…and a few photos of grandson in Cambodia too.
It is sometimes heartbreaking: to see tots begging when they should be playing,
to see kids working when they should be in school.
My husband gives money to a Cambodian school project every month. He upped his donation after seeing Cambodia firsthand.
Here are some photos:
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| Grandson is looking through the postcards the girl is selling |
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| School in a craft workshop |
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| Two boys showing off their skills at leather work for sale |
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| Boys working at leathercraft |
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| East meets west |
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| Cuteness in a village |
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| A water life |
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| Kid in a tub |
The baby above is being bottle fed when the parents have almost nothing. When the bottle fell in the muddy water of the lake – where raw sewerage goes straight into the water – the woman picked it up and stuck it right back into the baby’s mouth.
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| working |
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| Swinging in a liana: kids see the similarities, not the differences |
Thanks for sharing, it is pretty horrifying isn't it. Governments are so busy fighting they don't take care of their people or how they live or teach them the things we take for granted, like cleanliness.
How did you handle all the begging/selling of small souvenirs? When I went with my mom, it was impossible to keep on saying no or no, thank you. We definitely caved in several times… It really is quite heartbreaking, especially with the really young ones. Our tour guide suggested that donating to the Angkor Children's Hospital would be best in helping these kids survive. I hope he's right.
Did you also visit the land mine museum/refuge/nonprofit near Siem Reap? That was particularly heartbreaking too, especially with a wall where they had the names and photos of smiling children whose lives have been affected by land mines. Each one had a short passage about their life story and their hopes for the future.
We had a chance to go to the museum, Hisham — and turned it down. None of us thought we could handle it.
We did give money to disabled musicians etc, and sometimes my grandson gave donations to the kids, but mostly we just did things like buy souvenirs from village workshops, local T-shirts and so on.
And with the continuing, supervised donation to schools in a poor area we figure we are doing something. It is certainly hard to say no to beggging kids. Heartbreaking.