French group rescues Cambodian child scavengers from garbage dump
French group rescues Cambodian child scavengers from garbage dump AP Photos NY180-183[ By VIJAY JOSHI= Associated Press Writer= PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -
French group rescues Cambodian child scavengers from garbage dump
Vijay Joshi Associated Press Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Dressed in a starched white smock, Hen Horn flicked a saucepan of frying vegetables and breathed in the smoky aroma in the spotless kitchen of the Lotus Blanc restaurant.
Two years ago, Hen Horn was wading in garbage. Caked in grime from head to foot, inhaling the rancid stench of filth, he earned a living by scavenging in Cambodia's biggest garbage dump for 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
"It would be unbearably hot in the summer. But it was worse when it rained because there would be worms everywhere," said Hen Horn, 18.
His life took a U-turn when he was rescued by a French volunteer group in 2001 from his foul existence at the Stung Mean Chey rubbish dump on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Like Hen Horn, about 3,600 scavenger children have been saved from the dump since 1996 by the group "For the Smile of a Child" and provided with schooling, vocational training, health care and, most importantly, a future.
"In my own small world, I am the happiest man now," said Hen Horn, who is learning to be a chef at the Lotus Blanc, run by For the Smile of a Child. The haute cuisine restaurant, favored by Western expatriates in Phnom Penh, also serves as a vocational training school for the group's wards.
But for every lucky one like Hen Horn, hundreds more are still trapped in the dump.
Most earn about 11,000 riel (US$3) a day, often to help their parents pay off loans taken to feed the family in times of drought or floods.
The site presents the raw face of poverty in Cambodia, one- third of whose 12 million people do not earn enough to eat two meals a day.
The dump extends across an area of about 10 soccer fields, skylined by 20-feet-high (6-meter-high) hills of refuse that thicken the air with a nauseating stink of decay. The slippery ground is covered with a carpet of flies that rise up in black, buzzing clouds on being disturbed.
Hundreds of adults and children traverse the rotting waste, wearing torn galoshes, uncovering rubbish with steel hooks.
Anything that can be recycled is picked up with bare hands and tossed into sacks for sale to middlemen -- plastic shopping bags, drink cans, food tins, hypodermic syringes and even food leftovers sold as pig feed.
Every time a dump truck unloads its unsavory cargo - 400 tons (441 U.S. tons) in all every day - children and adults rush to pick through before it is pushed by bulldozers into a pit where it is burned.
Scrambling for scrap can be dangerous with trucks backing up and bulldozers moving in. At least four people have been crushed to death this year.
Hen Horn, the trainee chef, said his most vivid memory of the dump is "the pushing and shoving and everybody rushing to get whatever we could lay our hands on."
"I promised myself I would never go back to the dump. I would tell my mother 'don't give up hope. I will find a way out,"' said Hen Horn.
Founded by a French couple in 1993, For the Smile of a Child - "Pour un Sourire d'Enfant" in French - employs 120 Cambodians, half of them teachers.
The group's work is only a small contribution in the fight on Cambodia's pervasive poverty, which has led to one of the world's highest rates of child labor.
About half the country's four million children aged five to 17 are employed, mostly in farms and fields, according to government statistics. Others work in shops and factories, according to the government's latest Cambodia Child Labor Survey in 2001.
No figures are available on how many children work in hazardous places such as chemical factories or garbage dumps like Stung Mean Chey.
Cheoun Simorn, an undernourished 16-year-old girl who looks 12, has been scavenging there with her younger brother for the last year, starting at 6 a.m. and finishing with fading light at 6 p.m., earning about 15,000 riel (US$4) a day.
They are helping their father, a cycle rickshaw driver, pay off his debts. It's unlikely he will ever do so - Chheoun Simorn says he must pay 13,000 riel (US$3) every day, just in interest.
She breaks into sobs when asked why she works at the dump. "This is not a job I can talk about. I dare not tell my mother I don't want to work here," she said as she wiped away the tears, leaving a streak of black from her grimy hand on her cheek.
About two kilometers (one mile) from the dump is the headquarters of For the Smile of a Child -- a stark contrast of well manicured lawns, neat classrooms, white-tiled bathrooms and dining halls.
Children who have worked at the dump at least one year are chosen for the program, said Pin Sarapich, director of vocational training center for the group.
Parents have to be persuaded to let their children go to school and, in return, they are given 17 kilograms (37 pounds) of rice per week, a donation from the United Nations' World Food Program, to compensate for the loss of the children's income.
At school, the children eat two meals and two snacks a day. They get free education up to 12th grade and vocational training in the hotel business, beauty care, handicrafts or secretarial work.
But with a budget of US$1.07 million last year - mostly from private French donations - the group cannot take any more children than the 300 to 400 it helps per year.
Pin Sarapich hopes that the former scavengers will inspire others to try to escape from the garbage dump.
"The kids we help here will go on to help others by passing on their optimism, and the message that one should never give up," said Pin.
On the Net: World Food Program: www.wfp.org Pour un Sourire d'Enfant www.pse.asso.fr (French language)
GetAP 1.00 -- DEC 31, 2003 07:13:29