by Tara Winkler
One unseasonably hot afternoon, I had this reality brought home to me more strongly than ever.
I was working on the cool tiles in my room when an unholy racket, like feuding tigers, blasted in at me from the play area outside.
I stumbled out to find seven-year-old Nimol clutching his forehead, crying bitterly. Sinet, Kanya and Maly cuddled him, trying to calm him down. Meanwhile, someone was emitting primal screams from the back of the building. Savenh, her face grim, was striding across the yard towards the noise. I rushed over to join her, my eyes full of questions. We both pulled up short in shock at what we saw.
Little Makara, the baby of the CCT kids, was holding on to the fence. He lapsed into silence as we approached.
‘Makara!’ I called out reflexively. Makara had a special place in my heart. He was melt-your-heart cute, with a big cheeky smile and a gravelly little voice, a bit like the Cookie Monster. He was very easy to love and he adored me, too. But when he turned his head to look at me, my heart froze. His eyes were completely wrong; they were black pools of hate. He screamed in a voice like a chainsaw: ‘Go away!’
Savenh gently pulled me away. ‘Let him calm down,’ she advised.
We went to check on Nimol and ask the other kids what had happened. The news was troubling. Nimol and Makara, who were brothers, had been playing together when something set Makara off. The smaller boy had picked up a rock and smacked Nimol across the side of his head.
Within an hour, Makara had calmed down and was playing with the other kids again like nothing had happened. Jedtha, Savenh and I sat together watching them and talking things over.
‘Makara has a very bad temper,’ Savenh said. ‘He hits the other kids all the time. He’ll be fine and then suddenly he just snaps. Nothing seems to bring him out of it except time—just leave it and he gets over it.’
Jedtha and I nodded—we’d seen it too. Makara’s temper was a problem, and it wasn’t his only problem. He was kind of hyper a lot of the time. At school, he couldn’t concentrate. He’d just run out of the classroom and play outside.
Sometimes he’d be fine for several days but inevitably something would set him off and BOOM. A lot of the time it wasn’t even clear what the trigger was.
Jedtha’s eyes were deeply troubled—he had a soft spot for Makara, too. ‘I think maybe we should send him to another organisation. He’s a risk to the other children. Maybe it’s best if he goes somewhere else.’
‘I can’t see how that would help him,’ I said. ‘And we can’t separate him from his brother. But we definitely need to do something.’
There were no services in Battambang providing mental health support for children, but an NGO that provided psychological health services to adults gave us a lead to an organisation in Phnom Penh that might help.
Makara’s mental and emotional health was important enough to warrant a trip to Phnom Penh. We decided I should be the one to take him.
Navigating around the edgy, bustling streets of Phnom Penh as a foreigner can be challenging. Navigating with a five-year-old boy who was all smiles and sunshine one moment and a cartoon Tasmanian devil the next . . . that was an education.
Getting Makara from one place to another was a complete nightmare—he had his own ideas about what he wanted to do. I was terrified he was going to run off and get lost. At one point he had a temper tantrum and I ended up towing him grimly down the street, with him hitting my hand the whole way.
Another time we disagreed over where we were going, and he tried to fling himself out of the tuktuk we were travelling in. ‘Makara! Please!’ There was no reasoning with him when his mind was made up. I held on to his fierce little fists like my life depended on it. Thank goodness he was only five.
The counselling session that I took him to did not go well. I don’t suppose any counselling session could go well when the patient has to be dragged there kicking and screaming.
It took place in a hot little room, with a fan turning slowly overhead. Makara was supposed to sit on a wooden chair opposite the counsellor’s desk, like a suspect in a police interrogation room. But he wouldn’t even sit down. Instead, he stood in the furthest corner, refusing to speak, his face a closed mask of defiance.
The counsellor asked questions like: ‘Tell me, why are you upset? Why won’t you talk?’
So . . . no. Not a very successful session.
We eventually walked back to the hotel, my heart in my toes. That was not what I’d been hoping for. I wasn’t sure how child psychology actually worked—wasn’t it a long process where you played games and drew pictures and slowly built trust? It was pretty obvious that whatever child psychology was, the organisation we’d just left didn’t do it.
I had no idea what to do next.
By the time we got back to the hotel, Makara had already completely forgotten about the tantrum earlier. That evening, when I was putting him to bed, he told me he was scared to have the lights turned off. ‘There are ghosts here, Tara!’ he announced dramatically.
I knew enough about Cambodian culture to know that telling him there’s no such thing as ghosts wasn’t going to cut it. Even many adults live in terror of ghosts. But I had to say something to calm his fears, so I turned a night-light on and told him: ‘We don’t have to worry about ghosts, Makara. We’re good people. Ghosts don’t hurt good people.’
Makara shook his head glumly and said the saddest words I’ve ever heard a five-year-old utter. ‘I’m not a good person, Tara. I’m bad. I’m a bad boy. And stupid.’
‘No you’re not!’ I cried, stroking his hair. ‘You’re a good boy. And a very smart boy, too!’
‘No.’ His voice wobbled a little. ‘I’m not.’
‘You are, Makara. You are a very good person. Remember that time I spilled that big bottle of soap on the floor at CCT? Do you remember that?’
‘Yes . . .’ he answered, his puppy-dog eyes brimming with sadness.
‘No one helped me clean it up but you. You are very kind and thoughtful.’
A big wide grin spread across his face and a solitary tear rolled down his cheek.
‘And you know what else? I think you speak English more clearly than all the kids at CCT. It’s true! You’re a very clever boy.’
By this stage he was beaming. He wrapped his little arms around me to give me a hug. It was true, Makara had an uncanny ability to pronounce English words. And he could sing along almost perfectly to English songs, even though he had no idea what he was saying.
‘I speak English good!’ he boasted in English.
‘You sure do. Now don’t worry about ghosts. You are a very good boy so they can’t hurt you.’
He nodded, rolled over and fell asleep. I lay awake on my rock-hard bed, with my pillow that felt like a brick, thinking over what had just happened.
I’d never heard a child express such a low opinion of themselves before. I wondered if anyone had ever told him he was a good kid. It was quite possible that he had gone through his life only ever hearing what a bad, naughty and stupid boy he was. I’d heard the kids and even the staff yell those words at him, in a fit of exasperation. So why would he believe any different?
When I thought about it, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever taken the time to single him out and let him know how much he mattered, what a special little boy he was. In an orphanage filled with kids, with so many needs, there just wasn’t the time to spend on each child’s individual needs. We were always too busy getting food on the table, or getting everyone out the door to school, or just generally putting out fires. The only time Makara would ever hear feedback about himself was when he’d done something wrong . . .
I resolved to try to do better. The next few days seemed like the perfect time to start.
Over the next week I continued the hunt for a counsellor. But every time I was told there was a child psychologist I could try, it turned out to be dead end.
Makara came everywhere with me, and every time he did anything even mildly good I told him he was a
good boy, or a clever boy, or a kind boy.
He blossomed under all this positive, individual attention. His behaviour improved so much I could take him anywhere. I even took him horseriding as a reward, and he was so brave and proud of himself . . . it was adorable. He still remembers it as one of the highlights of his childhood.
‘I want to be a vegetarian,’ he told me one day over lunch. I told him it wasn’t a great idea for kids. ‘Okay,’ he conceded. ‘But when I grow up I want to help people like you do. Tara, can we give some money to that old woman begging over there?’ He had somehow, miraculously, turned into the perfect child.
He asked endless questions about my life in Australia. ‘Tara, are there people begging in Australia, too? How many times have you ridden in an aeroplane? When I get older, I’ll learn to drive an aeroplane and I can take you everywhere you want to go! Tara, do you have brothers and sisters in Australia? Did you know I have two brothers and one sister?’
‘What?’ I was surprised. ‘Who? I thought you only had Nimol?’
‘No, I also have one younger brother and one older sister.’
‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, okay.’ I made a mental note to ask Jedtha if this was true. If Makara and Nimol really had siblings, shouldn’t we know about this?
Makara’s behaviour improved so much that I was able to take him into the bustling, crowded Central Market. The market is housed in a gorgeous Art Deco building constructed in the 1930s. It has everything from food to flowers to antiques to luggage to clothes and electronics. Makara loved it—the sights, the food, the smells. But he was very good and stuck with me.
I stopped at a clothing stall to pick out some new things for him. Like all the kids, he didn’t exactly have a wardrobe full of options. While I was browsing, I looked down reflexively to check that he was still beside me. He was there, waiting patiently, but he was clearly mesmerised by a stall opposite us. I followed his gaze. He was looking at a child’s black tuxedo.
He looked up at me and took my hand.
‘Look! Tara!’ he growled. ‘Like Men in Black!’
How could I say no to that little face? I checked the price tag and, thankfully, it wasn’t too much.
While he changed into the tux at the back of the stall, I grabbed him a pair of cheap black sunnies. Just the thing for a five-year-old MIB. He was soon strutting around like the coolest thing on the planet.
‘That’s for being such a good boy,’ I told him.
Hanging out with Makara in Phnom Penh turned out to be one of the highlights of my time in Cambodia up to this point. It was all fart jokes and wisecracks and games of hide-and-seek. The night before we left to go back to Battambang, he was hiding behind the chairs in the hotel room, and jumped out at me growling: ‘Rah! I’m a ghost, Tara!’
‘I can’t see any ghosts, Makara,’ I informed him.
‘You can’t see ghosts because you’re a big person and I’m a little person,’ he replied. ‘But we don’t have to be scared because we’re good people.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘We’re good people.’
I never did find a decent child psychologist in Phnom Penh. But by the time we headed back to Battambang, Makara was behaving so beautifully I wasn’t sure if it was even necessary anymore. A bit of extra attention and TLC, combined with some positive reinforcement, seemed to be the answer. The trick was going to be to get everybody at CCT on board with that.
Makara bounced out of the car when we got back to CCT, all dressed up in his little tuxedo, and started recounting everything he’d seen in the big city to all the other kids.
‘Horses! Escalators! Ice-cream!’
When I got a chance, I called a staff meeting to talk about Makara. I said: ‘With Makara it is simple: if you want him to be bad, tell him he is bad. And if you want him to be good, tell him he is good. And he will be.’
I got Jedtha to help me to explain my theory more thoroughly, to make sure they definitely understood the concept.
They all agreed to try it.
The change in Makara was like an overnight flip—a turnaround so dramatic that everyone was motivated to keep working at it. Even the kids took it on board and stopped calling Makara ‘stupid’.
In the months that followed, Makara blossomed into one of CCT’s biggest charmers.
Jedtha was incredibly excited about it: ‘Do you know what Makara did? Did you see Makara today?’ he would say, like a proud parent. ‘He is just a different boy!’ He couldn’t believe that we could shape a child’s behaviour like that. To this day he says it gave him a confidence he’d never had before that he could actually make a real difference for these kids.
Seeing such a profound change in Makara planted the seed of an idea in my head. If I hadn’t spent that one-on-one time with him, I never would have realised that what Makara really needed was . . . a mum.
It was so obvious, I was embarrassed that I hadn’t seen it earlier. Of course Makara needed a mum . . . or a dad, or some other parental figure. Someone to nurture him, give him that special love and attention.
And he needed a family—a core group of people who were tightly bonded to him, who had his back for the rest of his life, just as my family had mine . . . No amount of good nutrition, good education or healthcare would make up for the fact that he didn’t have that. No matter how good an orphanage is, it’s never going to take the place of a family. And a family was what every single one of these kids needed.
Realising this made me feel quite sad. How could any orphanage give them that?
I didn’t know, but I had to try.
I sat down with Jedtha and tried to explain all this to him. It was too complicated a concept for my Khmer, so I resorted to Khmenglish—a mix of Khmer and English.
‘We can’t give them a mum and dad,’ I concluded, ‘but perhaps we can make CCT feel more like a family.’
Jedtha looked a little confused. ‘But the kids have a good life here with us, Tara! They are so happy!’
‘But, Jedtha, when the kids have problems, the staff don’t notice them because it’s a big group,’ I said. ‘I think we need to spend more time with each of them like I did with Makara, so we don’t miss these problems and the kids get the care they need.’
Jedtha nodded—it seemed he got the idea. ‘Okay, but how do we do that?’
‘Maybe we could start by including more art and physical activities in their schedules? That would give us a chance to spend more one-on-one time with each of them.’
So we decided to bring in a Khmer arts teacher on Saturdays; we’d heard of other orphanages doing that. I put my hand up to run little ‘physical education’ classes with them on Saturdays. And we’d run excursions once a week when we could.
This meant we’d all be working a little harder, but after the change we’d seen in Makara, we owed it to all the kids try to give them much more attention.
I asked Sinet and Rithy what they knew about Makara’s past. They told me Makara’s father was mentally ill and his mum was extremely violent.
They had heard that the boys’ mother had died, so the kids went to work illegally in Thailand. The Thai police caught Makara and Nimol and sent them back to Cambodia, where they were then sent to live at SKO. The two boys had an older sister and a younger brother, but they weren’t sure where they were.
So the boys actually did have siblings? But why didn’t we know where they were? And why were they separated?
As soon as I could, I sat down with Savenh and Jedtha to ask them about this.
‘Almost all of the kids have some family,’ Savenh told me, in an ‘everyone knows that’ tone. Everyone except me, it turned out.
‘Almost all?’ I was unable to hide my shock and bewilderment. ‘Which ones? I thought these kids were orphans.’ I suddenly thought back to the boy at New Dawn Orphanage. There seemed to be a trend here.
She went and fetched the kids’ case files, which were written in Khmer.
She went through them with me. I discovered that most of the kids had siblings they’d been separated from. Some of them even had parents, aunts and uncles.
‘I don’t understand,’ I blurted in English, looking at Jedtha. ‘Why did they go to SKO if they still have a mum and dad? And why were the siblings separated?’
Jedtha tried to explain: ‘It’s just how we do it in our country. If the family is too poor, it’s better for some of the kids to go to an orphanage. They will get food there, and an education. It means the family will do better, without so many children to support. And when the kids grow up, the kids who are educated in the orphanage then help the rest of their family.’
‘But . . .’ How could I explain how wrong that sounded to me? ‘But how do you choose which kids to take and which to leave behind? A coin flip? And the ones who are left behind, what happens to them? Are they just condemned to struggle through a life of poverty? And the kids who grow up in the orphanage, they won’t be able to get ahead in life either. Even if they do get an education and then get a good job, they won’t be able to escape poverty because they’ll be forever financially supporting the rest of their family who were left behind. What does that achieve? And, I mean: “orphanage”—why on earth is it called an orphanage when they aren’t really orphans?!’ I put my face in my hands. Cambodia has got to be the most confusing place on Earth, I thought.
Jedtha and Savenh were just staring at me blankly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m just really surprised.’
‘Cambodia is very different to your country, I think,’ Jedtha said again.