THE SEASON OF GIVING
Hope amidst Cambodia's despair
Christian orphanage brings joy, love to abused children
Editor's note: Richard Botkin, a member of the WorldNetDaily.com board of directors and retired Marine officer, is a senior vice president at First Union Securities in Sacramento, Calif. Every year, at Thanksgiving time, he travels to Cambodia with a group of dental professionals to serve the poor of that Asian country. This first-person article recounts some of those experiences and observationsBy Richard Botkin
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.comWe never would have seen those vacant, Stygian eyes, observed the distended belly, the errant fly crawling on his cheek, or the open suppurating scalp ulcers had not our bus driver stopped along this nowhere, sometimes-paved country road between Phnom Penh and Kampong Cham to relieve himself.
This little boy, likely about 3 years old, according to my friend Dr. Neil Speth of Loomis, Calif., who stepped out to treat him, could not have weighed 15 pounds. Had we not stopped, he, his diminutive pregnant mother and the small blue tarpaulin tent they live in along the road's edge that they share with an undersized pig tethered on a thin line of rope easily would have blended into the verdant camouflage landscape that is Cambodia in 2001.
At once both breathtakingly beautiful and outrageously unclean, it is easy to focus on the gloom and garbage that pervades this Ohio-sized country of 10 million survivors and spawn of the Khmer Rouge genocide and its aftermath. From the decadence and debauchery of the Phnom Penh bar scene to the squalor and debasement in the ubiquitous slums where far too many are forced to live, one is overcome with the sense of utter hopelessness as Cambodia's problems appear to be super Goliaths in a world devoid of available Davids.
It is not just in the town central markets where Westerners go to bargain hunt that one observes the omnipresent and aggressive beggars, the one-legged and no-legged victims of this land riddled with unexploded ordnance. Even in the hinterlands where few non-locals venture one cannot avoid war's victims, and I often ask myself if Cambodians will run out of legs before they run out of land mines. Less visible but even more pervasive than the destruction from land mines is the impact AIDS is already having on this country. Not only is Cambodia the most heavily mined country in the world, it is also the AIDS epicenter of Asia.
When does all the bad stuff stop? Where is the hope, the joy, the opportunity for a brighter tomorrow? When does Cambodia turn the corner? When do all the interest-rate cuts start to help out here, the U.N.-spent billions start to make life better? Where are the Goliath slayers, the good guys, the cavalry, the Davids waiting to rescue and lead this nation with so much unrealized potential?
As recently as three and a half years ago, Cambodia was the last thing Steve Fisk was concerned with. The happily married father of three young children was absorbed with raising his family and growing his successful landscaping business back in Westminster, Colo. A chance meeting with a Cambodian Christian at his church sparked an interest that was to radically change his life and those of many yet to be counted.
Making two quick reconnaissance trips in mid-1998 to Cambodia, it took Steve little to no time to realize that God was calling him to serve there. With an equal or greater pioneer spirit than his own, wife Jill accepted the challenge with alacrity. They sold their home, suffered the garage sales, packed up the kids and were off to an unknown land promising both peril and adventure.
Every single living Cambodian aged 22 or older is a direct victim of the Khmer Rouge experiment in evil that claimed 2-3 million people between 1975-1979. The whirlwind sown by communist oppression has yet to completely dissipate. Social problems ranging from poverty and crime to a lack of opportunity for most of the population and AIDS cannot begin to describe the challenges facing the population at the beginning of the new millennium.
By far the greatest casualty of the Khmer Rouge and what followed has been the basic family unit. In a culture that, even prior to 1975, did not place importance on marital fidelity, the consequences of infidelity are now exacting a deadly toll. It is common knowledge that 80 percent of all Cambodian males aged 16 and older frequent prostitutes. The published HIV-positive infection rate among Cambodian prostitutes is north of 70 percent. No advanced degree is required to forecast what is in store if trends continue. Add back the "normal" problems of crime, abuse, starvation, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities and a poor infrastructure, and it is difficult to see much upside on Cambodia's horizon.
Asian Hope began life on Oct. 3, 1998. Discovering that Cambodia's adoption laws were, at best, onerous, burdensome and bureaucratic, the Fisks shaped their vision for their new orphanage as one that would take in whatever children they could and simply raise them as their own. A particularly reassuring aspect of Asian Hope is reuniting brother-sister combinations and keeping family units intact – something not always practical or possible in this very poor country.
Botkin with children from Asian HopeThe mission statement of Asian Hope reflects the passion Steve and Jill Fisk bring to their David-like effort to reach out to this country and change its future. Quite simply, their goal is to expose all of their children to a classical education, a Christian upbringing, and then turn these young people loose on a nation starved for men and women of character.
A six-bedroom, two-story white stucco home in Phnom Penh's outskirts on Rue 592 is sanctuary for the five Fisks, their three-person staff and 31 once-orphaned children. Well before one enters the gate, one is greeted by a symphony of laughter and chatter as 34 children ages 3 to 16 sing, play, read and scamper about in riotous order. Steve's latest home project with the older boys is building a climbing wall in what was once a garage. The entire operation on Rue 592 – housing, feeding, clothing, educating and loving the kids – runs about $4,500 per month.
A second project launched by the Fisks has been the creation of their school in downtown Phnom Penh. Leveraging very meager resources, they have turned a $15,000 gift and two years of sweat equity into a brand new school that is providing a challenging and rigorous curriculum to upwards of 80 students outside of the Asian Hope family (The day I visited the kindergarten the children were discussing line segments.) The school's growth and success has provided cash flow so that many students in need are able to be scholarshipped. The Good News is generously shared.
Botkin with buddies Tuen and TiaWho are the children of Asian Hope and what are their stories? In the three years of working with them, I have developed a special friendship with brothers Tuen and Tia, ages 14 and 11 respectively, as they remind me so much of my own two sons. Having read this far, you might visit asianhope.org for each child's basic biography. While factual, their bios are brief and, for each child's protection, sanitized of the most gruesome details. One girl had been sold twice by her own mother, as early as age 8, to a man in her village. So common are the stories of murder, neglect, abandonment and abuse in the children's backgrounds, they almost appear normal in the Cambodian experience.
"Street Without Joy" was one of the early great books covering the war in Southeast Asia. "La rue sans joie," penned by Frenchman Bernard Fall and meant to describe a certain stretch of the old Highway 1 between Hue and Quang Tri in central Vietnam, remains the best short description for life across Cambodia today. No Santa Claus, no stock market, no McDonald's, no highways and not much chocolate; no big deal. But no joy. No joy.
For the past four Novembers, our small 12-man dental team has faithfully returned to the southern and central portions of this country, working in concert with some amazing Christian missionaries attempting to reach out and touch these people without joy. For all too many of those we serve their stories are like the little boy in the blue tarpaulin tent. Undernourished, undereducated, understimulated, their lives have never grown beyond meager subsistence. The eyes show it. That blank, unfocused, shell-shocked look of complete emptiness. No smiles. No joy. No joy except on Rue 592.
For the little boy in the blue tarpaulin tent, the arrival of Steve and Jill Fisk in Cambodia has meant nothing. For my pals Tuen and Tia, for Borah and Vanna, and 27 others though, it is the difference between life and death. If you do not believe in miracles, simply visit the little house full of joy on Rue 592. Are there nascent doctors, teachers, pastors, businessmen and women waiting to spring forth from this group, a future prime minister perhaps? Just maybe it will be my young friends Tuen and Tia who will lead this nation up from the darkness so that someday there will be no more little boys or girls living in blue tarpaulin tents. I would not be surprised at all.
Read Botkin's account from last year's trip.
Visit asianhope.org for information regarding the orphans, the organization and the Fisks' efforts. Contributions can be mailed, care of Hugh Hewitt/Asian Hope to P.O. Box 8674 Brea, CA 92821. All contributions are fully tax-deductible and every dollar sent goes directly to the care and education of the orphans. E-mail Richard Botkin.
