At a Glance

WARNING!! The following entry may be unsettling & is not suitable for little ones. It contains graphic description of violence & sexual perversion.

OK, so this is supposed to be about the children of LIA. I know people are most interested in them, but there's other stuff going on here I think you should know about too. Have a look at what I've seen, will ya'?

A young woman died in the street. People passed barely glancing at her. When the ambulance finally arrived, they realized she was dead & left. It's up to the family to discover, identify & move the body.

A homeless man whose eyes have been plucked from his head wanders the streets all day & into the night hoping someone will give him food.

A girl about 10 years old looks out the side of a tuk tuk with blank eyes as the half drunk, 50-something perv in a Hawaiin shirt rubs her knee & whispers who knows what filth in her ear.

Two teenaged boys knock the bloody stuffin' out of each other over an empty plastic bottle because the recyclables they sell for rice money are becoming scarce as more people move into their "career field" otherwise known as digging thru trash.

Old people squat in a garbage heap eating supper from trash bags hoping the darkness conceals their shame.

4 year-olds being tested for STDs.

All this going on every day & no one seems to notice. Perhaps that's the worst of what I've seen.
I won't overload you with what I've seen the other seven weeks I've been here. I figure this little glance gives you a pretty clear picture.

A quote from William Wilberforce reverberates in my head: "Having seen all this, you can choose to look away, but you can never say again, 'I did not know.'" True enough, I can never say again, "I did not know," but equally true I can (& do!) say, "I wish I didn't know." Not a day goes by that I don't wish I was back in Indiana with no knowledge of Cambodia. Not one day. But, I do know. And now, you know too. Please, keep praying.