The Delivery

Hi Everyone,

Like all construction projects that seem to take on a life of their own, this one was no different. The last few days leading up to the blessing and departure of the clinic were filled with many hot, sweaty long days of work and gathering of material. But in the end, the clinic was mostly ready save for some details and fine tuning to be done on route.

Monks chanting

We arrived at the clinic last Friday to begin work in the early morning before the monks arrived (we thought at 2 pm.) Unbeknownst to us, it was not that simple. Around 9:30 a group of elderly women, most with shaved heads, arrived to prepare for the ceremony in the afternoon. They came bearing many types of foliage, sections of banana tree trunks and leaves, lotus flowers, mats, incense and candles. The women sat on their haunches for hours chewing betel nut and assembling the material into elaborate sculptures of vegetation. We thought they were done a couple of hours before the ceremony but knew we were wrong when several elderly male men in white robes arrived to put the finishing touches on the preparations; placing fruit, lotus flowers and other offereings on the alter. Soon after the monks arrived, in their tangerine orange robes. After lighting the candles and with incense burning the chanting began. They chanted for safety and good luck for the clinic while sprinking the crowd with water and lotus flowers petals. After it was over the men and women disassembled the lot in very quick order and were gone, leaving us behind to toast the completion and devour a whole roasted pig.

On Our Way

We continued working on the clinic doing last minute things and miraculously, as planned, we were ready to go on Sunday afternoon. Leaving the port was a bit tense as the pilot did not tell anyone his intensions and took off creating some frantic moments causing some of us to leap into the water to retrieve ropes and fend off disaster. Finally underway, we set off downstream through the floating village and the channel mouth and onto the lake. We travelled till dusk and anchored near the shore for the night. Before sunrise, we were off again heading south towards the Stung Sen, on our way we contined to work on the clinic and organize the piles of equipment and material on board.

Crew who went on the trip

Part way through the day we rendezvoused with another boat, as our small tow boat lacked enough power to do the job; with two boats pulling we made better time. About mid-day we took off with the small boat, while the clinic carried on, we went into Moat Kla Village, where K.I.D.S. built the school for three hundred children last year. We needed to drop off a generator, lights and fans that we had purchased; the teachers had requested these items so the kids could study at night and have relief from the heat in the hot season. We had a great visit with the teachers and children and then left to catch up with the clinic. We continued on till dark. The wind started to rise and as there was no safe harbour nearby, we had no choice but to anchor in the open water of the lake. We spent a long and uncomfortable night with much banging and crashing of waves and blowing wind, not much sleep was had by any of the eleven of us that were on the trip. We were all relieved when dawn arrived and the wind dropped and we were on our way again.

We arrived at the mouth of the Stung Sen mid-day and anchored for a while to eat, then set off up river for the final leg of the trip. Along the way we were greeted by many smiles and waves as we passed through narrow channels and other floating villages. As we weaved our way up the Stung Sen the level of poverty took a turn for the worse. Around four o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday we arrived in the first village the clinic would serve. Almost immediately people began to gather, asking to see the medical team, that were not yet with us, as they were scheduled to arrive by bus, motorcycle and boat on Thursday morning for the first clinic.

We settled in to watch a beautiful sunset, a most amazing star filled sky and feasted on a wonderful evening meal, and the insects... feasted on us, more on that and the first clinic in a couple of days.

The push to finish the clinic was taxing to say the least and all the while back home our dear friend Mike Matthews, husband of Carol, a founding board member for K.I.D.S., became ill and has since passed away. Mike was an inspiring educator, actor and a fountain of knowledge as well as a loving husband, father, nano and friend who had a wonderful and witty sense of humour. His spirit will live on in the minds and hearts of so many. Mike and Carol have been great supporters of us and K.I.D.S. During Mike's brief and furious illness, he was the recipeint of great health care and medical attention at the Nanaimo Hospital. We know Mike would be pleased with the health care the clinic will provide for children and families. Adrianne and I want to thank Mike and his beloved wife Carol for their compassion, love and support.

With appreciation,

Rick and Adrianne

PS: Sorry for the gap in updates and being out of touch, but we have been out of good email connections for a while.

Update & Pictures

Hello Everyone,

We hope that you are all well?

Girl's Home construction

The construction of the girl’s home is coming along, the concrete and brick structure is nearing completion and soon work will begin on the roof and both interior and exterior finishing . We are all getting excited as we can now see how the extra space will look when the building is complete. The girl’s are very happy we had a nice time with them the other night when we went there for dinner.

As you know K.I.D.S assists children with education, tuition, transportation, books and uniforms. Two of these children are the daughters of Vanna and his wife the girls are age nine and eleven. Vanna is a land mine victim and has lost both arms just below the elbows and we have known him for many years. We have always admired him; he and his family are very poor and refuse to beg for a living, as many are forced to do here. Instead Vana and his wife support their family by selling books off a cart on the side of the road and Vanna’s wife hand washes clothes. The girl’s love school and this will be the second year that we will be assisting them with tuition and whatever supplies they need for the next year. Right now Vanna is down in Phnom Penh being fitted with prosthetic arms at an organization that assists land mine victims; Vanna even without lower arms manages to sells books, puts them into bags and makes change.

Solar lamps for all

Still on the topic of assisting children with education, we took a ride out to a village about an hours drive from Siem Reap to visit a program we started in a rural area a couple of years ago. We select children from the poorest families and assist them with tuition for English and Khmer school as well as other educational needs. We began sponsoring eight children a couple of years ago and added two more when we arrived this year. Hak, our friend and administrator of this program, also identified eleven more children that would love to be able to study English. When we arrived they were all waiting for us along with the principal of the school. The children that have had a year of English are doing very well and were able to answer basic questions and even asked a few themselves, we were greatly impressed with their confidence. Last fall we were given a donation to supply personal solar powered lamps for children so they child could study at night, as obtaining a candle or enough fuel to burn an oil lamp is difficult for them. We distributed the lamps and instructed them on their use and they were excited to get these useful and brightly coloured lights. We then went and visited the eleven new children and their families at their homes; this is always a very difficult part of the work here. Their stories are all very sad and similar, living in thatched tattered huts, most rented, a few families homeless and living with others or on factory land and most of the children having to work in tough conditions at the local brick factories. Many of these small 11 and 12 year old children spend the morning in Khmer school and the rest of the day hauling bricks or loading kilns at the factories, hard to believe these slight and beautiful children have to work in such hot and tiring environments. Most of the families agreed that they would try to compensate for the income lost if their child could go to school, some parents imploring us to improve their children's lot in life. Each time we asked the children if they wanted to learn English their faces lit up with great smiles and of course it is difficult to say no to such enthusiasm for learning. The cost for education is $14.00 a month per child and we will also provide them with bicycles as they have difficulty getting to school on foot as some live 5 kilometers away.

The floating clinic is nearing completion. The building and hull are finished and the electrical, plumbing and solar systems are done. We have a few days to take care of all the small details and the rain catchment system to supplement the water filtration in the rainy season. We are lining up the dedication and christening of the clinic for Friday the 17 and departure for the Stung Sen river on the 19. On the way to the Stung Sen we are going to stop and drop off a generator at the school for KIDS built last year for 330 children in Moat Kla village on the Tonle Sap Lake. We visited them a few weeks ago and the children want to study at night but they have no lights or fans for the hot season.

It should prove to be an adventure we will keep you posted.

All the best to you and yours,

Rick and Adrianne

The Clinic

Hello All,

New Construction of Lake Clinic

This week the floating health clinic has taken a big step forward. The prefabricated building is nearing competition and is now bolted down to the floating platform (see photo of clinic and TLC1). Things have gone very well except we hit some snags with the construction of the bathroom so we will be completing it ourselves, as some of the aesthetics were lost in translation.



Bathrooms here are purely functional

New Clinic and TLC1

and on the lake they often consist of a simple frame on the back of a building covered with boards, tarps or rice sacks and one or two boards over the water and presto you have, as they say here ...a happy room. It goes without saying that this is an environmental faux pas. Health is the main focus of The Lake Clinic (TLC) along with education, disease prevention and assisting villagers with the use and maintenance of bio sand filters. The TLC wants to lead by example and so we are going to be containing water hyacinths, which are floating aquatic plants that grow like weeds here and containing them in a tank under the bathroom. The hyacinths will capture and treat the waste in an ultra low tech, cheap and easily replicated manner. Jon Morgan, the founder of TLC, is in contact with a man who has done his PHD on the water quality on the lake; his simple method of using these plants, that are voracious feeders, will quickly turn the effluent/black water to near grey water quality, not perfect but eons closer to a solution in this harsh environment with no power and miles from anywhere.

Thatched hovels

Each day we head out to the Port where the clinic is being built. As we travel through town, by the beautiful hotels and into the countryside the poverty slowly starts to emerge and by the time we are in the Port area it is hammering at your senses. The crowded, thatched hovels are crammed together over or on the edge of the lake; the dirt/mud road deteriorates into a bone jarring ride, some days we have to walk as the road is too rough. The heat, smell of rotting fish, dust and lack of toilets

On their way to school

make this a very sad place. Small children play happily in the polluted water not realising what contaminates this water holds, while others pick their way along in bare feet on the way to school (see photos). Every day we are reminded that life can be so unfair and it helps to know that together we are all assisting those that have been placed in these untenable situations.



The doctors, nurses and midwives of TLC have been facing challenges of their own of late. A few weeks ago the TLC 1 lost it transmission; a replacement is on order from Vietnam and still in transit. This has a huge impact on the clinic staff as they have to transport themselves and their gear on a much smaller boat; towing cooking material, medical equipment in an even smaller boat behind. It is getting hot here, 30 plus each day. The teams are putting in long days treating patients then sleeping and eating wherever they can find space on other boats, schools or floating homes for four days a week, basically camping on the lake. We have been out on the lake several times over the years and at the best of times it can be an endurance test. The floating clinic will be going even further afield to the Stung Sen River; with the TLC 1 out of commission that area is not being served at all at present. To say we are inspired by Jon’s vision and commitment to health care and the TLC staff is an understatement; we, the staff and no doubt the villagers are all eagerly awaiting the completion and delivery of the new clinic to serve the Stung Sen area.

Wishing you and yours all the best,

Thanks for your support,

Rick and Adrianne

Buildings, Books and Bumpercars

Hello Everyone,

Hope all is well with you and yours.

The prefab building for the floating clinic is coming along and will soon be transported and assembled on the deck of the platform, we are having a bathroom and shower built as well. In the meantime we are assembling the cooking supplies, mats, coolers etc as well as coordinating the installation of solar panels, wiring and plumbing. We will soon update this project again with more photos.

The addition to the girl's home is moving along as well; with the concrete structure almost complete and the brickwork well under way. As we visit the girl’s and check on the progress of the project we realize how cramped for space they are so we are all waiting for the completion of the new space with great anticipation.

Kompong Cham School

We took a trip to Kompong Cham, another province to the south, about a five hour drive from where we are. We went to a small isolated village on the bank of the Mekong River. We were there many years ago with a young girl whose family ran the guest house where we used to stay. We decided to return with the same Cambodian family, who are now our good friends, to assist the children of the village with educational supplies. To get to the village we had to take a small ferry across the Mekong River, the ferry only held six cars, we had three full of supplies. The village is picturesque, surrounded by pastoral farmlands, banana trees and shaded roads however the bottom line is the same, schooling is difficult to achieve for many children and the people are very poor. The woman who runs the Guest House grew up in the village and lost her brother during the Khmer Rouge regime, when she was young she worked very hard as a child, especially during the Pol Pot times. She and her family now run a very successful business and own two guest houses in Siem Reap, she wanted to give back to her village. Together we pooled funds to provide exercise books, pens, pencils, crayons and a treat for over 1000 children. On our arrival we were met by the teachers and students. They had prepared a ceremony for us and were very excited to have visitors and receive the school materials; after handing out the piles and piles of supplies we walked around the school. The principal explained that in the rainy season the school has to close for a few months as the classrooms are flooded and everyone in the village uses boats to travel from A to B. Hard to believe the red dusty roads turn into small canals, this explains why all the houses are built on stilts. The school was having problems with their water pump for their well and so we were able to purchase a new one; K.I.D.S. also bought a few tables for their library, so the children can sit and read. It was nice to see the children walking and riding their bikes home tightly holding their new materials and smiling. It was also great to see Cambodian people reaching out to assist their own and supporting education.

Sopeak and family

We have been going out to visit some of the children KIDS supports with education in the countryside. Last year you may remember a young woman named Sopeak, who we have been assisting with school, she is very bright and incredibly dedicated; she also has a hearing problem that we were able to improve with a hearing aide. We were waiting for some ear surgeons from France who volunteer annually here to see if they could help her, but due to a miscommunication she missed the opportunity in October. We hope they will return to Cambodia soon as her hearing is still deteriorating. We took a ride out to her home, which is about 15k outside the city. Her family met us with smiles and fresh coconuts from their garden. Sopeak is still doing extremely well in school, out of 66 children she is number 6 in her class, she is also progressing well in English and we had a nice chat about school and life in the countryside. She continues to put in 12 hour days riding 30 k each day to and from Khmer and English school, some of that trip is at night in the dark as there is no electricity in her village area, once home she studies by the light of the solar lamp that was donated for her last year. Her father was home, as he left his job in Phnom Penh, a city hundreds of kilometres from his village, where he had been making furniture for a few years, and only able to come home a few times a year. The factory stopped paying him a salary and expected him to work for room and board and so he has now come home to try and find a job and be closer to his family; he is a hard working man. His wife does her best with 5 children by growing vegetables and bananas to eat and sell; they live in a small one room house with a thatched roof (see attached photo, Sopeak in red shirt). Due to the families financial difficulties two of Sopeak’s younger teenage sisters have now had to quit school and work in town at the local massage places to try and help support the family, we are working on solutions to get them back in school. They are a close, loving family and everyone pulls their weight as best they can in the face of difficult odds. With donations we are going to provide them with a new well, as theirs is becoming unusable, buy the father a phone so he can look for work and buy another bike for the children; transportation and communication can improve life greatly in the countryside.

At the fair

On a happy note we took all the girls from the girl’s home and a group of boys who live at a safe house that we assist, to a fair that was in town. All together there were about 30 of us. The kids had a fantastic time, they mostly loved the trampoline and the bumper cars, the small ones rode around on the baby bumper cars...great fun. It is hard to believe these kids can jump for 30 minutes in 34 degree humid weather and want to keep jumping; everyone was hot, sweaty and happy on the ride home.

We will write again soon about the other projects. As always thanks for making this all possible.

Warmly,

Adrianne and Rick

Buildings and Bikes

Hello Everyone,

Mobile Health Clinic

We hope all is well and the New Year is off to a good start. We thought we would write and give you a quick update on the progress of the Mobile Health Clinic and the addition to the Girl’s Home. The clinic is progressing very well; the welding of the steel floatation is now finished as is the wooden platform and railings around the perimeter. Work has also begun on the prefabricated building that will be brought down to the port, assembled and bolted down to the deck. The Lake Clinic staff are very happy to have this clinic built and we are working closely with them to identify their needs regarding the function of the clinic. In speaking with the doctors, nurses and midwives they are looking forward to having a permanent facility where they can treat those in need and stay in a comfortable place while working in this isolated area. We are planning to tow the clinic to its location on the Stung Sen River in a few weeks, about a 24 hour trip (no doubt an adventure), not sure how were getting back???

Addition to the Girl's Home

The addition to the Girl’s Home is coming along with the foundations and first floor support columns complete and the forming of the second floor and support beams well under way. These projects are providing work and training for many Khmer (Cambodian) people. With the construction of the Girl’s Home, the building of the clinic and work on an addition to the building we live, which starts early and goes 7 days a week, life seems to be one big cloud of dust and noise.

We took the girl’s out and bought them some new, higher quality bikes as the ones we purchased two years ago have seen many kilometres and the constant repairs were starting to add up each month. We have connected with the girl’ several times now and they are progressing well in their studies and with their English. It is hard to believe how the girl’s are growing. The older ones seemed so small a few years ago and now several of them are teenagers. We have known many of them for years and it is hard to believe that they once lived such difficult and tragic lives. They are now healthy, bright eyed, happy and keen to study and learn. We believe that this model of small groups of abandoned children and youth coming together to live as a family is so much better than living in large orphanages and the closeness of the girls is wonderful to see, they are truly a family.

After retrieving Srey Poan from the border we told her mom that we would assist her and the remaining children somehow. So we went to the market and purchased a bicycle, fish paste and various other sundries so she could make Khmer soup and transport it to sell at local market for a profit. We also purchased two bags of organic fertiliser to give the current juvenile rice crop a good start; as you recall in our last email the family lost their first rice crop to the floods a couple of months ago. With this leg up the family will hopefully be able to tide themselves over until the current rice crop matures. They were very grateful for the assistance.

We have attached photos of the clinic platform awaiting the building, the some of girl's the house mother and cook in front of the formwork of the girl's home.

We thank you for your kind messages and best wishes and will continue to keep you posted.

Warmest regards,

Rick and Adrianne

Srey Poan

Dear Friends,

We have been busy with the projects and all goes well with both the Girl’s Home extension and the construction of the floating mobile health clinic, we will update them soon.

We have a story about a girl, Srey Poan, whom we have known for several years. On Christmas Day we received a call from You Vath, who runs K.I.D.S. Girl’s Home; she was very concerned as Srey Poan, whom You Vath has known and worked with for years had gone to the Thai/Cambodian border to find work. The sixteen year old has lived most of her life in street children’s centres and protection centres/orphanages; she is lovely and very bright. KIDS has been supporting her with English lessons for quite awhile. We were all very disturbed to hear that she was in the border town of Poipet, a difficult place where human trafficking is common and many problems exist, especially for young women. Srey Poan had called her friend at the Girl’s Home from Poipet to say she was very unhappy and had been working selling used clothes all day as well as being used as her employers housekeeper and babysitter until late in the evening. A month after starting work she had not been paid and was told she could not leave until she paid back the debt of her transport to Poipet (only $40.00).

We decided that we would head out in the morning to find her and bring her back. On Boxing Day we rented a taxi to drive us the 250 kilometres to the border. You Vath had also brought along Srey Poan’s mother, who lives in poverty with her other 4 children in the country side. The mother was forced by poverty to give Srey Poan up many years ago as she could not feed or educate her and felt she had a better chance in the city. Srey Poan’s mother arrived wearing the only clothes she had, very worn and filthy pyjamas, the baby also had little to wear. You Vath lent the mom pants and a shirt and the seven of us crammed into the small Camry and off we went. As we traveled along it became evident that we did not really know where the girl lived or worked and so the task of finding her looked fairly daunting, as Poipet is a fairly large city, however in true Cambodian style there was a belief that we would find her. You Vath spent most of the trip on the phone following leads as to where Srey Poan may be working and living but we had no solid information, other than she could be working in one of the local markets in Poipet. When we arrived in Poipet we went to the main market and walked around looking for her without luck. After some time You Vath discovered the phone number of where the girl was living. Srey Poan’s mother phoned and asked to see her daughter and we found out that the girl was over the border selling clothes in a market in Thailand and would be home in the late afternoon.

With several hours to kill and no choice but to wait, we took the mother and child and outfitted them with new clothing and bought diapers for the baby and then took them to a restaurant, as they had not eaten for awhile. We went to the house at around 5 o’clock and found Srey Poan, who was very happy to see friendly faces and quickly gathered her few things to come with us. The owner of the house had obviously been alerted to our arrival and sat us down and went into a long tirade about how the girl should not be leaving as she had not worked off her debt and made a big show of paying her 5 dollars for the month of work. We listened quietly and then took Srey Poan and left, much to our relief. We squeezed Srey Poan in the back seat with the other five of us and headed back to Siem Reap. On the long and uncomfortable ride home, in the pitch black on a dangerous highway, Srey Poan told us stories about how hard she had to work. Each day with no money she had to make her way over the border, past the casinos, clubs and worse to sell clothes in the border markets of Thailand. She had left her pervious living situation at the orphanage/protection centre due to a staffing change and difficult living conditions; forced with no other option than to try and support herself she tried to find work and obviously fell into the wrong hands. So many young women are sold into servitude or prostitution here and are often never seen again by family and friends, she was lucky. Srey Poan’s mother went back home to her small rice crop that has recently been ruined by floods but she was relieved, that the daughter she cannot support is now protected and safe. We will buy the mother a bike so she can commute to the nearest village and try selling some vegetables to help her other children and see if we can assist her in any other way.

The population of the Girl’s Home has now grown by one. The next day when we saw Srey Poan she was arm in arm with her friend and smiling from ear to ear, she is now safe and back in school. A happy ending, a new year and a new beginning for her.

On the eve of this new year we thank you for your support and generosity, we wish you much love happiness, health and peace for the year ahead.

All the best

Adrianne and Rick

Best Wishes and Project Update

Hello Everyone

After a nice break and rest in Bangkok we came into Cambodia overland. Arriving at our apartment with great anticipation we opened the door to find that since we moved out the ever prevalent red dust and spiders along with their cobwebs have had several months to dig in, being tired we decided to deal with it in the morning after a good night’s sleep. Early the next day, as is the way here in Siem Reap, the crowing roosters and the monks chanting from the temple nearby got off to a very early start. To add to the early am symphony of sound there was a funeral going on down the street with loud amplified music. The owners of the apartment are also adding on to the building, short story...hammering, drills and clanging adding to the din. Needless to say we were up early cleaning and evicting the spiders, their creations and the dust.

Despite the chanting, crowing, dust and disarray we respectfully realised our fate could be outside of our thin walls rather than within. We watch as heavy piles of clay tiles and sacks of cement are carried on the shoulders of youth labourers, both males and females; who trudge barefoot up and down three flights of stairs throughout the day in 30 degree heat. We also hear their laughter and bantering throughout the day as they hammer, drill and mix concrete. We learn daily from the people here about their amazing resiliency against adversity and sometimes great odds and their ability to accept their situations with courage, grace, humour and patience.

We have made our connections with friends and projects and it will be a busy season. The Lake Clinic (TLC), who we have worked with for years is partnering with KIDS and the Compassionate Eye Foundation to build a mini mobile floating clinic. This project, thanks to the preliminary ground work from TLC is now in moving quickly, the steel for the floatation has been delivered and the welding sparks are flying. Work has also begun on the structure that will be put on the floatation to house the clinic. We are very pleased to be able to coordinate and work in partnership to make this project possible. It will be permanently stationed in a region that has an estimated population of somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 people who would otherwise have no health care at all, so this will be a great new year for the people living in this area.

Another project that is dear to our hearts is the Girl’s Home that KIDS has run and funded for 4 years . On our wish list was an addition to their house that would ease their quite crowded conditions and give them more space to live and study as they are growing bigger. Thanks to your kindness this in under way as well. The foundations are in and the walls will soon be rising out of the ground. The kids are thrilled. We will send photos of both projects soon.

It is Christmas Eve here and we are taking a day off after a rather hectic start but we are very pleased that the two major projects are up, running in high gear and we are working with great people.

We also see that our own resilience comes from our community of friends and family who continue to come together and give us such great support. We thank you all and wish you and yours much happiness, health and meaning for the new year.

Love,

Adrianne and Rick