
Hi Tara, I’m a journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald, and I heard from a friend of yours about the work you’re doing with CCT. I’d love to write an article about you and the kids! I think it’s an amazing story.
I could hardly believe my eyes. A journalist! And from a big Aussie newspaper! I promptly wrote back, ‘Yes, definitely!’ (or words to that effect), gave her my Cambodian number and pedalled home frantically to wait (nervously) for the phone to ring.
Caroline was lovely and I couldn’t believe how well the interview went. I’ve never been comfortable with public speaking or performing, but talking to Caroline was easy. I just told her everything I’d been writing over and over again in all those emails.
Sally was jubilant when I told her. ‘This is just the break we need!’ she said.
Caroline told me the story was going to be a double-page spread in the Sunday paper, so she’d need a few photos. I got Jedtha to help me take them. As usual, I hated all of them, but I gritted my teeth and sent them off anyway.
The response that rolled in that Sunday was even better than Sally and I had hoped. We were soon inundated with emails from people wanting to donate, to fundraise, to volunteer and to extend their good wishes.
We were both frantic, spending almost every waking hour trying to keep up with the influx of correspondence, saying ‘yes, please,’ and ‘not yet, but please stay in touch,’ and above all ‘thank you,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘thank you’ . . .
The donations that resulted from the article were enough to keep us going for several more months. Sally and I were blown away by the power of the press. Suddenly it felt like everything would be alright.
For our next fundraising effort, we launched a monthly donation program. After all, it was what all the big charities were doing to keep funds coming in and it would hopefully provide us with a sustainable flow of income. Securing cashflow—regular, reliable funds on which we could depend—was a really important step. We needed to be able to plan more than just a few weeks ahead.
People started to sign up as regular donors immediately. It was a fantastic start for our fledgling organisation.
Not long after the rescue, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I woke to a blood-curdling shriek.
I slipped out of bed to see who it was.
All the kids had bedding and designated bedrooms, but most of them felt safer sleeping together on the cool tiles of the downstairs common room, right outside my tiny ground-floor bedroom.
Getting up to check on the kids was becoming a nightly ritual of mine. There was always at least one other staff member on duty at night, but I wasn’t sleeping all that well and woke at the slightest peep. Most of the kids suffered nightmares or night terrors or some other legacy of a lifetime of trauma, hidden behind those happy smiles.
As I stepped into the common room I strained my eyes in the golden glow of the night-light. I could barely make out the silhouettes of the sleeping kids, who looked like they’d been flung randomly around the room and had fallen asleep on the tiles exactly as they’d landed: upside down, slumped up against a wall, or flopped over a piece of furniture.
A whimper drew my eye across the room. In the flickering light, I saw that it was Rithy, moving restlessly in his sleep. I tiptoed around the sleeping bodies to sit next to him. He was asleep, but crying. I stroked his hair for a few minutes until he settled into a more peaceful sleep.
And then, as was my habit at this time, I counted the sleeping bodies one by one. If you’ve ever looked after multiple kids you’ll understand that compulsion, I’m sure.
My eyes—and my heart—stopped when I spotted someone sitting alone, shoulders slumped but wide awake, in a dark corner of the room. It was Sinet.
Why was she awake? I grabbed my Khmer–English dictionary, crept around the other kids, and sat next to her.
‘What wrong, Sinet?’ I said softly in Khmer. ‘You can tell me.’
‘Tara,’ she breathed, wiping away tears.
And so began the first of many late night talks between Sinet and me.
We had to work together to converse, relying heavily on the dictionary. It took an incredible amount of concentration to follow what she was saying. But every evening, I managed to learn a little more of Sinet’s life story.
Sinet was born at home in a small, Khmer-style house on stilts.
The house was made of thatched palm leaf, but the thatching was old and riddled with holes, which were mostly patched up with old rags, plastic bags, scraps of cardboard and whatever else came to hand. Some of these holes were so big they were difficult to patch, so at night, as Sinet was falling asleep on the wooden floor, she could loo
k up and see the stars. And in the monsoon season, she slept in the rain.
During the rains, the swollen waterways would overflow into the low-lying land around her home, carrying with them sewage and rubbish from the surrounding area. A swamp of filth engulfed the long legs of her rickety old home, providing a haven for mosquito larvae, parasites and water snakes.
For the first six years of Sinet’s life, both her parents worked selling lanterns made out of empty condensed milk cans. On a good day they made about a dollar.
A dollar was not enough to feed all six kids, so the family were often forced to pick wild morning glory and hunt tiny pest fish in the rice fields nearby. Covered from head to toe in mud from the paddy, they’d catch the fish with their hands.
On rainy nights, Sinet went out into the fields to catch bullfrogs with her dad. Once caught, the bullfrog’s skin would release a noxious sticky fluid that stained their hands black. Sinet didn’t mind, though, because if they were successful she’d wake up the next morning to the mouth-watering smell of bullfrog frying over hot coals.
Most days, however, there was no breakfast. And what the kids got, they had to fight for.
Sinet’s family was the poorest in the village and most of their neighbours looked down on them and thought they were savages. Their mother was violent with the kids and had a gambling addiction, and she and Sinet’s father constantly fought with each other.
Sinet wet the bed often and, because she had no fresh clothes to change into, her ragged shorts smelt of urine. Her hair was never washed or brushed. She had lice and skin infections all over her head, which left bald patches in her hair. She was out in the sun a lot so her skin was very dark, which is seen as the height of ugliness in Khmer culture, and her skin was always covered in mosquito bites. Her baby teeth were stained brown and some had rotted almost to the gum line, and she was bullied by the village kids.