by Tara Winkler
Terry shook his head sympathetically. ‘Let’s try to find some way to help each other,’ he said.
I wasn’t sure how I could help New Dawn . . . but, boy, could I think of a way New Dawn could help me! ‘So, Terry, tell me . . .’ I said. ‘How did you guys get DGR status in Australia?’
‘Yeah, they make it difficult, don’t they?’ said Terry. ‘My involvement in the AIDS charity has been a big help. The AIDS charity acts as a conduit for New Dawn, accepting donations under their umbrella in Australia and issuing the tax receipts for us.’
Suddenly I spied a glimmer of hope. Maybe we could convince New Dawn and the AIDS charity to help process CCT’s donations too. Then we’d have a way of accepting donations from Australia again.
Sally called me a few days later. ‘I just had an email from Jake, the chairman of New Dawn’s board,’ she told me. ‘He’s coming back to Battambang and wants to meet you. He’s a member of the AIDS charity too, like Terry. This is our chance to see if we can partner with them!’
So one of CCT’s first-ever visitors was Jake, a flamboyant blond man who turned up in shorts and a tank top, exuding easygoing Aussie charm.
I showed him around and the kids peeked shyly at him from behind their homework. He was very generous with praise about how clean and tidy and organised the place was and how polite and happy the kids were.
After showing him around our facility, I invited Jake to sit down with me at the stone table in the open area downstairs. It was time to ask him for help.
But before I could open my mouth, he said: ‘Tara, I’m completely blown away by what I’ve seen here today. You and Jedtha are doing a fantastic job at managing this place. You’d think the kids had been here for years!’
I’m as vulnerable to flattery as the next person, so I broke into a smile.
‘Look what you’ve done here!’ he continued. ‘You’ve got all the parts working together like a well-oiled machine. I tell you, we need a good operations manager like you at New Dawn. So what do you say? Want the job? We’ll put you on a monthly salary—and you can bring your kids over to us too!’
My jaw dropped. I hadn’t been expecting this! But it was a fantastic idea, one that would solve all my problems.
Once I’d regained the ability to speak, I replied, ‘Wow, what an amazing offer! I’ve got to talk to Jedtha, Sally and the team first, but I think it sounds like a great plan.’
Over the next few days, I talked at length to Jedtha and Sally about the details—and logistics—of merging our two organisations.
Jedtha was a little wary about trusting another organisation, and the stories about the disgruntled monk really worried him. They worried me too. But we both felt that we had to grab this chance while we had it. We urgently needed a way to accept funds. We’d just have to work out a plan to manage the risks.
Sally and Jedtha and I decided that, first of all, we needed the AIDS charity to approve CCT as a partner. In time, provided we all worked well together, we’d merge the two centres into one. But we didn’t want to move CCT’s kids before we were certain it was going to work. The last thing the kids needed was more instability.
Jake understood this and promised to talk to the AIDS charity about accepting CCT as a partner for the interim. He told me that Terry was delighted with the plan because he was swamped by his fundraising role. Jake assured me I had the full support of Terry and the board in my upcoming role.
Although we were serious about merging with New Dawn and the AIDS charity, Sally and I decided we’d set the wheels in motion to register our own Australian charity too, just in case.
It would be a huge job, but Sally was on to it. We decided to call the new Australian foundation Green Kids Global (GKG), inspired by Sally’s vision for building a self-sustaining eco-village.
Jake, who was now back in Australia, asked me to write a proposal outlining my aims and objectives in bringing the two centres together, and my requirements for bringing New Dawn up to standard. So I started visiting New Dawn to scope out the project.
I was a bit surprised by what I found . . .
It was clear New Dawn was seriously understaffed. The few staff they did have mostly looked bored and uninterested. The minimum standards set by MoSVY stipulated that residential care centres should have at least one staff member per twenty kids. From what I saw, New Dawn didn’t come close to reaching that ratio.
Whenever I arrived I found large groups of toddlers and young kids playing unsupervised without an adult in sight. Sometimes it’d take me over half an hour to find a staff member on duty. And when I made visits two or three days apart, I’d notice that some of the kids were dressed in the same dirty clothes and smelt of urine.
Many of the kids were suffering from serious illnesses and disabilities like tuberculosis, HIV and cerebral palsy and it didn’t seem like they were being treated or managed properly—if at all.
The general level of hygiene at the centre was worrying, too. A putrid stench from the toilets filled the halls of the large dormitories and there were food scraps and rubbish everywhere.
Given the poor level of supervision, I couldn’t help feeling somewhat alarmed to see kids regularly playing and swimming in a creek that ran through the back of the property.
One day I had a little chat in Khmer with a boy who was sitting alone looking very glum. He looked like he was about ten years old.
‘Sok sabai?’ I asked him in Khmer. How are you?
‘Ot Sok sabai,’ he replied. Not good.
‘What’s up?’ I asked him gently.
‘I want to call my mum and dad. I miss them.’
‘Huh?’ That couldn’t be right. ‘Where are your mum and dad?’
‘They’re in Battambang, not so far from here,’ he told me, gesturing towards town.
‘Why are you living here if you still have a mum and dad?’ I asked, confused.
‘I don’t know,’ he said with a shrug.
Why was this kid was living in an orphanage when his mum and dad were still alive? I resolved to ask Jedtha to help me get to the bottom of it.
I added that conversation to the growing list of action items I was writing in my diary. Working for New Dawn was clearly going to be a hard slog, but I was champing at the bit to get started. I was sure I could bring good things to the organisation, and I couldn’t wait to put a long-term solution to CCT’s administrative woes into place.
After I finished the proposal and submitted it to the New Dawn board, I received some very warm emails from people on the board, saying things like: ‘This proposal is exactly what we need.’ Buoyed by this, I started checking my email more often than usual, hoping the official job offer would arrive soon. I was desperate to sign it and get started.
But then one of the board members (let’s call her Julie) wrote to ask if she could meet me before the job offer was made.
Uh-oh—this didn’t sound good. I knew Julie and Terry were good friends. I hoped Terry wasn’t feeling threatened by my appointment, despite what Jake, the New Dawn chairman, had told me. But over the past few weeks, Terry had never been anything but amiable, professional and welcoming. He’d even invited me and some other expats to his place to watch Australia’s best-loved horserace, the Melbourne Cup.
Still, some instinct told me that Julie’s request was cause for concern.
The morning after Julie arrived in Battambang, we went to a cafe to have lunch and a long chat.
Julie, a retired social worker, seemed to be a down-to-earth type. She put my mind at ease by stressing that she was absolutely supportive of my appointment as operations manager. However, she wanted my starting date to be postponed because New Dawn was dangerously low on funds. So low, in fact, that Terry had been forced to use his own funds to keep the orphanage going, and they didn’t even have enough to pay for next month’s operating costs.
‘Terry’s in a very tough spot,’ she said. ‘These kids have nowhere else to go. He’s doing all he can to keep the doors open
.’
Terry was supporting New Dawn himself? I was still reeling from this awful news when Julie continued: ‘It’s very important that you, Terry and Chum, New Dawn’s country director, can all work together as a team. Sometimes Jake can be a bit too hasty when making decisions with New Dawn. Things will be much smoother if you start in mid-January instead, when Terry will be in Battambang. That way, he can assist with your induction.’
Something about the intense way she said this made me ask: ‘Julie, I’m sorry, but is there some kind of conflict happening on the board?’ She admitted that yes, there was some friction on the board. Jake hadn’t consulted with the other board members at all before offering me the role when he first met me in Battambang. ‘We have a meeting scheduled for December at which all the issues of funding and new appointments will be discussed.’
It all sounded terribly messy and complicated. I agreed that my starting date should be postponed until after the board meeting. I was glad I’d been given a chance to digest all this information before I jumped in at the deep end.
That night I wrote to Jake, telling him that I was now aware of the friction on the board and that I was going to sit back and wait for the committee to make a unanimous decision about how and when we would proceed.
His reply came back the following morning:
Tara, please don’t worry about anything Julie said. She and Terry are best mates. But please don’t be put off by either of them—everyone else on the board wants you to start ASAP.
A few hours later, Jake sent me—and all the members of the New Dawn board—an email with my official job offer, and told me he’d informed Chum that Jedtha and I were to start work the following Monday. A few emails came in from other board members welcoming me to the team.
I wasn’t nearly as happy to see the offer as I would have been before I met Julie. Now it was just confusing.
Should I follow Julie’s advice and wait? Or follow Jake’s, and jump in? I really didn’t want this plan to fail. Eventually, after a chat with Sally, Jedtha and I decided that as Jake was the chairman of the board and Chum was now expecting us, the best thing to do was to follow his direction.
Jedtha and I arrived at New Dawn on Monday at nine on the dot. We said a quick ‘hi’ to some of the kids and made our way to the main office to meet the orphanage director, Chum.
Chum was slouched in his chair, drumming the long talon of his pinkie finger on the desk. He did not look one bit pleased to see us. When I saw him, his demeanour reminded me of Rath.
Jedtha and I bowed politely and sat down opposite him. But before we even had a chance to introduce ourselves properly, he launched into a full-blown rant in English.
‘New Dawn not need foreigner!’ he informed us. ‘We no need foreigner to work in Cambodia. All staff should only be Khmer. New Dawn not need to hire more people because I can do all myself. I have enough ability!’
I looked at Jedtha, wide-eyed. Jedtha looked horrified. We sat in silence for a minute with the shock from that outburst still hanging in the air.
‘Why you don’t want to work with foreigners, Chum?’ Jedtha asked in English.
‘Foreigner hire staff with no ability! Foreigner can’t understand how to do in Cambodia. If board in Australia want to stop Terry, that is good too. I can do all myself!’
I was shocked again (and secretly quite impressed) when Jedtha, in his calm and polite way, accused Chum of racism.
‘You don’t know Tara,’ he added. But he didn’t push it any further. Clearly, Chum was not going to make us welcome. So we wound up the conversation and left.
On the way home, Jedtha told me in Khmer: ‘I know Chum. He is the long-time assistant of Samlain, the monk who was the director of New Dawn. I knew Samlain when I was at the pagoda. He is Rath’s brother.’
I nearly fell off the back of Jedtha’s moto. All this time, I had been gearing up to work alongside the assistant of Rath’s brother!
I was to learn with time that ‘brother’ doesn’t always mean ‘biological sibling’ in Cambodia. But whether Jedtha meant ‘brother’ or ‘relative or close friend’ the meaning was the same—Rath, Chum and Samlain were tight. I wrote to Jake as soon as I could to tell him all about the meeting. I also told him that I was not prepared to work with Chum, putting CCT in the direct spotlight of further resentment from Chum, Samlain and Rath.
Jake wrote back. Then Terry wrote back. Then Julie wrote back, and the rest of the board weighed in, and the complications multiplied like wildfire. It seemed I’d walked into the middle of a small war.
I contacted Geraldine Cox, another Aussie who runs an NGO in Cambodia—Sunrise Children’s Villages—and asked for her advice. Geraldine was in a tearing hurry when I spoke to her, but she listened to my story and her advice was succinct: ‘Whatever you do, don’t merge with New Dawn. They’re a sinking ship and will take you down too.’
Jedtha, Sally and I agreed with Geraldine. We couldn’t afford to get involved with such a dysfunctional organisation.
The whole saga left us with a horrible legacy. By now, several thousand dollars in donations to CCT had gone to the AIDS charity in Australia. The plan was that the money would be transferred to New Dawn, and then on to us.
But very shortly afterwards, New Dawn’s relationship with the AIDS charity completely collapsed. It took us months to get our money back—at a time when we were in urgent need of funds.
I believe that everyone involved in New Dawn had good intentions. They just wanted to help the kids. But it was a valuable lesson for me: good intentions just aren’t good enough. Without knowledge and expertise and a deep insight into the culture it was too easy to inadvertently make bad choices and end up doing more harm than good.
It’s unfortunate that New Dawn’s problems continued into the future. Terry resigned soon after I stepped away. He still lives in Battambang and continues to be a great support to CCT and me.
New Dawn was investigated multiple times by DoSVY. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the wherewithal to take any meaningful action.
Several Australian volunteers came and went, dismayed and sometimes outraged by the hopelessness of the organisation.
A little later, some of the older kids protested publicly after they were turned out of the orphanage with nowhere else to go. It hit the national papers in Cambodia. CCT helped to arrange temporary shelter for them until they found somewhere permanent to stay.
While I continue to hope that New Dawn will adopt better practices, and worry about the wellbeing of the kids in their care, I’m extremely relieved our involvement with New Dawn ended when it did.
12
Thanks to a small but steady trickle of funds coming into our Cambodian bank account from new supporters, there was a period of time after the New Dawn saga when life settled into a pleasant routine. I started having dinner almost every evening with my adopted Cambodian family: Chan and Mina and their three kids.
One afternoon Ponlok, Bopha and I wandered down the dirt lane from their house to pick up a few groceries for dinner from a street stall. On the way, a little old lady with short white hair and a toothless mouth full of betel nut stopped us to try to sell us some sweet Cambodian rice cakes.
As always, I listened to the conversation with ears pricked, paying attention to the subtleties in tone and the way my Khmer friends’ mouths effortlessly wrapped around the complex phonemes. I could understand spoken Khmer quite well by now. It was great fun to listen to the conversations happening around me.
But my attention kept getting pulled to the palm tree beside us, where a wretched-looking dog was slumped in the shade.
God, she’s almost completely bald. I thought to myself. Is it mange? Or maybe it’s just old age? I’d be surprised if many dogs here reached old age though . . .
Usually, I found the dogs in Cambodia endearing. To my eyes, they were quirky little creatures of all kinds of funny shapes and sizes. But this one was beyond quirky . . . Besides being bald almost all over, her
other defining feature was a very conspicuous set of nipples.
She could have fed a Brahman bull calf with teats that big! She must’ve had a thousand litters, the poor thing.
And sure enough, a couple of metres away a litter of eight guinea pig-sized puppies were lying in the sun, emitting tiny squeaking cries for their mum.
I watched as eventually the mother dog heaved herself up to respond to their soft yelps. One by one, she picked them up and moved them to a safe spot under a stone chair in the shade. She carefully lowered herself down next to them to let them feed.
‘Yiyay,’ I said, using the Khmer word for ‘grandmother’, ‘can I look at the puppies?’
She showed me an expanse of red-black gums, and waved me over.
The old mama dog saw me coming, raised her head for a moment but then flopped back down in the dust, unfazed. The puppies’ eyes were still shut so I guessed they couldn’t have been more than a week old.
As a great fan of all things canine, I usually react to puppies of all breeds with cries of adoration. But now that I was up close, I was taken aback by how . . . well . . . ugly they were. They looked kind of like hyenas, with their mottled coats. Their dark brown muzzles were alive with fleas that wove under, over and between their eyes and nose.
In Cambodia, the idea of dog ownership is very different from the one I’d grown up with, because when people do it tough, animals tend to do it tougher. For most Khmer families, the dog lives a loveless life as a guard dog. Sometimes dogs even wind up on a spit, sold as a snack at roadside beer stalls.
Ponlok and Bopha and the old woman wandered over to see the white girl fussing over a pack of flea-bitten mutts. The old woman chuckled and then asked me if I wanted one.
It was a tempting offer—a part of me desperately wanted to rescue the poor little things. I’m going to be living in Cambodia for a fair while, I thought to myself. Maybe I could get a dog . . .