Begging Children in Cambodia

December 22, 2010

You know me, I can't keep bubbly, rosy blog writing for long without describing the underbelly of life in spiritual, magnificent Cambodia. You’ve all heard of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge genocidal killing fields. What I didn’t know is that they only completely squashed the Khmer Rouge less than 20 years ago. Before the killing fields, Cambodia had a period of relative prosperity, filled with intellectuals, artists, and more. Then, the Khmer Rouge killed almost all of the intellectuals, leaving only 3 archeologists who pretended to be rice farmers; it’s sadly ironic, to only have 3 archeologists in a country chock full of rich temples. Then, they even started killing some farmers too, just because they didn’t comport with some twisted version of Maoism. When the Khmer Rouge were overthrown by the Vietnamese, they went into hiding in Thailand, sneaking back over the border for decades, terrorizing the communities there and leaving a trail of landmines that still explode and leave amputees in its wake today.

What’s left is a recovering nation. And, there’s a palpable feeling of learned helplessness in the country today. Lonely Planet described it more as the Cambodians’ resilient nature, overcoming horrific historical events. I agree, but learned helplessness also captures the feeling here. Passivity was probably a safer option, in the face of the Khmer Rouge. But, sad passive moments are what I keep on seeing on the faces of the Cambodian begging children and, even, when the few guides here describe their past history of loss at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and resulting poverty. Their victimhood usually seems to be described with the goal of begging for more tip money. It’s not a direct beg from the guides, but a sad reality that they feel the need to sell their victimhood for more money. It’s not that uncomfortable in person, just part of the complex guide-tourist interaction in Cambodia.

The Cambodian kids here are both doing better and staying worse. Recently, school has been made available to, supposedly, all children. I see children who seem to be out of school, working and begging, but it’s still progress to have universal schooling as a policy.

The country is staying worse by the child begging culture being alive and well here, perpetuated by the parents’ desperate manipulation of their children into beggars. Truth is, you want to give money to a child more than an adult. But, it’s heartbreaking seeing a two year old begging you to buy their faded roses while you’re eating at a restaurant as late as 10pm at night. The child would beg, get a no from us, then put a practiced look of deep sadness on his face, not leaving our table for a long time. Boom was confused but with his typical protective clarity told the begging child, “We won’t give you money. You have to go.” The begging child finally walked away, leaving a sad wake behind him.

Then the questions came –

Alice: “Why don’t we give the kids money when they ask for it? They don’t have any money.”

Griffin: “Why does it make their life harder if we give them money? Won’t it help them?”

Alice: “What’s a refugee?”

I guess the refugee question had been simmering for a while and needed to be answering in this moment of awakening. It’s an awakening for the kids since they’ve never seen that kind of child begging and didn’t understand how, as tourists, we needed to stop perpetuating the begging system by not giving them money. It’s so bad here that an organization puts out little colorful handouts for tourists asking them not to give child beggars money along with telling us not to take orphans into our hotel rooms, that the majority of the prostitutes here are between the age of 12 and 17, and where to give money that will help and not hurt Cambodian kids.

The first photos above are of a maybe 9 or 10 year old boy with his homeless family under the golden dragon, who was smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper until we came up close. Then, he hid his cigarette, which you can see in his hand, barely hidden. Kids sure do grow up fast around here.

Then, there's a picture above of boys playing a game kicking their shoes in the playground, to see how close they can hit and knock a couple Cambodian dollars on the ground. After I took the picture, one of the older boys tried to insist that I pay him for the photo, aggressively arguing with me in Cambodian.

On our walk up a side of a mountain to a temple outside of Phnom Penh, we were followed by a group of 5 boys who may have been around the same age as Griffin. They were pleasant, upbeat, helpful, and had pretty good tourist English. They played with our kids, willing to do the limbo with them. In fact, it often didn’t just seem like they were willing but like they really enjoyed the liberation of playing like kids.

At the same time, there was a slightly out of control vibe that we got, leading us to keep an eye on our kids when they’d run up ahead with them. And, it was unspoken that the kids would want money for their attempts at tour guiding us and entertaining our kids. They’d even swing from branches, pretending to be monkeys…showing our kids the best vines to climb. Our kids and us let ourselves be charmed by them, despite our instinctual sense of reservation.

As we descended the mountain, with our van in sight, the begging began. They got very serious, hard looks on their faces and asked for 1 or 2 dollars for their school. And, they did it with intense, repeated insistence, pushing up on both sides of us. We were going to eat a little local food before getting in the van, but both Ken and I had an unspoken instinct to get in the van asap. The boys even started working Griffin who looked confused and kept on saying, “What? Money? I don’t have money to give you.” He looked so bewildered to have boys who’d formerly done fantasy play with swords with him turn into such hardened, begging businessmen.

Boom saw me give a firm, “You can stop asking, we won’t give you any money.” And, then I ignored them, pressing on. Boom saw me feeling uncomfortable and repeatedly told them “No money for you,” looking at me like he was Superman coming in to protect me. We got in the van, seeing them deliberately put on their sad, hard faces, pressed up against the van windows. Ken and I were shaken up.

The last couple photos you’ll see above were taken that night at Friends Restaurant, part of Friends International, an organization that helps begging, street kids and families in Cambodia. The staff there came from the streets and were trained in vocational skills, in this case as cooks and waiters. The food was really good. We gave a donation we wished we could have given the 5 boys from the mountain temple.

Click here to see video of street kids in training and employment at Friends-International Restaurant, as part of the organization's vast training program.