You don't know what you don't know

This was written several weeks ago and we are just now getting around to posting the articles. So, we’ve done a good job telling you all about the wonderful and amazing things we are seeing in SE asia.  But I’m feeling compelled to tell about the not so wonderful.  Be prepared for a dose of reality if you have not already traveled this way. First off, I have loved traveling through SE asia, which hopefully you can already tell by our posts.  But I would mistaken if I didn’t tell all.  This is the part that is hard to write about. 

Cambodia, while being an amazing country, sucked the wind out of me on a number of occasions.  And for Cambodia’s sake, what I’m about to write isn’t privy just to this particular country; it’s just where I felt I felt it the most.  I have traveled to 3^rd world countries before and have seen poverty in different forms.  I just haven’t seen poverty and corruption quite like this.  And if it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not.  This is reality and I live in a part of the world that I too often take for granted. What hit me in the chest was when we would see a naked mother sitting on a street corner with several children, feeding themselves out of the garbage.   Or even worse when I would come across a naked little baby on the sidewalk, seemingly all-alone.  These images pulled at every heartstring I have.  I still am haunted these images that I walked away from… And I still ask myself what can I do?

We were fortunate to meet up with a friend of a friend who works for an NGO (non government organization) over here in Cambodia and I got my first lesson on women and child sex trafficking and how prevalent it is.  How orphanages are also being corrupted by child molesters and how women get sold into the wrong hands and end up in sex trafficking because their families thought they were doing good by giving them a better life in the city than in the village.  Which brings me back to images of women with several children, now understanding the why and how.  Don’t get me wrong, there are wonderful people doing wonderful things in this part of the world to help these tragic and demoralizing situations.  But for me, it was one of those things that I have heard about, but never really wanted to believe actually existed.  And then I’m here and can see it with my own eyes.  It’s crazy. 

There are other things we take for granted in the US like hygiene and simple education.   For example, we learn as children to wash our hands with soap when we use the bathroom.  They don’t here.  And I’m not kidding.  You can go to a place like the airport and find no soap in the restroom and perhaps not any toilet paper.  This is common.  My friend Anjanette, who now lives in Bangkok, witnessed a Thai woman get hit by a car over here and was appalled when people rushed to move her limp body off the street while waiting for the ambulance. The next day she was telling this traumatic story to the kids in her classroom and they said, “but teacher, nobody told us we shouldn’t move someone after they get hit.”  You don’t know what you don’t know.  And if you grew up with a squatter for a toilet and never used soap to wash your hands, then you wouldn’t get mad at the fact that there was no soap in a place like the airport (like I do.)  And then there is the labor, what we call the workforce.  I have often said I don’t ever want to work in a cubicle again.  As I’m sure many of you have.  But working in an air-conditioned office, in a cubicle, for only 8+ hours would be heaven here.  Try doing manual labor outside in 90+ degree weather, 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week.  For the majority of the people, that’s life here. 

I was talking with Anjanette one night at dinner and I had a moment.  She says to me, “You know how in the US we always say “if I won the lottery, I would…”  And we fill in the blank. “  I looked at her and realized what she was going to say before she even said it.  People reading this…you already won it.