by Tara Winkler
The next morning we left Sinet at the hotel with her nose in a book, and Peter and I went out into busy Phnom Penh to meet with Jedtha at a cafe. I knew I’d have difficulty reining in my anger, so I asked Peter to help mediate. The plan was to work with Jedtha to help identify the issues and accusations that truly worried him. Later that day we’d work through the list together in our meeting with the lawyer.
Walking in and seeing Jedtha sitting at a table was hard. Knowing him so well—his kind, gentle face, his habit of fidgeting when he was stressed—it meant that part of me wanted to greet him like the friend he had once been. But a bigger part of me felt decidedly unfriendly and unsympathetic. How could he have done this to me?
Peter kept things polite and businesslike, and between the three of us we made a list of all Jedtha’s concerns.
It seemed that Jedtha’s main issue was that I’d been doing so many things that were ‘highly illegal’ because the law—according to him—was different for foreigners and locals. These things included taking the children to Phnom Penh for medical treatment, and owning a pornographic DVD and picture.
‘Jedtha, you do realise that this is not pornography,’ I hissed.
Peter shot me a quelling look and said: ‘I’m sure the lawyer will help clear that up. But, Jedtha, can you please explain to us why you never told Tara that taking the kids out of Battambang was illegal in the entire eighteen months that she was working at CCT? If that’s true, you put her in a dangerous position.’
‘Well, yes, I don’t know,’ Jedtha said, clearly flustered.
We tried asking the question a few different ways, but he just couldn’t give us a straight answer.
Peter asked about a lot of the comments in Chloe’s letter, but Jedtha said he didn’t know anything about them. He said that while the kids did have some behavioural issues, as far as he was concerned, that was a normal part of working with children in orphanages. He said he didn’t believe that I’d ever wasted money and never thought my dogs, who were mostly living on leftovers and rice, were an issue.
But, oh dear—he had a lot to say about Sinet. Davi and Savenh had told him a bunch of stories that didn’t even have the tiniest seed of truth in them—crazy stuff like: ‘Sinet hit Sakana, drawing blood. When Makara and Sakana told Tara, Tara said: “Oh well, Sakana deserved it because he’s spoiled.”’
I felt like crying and laughing at the same time.
Peter and I headed back to the hotel to wait for our appointment with the lawyer.
I gave myself a metaphorical pat on the back for staying calm through that meeting with Jedtha. It hadn’t been easy, but I could see that things did go better when I didn’t fly off the handle.
I could also see that Jedtha was approaching the whole thing in a reasonable way. He abhors conflict and doesn’t know how to deal with it. But he was doing his best to work through it with us. The problem was, I didn’t know where it was all heading. The thought of going back to CCT was frankly nauseating—but I couldn’t abandon the kids, and I was pretty sure none of our new donors would keep supporting CCT if I walked away.
Sinet was sitting on her bed in the hotel room writing in her journal when we got back to the hotel. She looked up with interest and a little concern—she knew something was up, but she didn’t know what it was.
With the future so uncertain (and the fact that we were good friends), I felt it was unfair to leave her in the dark. So I sat on the bed opposite her and told her the broad brushstrokes of what had happened. I didn’t burden her with too many gory details—but I wanted her to understand why I might not be returning to live in Battambang.
She took the news so stoically I was worried—surely the thought of going back to an orphanage where the staff had accused you of all kinds of nonsense should be extremely upsetting? I asked her point blank: ‘Are you okay to go back to CCT?’
She returned to her writing and said mildly: ‘Yes . . . because I know you will always be there for me.’
Her simple faith and trust in me broke my heart. I couldn’t, couldn’t abandon her and the other kids.
There was a part of me that couldn’t help but feel pleased to see Jedtha squirm in his seat when he met our new lawyer.
Jedtha is a big shot around Battambang—tall, well-spoken, educated and respected. But our new lawyer, Sok Hy, was something else again. Sok Hy is a highly educated, global-citizen type. He got his bachelor’s and master’s degree in law in Cambodia and also completed a training course at the Australian National University in Canberra. He worked in the Cambodian senate for almost five years and was a consulting expert in the process of drafting Cambodia’s improved legal system. He has worked as a criminal and corporate lawyer on high-profile cases throughout Asia and now works as a commercial and banking lawyer.
After introducing himself and outlining his considerable credentials, he worked though the list of accusations against me that we’d created with Jedtha that morning.
His brow furrowed into lines of complete bewilderment as he read the documents.
‘There’s no legal grounding whatsoever for any of these accusations,’ he said. At one point, a little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘This is quite funny!’
He read on, and turned to Jedtha. ‘Okay, so can I see the evidence you say you have?’
Jedtha dropped the DVD case and the coloured picture onto the table. Sok Hy picked up the picture and his eyebrows shot up. ‘This is a person’s mouth, with some colours on top.’ He dropped it dismissively and picked up the DVD. ‘So is this pornography?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, rather assertively. ‘It’s a popular, primetime TV series—I’ll pull up the synopsis for you on my laptop.’
He examined the DVD cover and read the online synopsis. ‘This is a TV show,’ he sighed. Then he added, ‘Anyone who thinks this is evidence of anything is stupid.’
By now, Jedtha was so out of his depth he could barely string a sentence together. I felt a tiny bit sorry to see him in such a state. But a bigger part of me was jubilant. I felt so vindicated.
Now that the business was over, Sok Hy pushed the paperwork aside and we all settled down for a chat. He asked us a lot of questions about CCT and told us a bit more about his life. He said he was very appreciative of our work in Cambodia and felt a strong affinity with us.
He said: ‘I think you should go back to all the people who are carrying on with these threats and say: “I’m not a child. I have a lawyer. And if I hear one breath of this ever again I’ll be seeing you in court. And if you don’t believe me you can give my lawyer a call.”’
Sok Hy has remained a great supporter and pro bono lawyer of CCT. We’re very grateful to have him on our team.
Now that the fear of being thrown into jail had dissolved, the full realisation of what lay ahead of me began to sink in. The CCT team was broken. I was broken, too. I just could not face the thought of going back to Battambang, where people like Rath and Chan made death threats against me, and people like Davi had threatened to put me in jail. All the fight had gone out of me.
The best plan I could come up with was to stay in Phnom Penh, where I would manage donor relations, and occasionally make trips to Battambang to check that the donors’ funds were used as intended. I’d have to find a job—I couldn’t justify taking money from donors if I wasn’t working full time at CCT. I’d have to see if it was possible to make a life for myself away from CCT, while still upholding my responsibilities to the donors and, most importantly, to the kids.
I told Peter all of this and he said: ‘Come on, don’t give up on me now.’ He gave me a friendly nudge. ‘We can get through this. I’ll come with you to Battambang and help you deal with Davi and Savenh. Once that’s behind us, we can focus on moving forward.’
His calm assuredness gave me a little injection of energy. It did sound like a good plan.
Passing the imposing black statue that towers over the turn-off into Battambang raised strange, conflicted feelings in
me. I was home. I desperately wanted to see the kids. But I was dreading the looming confrontation.
When we arrived in Battambang, we checked into a hotel and Jedtha came to meet us to discuss the next course of action.
We wanted to fire Davi and Savenh. Jedtha was clearly nervous about this idea. ‘Maybe possible to give them one more chance?’ he asked. ‘I think we won’t have this problem again.’
‘But don’t you agree that they deserve to be fired?’ Peter asked. ‘If you want Tara to help you run CCT, how can you expect her to work with them?’
Jedtha suggested that perhaps we could just fire Davi. ‘Savenh is a good social worker—she’s good with the kids,’ he said. ‘She’s known them for a very long time now. Also, Savenh has worked with us from SKO days. We can trust her.’ Jedtha continued: ‘Or maybe we can just move CCT to Phnom Penh? That could solve the problem.’
That suggestion didn’t come totally out of the blue. Jedtha and I did sometimes fantasise about moving CCT to Phnom Penh. We felt so paranoid about Rath and Chan—and Rath’s network of ‘relatives’—that making a fresh start didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
But Peter thought we were both mentally defective. ‘Is that going to be your solution every time you have a problem with staff? Instead of dealing with the situation, you’ll just move cities?’
Jedtha was getting agitated. ‘Please, we can’t fire Savenh. I promise we will not have any problem from her. I agree we should fire Davi, but not Savenh. Not Savenh.’
We had to give Jedtha something—it was only fair. So we agreed that we’d just fire Davi and then see how things went.
‘But it will be difficult,’ Jedtha warned us. ‘She will not want to accept.’
‘Well . . .’ said Peter. ‘We’ll try to do it very sensitively, so she won’t lose face. We won’t put any blame on anyone, just tell her that we don’t have the funding to keep a nurse on anymore. Keep it as stress-free as possible.’
Jedtha nodded. ‘Okay. You try that. It may be okay. I will arrange for us to meet her this afternoon.’
When we arrived at CCT the kids squealed and ran at us, jumping up and down and flinging their arms around me and Sinet. I started to cry. How could I leave them?
I gave them all a big hug. Little Akara wiped away the tears that rolled down my cheeks.
‘Oh, I missed you all so much,’ I said in Khmer, trying my best to smile. ‘I brought some presents from Australia for you all, but I need to have a meeting with the staff first, okay?’
‘Okay!’ They skipped away, beaming.
We asked Davi to join us in the main downstairs common room. Peter and Jedtha and I sat in a circle on the floor with her. Having to sit opposite Davi set my limbic system into overdrive. I wanted to yell: You fucking bitch! Look what you’ve done! You’ve wrecked everything—you’ll be without a job and CCT will be left broken!
So it was probably best that I didn’t do any of the talking.
I let Jedtha do the translating for Peter. I figured she might accept this news more readily from an older, white male than she would from me.
Davi sat very still, her face blank, but with a defiant gleam in her eye.
Peter broke the rising tension in the room by clearing his throat. He said: ‘Davi, I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid we don’t have enough funds for a nurse anymore. So I’m afraid we have to let you go.’
Jedtha translated to Davi. She shook her head and said: ‘No. I don’t agree.’
Jedtha translated this for Peter, who was shocked into silence for a beat, his eyebrows shooting sky-high. He sputtered: ‘What do you mean she doesn’t agree? We don’t have the money. It’s as simple as that.’
Jedtha translated this back to Davi, who shook her head vehemently.
‘She still won’t accept it,’ reported Jedtha.
It was a real face-palm moment. I looked at Peter with eyes that said: ‘Oh, fuck it. She’s impossible and I’m too tired for this.’
Peter gave me a reassuring tap on the knee, leaned forward and said: ‘Look, tell her she can come back to work tomorrow if she wants, but she’s Not. Gonna. Get. Paid.’
When that seemed to fall on deaf ears, Jedtha said: ‘We need to give her some money. In Cambodia we do like this.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘Oh,’ Peter said, sounding a bit surprised. ‘If this is a cultural thing, why didn’t you mention it before? How much does she want, exactly?’
‘I think maybe five hundred US dollars is good amount,’ Jedtha replied meekly.
I was loath to give this bitch any of the money we’d worked so hard to raise, but it was a way to get her to leave without adding to my ever-growing list of enemies in Battambang. So we agreed. At least now she would go without causing any more problems.
Davi picked up her handbag and left without another word. I was glad to see the back of her, but also deeply sad that it had come to this.
I clambered to my feet, and went out to call the kids into the common room. Peter and I handed out the donated gifts I had brought back in my oversized luggage and watched the kids play with their new presents for a few minutes. Then it was time to break the news to them.
‘Okay, everyone. Please stop playing for a minute I have something to tell you . . .’ I started crying before I could even get the words out. The happy expressions on their faces faded away and were replaced with looks of deep concern. ‘I have to go and live and work in Phnom Penh now, so I won’t be at CCT every day anymore.’ My voice quivered as I spoke. One by one, the kids all started to cry. ‘But you know I love you all very much and I will never leave forever and will come and visit on the weekends as much as I can.’
In hindsight it was really a terrible thing to do to them. I would one day come to learn just how traumatising it was for the kids.
Even at the time, I hated that I was crying. I knew I was only contributing to the levels of distress this news would bring, but I couldn’t help it. I could see Sinet trying to be stoic up the back of the room, but with the intense emotional charge in the room, tears were running down her cheeks too.
Even today, if I ever cry at CCT, everyone else will cry with me—the kids and all the staff, too. And then we all laugh and cry at the same time, because it’s so funny and sweet.
But this wasn’t funny or sweet. It was awful. I felt like such a failure.
If my life were a movie, this would be the place to insert a ‘sad and lonely in Phnom Penh’ montage. It would start with Peter helping me move my bags into a tiny, $5 a night hotel room that I called ‘the dog box’. (Picture those horrible concrete cages people put greyhounds in and you get the idea.)
Then zoom in on Peter’s face as he looks around the hotel room with a kind of ‘Oh dear, you poor kid’ expression . . . Then jump-cut to me, dissolving into self-pitying tears. There was a part of me that wished Peter would say: ‘Why don’t you come home and get back into your film career, Tara?’ Not that I would have. But I wished someone would just say it, offer me an out so I could feel I had a choice, that I had chosen to be here . . . alone in my dog box.
Cross-fade to me saying goodbye to Peter at the airport, me looking completely and utterly destroyed as he walks through the gates. In that moment I felt so very small in a very big, scary world.
Then dissolve to me sitting in a bar on the riverfront trying to drown my sorrows by drinking vodka so cheap and nasty it was more like turpentine. I couldn’t even get past the second glass. My head slumps into my hands. I can’t even manage to successfully drink my sorrows away—am I destined to fail at every fucking thing I try to do?
Cut in a few scenes where I sit (alone) in cafes applying for jobs and trying to keep up with donor communications for CCT. Add a truly awful dinner with an aid worker who I thought was a potential friend, but who was only trying to get into my pants and tried to do so quite forcefully.
Cut to me walking home alone through the streets of Phnom Penh as the rain falls in sheets, drenching me to the
bone.
Zoom in on an SMS from Carolyn, which says: I’m so flattered that you feel this way about me, Tara. I adore you and would do anything for you. But I’m afraid I don’t feel quite the same way.
Yep. Lovin’ life.
It was the loneliest time of my life. I was in limbo—completely cut off from both my old lives. I missed the kids. I missed Franky and Rosie and Ruby, who were now under Sinet’s care at CCT. I missed Carolyn. I missed Peter, Sue and Noni. I missed my friends. The grief and isolation consumed me.
But it did give me time to lick my wounds and think.
I spent a lot of time reflecting on the role I’d played in the whole mess. Where had I gone wrong to make my team turn on me in such a vicious way?
There had been a lot of fear of being fired coming across in all the accusations, so perhaps the way I’d gone about firing Heng and Reaksmey had been culturally inappropriate. Or perhaps losing my temper in that meeting had a much bigger knock-on effect than I’d first thought . . .
If you lose your temper like that in Australia, it’s not good, but you might eventually be forgiven. But you absolutely can’t show anger like that in Cambodia. It’s just a no-no—anger must be suppressed unless you want to end up on the receiving end of some serious passive-aggression.
Here’s what the Lonely Planet guide says about Cambodia: ‘No matter how high your blood pressure rises, do not raise your voice or show signs of aggression. This will lead to a “loss of face” and cause embarrassment to the locals, ensuring the situation gets worse rather than better.’
Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. I’ve seen some awful cases where foreigners trip over this unwritten rule—like a woman I know who yelled at her landlord and ended up getting locked out of her house forever.
In the staff ’s eyes, I’d completely humiliated myself. And in threatening to fire them—and then firing Reaksmey and Heng—I’d humiliated them, too. But also, I had destroyed any sense of safety they had within CCT. If a leader makes their team feel unsafe and untrusted, things will inevitably start to unravel.