Two weeks ago I was in Kentucky, and while visiting with my brothers and sisters, I found myself being grateful that they have homes and food and what they need for themselves and for their children.
That came to mind because I had just come from Cambodia where so many people are suffering from real poverty and a lack of food and housing and the basic necessities of life.
Some are poor because of the unforeseen twists and turns of life — losing a job or a major illness. Some are poor because of bad choices in life — giving up good jobs in the U.S. for adventure in Cambodia and then finding out life can be very difficult for foreigners here where they do not have family, friends and their familiar support systems.
An additional problem in Cambodia, though, is the legal system and social structure making problems worse, particularly for the poor.
Our St. Vincent de Paul Society has helped one Cambodian woman in a rural province, a single mother with two teenage children, when she was quarantined by the government three times during Covid and then needed three surgeries. She has had repeated problems paying rent and providing food because there is no insurance and her job serving in a restaurant has no sick leave. Her salary was $180 a month, and when she couldn’t work, she got no pay.
In January, her 16-year-old son was stabbed in the back when he was robbed of his phone. He was taken to the hospital and treated but the mother could not pay the hospital bill. Poor families in similar circumstances go to loan sharks or sell their cow or their land but she had no cow or land. She did pawn her motorcycle — meaning she could not go to work — but it was not enough and she was arrested by the police, handcuffed and taken to jail in Phnom Penh for non-payment of the hospital bill. I paid the balance of the bill and got her released.
Then this month that 16-year-old son went to the defense of his 14-year-old sister who was being bullied at school. In a fight, the bully’s head was cut and he was taken to a clinic for stitches. The bully’s family demanded $1,200 for a bill of about $100 — pay the $1,200 and the matter is finished or do not pay and the police would be called. The mother had no money so the brother — and the sister — were taken to jail.
The mother sold the motorcycle to her landlord for $500, borrowed $200 from her boss and prostituted herself the night her kids were in jail to get money to free them, the first time she had ever done that. She still didn’t have enough, so I gave her $450 to pay off the bully’s family and the police (they get their share) and her children were released.
I warned her that the St. Vincent de Paul group could not support her family — we don’t have that kind of money — and that now she had no motorcycle to go to work, owed her boss and could not pay the rent at the end of the month or buy food. She said she understood but had to get her kids out of jail where they would wait six months before ever even going to trial.
Life can be very difficult in Cambodia if you are poor. And it is difficult for us as church, trying to help. I normally refuse to give money that goes to bribe police or officials, but when a mother is turning to prostitution for her children? What would Jesus do? Every day I try to answer that.
Father Charles Dittmeier, a priest of the Archdiocese of Louisville, is the co-director of the Deaf Development Programme in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and pastor of the English-speaking parish there. Follow his journey at parish-without-borders.org
