It's a hard life

My heart breaks for a dear friend of ours.

For the purposes of this story we will name her Lee. Lee has a 4 year old daughter and lives with her elderly mother, 16yr old brother, and her young nephew. She is 30 years old. 

Lee has been in a relationship with a man for 6 years who is the father of her daughter. She now discovers that this man has another wife in the provinces who has borne him 7 children. She has decided to divorce/separate him after she learns she is "second wife". 

This has hard ramifications for Lee and her daughter - lets call her Mai. Mai is a beautiful young girl who plays happily and enjoys spending time with our son James. They play so well together. We have come to love this little girl and her mother very much over our time here. 

Because Lee will separate from her daughters father, she will no longer get the rent paid and food, clothing, schooling provided for Mai. This breaks her heart as her daughter loves going to school. Lee has decided that she will need to go to Thailand to work in a fruit processing factory/fields in order to provide for Mai, her mother, brother and nephew. She will have to go alone and leave Mai with her mother. Lee is scared to leave them due to her mother being older and not copying. She worries everyday. She cries often.

Mai's grandmother "Ma-yay" asks us to help. Please take her grand daughter Mai to Australia with us! Please help Lee find a job in Australia. Please take a photo of Lee so you can find her a husband and then she can go to Australia. It's heart breaking having to tell them no, we can't help like this. We are at a loss of what to do, how to help. I have spent hours online researching different ways to help them immigrate to Australia. Lee is desperate and says she will do any work and work hard. She just wants to put Mai through school and feed and care for her family. It is impossible to help them move to Australia. If she was from a neighbouring country Thailand she could get a working visa but not from Cambodia. 

How do you begin to contemplate what this life is like for Lee and Mai? Are they to be separated? Nick and I have been crying over their situation and had many sleepless nights. I tell Lee that I worry for her and she tells me I don't have to. It's impossible for me to not worry for them!

It's meeting desperate people like Lee and Mai and their family that makes you realise just why people risk their lives coming to Australia on people smuggling boats. People get angry and upset that they try to get in OUR country. I have a new understanding now. 

Changes are afoot

Hello from Cambodia!

It has been a very interesting month here since arriving in Cambodia. We have lots to tell you all about what we have been doing and lots to tell you about the changes in place for us at the moment with regards to our plans.

For those of you who haven’t been following along with our journey via our blog (www.dightfamily.blogspot.com) I will give you a brief overview of the last month.

We have experienced many highs and lows here in Cambodia. It is not an easy place to live coming from a Western background. James has been enjoying riding in the tuk tuk’s and is learning to love rice meals. Nick and I have been tried and tested on our ability to cope but have come to enjoy being here. It has been great getting to know the staff at Sunshine Cambodia and the kids. James enjoys running around with them as long as they don’t all mob him as they tend to get a bit excited and overwhelming for him!

We do have some developments to share with you that affect not only us but our financial supporters as well.
First, an overview of what has led us to our current position:

After careful consideration at looking into the planned paid preschool, it has been decided that it will not be going ahead at this point in time. It will just not be effective in bringing in funding for Sunshine which was its purpose.

Nick’s position is such that all his work is done via email (as he works on documents and it is easier to email internally to pass document from computer to computer).

Back home, we have had some expected personal finance fall through with Nick’s final field trip for work before we left not going ahead. This did not happen until a week before we left which was too late to pull out of going. This would have allowed us to have the finances needed to leave money for our responsibilities in Australia. We did not want to raise funds to cover our debt repayment and commitments and so were relying on our own savings. After looking into different ways to resolve these problems over this last month we have come to the realization that we will need to return to paid employment in order to rectify this.

Here in Phnom Penh things were not quite as we expected them to be before we left. This is simply due to a lack of communication and misunderstanding. We had thought that Alison would be working with the preschoolers and also helping to get the new paid preschool up and running. We had expected to be able to have James in the preschool room with Alison during the day. What we didn’t realize is that the preschoolers in Cambodia are aged 5-6 years and are actually in more of a school style class rather than what Australian’s consider preschool / daycare. This has led to James needing to sit in the office with us during the day. He is not coping with that. We had looked into swapping days with only one of us going in however that looked unlikely to provide a suitable resolution.

All of these things above have led us to make some tough decisions. We had a meeting earlier this week with the Director of Sunshine Cambodia and one of the previous Directors. We were able to talk about these difficulties we were having but also with the change in Alison’s role (or lack of due to the paid preschool not going ahead). It was acknowledged that Nick would be able to do his work from anywhere in the world. A new position was offered to Alison to take over the role of Australian Representative for Sunshine Cambodia which was previously filled by a lady based in NSW who is looking to retire from the position. It is a position that they have been looking for a younger person to fill for the last few months or so.

Because of these new developments, we have decided to come home to Perth. We want you all to know that this was not our first choice and also was not a decision we made lightly. We have spent many sleepless, anxious nights discussing and praying over our options and trying to decide what to do. Our biggest fear was failure and “quitting” on Sunshine and letting you, our supporters, down. We have been assured that this is not how Sunshine feels as we will still be working for Sunshine Cambodia, just in different positions (well actually Nick’s position will be the same, just a different location). This will look to solve all the above issues we are facing. It will give Alison a position with Sunshine Cambodia. It will allow Nick to continue his position. It will solve our difficulties with James and what to do with him each day. It will allow Nick to return to paid employment in order for us to meet our responsibilities in Australia.

We are sad to leave and this has been hard for us, however we see this as a greater way of helping Sunshine. We are very sorry that we cannot stay for longer. We feel that our time here in Phnom Penh has not been wasted as it has allowed us to get a greater understanding of Sunshine Cambodia in order to work effectively in our positions. We are thankful that we can still serve God in this way.