by Gail Gutradt
I doubted that. Ouen was in tears, and Vuth shifted nervously from one foot to the other, avoiding eye contact. Wayne gave the boys fifty dollars apiece, plus a little more to cover their expenses until they left for Malaysia. We took a few photos, and Wayne gave each of them a bar of soap, a toothbrush and some toothpaste, and a few packets of shampoo. They had one small suitcase between them, a cardboard carrying case that had once held a laptop computer; in it they put the toiletries with their few personal belongings. Then they shook Wayne’s hand and prepared to leave.
Pesei was there, standing quietly in the background. In two years it will be his turn to go, and he will have his younger sister to think about as well. Pesei has worked hard in school and his English is good, and he is a wonderful artist. His life will likely be much different from Ouen’s and Vuth’s, but he looked on, clearly moved by what he saw. Our eyes met for a moment, and I think we each understood what the other was thinking, but we didn’t talk about it. Sok was there also, an older boy who refuses to go to school, and whom Wayne allows to stay because, really, he has nowhere else to go. After lunch Wayne overheard Sok encouraging his little brother not to be like Ouen and Vuth, but to remain in school.
Wayne walked the two boys to a waiting moto and said goodbye. It seemed a lonely leave-taking, marked by but a brief ceremony—a red thumbprint on a paper, some money and a few bars of soap. Some of the other children were present, but they seemed stunned and could not say goodbye. The whole proceeding felt to me like a scene from a movie of men being released from prison. One minute everything is provided, but then they walk through a gate; the next moment they are on their own, boarding a bus on a lonely road. I longed for a gathering of the clan, for some recognition that these young men were loved, that they had been and always would be part of this community, this family, some celebration of their maturity and a boost for their confidence as they departed. And some reassurance for the children who remain behind.
That night after we close the office, I follow Wayne as he walks with Mister Baing toward his sleeping porch. Baing is fourteen years old and doesn’t go to school. He is illiterate in his own language, but he is smart. He spends a lot of time with the volunteers and speaks English better than most of the other kids. He has apprenticed himself to the bricklayers and carpenters around Wat Opot and works hard, and he is learning a trade.
Baing is clearly worried. He repeatedly asks Wayne whether Ouen can come back if things don’t work out for him in Malaysia. Wayne says, “No. Ouen did not go to school, so he has to go out into the world and work.” Baing asks whether Ouen could come back if he goes to school. Clearly it is not only Ouen he is worried about. “No,” Wayne answers. “Ouen is a man now. He will be fine.” And Baing protests, “But … he cry!”
In the end, Ouen and Vuth never did get to Malaysia. They knocked around Takeo for a few months, their departure repeatedly delayed by conflicts between the Cambodian and Malaysian governments over exploitation of foreign workers.
When I visited in 2012, Ouen was living in Phnom Penh. He had gone from one tedious job to another, getting restless, rarely lasting for more than a few days. He constantly asked Wayne for money, inventing a series of family deaths and memorial ceremonies. Wayne paid bribes for jobs and fees for uniforms, but nothing much came of it. Finally Wayne told Ouen that he was on his own. When I left, Ouen had gotten himself hired by a taxi company, washing the cabs. He had no place to live, and was sleeping at the car wash office.
Sink or swim. Sometimes it turns out that a young person must be hurled into independence before he faces the reality that parents—biological or surrogate—cannot support him for the rest of his life. After he had been living completely on his own for some time, Ouen thanked Wayne for making him understand that he needs to be responsible for his own life.
Ouen’s poor eyesight makes everything more difficult for him, but Wayne says it is harder for children from impoverished backgrounds to find and then hold in focus a vision of what their life could be. For their part, children like Pesei, whose families were more structured and self-sufficient, are driven to reclaim all that was lost to them.
As more children reach high school age, Wayne has begun a series of one-on-one meetings and counseling sessions where the children discuss their education and career plans. Wayne asks them to come up with several careers they might be interested in, and then offers them realistic guidance on how to reach their goals. Wayne has also invited students from universities in Phnom Penh—many of them rural kids themselves—to visit Wat Opot and speak with our children about scholarship opportunities and to encourage them to make plans to attend college.
At the other end of the spectrum from Pesei is Mister Sampeah, the boy who came to Wat Opot hiding in the back of his mother’s ambulance. His mother had been viciously beaten and died without regaining consciousness and, understandably, Sampeah refused Wayne’s offer to try to find his village and reunite him with his family. As Sampeah grew older he began skipping school a lot. Maybe he was scared—scared of going out into a world that has only bad memories for him. Sampeah knew that some of the boys had been asked to leave Wat Opot because they refused to go to school, so he studied just enough to keep up appearances.
One day, Wayne was talking with some of the kids who had played hooky from school. He singled out Mister Sampeah as an object lesson. “Sampeah doesn’t go to school,” he said. “Maybe he will have to go home.”
Mister Baing looked very serious. “Sampeah not have home.”
Recently, Wayne found a foster family for Sampeah, and he tells me he is doing well now, living in the village.
Some of the older kids are aware that the little ones need advice and encouragement, and they talk about giving back to Wat Opot by setting an example for the others. As more Wat Opot children graduate from high school and university, Wayne is planning a wall of graduation photos to remind the younger kids of what is possible. But he can see that in the coming years one of his biggest challenges will be to convince all the children, HIV positive and negative alike, to avail themselves of the opportunities that Wat Opot has to offer, and to set high goals and not to be afraid to work for them.
38
Geewa: In His Own Words
Geewa [CHEE-wah]. It’s the name my family calls me. It means ‘Monkey.’ I was born in a monkey year.”
“Not s’waa?” I asked. That was the only Khmer word I knew for monkey.
“No. It’s different. Like maybe ‘Little Monkey,’ a funny name old people like to call you. And Pesei, it’s not my real name either. They call me that at Wat Opot because it’s the name my mother called me. My mother liked that name. Pesei is a girl’s name, a soft name, because I am quiet.”
“What is your real name, then?”
“Rathanak. It means diamonds, gold, everything you have that can make you rich. In school they call me Rathanak, my given name.”
Before Pesei’s father got sick there had been wealth. The family had a trucking company and a car and land. But his father caught AIDS and brought it home to his wife.
“My father was sick, and my mother borrowed gold on our land.”
The fact that his mother borrowed the money in gold will prevent Pesei from reclaiming his family’s rice fields. Ten years ago, when his mother took out the loan, gold prices were low. To reclaim his patrimony Pesei must pay the lender back the same weight of gold, and the price has risen dramatically. These days the gold is worth much more than the land.
His mother spent all she could borrow to take care of his father’s medical bills.
“After my father died, they took everything. So my mother went to Phnom Penh to work. Me and my sister Jorani stayed with my father’s mother in a little house. My yei did not want my father to marry our mother. My mother’s family was very poor and she did not have an education, and her skin was very dark. But she was beautiful and smart and had lots of friends.
“My mother had HIV, but it didn’t show yet. She went to
Phnom Penh and did makeup and hair style for movies. She worked very hard, visited us every three months. No one knew she was sick. They had no ARVs yet, so she took the old medicines. One day when she was working, someone saw the pills and asked. She was afraid they would know she had HIV, so she stopped the job. She came back home to visit. She was very thin.
“Then she went back to Phnom Penh and worked cutting grass to feed cows. But it was very hard work. After, she was getting very sick, so she stopped working, came to the hospital in Takeo. She lied to the doctor, told him no one was at home to take care of her, nothing to eat, so the doctor took her to Wat Opot.
“So she stayed at Wat Opot and Jorani and I stayed home. Some people told me maybe she died. I kept crying, but I still went to school and I missed her. Finally she came to see us. I said, ‘Where you stay? People say you die!’ She said, ‘Opot, but you cannot come because it HIV place.’ I had no clothes. Only my kramah and short pants. After we ate she took a truck back to Opot, and I jumped on the back of the truck, and we went to Highway Two to get the bus. She saw me and she cried. It was very far so I could not go back. She said I can come to Opot, but only for a short time, but I came and met Wayne and some of the kids here. Then I stayed and took care of my mother.”
“What was it like when you first came to Wat Opot?” I ask Pesei.
“It felt strange. Everything was different. Smelled different. Even the rice was different. The rice was the wrong size. People all looked very strange, sick, all smelled of medicine, disinfectant. But after, I got used to it.
“My mother needed money, so she sometimes went to Phnom Penh to ask her friends. Friends gave her money, but they were scared of HIV so did not let her come inside their house. I slept outside on the street with her. We did that six or seven times. That made me strong. I can live anywhere, sleep anywhere, because I wanted to go everywhere with my mother.”
He was ten years old.
“We stopped going to Phnom Penh because she was so thin they would not pick her up, because they were afraid she would die on the bus. Sometimes we waited two, three hours for a bus to stop. My mother had a good voice. On the way to Phnom Penh she used to sing on the bus. Then people liked her, gave her money.
“One day at Wat Opot she fell down from the bamboo bed under the tamarind tree. She broke her hip, made skin problem [bedsores]. I took her to the hospital, took showers with her, cleaned her. After three months we went back to Wat Opot, but it hurt. She always screamed and cried.
“After she died, I decide to stay here at Wat Opot. My yei came and wanted me and Jorani to go back to live with her in the village. But I decided to stay because Wayne said we could go to school.
“At first it felt very strange, but people liked me because I am polite, I am a good kid. And I always make friends with volunteers.”
Abruptly, Pesei began to tell a story he had never told me before. Unlike the Khmer, Chinese do not cremate their dead, but bury them in tombs carefully oriented according to the laws of feng shui. After some years the bones are dug up, cleaned and reburied.
“My father was half Chinese, half Khmer, so after he died they buried him. About four or five years later, we had to get the bones out and have a ceremony and put them in a good place. I am the son, so I had to do it. I climbed down into the grave. Jorani was there, crying. I was crying. My family were all crying and holding hands like a chain and I reached up, held on to my family with one hand, cleaned the bones with my other hand. I had to take everything off the bones, old clothes and skin and everything. I felt very scared, but I am the only one who could do it. I cleaned all the bones: head, arm, finger, everything. I took the bones out and put them in a nice box, and we buried it with my grandfather’s bones. After I did that, I can do anything.”
Pesei is twenty years old now. He is about to leave Wat Opot to study at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. The Schmitz-Hille Foundation, which sponsors the art program at Wat Opot, has given Pesai and Sambath, another talented twelfth-grade boy, full scholarships, but they must still pass their final exams to graduate. These tests are notoriously difficult, the more so for students from village schools. Most students find it necessary to take extra classes after school to get a passing grade. Sambath, who wants to be an architect, is an excellent student, but he failed the exam last year. Some of the better students inform me that on occasion an especially good exam paper is swapped with that of a wealthy student, one who skips class a lot. This can be crushing to the diligent pupil, for a good grade on the exam not only allows the student to graduate, but also may help him qualify for a scholarship. Now, to go to university, Sambath must wait a year to take the exam again. Meanwhile he has been attending special exam-prep classes in Phnom Penh, where he can live with his older brother.
Pesei has decided to join Sambath to prepare for his exam, but living in Phnom Penh is expensive. Wayne tells Pesei that with so many other kids in school he cannot afford to support him there until he is enrolled in university. Pesei worries about it for a few days, and then remembers an uncle in Phnom Penh. He has not seen him in many years, but surprisingly the uncle and his wife invite Pesei to live with them while he prepares for the exam.
Pesei and I are just leaving for Phnom Penh in a tuk-tuk when his uncle’s car arrives unannounced and whisks him away to a party at his grandmother’s house. His extended family has gathered there, people he has not seen since before his parents died. They have a feast and his family wish him well in his new life.
“Everybody was happy to see me. They called me Geewa, Monkey,” a name he had not heard for a long time.
Pesei had been living in Phnom Penh only a few weeks when he spoke to a cousin who was making a trip to see their maternal grandmother. He asked to go with her.
“I went to see my mother’s family because my mother wanted to go before she died, but she was too sick. I have only one cousin from there. She took care of me when I was little and my parents arranged a marriage for her. It was very far away. We had to take a bus, then a moto, then cross the river, then another bus, another moto. My cousin is the only one who knows the way back home. I wanted to go for a long time because my grandmother is very old, but I didn’t have the money, didn’t know the way. They are very poor and live very far away, near the Vietnam border.
“After I came there, I met all my family, and told my grandmother that my mother was crying before she died. She wanted to come here. My grandmother asked me to pray and light incense and ask my mother’s spirit to come. I called Jorani and asked her to go to the crematorium at Wat Opot and pray and tell my mother.
“Everyone was excited to see me in Prey Veng, where I was born. They had not seen my face since I was seven years old. They said, I am my father; I look exactly like him, but I have my grandmother’s feet.
“And they called me Geewa.”
I remembered the night Miss Jorani came to the crematorium to pray to her mother’s spirit because it was the only time I ever saw her at the evening memorial service. I asked Jorani why she had never come before, and about her childhood at Wat Opot.
“I was four years old when my father died from AIDS. Pesei was six years old. I didn’t go to school yet when he died. When I was very young, my mother made me to plant rice, to cut rice. I was eight years old or seven years old.
“When my mother was sick she left home. She rode on the moto on the back and I couldn’t go with her, and I cried. Then she came to visit and brought me here to Wat Opot. I was nine years old. There were three dorms and one kitchen and no buildings or landfill or palm trees. Only one place they planted a garden, near the kitchen. The flowers were very beautiful.
“At night I rode my bicycle around the crematorium. My mother told me, ‘Don’t go near that place! It full of ghosts to burn!’ I wasn’t afraid. I really liked that place. But when I knew about the ghosts I don’t go back again.
“Other children were here before me. They brought me shoes and clothes. They were very kind. They c
ame to speak with me. Kalliyan, Sida, Sovann, Punthea, Rajana, Srey Pich, Sun Tevy, all were here. Mister Chhang and the others, they all died.
“I helped Pesei take care of my mother. Clean her sores, take baths with her. She always cried, ‘I going to die! I cannot stay with you anymore. You have to take care of yourself.’ She told me I have to study hard, stay at Wat Opot and have a better life, not go with our grandmother.
“I had one piece of my father’s bone. He was Chinese and Khmer, so we could not cremate him. Pesei cleaned the bones. My mother gave me one piece and Pesei one piece, but we both lost them.”
I asked Jorani whether her mother had been angry at her father for infecting her with HIV.
“She was not angry at my father. She took care of my father. She was very kind. When my father died, she very very cry. She tried to take care of my father, sold everything she had, her car, her other house in Phnom Penh, gold. Now I have nothing, but I have Wat Opot.
“She told me, ‘Don’t trust the man. Take care of yourself, study hard.’ She always cried when she gave me advice. When I saw she cried, I always cried too.
“Pesei came here maybe half a year before me. When he brought me to Wat Opot he taught me to say, ‘Good morning, Wayne,’ but I was really shy. I could not say that. I was very afraid of Wayne. He wore a black shirt and black pants. He was a big man.”
Miss Jorani tells me about the volunteers and about the other children at Wat Opot.
“Volunteers come because they like the children and it’s a very nice place. The children have a good heart. They pity the children and like to play with them. They tell the world about the children, that they lost their parents, but they can still play with a happy smile.