How (Not) to Start an Orphanage

by Tara Winkler

  As word got around that Jedtha and I were in the vicinity, parents who lived in the little village kept approaching us, begging us to take their children to live at the onga. There were literally over thirty children lined up down the road, hoping we’d pick them to go with us. It was a strange and sad sight—a whole village wishing for their children to be taken away to a better life. And what was even more surprising was how keen the kids were to leave everything they’ve ever known to go with two strangers to the esteemed onga. I wondered if they even knew what an onga really was. Their implicit trust of foreigners was very worrying.

  In the end we did take Teng with us. Jedtha also arranged for a sweet ten-year-old girl named Masa to come, too. He’d been told such appalling stories by the neighbours he felt she was at extreme risk of abuse. I wasn’t sure I agreed, but the arrangements had been made by the time I knew what was happening.

  On the way home to Battambang, the kids fell asleep and Jedtha and I talked softly about Prachea Thorm. We were both sobered by the things we’d seen that day.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Teng’s parents. It was wrong for the family to be broken apart just because of poverty. They clearly loved their kids—they were grateful because they saw CCT as a golden ticket. And Tula’s mum and dad were the same. Human beings need to grow up in families, right? These kids should really be with their mum and dad, not at CCT.

  Thinking about the injustice of leaving the parents behind, and the burden on Mao and Tula when they grew up and left CCT wasn’t a nice thought. With nine siblings and a mum and dad living in poverty, Moa and Tula were growing up with a black cloud over their heads. When they started work as young adults, they’d have eleven people they cared about constantly needing their help. Even if they became doctors or lawyers, there’d be hardly anything left over . . .

  Jedtha and I spent the rest of the journey discussing ways to help the families support themselves and then reunite them with all their kids. I loved the idea of the kids coming home every day to their real mum and dad.

  14

  So by April 2008 we had twenty kids at CCT. Having more kids meant more work—more fires to fight, emotional issues to manage and more individual wants and needs . . . And meanwhile we were trying to get justice for Sinet.

  Life was getting stressful.

  One of the hardest things for me at that time was coming to terms with the disparity between healthcare in Australia and Cambodia. In Australia, kids come home from school with the common cold. In Cambodia they come home with dengue fever. I always did what I could to ensure the kids got decent healthcare, but it always felt like the odds were stacked against us.

  Sineit was still getting really sick all the time with low-grade fevers and spells of nausea, and had a generally poor appetite. She never got as sick again as she’d been at SKO, but every time she went to see her doctor at Battambang’s public hospital, she’d return with a plastic bag full of unlabelled medication, which never seemed to help much. I wished there was something better available for her. After everything we’d been through, all we’d managed to achieve was better adherence to a treatment that she was already developing a resistance to . . .

  One day when Kanya had period pain, she was given antibiotics (which you can buy over the counter in Cambodia) and told to take one whenever the pain was bad. It’s no wonder antibiotic resistance is becoming such a serious public health concern.

  To make matters even more stressful, the tiny trickle of funds from the regular donors wasn’t quite enough to cover everything, especially now that we had more mouths to feed. And the other one-off donations we were relying on were getting harder and harder to come by.

  By now, Sally had successfully set up our Australian charity, Green Kids Global, and was doing everything humanly possible to secure DGR status, so we could give tax-deductible receipts and set up an online donation system. She was also putting together proposals and plans to try to get corporate sponsorship for us. But it was hard—it seemed we just weren’t big enough or established enough to attract major sponsors.

  We were reaching a state of crisis. All we had to rely on was the small database of existing supporters who I would email and ask for money as I needed it. These supporters made great sacrifices to help us, but there was a limit to how much they could give. Soon we were living month to month, and Sally was still topping us up with her own money just to keep us going.

  I had been living without a salary for almost a year. Sometimes, I was personally so desperate my friend Vicky Baron would put $50 in my bank account just to get me through—and she really didn’t have much money spare herself.

  My friends and family did all they could to spread the word. But the fundraising game was tough. Very tough. I remember nearly crying when I got yet another email from a kind-hearted soul in Australia wanting to send toys and clothing that her own kids had outgrown. This happens all the time—people wanting to send ‘stuff ’ instead of money. I wanted to ring them and plead: ‘We don’t need your clothes or toys—the cost of postage to send them over here would feed us all for a week. We have a water bill and a power bill and a pathology bill to pay. Please, please, just send money!’

  I did my best to make sure the kids had no idea of our financial woes. The last thing I wanted was for them to start worrying that their new home was not as secure as they’d thought.

  All our hopes were resting on Green Kids Global finding a way to get DGR status. And after many months of effort, a promising opportunity came up. Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS) said they could partner with Green Kids Global to provide us with DGR status. RAWCS were wonderful and incredibly positive about helping us. But, as with everything, there was red tape involved.

  After a lot of negotiation, Sally called to tell me that before RAWCS could agree to the partnership, we needed a Cambodian Rotary club to sign a document approving CCT.

  ‘Do whatever you have to do,’ she said.‘Just GET THE DOCUMENT.’

  So I jumped on a bus to Phnom Penh and presented our story to a group of Cambodian-based Rotarians. They all seemed very positive about approving us as a Rotary project, but the president of the club—a soft-spoken, academic-looking man from India—seemed to need more time. He said: ‘We’ll look over your proposal and consider it over the next few weeks.’

  I couldn’t help looking dismayed—we really couldn’t afford to wait ‘a few weeks’. So he suggested we have dinner that night and talk it over.

  Later that night, at his family home, I told him more about CCT, and he told me he was very impressed. Then he went on to talk at length about his religious beliefs—the Baha’i faith. I listened, always curious to learn more about different belief systems. When he asked what I believed, I ummed for a moment and then politely tried to navigate around the question by saying that I had a great love and passion for science.

  Before I left, he told me he’d be happy to sign the documents to have CCT approved. ‘You can come by tomorrow and pick them up,’ he said.

  The next day I turned up at his place with a skip in my step. This was the ticket we needed!

  ‘Hello, come in,’ he said. ‘Sit down and have a cold drink.’

  He sat down opposite me with a pen and a little card in his hands.

  ‘I’ll get your papers for you in a minute. First, I’d just like to say how nice it was to share my faith with you yesterday. I know what you meant about having a love of science—and with Baha’i, all paths lead to God!’ He pushed the little card in front of me and added: ‘You can sign up to the Baha’i faith here and then I’ll go and get those signed documents for you.’

  Oh geez, I thought to myself. Feeling like I’d dug myself in too deep to backpedal now, I signed the card, collected the signed documents and went on my way.

  On my way back to Battambang I kept thinking: I can’t believe I just converted to the Baha’i faith!

  Shortly after this, we had three awful scares.

  1. The kids rode home
from school one day crying and upset—someone had deliberately swerved at them in a car, clipping little Akara and knocking her off her bike.

  Akara! I nearly died when I heard this. The thought of the kids being hurt scared the hell out of all of us.

  2. Jedtha was giving me a lift into town on the back of his moto. We were moving with the traffic along the riverbank when some rough-looking guys on a moto pulled in beside us.

  They sidled up very close alongside us, and I just had time to think, This is weird, what are you doing? before I saw them kick the back wheel of our moto out from under us. Jedtha and I went flying and landed on the road with a thump.

  Two thumps, actually.

  We were both badly shaken and covered in cuts and bruises, but, thankfully, the traffic flowed around us in the magical way that Cambodian traffic does.

  I shot to my feet, spitting fire, and shrieked: ‘Go after them!’ in Khmer. Jedtha jumped straight back on the bike and charged off into the distance. So then suddenly I was left standing beside the road with no moto, and no Jedtha, covered in bloody scrapes and wondering why on earth I’d said that.

  Rumours often fly around in Cambodia about people paying gangsters to despatch enemies by kicking them off motos. So the whole incident shook us up badly.

  3. Not long after we were kicked off the moto, some people who were supporting SKO approached me, asking for the truth about Rath. They told me that Rath hated Jedtha and me with such a passion that he was always saying things like: ‘I’ll never forget what they have done,’ and ‘They will be sorry for what they did.’

  Jedtha and I would joke about it sometimes—a case of you’ve ‘gotta laugh or you’ll cry.’ I’d crack him up by pulling out my most badass Khmer: ‘He thinks he can fuck with us? Bring it! Bitch!’

  But the truth is, I’ve never feared and hated anyone like I feared and hated Rath.

  The honeymoon was well and truly over. For a while there, it felt like Cambodia was conspiring against me.

  I was so stressed I developed a strange rash, like a map of the world, on all my limbs.

  When I google ‘symptoms of culture shock’, I now realise I was a textbook case. I spent many weeks feeling just like Wikipedia said I would: disoriented, worried, fatigued, lonely and anxious. All at once. All the time.

  I didn’t know what to do about all our problems except push on and push through—surely there’d be a light at the end of the tunnel sometime?

  Jedtha worried constantly about me and wanted to hire security guards for my protection, but I felt at the time that we just couldn’t justify the cost. Besides, as I kept pointing out, I had the dogs, and they were very loyal and protective of me.

  We started talking about hiring Chan to be our driver—we’d be less visible and vulnerable in his car. Hopefully, we could put this plan in place when more money came through.

  The thought of having Chan as a driver was a comforting one. He was my Cambodian brother, and I trusted him with my life. But one morning Chan’s wife Mina came to CCT to drop off some washing I’d given her a few dollars to do. She was sporting a big black eye.

  ‘Mina!’ I cried, pushing her into the light so I could examine the ugly bruise. ‘How did this happen?’ It was distressing to see such a horrible thing on my friend’s face.

  ‘Oh.’ She pulled away with a laugh. ‘I walked into a stick. I’m clumsy.’

  As soon as I could, I pulled Sinet aside and asked what she knew about Mina’s black eye. She told me: ‘Chan probably hit her.’

  Hearing my fears confirmed out loud sent a shockwave through my system.

  ‘Talk to the staff,’ she said. ‘They’ll tell you.’

  I rounded up Savenh, Heng, Davi and Jedtha and asked them to tell me what they knew about Chan. They were all—even Jedtha—tight-lipped at first. But I pushed, and eventually the truth came out.

  ‘Everyone knows he is a very aggressive person,’ Savenh said. ‘He gets into fights a lot.’

  The rest of the staff weighed in. They told me that before I learned to speak Khmer, Chan used to make nasty remarks about me, right in front of my face.

  ‘Now he just does it behind your back,’ Jedtha said. ‘He’s only nice to you to get your money.’

  ‘Why are you only telling me this now?’ I couldn’t believe it.

  There was a long pause. Nobody met my eye.

  Jedtha was the first to speak, his voice soft and apologetic. ‘He was your friend. We didn’t want to upset you,’ he said.

  My god, I thought. In all this time they never breathed a word about it. What else aren’t they telling me?

  Discovering Chan’s duplicity really rocked my foundations. Was everything I thought I knew about this country a lie? Could I trust anyone?

  And as for Chan—knowing he was a bad guy who had deceived me all this time—it was like seeing a poisonous snake on the path ahead. I had to get myself and the kids away from him as quickly and quietly as possible.

  Life kept getting harder. The stress was getting the better of me and I started feeling angry and bitter. I couldn’t shake the resentment I felt towards the staff.

  And our funding problems were becoming quite serious. I was so broke and often hungry, and I started to seethe when friends in Australia wrote cheery missives on Myspace about what a great night out they’d had. I couldn’t help thinking: If you gave us the money for that first cocktail, it would feed us for a whole day.

  In a casual conversation with some donors one day, I happened to mention that I was so broke I was mostly living off white rice and soy sauce.

  Sally pulled me up on this. ‘If you tell people things like that, people are going to think you are not good at managing CCT,’ she scolded.

  ‘But . . . it’s true!’ I protested.

  ‘I’ve been sending you money!’ Sally said. ‘Are you sure this is not just your eating disorder being aggravated by the stress?’ It’s true that stress has always been a potential trigger for me, but at this point in time, my weight truly was the last thing on my mind.

  ‘Sally, I’m very grateful for the money you’ve been sending. But after paying all the bills and giving the staff their salaries, there’s nothing left. We don’t have enough money, Sally. Do you understand? Not enough. NOT ENOUGH!’

  I immediately felt bad for snapping at her. After all, she was practically CCT’s biggest supporter at this stage.

  Something had to give. Even if we started to make cuts, CCT’s funding still wasn’t enough to give twenty kids healthy, happy childhoods. I desperately needed an idea, a plan . . . something. I had to find a way to keep a reliable income stream coming in.

  To add to the stress, Sinet’s case seemed to be moving at a glacial pace. Sinet had been in to talk to the prosecutor at the court a couple of times. They also called Sineit and Kolab to give statements, as they were eyewitnesses to one particular night—a night when Rath raped Sinet while they were all sleeping in the same room.

  Our lawyer warned us that these delays may be indicative of corruption. But still, he would try his best to keep pushing.

  I started backpedalling my way out of my relationship with Chan. The plan was to ease away subtly, without provoking any drama, as in: ‘I’m slowly moving away now . . . nothing to see here . . . okay, goodbye!’

  It was devastating to have to end my relationship with Mina and the kids. Mina is a truly beautiful woman and the kids are remarkably bright and have so much potential. But in the end I decided there was nothing I could do for them. Mina would never leave Chan and I just couldn’t have a person like Chan associated with CCT.

  So one afternoon, I very gently told Chan I wouldn’t be able to afford to bring him on as CCT’s driver as we’d hoped. And I let Mina know that I would no longer need her help with cooking vegetarian food and doing my laundry.

  It felt very unwise to go into my real reasons for letting them go, so I told them I didn’t even have the few dollars that I was giving Mina (which was rapidly becoming true
, anyway).

  Chan was no fool. He sensed that something was wrong and called Sally and my dad, Peter. Had he done anything to make me angry?

  The following Sunday afternoon, Sinet, Sineit and I were sitting around watching a movie when the phone rang. Sinet, in happy, confident mode, answered the phone for me.

  I heard shouts blasting out of the phone—it was Chan’s voice, sounding very angry. I put my ear close to the receiver and listened in. ‘So you’ve turned Tara against me, too, have you, Sinet?’ he thundered.

  Sinet’s demeanour immediately went from ‘well-adjusted extrovert’ to ‘scared little victim’. Seeing her go into that state when she was scared always triggered the mother bear in me.

  Outraged, I grabbed the phone. ‘Chan!’

  Chan went: ‘OH!’ And then, in the usual jolly, high-pitched tone he adopted with me: ‘Hello, little sister!’

  I said through clenched teeth: ‘Chan, I heard every word you just said to Sinet.’

  I could hear the shift down the phone . . . Then out came this voice that sounded like it was possessed by pure fucking evil, threatening me, our staff and all of our kids. ‘You believe me! You think you can trick me, you little bitch . . . You made a big mistake!’

  I slammed down the phone, my hands shaking. I knew Chan would come looking for me and I didn’t want to have him anywhere near CCT or the kids. ‘I have to get out of here!’ I said to the girls and the staff.

  In a panic, I hailed the first tuktuk to come down the road and bundled Ruby, Rosie and Franky inside. If Chan came by and saw that the dogs were gone, he’d know that I had gone too and the kids would be safe. There was a guard at CCT, but I called Jedtha from the tuktuk and asked him to get to CCT straight away. He could help the security guard protect everyone in case Chan did come looking for me there.