One More Week

I don't really want to leave. Julia doesn't really want to leave. So why leave?

This evening at around 7 pm Julia had a magnificent brainwave for a fundraiser for New Hope. At 8 pm we had changed our flight to Laos giving us an extra week in Siem Reap. I know it may appear we've gone a little mental for this organization. But honestly, is that bad?

Julia's idea involves our kids, simple art projects, her friend's gallery, her brother's band, and hopefully a whole lot of revenue for New Hope. The finer points have yet to be nailed down (they'll probably be formed and fueled by many ice coffees over the weekend).

What tipped the scales, really, was our walk through the village today. The school itself is in the "better part of town" meaning the buildings have walls and roofs. About 100 meters down the same road, the shacks are made primarily of palm leaves, walls are optional. "Kitchen" is used to refer to the one pot in a household -wherever it happens to be put down.

We've seen the same kids come to school every day for a week. They all wear the same thing everyday and they are all pretty grubby. In a classroom setting it is more difficult to tell who comes from a poor family and who comes from a desperately poor family. It's a different story out in the village. It's easy to see that the family living in a corrugated steel building (four walls and a roof) is far better off than the mother and her kids squatting under s palm leaf roof with no walls.

We saw how much rice families had to feed 4-9 people for the next six days. Not much. Malnutrition is rampant. We saw a 14 month old baby no bigger than a healthy 6 month old. Most infuriating of all, the Cambodian government actively bans, and will destroy, vegetables grown on their land (the majority of the huts are essentially squatting on government land).

Here's why I am staying. Kids from sponsored families were so obviously so much healthier and better off than kids with no sponsor. Considering the miniscule cost to keep a family alive we can't not at least try.