Last September I went to Cambodia with a group of Japanese volunteers, and during our time at Wat Opot I made this short movie. All the actors are kids, mostly orphaned by AIDS (having lost one or both parents).

It’s a movie about friendship and living with HIV. There is a worldwide fear of HIV, but that fear is intensified in cultures with relatively little formal education or medical awareness. When Cambodians were dying by the thousands of AIDS, their own families cast them out, hospitals wouldn’t receive them, and even crematoriums were afraid to burn their bodies for fear that workers might be infected by the smoke.

That was three years ago. Not surprisingly, people living with HIV are still stigmatized in Cambodia.

About 20 percent of the kids at Wat Opot are living with HIV. They have worked hard with the surrounding community to dispel their fears. All the kids at Wat Opot attend the nearby public schools, and they interact freely with kids in the community. That isn’t to say all the fears and stigmas have gone away, but the situation is much better than before. The director wrote the short story that this movie is based on to help more people to understand that it’s okay to make friends with HIV infected people. We hope to distribute it in Cambodia on DVD’s and via YouTube. I’m still working on finalizing some things, like adding credits in Khmer script, but now you can see it with English subtitles.

A quick qualification: this was a learning experience. It my first attempt to make a short movie, and the crew were all learning with me as we went along. We made some significant mistakes, but we also got some things right. The actors are all kids and staff from Wat Opot, plus one woman from the community who spontaneously assumed the role of Doar’s mother (and proved to be a natural). I’m proud of what we did, and I hope we’ll create more movies in Cambodia with better and better results.

Enjoy. If you want to tell others, just send them to the main page here: www.photosensibility.com (thanks).

A Japanese volunteer and Cambodian youth handling the sound

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Did you know more than 300,000 children will likely die of AIDS this year, and more than 2 million will be infected? Most of the deaths will be in Africa. The most important task ahead is to stop new infections, which is much more cheaply done than treating existing ones. Now some would argue that treatment is simply too expensive, relative to prevention which is still lacking (implying that we should let tens of millions of infected poor people die and spend the money on prevention instead). Although I get this in economic terms, I know too many specific children and adults who would probably die if that were the case. I also think the money spent on overhead (doctors, clinics, developing and delivering medicine, etc.) will have many lasting benefits that need to be taken into account.

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Tai Meng

I’ll be going to Cambodia in two weeks and visiting Wat Opot again. Wat Opot is a “children’s community” caring for children orphaned by AIDS. About 30 percent of the children and most of the staff are living with HIV, including the girl in the picture.  They all attend regular school, and they have supplemental classes at Wat Opot. The supplemental classes are important, because the quality of education at the school is very low.

Teacher at Wat Opot

This is one of the teachers for the supplementary classes. This conveys her personality — serious and kind (but mostly serious). In the morning she teaches the youngest kids (kindergarten age), and in the afternoons she works with the elementary school kids.

Studying by window light

This is Tai Meng writing in Khmer on a slate board. There is no elecricity, so she works by window light.

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A baby girl died almost two weeks ago. She survived for two months longer than her mother. Now there are three sisters remaining, all healthy and confused, and a father who is HIV positive but doing well with medication. She was known affectionately as Baby Peak.

The day before she died I held her for awhile so her sister could have a break to play. An eleven year old girl who cared for her dying mother, caring for her dying sister, just wanted to cut and glue paper with the other kids. I did ask her to stop and bring a bottle, which she did, and then I fed Baby Peak. She burped contentedly and fell asleep on my lap. I thought, “Maybe if we all work together we can save her.” She had a will to live. She ate well.

Baby Peak and her sister

She died of AIDS. Technically, she died of some unknown illness. She had started on ARV drugs (that fight HIV), but something already had her in its grip too strongly for any drugs to release her. The local hospital had given up and sent her to the orphanage. There was hope but not much.

Taking ARV drugs the evening before she died

The next morning (Monday, February 9) we learned that Baby Peak had died in her sleep. I confess my heart didn’t break when I heard it. I didn’t know how to feel. But I found the older sister, took her hand, and led her to where some children were drawing pictures and folding origami. She joined them and drew a picture of yellow birds and a girl (or maybe it was her mother…). The yellow birds were origami cranes. Later I saw a yellow paper crane resting on the flowers that covered Baby Peak.

The father came on his motorcycle. He has his hands full living with HIV and trying to work. He only keeps the youngest sister, who cries all day when he’s gone. After he arrived there was a brief service, and then a cremation. It all happened so quickly I almost missed it. I didn’t bring out my camera for a change. Not that pictures are bad, but one or two people had their cameras out and that was enough. I wondered what the father was feeling to lose a daughter so soon after losing his wife.

I sometimes teach a seminar about HIV/AIDS to university students in Japan. Recently, I was teaching at a Christian university, so I began by asking: “Is God good? How can we say that God is love when children and babies die of AIDS?” Maybe you think that’s a strange way to start, but I figured that was a question many of them would have, so it was best to bring it out directly. Most of the students were not Christians, and they have probably had their share of trite questions and answers that don’t satisfy.

I didn’t want to give my own answer. My life has been remarkably free from sickness and death, so who am I to act like I have honestly confronted these questions. But I asked my friend Wayne, the director of the orphanage, to give an answer. Here is what he said (which I shared with the class):

I believe that GOD is Love. From a distance PAIN and SUFFERING can appear to be acts of an unjust and unloving GOD but when one realizes that those who have suffered the greatest, are often those who appreciate life the most, then one begins to understand that PAIN and SUFFERING are actually gifts from a Loving Creator. Perhaps your question should be: Why does GOD allow some people to live in comfort? For those who live in the greatest of comfort are often those who find no meaning in life.

Wayne is not the type to try and give “correct answers” (in the Christian theological sense). He just answers from where he’s at, and I appreciate that. The students did, too.

Baby Peak’s death was a dose of reality for us (the Japanese volunteers and me). It was a reminder that people are still dying of AIDS, and if we leave the relative security of Japan and go out to where the poor live “outside the gates” then we may find suffering and death there. We also find life there.

When we push death away and choose comfort, we also push life away and choose illusion.

Coming back from Narita Airport on the train, I felt like I was the only person who could see. Everyone looked lost in various worlds, numb or deluded. I didn’t avert my eyes, like I’m used to doing here, but looked at people wondering how they had fallen asleep and what would wake them up.

Now a week has passed, and I’m intent on keeping my own eyes open.

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