Day 6

It's 11 pm here in Cambodia as I sit down to write. We have had a long full day. The day began with breakfast here in the hotel. They have a very interesting buffet. Kaley enjoyed going to the Japanese noodle bar and having noodle soup prepared freshly for her. Brennan ate some of everything. He has really proven himself to be the experimenter, willing to try anything put in front of him. I don't remember all of what I saw on his plate but I do remember the baked beans and the fried fish patties. Breakfast? Me, I stuck with bread. :-)

After breakfast our driver, Yoen, (pronounced like pittsburghese you'nz without the z on the end!) picked us up and we headed to Mosalvy. This is the government bureau in charge of adoptions. We drove up to a fairly dilapidated concrete building several stories tall and then had to climb several flights of narrow stairs until we reached a door marked "Adoption Bureau." A fairly well dressed and polished Cambodian woman was the only person there. She offered us seats and we sat down together. When Yoen began to tell her in Khmer why we had come she clearly became agitated and the two of them when at it for a while with voices raised. There were many cabinets in the room and thick files piled on top of the cupboards. From the tone of the voices I didn't think we'd be getting a look in those files, however. Yoen finally turned to us and said, "She said she doesn't have any records here. Go back to the Nutrition Center and ask them again." I asked Yoen to tell her that from the bottom of my heart I thank the people of Cambodia for these wonderful children and that they are good children and I just want to do everything I can to help them understand how they came to be adopted. She looked me and the kids up and down and then she and Yoen had another lengthy discussion, but this time it was quieter and not as tense. After a while he turned to us and said, "She says maybe it is not good for you to look. You think their Cambodian family will be happy to see them but really they do not care about them but they will ask you to send money over and over to help them so it is better for you to stop looking right now." We thanked her politely and headed on our way, disappointed by the dead end that we had hit once again.

There's nothing to lighten the mood like a shopping trip so Yoen suggested that we hit the Russian market for a while. This used to be the market where the people would buy their more necessary items, but now it is a mixture of all kinds of things including handicrafts. We spent about an hour in the huge very hot tent catacomb looking at jewelry, silk products, really weird and bizarre foods (how about some stir fried roaches to get your appetite going?) pirated DVD's and CD's. Cambodia has New York beat. DVD's are only $2 as are CD's. Problem was the beggars who followed us everywhere. A mother with her baby, an amputee with no legs who scooted along behind us, a woman badly disfigured from burns, little boys, little girls.... You can't possibly try to help anyone no matter how moved you are because you will be surrounded within seconds by so many others clamoring for help. It's very difficult to experience.

We left the market and headed to the outskirts of the city to a non-profit organization near the garbage dumps. The garbage dumps are the center of the worst poverty in Phnom Penh. Thousands of people live in cardboard boxes waiting for the garbage trucks to arrive each day in order to rummage for food and other items. On the outskirts is an organization that translated from French is called "Smile of a Child." This project serves several thousand children and their families each year, with the goal of keeping families together and improving the lives over time. Children, even babies are able to leave the dumps every day to receive nutritional support, education, and health care. The school for the teenagers is something like a vo-tech school that focuses on the tourist industry. The kids learn how to work in a 4 star hotel, run a kitchen, wait tables, give massages, do hair, etc. There is a restaurant on site and that's where we ate lunch. The service was very attentive and the food was good. (Well, most of it was good. Jim ate some kind of meat roll that he insists was something really freaky.) We had an additional reason for visiting this place. The nanny who first introduced me to Kaley at the Nutrition Center now runs the baby house there. Madame Pok is the smallest woman you'll ever see. Even Kaley looks like a giant beside her. She was VERY glad to see Brennan and Kaley and we promised to return at 3 pm for a visit.

Meanwhile after lunch we headed into the countryside to visit the Killing Fields. These are the remnants of the mass graves where the Khmer Rouge buried 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. It was a very strange place to visit. You'll travel down this dirt road through little village areas for about a half hour out from town bouncing over HUGE craters and playing chicken with the other cars, trucks, and motorcycles along the way since the road is not two lanes wide. Yoen is a good driver and we've been very fortunate that our sidetrips have gone very smoothly. Anyway, when you get there you see a big monument rising in front of you. It has glass walls, and seven rows of shelves. It stands very tall. Stored in the monument are 8,000 skulls of men, women, and children found at that grave site. As you walk around the field there are still pieces of clothing and bits of bone and teeth working their way up out of the ground. We all commented that we expected the area to have a solemn feeling but there really wasn't. We hired a guide for a few dollars and he walked around with us. His two sisters were both killed at age 12 and 15. He was just a baby but survived somehow. He described in detail had the Khmer Rouge killed all of the professional people (doctors, lawyers, teachers) first in their efforts to create a utopian farm culture. This holocaust wiped out the highest percentage of a population of any holocaust and yet we don't here much about it. It is incredible that so many nations stood by for so long as this happened. The man giving us the tour, and many other Cambodians are still very bitter that Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge was never brought up on charges through the world court, but instead died of old age a few years ago, still hiding in his jungle compound.

Also at this site were probably about 20 beggar children. They looked truly pathetic. Unhealthy hair, barely clothed, etc. Since there were a limited number of them, I reached in my purse to pull out some Cambodian money to give to each of them. In Cambodian currency right now 4000 rial equals $1 US. They don't have coins it's all paper. So to give a child a 100 rial note isn't really giving them enough to buy a piece of gum! I should never have broken Lisa's rule that says, "don't give money to the beggars" because within seconds I was totally swarmed and they were literally clawing at me for the money. They would grab for the bills and then quickly hide them and deny that I had given them any and ask for more. I realized that these sad children were really very cunning, dishonest and bright as they try to con tourist after tourist in this rural location. Oh well, you live and learn.... but I'm willing to bet that before we leave I'll make the same dumb mistake again.

By 3 pm we were back to Smile of a Child to visit with Mdm. Pok. It was so great to see her. She cried and kissed Brennan and Kaley and thanked me for bringing them to see her. She said she wonders about many of the children often and it is so good to see how big and strong they are. Brennan and Kaley had a great time there in the baby house playing with several of the toddlers. They were clearly well fed and looked healthy even though some are HIV positive. They were also friendly and playful and enjoyed climbing all over all of us. Even Jim & Derek were smitten by these attention seeking little Cambodian cuties.

Mrs. Pok explained that part of why she came to work there was because of the corruption she saw in adoption in Cambodia and she was glad to have this opportunity to work with an organization that tries to support families so that children can grow up with them. Even still, she said some parents are dead or just can't take care of the children at all and she wishes adoption could become possible again. I had an opportunity to show her Brennan and Kaley's documents and ask her if she by any chance knew any more. She was very honest and very sad telling us that in her honest opinion, now that she does not work for the government and the Nutrition Center she felt free to tell me that the documents were fraudulent. She said the birthdates and arrival dates at the Nutrition were always changed so that the babies could be adopted sooner since there was a law that the babies had to be in the orphanage for at least 3 months before they could be adopted in case their birthfamilies came back for them. The fraud in adoption runs very very deep here in Cambodia. Some of it has been innocent and well intended, making it possible for children who would never have had a chance here to have a life in another country. Even still, in order to make the adoption legal it was necessary for the paper trail leading back to families to disappear completely since only orphans are eligible for permanent visa status according to US law. Some of the fraud was not well intentioned as desperately poor birthfamilies in small villages were offered small amounts of money to relinquish their children. Funny thing is some of the same names that I remember from 1991 are names that still are at the heart of the adoption "business" here. As I've tried to explain to Brennan and Kaley over the past day, there comes a point where you just have to let it go... realizing that for whatever reason they came to be at the nutrition center, and somehow we have to believe that it was God's plan for their lives for them to come to the US.

I think we have truly come to the end of the road in searching for records, but at the same time I sense that the questions are being answered without finding their actual birthfamilies. You can't see this poverty here and not understand the thought process of a family that takes a baby to a place where they will be fed and clothed and cared for. Moreover, families see growing up in the US or Europe as being a blessing bestowed only upon the lucky babies. Can a birthfamily possibly want more for their child than for them to be a "lucky baby?" Despite what the woman Molsalvy told us about the birthfamilies not caring, I don't believe that, and I will continue to affirm the theory that Brennan and Kaley's birthfamilies were acting out of unconditional love when they made the choice to let them go. Whereas a child placed for adoption within the US might wonder "Why?" this choice was made for them, I think that it is now painfully and simply clear to Brennan and Kaley why that choice would be made here. And it certainly helps to have nannies who love and remember them and who are clearly thrilled to see them healthy strong young adults. It gives them a connection to their roots, to those who gave them their start in life.

We were already physically and emotionally exhausted but our day wasn't over yet. We had purchased 250 pounds of rice, bunches of bananas, dried fish, eggs, cookies, etc. to deliver to the Nutrition Center... all of which cost less than $50! We took them to the director of the Nutrition Center and visited with some of the nannies again for a few minutes. Yesterday, for whatever weird reason the orphanage seemed empty, but today there were MANY children. In the cottage doorways, profoundly retarded and handicapped children were on the floors and sitting in high chair type contraptions. Beautiful healthy looking toddlers, pre-schoolers, and a few elementary age children were running around the courtyard. One of the nannies pointed at child after child one by one saying, HIV, HIV, HIV, HIV.... It doesn't get much sadder than that. Even sadder, perhaps, is that in 1991 when Brennan & Kaley were adopted there was no HIV in Cambodia. But as the UN, the military, and non-profit groups came in to the country to help re-build it and monitor a democratic election, they brought AIDS with them and spread it like wildfire through the prostitute community. It doesn't take long before it impacted a frightening percentage of the population.

Well, if anyone is still reading after this terribly depressing dialogue, I'll try to finish out our day. We went for dinner at a lovely rooftop restaurant right downtown by the river called the FCC, short for Foreign Correspondents Club. Lots of westerners there eating. Our driver Yoen told us that it would be very expensive but I had heard that it had the cleanest and best western style food in town and we were ready for some COMFORT FOOD by this point in the day. The guys in the group each had a couple of beers, the kids had mocktails, we had a couple of appetizers, pizzas, a couple of desserts, etc. and the bill was still just $66 including tax and tip for all six of us! You can definitely eat pretty cheap in this town. We had a leisurely dinner and it was a good pick me up after our long day.

After dinner Yoen drove us down the street to an area where Kaley could hit a reputable jewelry store and Jim could hit the internet cafe in hopes of a good enough connection to upload yesterday's journal. Kaley was able to design a ring that will be ready before we leave Cambodia. She was very excited about that and I think it will be a great keepsake for her. She is still enjoying her shopping (checking out the trinkets and fake handbags in the markets!) but I've also noticed a transition where she has started asking about what she can leave behind at the orphanage when it is time to go home. I'm happy she decided to design the ring instead of shoes, however, because that will be a keepsake for a very long time.

As for the internet cafe.... well, let's just say it was painfully slow....but very entertaining to watch the monk working on the computer and talking on a cell phone... and Jim using sign language and a lot of arm waving to talk about motorcycles with the mototaxi drivers gathered out front.
Time to sleep. Tomorrow will be another busy day. We're going to the museum of the genocide in the morning and in the afternoon we move to our new hotel by the river. Hopefully the internet will work better there and we can get some pictures up for you all to look at.
Hugs to all -
Lisa & Crew