Project Friends

We’re leaving for Cambodia tomorrow. I haven’t written much about the move on this blog, but I suspect the transition will bring new life to my posts here.

We’re going to get our hands dirty. This is literally true for me, because I’m bringing thousands of seeds for gardening projects. For the record, I don’t have a green thumb, but I was well coached by a true expert (and I’m at that age when men strangely take to growing things from the earth). We’ll be plunging into new relationships, learning language and culture together, and continuing to share our journey with others searching for “a better way to live.”

You may know I’ve been taking groups of Japanese to Cambodia since early 2008, and last year our family went there for Christmas. This year we completed the process of founding Project Friends, a Japanese non-profit to help sustain and organize these efforts through a learning community in Japan.

We have a small but incredible team of volunteers in Japan. We met with many of them on Sunday. As several of them shared reports of the work they’ve done, I thought about how the scene might appear to an outside viewer. He or she might ask how we did it, pulling together such gifted people and inspiring them to participate, and I would reply: I don’t know. You can’t get such people to do that; they have to choose with freedom.

I do give credit to Hitomi, and to other leaders in the group, for facilitating relationships that people want to be part of.

Here is a video that we made to publicize Project Friends for potential participants. We made it in Japanese, but I’ve added subtitles to this version. The music is the chorus of a popular song about love and life that quaintly but hopefully repeats: Your smile will show me the way.

We’re a diverse community.We dream of a learning community in Japan who truly seek a “better way to live” as they work out the mystery of what it means to love.  We also dream of Japanese living alongside Cambodians at the margins.

We come to this work with faith in Jesus, yet we come open-handed without power in ourselves. We share freely but will not push others or expect them to respond to us. If people are made in God’s image, and God is calling them, why would we want to manipulate them and disrespect their journeys and choices? Rather, we can work and learn together with anyone who hungers for love, because we believe that hunger can only be satisfied by encountering the God who is Love, who became love in the flesh and lived among us.

With that parting thought, we cast off of our this new leg of our journey.

Let the adventures begin!

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I just read a chilling article in the New York Times about our prospects in the fight against HIV/AIDS.  They’re not good.

During the past 10 years we turned a corner. Cheap medications became widely available, and millions of people worldwide began receiving treatment. Before 2005, getting HIV was a death sentence for the majority worldwide, including more than 2 million children newly infected annually. Then there was hope. But will this hope be sustained, or are we turning a corner in the opposite direction?

…for most of Africa and scattered other countries like Haiti, Guyana and Cambodia, it seems inevitable that the 1990s will return: walking skeletons in the villages, stacks of bodies in morgues, mountains of newly turned earth in cemeteries.

What happened?

Simply put,  the number of newly infected people each year is exceeding the number we can treat. At the same time, funds for the fight are shrinking.  Besides the global economic crisis, donors have been redirecting funds to combat malaria and other preventable diseases that actually kill more people than HIV/AIDS.

It would be a terrible tragedy to return to the situation ten years ago when people were dying in such numbers and unimaginable conditions. I’ll be moving to Cambodia in two months, and I know children who are alive because they take ARV medications every day. When those programs started, promises were made that the plug would never be pulled.  You can’t give someone medicine and then take it away after a few years…can you?

The bitter truth is that we cannot save everyone. We’re slowly saving less and less. We must concentrate more on prevention, or the dam will break.

“You cannot mop the floor when the tap is still running on it,” said Dr. David Kihumuro Apuuli, director-general of the Uganda AIDS Commission.

There are no easy answers. Prevention versus treatment is more than just a debate to take sides in. Simply giving more money is not an answer. I recommend reading the full New York Times piece and Bill Easterly’s response for further perspective.

Living with HIV in Cambodia thanks to ARV medications provided by USAID funds

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This is the gecko that was living in my room last time I time I was in Cambodia. He normally stays behind the dresser where you can see him during the daytime if you look. At night, when the lights are out, he comes out to eat.  I turned the lights out and waited, then I turned them on and took this shot (just after he ate a bug, but I blew that shot).

By the way, geckos come in different varieties. When traveling in Southeast Asia it’s very common to see small “geckos” running around on the walls. Most people don’t realize there are much larger geckos as well living inside most homes and rooms. The large varieties make a very loud “uh-oh” sound (kind of like “guh koh” from which they get their name).  They can grow quite large. This one is about 12 inches long, but he’s not a “big” one.

I’m not posting much recently. We’re in transition, so I’m not particularly inspired with new things to say. Today Hitomi is meeting with a few members of our Project Friends volunteer team to put the finishing touches on key processes. They will be working hard after we leave. One is handling the accounting. Another is processing applications (actually, we’ll pay her a bit for that). Another is organizing events for past and potential participants. Then there are others who will help coordinate and assist. I’m amazed at their willingness to serve.

Last night I taped together eight boxes that we’ll take to Cambodia (double width cardboard specially purchased). Today I hope to finish packing them and clean up most of our mess from my in-laws’ house. The kids will go with their grandmother to see the latest Doraimon movie.

Spotting a bug

Eating the bug (I didn’t focus on time)

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I’m spending Christmas this year with my family at an orphanage in Cambodia. It’s a decent place run with genuine love on a very low budget (much lower than the linked article). They care for kids living with HIV, who are rejected by most orphanages. And they could use some money, if you’re looking to give, because they run on a shoestring.

That being said, and I mean it; I’m hoping for a future without orphanages. I don’t recommend starting an orphanage if you want to help orphans. I’d like to see orphaned kids being raised by their extended families, because the majority of “orphans” in the world have relatives who could take them in. Heck, a lot of them have at least one parent alive (the definition of “orphan” in Cambodia is that at least one parent has died). Often the relatives are very poor, so they think an orphanage would be better for the child, but a small subsidy would help them accept the responsibility. I don’t have it here, but I’ve read about a study showing that being raised by a dysfunctional family is better for a child than being raised in an institution.

I want to learn from an organization in Phnom Penh that has (I’ve heard) placed thousands of orphans in homes with either foster parents or extended family members. Someday I’ll post a report of my findings here.

In the meantime, read this excellent article from the New York Times which makes an excellent case for supporting families rather than starting more and more orphanages.

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