My Charity in Cambodia: A true story by an Atheist
Seven years ago I moved to Siem Reap, Cambodia, tourist hub, home of the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat. I am a musician entertainer one-man show and I found ready employment in the many 5-star hotels, bars and restaurants here. I was instantly earning a very adequate income for one or two hours playing a few nights a week.
Not long after my arrival I discovered that Khmer (Cambodian) people are mostly destitute and cannot afford to go out, have a beer or two and enjoy live entertainment. With a lot of free time I decided to take my guitar, sit somewhere in town and just play/sing hoping to spread some joy to the masses of Khmer wandering the city without a dime in their pocket. I chose a very busy footbridge in the middle of town where I could comfortably sit and so could an interested audience. Within 90 seconds I had a “full house” of enthusiastic locals and well-heeled tourists. A transient community was born.
About 20 minutes into my show six pathetic little children (4–10yrs?) showed up and sat amongst the crowd; wearing rags, filthy and carrying trash bags of gathered plastic bottles, for which I found out later they earned a few pennies. They looked hungry. I asked a Khmer girl (who spoke English) to ask the kids if they were hungry to which they all nodded. So I took the 6 of them to the street-side noodle carts less than100 feet from the bridge and bought them each a meal of noodles, fried egg, veggies and a bottle of drinking water all of which I required they eat on the spot, which they did.
Back to the bridge I started playing again when 7 more children of the same description came along and likewise, asking a young Chinese woman to hold my guitar, I took them to eat. Upon returning the Chinese woman handed me a $20 bill and said “I have lived in Cambodia one year and that is most fantastic thing I have seen and here’s some money to help you feed the children.” She added “If this was on Tripadvisor it would be the most popular attraction in Siem Reap.” I got her point, but instantly reflected how appalling that poor street kids could be seen as a tourist attraction. Yikes!
The next night I returned to the bridge and so did the kids come again, their numbers increased. And the charity kidsonthebridge.org was born. A few days later I had a sign made “Help me Feed the Street Children”, for it turned out these kids basically lived in the streets most sent out by their parents to beg, steal and who knows what?; the breadwinners of the family. And so it went nearly every night for the next 8+ months until the children were banished from the bridge because of, I believe, the glue-sniffing addicts pictured above who are far from the cuddly babies we like to imagine and more like the creepy zombies of popular horror flicks.
Not long afterward I was employed by an open-air restaurant. The kids discovered me playing there and I continued my outreach collecting tips at my gigs to feed the kids. After about one month I hired a young Khmer woman to take care of feeding the kids and what other needs they may have and I simply raised and provided the funds, and though the circumstances morphed over the next years the basic operation remained the same… until Covid.
Now the charity has become a village school at which the kids are fed a nutritious meal, taught English, music and art and personal hygiene along with some outreach to particular families as funds allow. I do not go to the school, ever. It is a wholly Khmer generated program and my one rule is no white foreigners are present.
For those still reading and curious about the title; I am an atheist. A serious 100% atheist. I’ve despised god since “He took your grandmother to live with him.” I was eleven. Unrequited hatred is frustrating and receiving no response from god, by age twelve I concluded God does not exist at all. For me the debate was ended for all time.
Not long ago I received a message from a woman telling me that her group had free eggs and used clothes they would love to provide to the children at the school. I responded that would be wonderful. She replied, “We are Christians and we would be happy to bring the things to the school if we could pray with the children for an hour or two.”
I explained that “though we have an urgent need for eggs, used clothes and all manner of help we can get, we do not allow any foreigners to visit the school. We would very much appreciate the help but that’s our rule.” Secretly I was seething, because I knew.
The Christian angel very politely said “I will pass your message on to the group and we will get back to you.” I never heard from them again.
The kids never saw an egg or a T-shirt from the Christians. So we struggle on without God’s help as we have for seven years reinforced in my conviction that goodness and human kindness come from good people and nowhere else.