A visit to the PURE! home in Phnom Penh

What you are reading is draft four hundred fifty nine thousand of this post.  I thought it would write itself, but it’s become clear to me that I’m having trouble putting my thoughts to paper (to keyboard??) because I’m scared that I won’t be able to do this experience justice.

We spent a couple of days visiting an orphanage in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and met some of the most wonderful little people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.  I absolutely fell in love with them, even when they were running me ragged.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In yet another instance of serendipity on this trip, during our visit to Cambodia we happened to cross paths with a friend of mine from way back, Nicoline.  Nicoline and I met when she was an exchange student at my high school, and she very graciously tour-guided Adam and me around Amsterdam a few years back (and ferried us around on her bicycle, the poor thing!).  When I found out that Nicoline was running an orphanage in Cambodia, I immediately began to hope that we’d be able to meet up with her in our travels.  I wasn’t hoping too strongly, though–our schedule was unsure, and Nicoline splits her time between Cambodia and Netherlands.  Moreover, when she is in Cambodia, she also spends time in Siem Reap, working on other projects her NGO supports.

The travel gods were smiling on us yet again because our arrival in Cambodia coincided with Nicoline’s return to Phnom Penh, where the Pure for Kids orphanage is located.  Nicoline invited us to visit the orphanage and we jumped at the chance.  We arrived that first day to find thirty four kids, ranging from eighteen months to sixteen years, studying away.  They greeted us warmly and kept on with their lessons while Nicoline showed us around.  The orphanage is simple, but clean and safe.  The younger children sleep in teeny wooden bunk beds in large dorms and the older kids share smaller rooms upstairs.  There are three full-time live-in staffers and usually three Pure Volunteers to teach classes.

After the children ate lunch, they had some free time, during which we were free to play with them.  Some were more shy than others, but some were braver and promptly decided that we should join in the fun.

They were so proud to show off the songs they knew in English and eagerly soaked up anything new we could show them, which resulted in me singing “The itsy bitsy spider” approximately eleventy gajillion times.  Sorry, Nicoline The real fun started, however, when I pulled out the camera.  There was something about being able to ham it up for the camera and then being able to look at the pictures immediately that broke down any remaining barriers.  They bounced between Adam and I, shouting to get my attention, “Picture, picture, one more, one more!!” and climbed on Adam like a jungle gym, then fanned him with their coloring books when he sat down for a moment.

I had such fun laughing and playing with them, but the impromptu photo shoot had sent them into a full-on frenzy, so we put the camera away and sat down with them for some calmer activities.  That’s when the cuddling started.  I was absolutely charmed when the eighteen-month-old, Diem, toddled over, pulled himself up on my knee and motioned for me to pick him up.  It made me melt when my little friend, Srei Hong, wrapped her arms around my legs anytime I stopped moving long enough, and always wanted to sit on my lap.  I have to admit though, to being surprised when I noticed that one of the teenage boys was shadowing Adam’s every move, and every time Adam would sit, the boy would rest his head on Adam’s shoulder or throw an arm around him.

What?  An affectionate teenage boy?  At that moment it hit me.  These kids have so little, there’s no room for distance, no time for pretending to be tough or too macho for physical contact.  I began to watch them in a new light, and was so moved by the joy that seemed to bubble out of them when they played, by the way that they formed a great big family–the older ones carrying the little ones around, by the way that sometimes you had to coax a smile out of one of the shy little ones, but once it was out, it was given so freely, with such trust and innocence, there was no hiding it.

These children don’t have a lot, but it is clear that they do have good family.  They may not have parents anymore, but they have each other and the Pure for Kids staff, and they are happy and healthy and loved.

My appreciation for Nicoline, her volunteers and the Pure for Kids staff only grew through the rest of our visits to the orphanage.  On the second day, the staff was preparing for a rededication ceremony and asked me to keep an eye on the youngest class–basically all kids under 6 or so.  Adam was helping the volunteer in the high school classroom, so I was on my own.  The teacher  got them set up with their workbooks and then left me with 12 little ones, all sitting at benches, diligently studying.  “Piece of cake,” I thought.  And then I promptly pulled those words out of the thought bubble over my head and ate them.

Holy sweet mother of mercy, those kids have loads of energy.  (That sound you hear is the hysterical laughter of all of my teacher friends who I’m sure, are screaming, “TOLD YOU SO!!”)  I was wholly unprepared for the “what next?” when they lost interest in their workbooks, and at one point, after retrieving two of the older ones from the middle school class on the other side of building, I realized that my best hope was to keep them in the room, even if we weren’t doing anything educational, per se.  Yes, that’s right, I resigned myself to herding them, not teaching them.  I managed to keep their attention, for the most part, with about a million more rousing renditions of The Itsy Bitsy Spider and enough Ring Around the Rosy that we were all so dizzy that the falling down part at the end was involuntary.  Sidenote: games involving children hurling themselves down onto concrete floors?  Not necessarily a good idea.

Thankfully, soon it was time for lunch and after lunch it was all playtime (they would normally have more classes, but the schedule was a little unusual that day), which did also involve a certain amount of playing in the pouring rain–such fun.

When it was time for us to bid the orphanage adieu, I was exhausted but so sad to be going.  I still get the warm fuzzies when I think about those children and everything that Pure for Kids is doing for them.  If you’d like to know more about the orphanage, please click through to the website: PURE! for Kids Orphanage.  If you click on any of the links on the right hand side of that page, you can see the monthly budget of the orphanage (for instance, the salary of the live-in director of the orphanage is $50 per month, and they spend $120 per month on 300 Kg of rice to feed all those children!) and information on how to sponsor one of the children at the orphanage, amongst other info.  It’s worth having a look–if you are in the position to make a donation, it’s such a worthy organization.  If not, it’s certainly worth the time to check out just to see some more of the photographs of the children and hear the latest news .

Meg