I am always aware of the constant poverty in Cambodia, and on this trip, covering some 8 provinces on the western side of Cambodia I found myself unable to help time and time again. The one thing that gives me comfort while living among such poverty is that I was able to help about 100 kids this week have an opportunity to get education, eat good food, and have opportunities that all the other people I met could probably never even imagine.
Do you know how they treat poor people in Cambodia? They give them a bottle of soy sauce and take their picture. I am not sure who is supposed to be the one feeling blessed, the photographer or the impoverished villager.
If you are an urbanite just remember you can’t eat concrete. You need the poor. Love them, treat them with respect and give them the full value of the fruit of their labor.
True poverty. “Om” is a widow. She came to Poipet, Cambodia many years ago and barely survives, but has nowhere else to go that offer any better prospects. She has no family to help her, so each morning she cooks rice and tries to sell it to people. When I met Om, she was just washing the dishes from the morning breakfast. Yes, in the same water, that she is living over. I just pray that the people she feeds don’t spread cholera. Her house is the little hole directly in front of her. It is made out of rubber insulation from discarded shipping containers and bamboo. Her toilet is behind the white rice sack wall and her clothes line, for her other set of clothes, is a bamboo pole.