How (Not) to Start an Orphanage

by Tara Winkler

  Then, desperate, I called one of my most-trusted friends in Battambang—Terry, the ex-donor representative of New Dawn. Poor Terry! I was in a terrible state.

  ‘Terry! I’ve had a death threat from someone who says he’s going to team up with Rath . . . I need somewhere to hide so he can’t find me!’

  ‘Come over,’ he said without hesitation.

  The tuktuk had barely come to a stop before I jumped out, threw a bunch of dollars in the tuktuk driver’s direction and ran to Terry’s front door with the dogs following behind me.

  ‘I’ve got my dogs,’ I said, as the four of us burst through the door. ‘I hope that’s okay!’

  I tied the dogs up out the back and scuttled back inside, blurting out everything that had just happened.

  ‘Fuck,’ Terry said. ‘This doesn’t sound good!’

  Terry’s gatekeeper appeared at the door.

  ‘Terry,’ the gatekeeper said, ‘I think Mr Chan and his son are circling the block with a motorbike and a tuktuk.’

  ‘Oh my god—he knows I’m here!’ I said, feeling like I was seconds away from full-blown panic.

  Terry looked at me helplessly. ‘This obviously isn’t a good spot to hide out. You’re probably better off at a hotel. We’ll just have to get you to one without Chan knowing.’

  So the dogs and I piled into the back of Terry’s Camry. We waited until Chan and Ponlok started on their third lap of the block, then sped through the gates as fast as we could.

  Terry dropped us at a nice hotel in town. I was so scared, I didn’t give the reception staff the option to turn me away. I slammed a small pile of money on the counter and shrieked: ‘I NEED A ROOM AND I HAVE DOGS WITH ME DON’T WORRY THEY DON’T BARK OR PISS INSIDE OR ANYTHING NOW QUICK GIVE ME THE KEYS! QUICK QUICK QUICK!’

  For the next few hours it was me and the three dogs holed up in a tiny room, with a chill running down my spine every time I heard a tuktuk pass by.

  I sent a message home, letting my parents and Sally know what had happened. My poor parents. I really didn’t mean to worry them so much. But of course they were worried. Peter sent out a message far and wide calling for help to protect me. Paul Harapin, one of Green Kids Global’s new board members, called the Australian embassy, who then called the chief of police in Battambang to have me placed under police protection.

  I had to go to the station and tell the police the whole story. The police took down every last detail of the incident—including what my dogs looked like! One of them said: ‘Ah, they’ve been circling the police station, too. We were wondering what those people were doing.’

  They told me not to worry and dropped me back to the hotel. A policeman would meet me in the morning and take me and the dogs back to CCT.

  I was utterly exhausted by the time I got back to the hotel room. My dogs were still there, waiting patiently. I felt considerably more relaxed now that I knew the police chief was looking out for me.

  For the first time in as long as I could remember, I enjoyed a hot shower and cool air-conditioning, and curled up on a soft bed surrounded by three cuddly puppies.

  What a strange day, I thought to myself as I drifted off to sleep. I suppose I should start getting used to this—this crazy life down the rabbit hole, where things are never quite as they seem . . . Where kids in orphanages are not orphans, where your best friend turns out to be your mortal enemy and where, after a day spent in a living hell, you can wind up in a soft, clean, air-conditioned heaven on earth.

  And with that, I was sound asleep.

  The next morning, as promised, the policeman arrived and took me and the dogs back to CCT. I’d been dealing with so much stress that it was a huge relief to suddenly have a tall, tough-looking policeman driving me around and hanging out in the yard at CCT.

  The policeman’s name was Meah. He had the bearing of a soldier, and Jedtha and I were impressed by his dedication and competence. He told us that he was impressed with us, too—he liked what CCT was doing.

  Later that evening, the police at the station called. ‘We’ve got him. Do you want to come in and press charges?’

  When we arrived, Chan was sitting at a table at the back of the station with a policeman. He was crying uncontrollably.

  ‘I’m sorry, P’oun srey!’ he sobbed. ‘I was drunk! I was at a wedding and I drank too much. Please don’t send me to jail. I need to take care of my family . . .’ He continued rambling but I couldn’t make out what he was saying through all the blubbering and the snot.

  I was tempted to feel sorry for him, but then I thought back to Mina’s black eye and those chilling words I heard him hiss down the phone, and how long he had circled Terry’s place and the police station after the wedding had ended. I had learned enough about Chan over the last few days not to necessarily believe his whimpering apology, but I didn’t want a war. I decided not to press charges.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, P’oun srey!’ he said as he got up to leave.

  ‘That’s okay, Chan. But please don’t ever contact me or come near me or CCT again,’ I said forcefully. ‘Oh, and Chan? Be good to your family.’

  He nodded glumly, and left.

  ‘He’s a weird guy,’ the policeman warned me. ‘Don’t believe those tears. It was all a show.’

  When we pulled into the gates at CCT, the staff hurried over to find out what had happened. I filled them in and concluded: ‘So it’s okay. It’s over now. He won’t have anything to do with me or CCT ever again.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said Savenh darkly. ‘In Cambodia, people like him wait until they think you’ve forgotten . . . and that’s when they get you.’

  We decided to hire Meah as our second security guard. It would make us all feel a lot safer to have both a day and night guard at CCT.

  Hiring Meah didn’t mean I sailed through that big drama with Chan unscathed. I was terribly burned by it. I lost faith in my ability to work out who my friends were in Cambodia. And feeling like Jedtha and the staff had concealed the truth from me about Chan also really rattled me.

  In my disillusioned state, I often wondered if maybe the little problems I had with the staff were about something darker than just a lack of experience or common sense.

  For instance, sometimes it looked like Reaksmey just wasn’t trying to do what we asked. We had to keep reducing his responsibilities. And I started to suspect that Heng, our cook, was skimming small sums of money off the food budget. The receipts she handed in sometimes looked quite dodgy, and they weren’t adding up with the produce she was bringing back. I started to monitor her accounts more carefully, hoping I was wrong.

  But by far the biggest issue with the staff was that the kids still didn’t trust them, and, to be honest, at the time I couldn’t blame them.

  Shortly after the Big Chan Drama, some of the kids rang me when I was in Phnom Penh. They were scared and upset, because apparently Savenh, Davi and Reaksmey had sat them all down and said: ‘When you have problems, don’t tell Tara.’

  Now what was going on? I wondered as I paced around the dingy little Phnom Penh hotel room. What were the staff trying to hide from me now?

  I reassured the kids that they could always talk to me and tell me about anything that was troubling them. Then I rang Jedtha and gave him an earful: ‘Why are the staff saying that? Is there some problem going on that I need to know about? No, it’s not nothing. The kids are scared. They called me crying. Tell the staff we’ll fire them if they ever say anything like that again.’

  Okay, so I overreacted. The relentless stress had me at my wits’ end.

  I found out later that the staff had only been trying to say: ‘Stop hassling Tara with every little issue you have, she has enough on her plate. Come to us and we’ll help you.’

  But the kids had been through a lot, too. It was no wonder that they had trouble trusting their carers.

  By the middle of 2008, we finally fulfilled the quest to get DGR status for Green Kids Global (GKG) through RAWCS, which meant
GKG could issue tax-deductible receipts. Now we could set up an online donation system and a proper admin structure. And, most importantly, we could accept donations without forcing our donors to jump through flaming hoops.

  My friend Sally Reynolds got in touch to tell me she was going to organise a fundraiser in Australia. She wanted the funds to be split fifty-fifty between us and Charlie Teo’s Cure for Life Foundation. Charlie Teo had been her sister Fiona’s doctor. I had seen Charlie passing through the hospital corridors when Fee was sick and I knew that he was a respected neurosurgeon, but I didn’t realise that he was also a bit of an Aussie celebrity. He’d been featured on several TV shows, including 60 Minutes, Enough Rope and the ABC’s Australian Story.

  ‘I think doing a split event might work pretty well,’ Sally continued. ‘It could be a great opportunity for people who are already active in charity to hear your story. Of course, it would be best if you showed up in person and told the story yourself.’

  Remember that plan I said I needed to solve the problem of CCT’s unsustainable funding? Well, this looked like it might be it. I would go back to Australia for Sally’s event and use it as an opportunity to do some serious hustling.

  I said: ‘Sally, you’re a lifesaver! I’m so grateful you’re doing this for us. And yes, I’ll definitely be there.’

  When Sinet heard I would be heading back to Australia to do some fundraising, she asked if she could come. ‘I can help you,’ she said. ‘I know how to talk to donors. I used to talk to many donors at SKO. Once I even learned how to have conversations in Japanese so that a donor would help us.’

  ‘Really?’ I was impressed but also felt slightly disturbed. ‘You should not have had to make money for SKO, Sinet. That was the job of the staff, like it is my job. I never want you to feel like you have to do anything like that for CCT.’

  ‘Tara, I want to help. CCT is my home. I can’t live without CCT. If I can help, please let me!’

  You can imagine the effect those words had on me—it was like she lit a rocket under me. If I was motivated to secure CCT’s funding before, nothing was going to stop me now.

  ‘And I’m not a kid anymore anyway,’ she reminded me. ‘I’m over eighteen now!’

  It was true. She was an adult and probably had more experience ‘fundraising’ than I did. And she had such a powerful story to tell.

  But having a beneficiary, like Sinet was at the time, involved in fundraising activities is an extremely contentious issue for any charity that wants to uphold best practices. To this day we struggle with the conundrum of how to successfully raise funds without exploiting the kids or families to do it. The fact is, donors need personal stories to connect with. Personal stories help people to understand why they’re being asked to give money, where their money is going and what’s being achieved. Yet using personal stories from beneficiaries comes with a quagmire of ethical issues. For example, even if you get informed consent from an adult who is a beneficiary of the program, does the power imbalance at play mean that consent is truly ethical? And how do you make sure that the consent is genuinely ‘informed,’ especially when we’re often talking across cultures—can a Cambodian with limited education properly grasp what it would mean to share their story on an Australian current affairs show, for example? We wrestle with questions like this constantly. It’s one of the reasons we’ve changed most of the kids’ names in the writing of this book.

  I asked Jedtha what he thought of the idea of Sinet coming with me to help fundraise in Australia. To Jedtha, it was a no-brainer. We needed the money, she was an adult, let’s treat her like an adult and let her help.

  ‘I’ll ask Savenh to organise a passport for her,’ he said. ‘She can arrange to get it done quickly.’

  Getting things done in Cambodia’s post-communist bureaucracy was an art form, but our staff always seemed to know how to navigate it.

  ‘Maybe I’ll talk to Chloe and see if she wants to fly over to help you while I’m away?’ I suggested. ‘She can also help look after my dogs.’ Chloe was an old school friend who’d taught English at SKO. She and her mum were great fans of CCT and had done some fundraising for us. She was also a massive animal lover, so I could rest easy knowing that she was looking after Ruby, Rosie and Franky.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Jedtha agreed.

  And so it was decided. I started planning our trip. I knew our position was precarious enough that one fundraiser wasn’t going to be enough to turn things around for us, so I got busy locking in meetings with other potential donors in Australia.

  In the meantime, the issue of trust between me and the CCT staff, and the staff and kids, reared its head again. Sinet came to me one afternoon and told me that, even though they knew it was against the rules, some of the staff were smacking the kids when they were naughty. I never discouraged Sinet from coming to me and reporting problems. She was my eyes on the ground and she took that role seriously. Also, because we were only a couple of years apart in age, we were fast becoming good friends.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of the kids being disciplined like this under my watch. I understood that it was the way things were done in Cambodia, and in many other parts of the world. But I was never smacked as a child, and to me it seemed like an appalling way to communicate. The kids had been through enough, and I don’t believe violence should ever be the answer. We’d spoken with the staff repeatedly about this, so it was disappointing to think they were ignoring the rules.

  Jedtha suggested the two of us sit down with the kids and see what they had to say.

  So we gathered them into a little circle on the floor and Jedtha said: ‘Raise your hand if you’ve been hit by a staff member in the past few months.’

  Every hand in the room went up, and little Nimol cried in an aggrieved tone: ‘Yes! And Reaksmey pulled my ear!’ He grabbed his ear to demonstrate.

  The kids’ grievances tumbled out one by one—they’d received smacks across the face, been dragged across the room by the ear . . . that kind of thing. It didn’t seem to have been particularly traumatising for them, but to me it was unacceptable. I was just grateful that at least the kids felt safe and confident enough to share all this with Jedtha and me. It wasn’t something they’d have done at SKO.

  Knowing the kids were still being hit, despite my explicit instructions to the contrary, made my blood boil. To me, it was all just further evidence that I couldn’t trust CCT’s staff.

  The next time the kids were out of earshot, Jedtha and I called a meeting with all the staff. It was raining, so we sat in a circle on the floor in the living room area.

  As gently as I could, I told them I was disappointed to hear that some of them had been breaking the ‘no hitting’ rule.

  Reaksmey looked at everything except me. Davi looked slightly mutinous.

  Savenh said: ‘We haven’t been hitting the kids,’ in a tone that meant: ‘There, that’s all sorted—let’s move on.’

  ‘The kids told us you have,’ I persisted. ‘I know you wouldn’t hurt them but—’

  ‘They’re lying,’ she said flatly.

  The temperature in the room started to rise. ‘They’re not lying.’

  ‘Then you misunderstood,’ said Davi. ‘You know your Khmer is not that good.’

  I was getting frustrated. This wasn’t the conversation I wanted to be having—I just wanted to resolve the issue. But Savenh and Davi were being unbelievably obstinate. And why the hell wasn’t Jedtha saying anything?

  ‘I do understand, Davi,’ I informed her. ‘The kids are telling us you’re hitting them, and it upsets them.’

  Reaksmey looked terrified, but Davi looked scornful. She snapped: ‘Any child who says we’re hitting them is stupid!’

  I was trying to have an adult conversation here, but Davi kept subverting my efforts with this defensive nonsense. I could feel the mounting frustration levels building like a pressure cooker in my brain. I snapped. ‘If I ever hear you say that again—and if I ever hear any of you
are hitting any of the kids again, ever—you are fired! Got that? Fired!’

  And then I burst into tears.

  Everyone looked shocked. I had committed a serious faux pas. Losing your cool in such an explosive and uncontrolled way is considered to be a disgraceful loss of face in most Asian cultures.

  It definitely wasn’t my finest moment, but it was the culmination of over a year of stress. That outburst was to cost me dearly in the months to come.

  Life went along fairly normally for a few weeks.

  We went back to the lawyer to see what was happening with Sinet’s trial. He assured us the police commissioner had been true to his word and a date would soon be set for the hearing, but it was unlikely it would happen before our upcoming trip to Australia. We just had to be patient.

  I was kept busy tightening up processes where I could. I didn’t want the staff—and Chloe—to be inundated with work when I was gone.

  Then Sinet informed me that Reaksmey had once again smacked one of the kids.

  We had tried really hard to help Reaksmey cope with his role. We’d reduced his responsibilities more and more over time, so he could manage while continuing to study at university. But he kept coming up short. We’d given him warning after warning, and now he’d broken the rules again, after I’d made it crystal clear that we wouldn’t tolerate any hitting.

  Jedtha talked to him about it and Reaksmey admitted it was true. He told Jedtha the job was just too much for him and caused him too much stress. It wasn’t that Reaksmey wasn’t a good person. He was a very nice boy. But he was young and the role just wasn’t right for him. So, regretfully, Jedtha and I decided we’d have to let him go. But Jedtha couldn’t face firing his nephew himself. ‘You’ll have to do it,’ he said. ‘I can’t. He is my family.’

  I sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll do it then . . .’

  It was awful. Reaksmey hung his head forlornly and just nodded quietly as I spoke. He said he’d seen it coming for a while. I wished we’d had the funds to help cover the costs of his studies, but it was way beyond our means at that time.