Seedling of Hope People

Hem Sopheap is between 27 and 30 years old; she does not know exactly. Her mother died a few days after she was born. She grew up with her father and his new wife, who did not accept her.  She has a half brother, but during Pol Pot times the whole family was split up and she lost her parents. She was about five years old at that time. She has never been to school and does not know how to read and write. She still has her grandmother, who lives in the provinces, and a few years ago she was reunited with her half brother.

When she was about 17 years old she had an accident with a landmine, and she lost her right lower leg and her right eye. She now has a prosthesis.  She tested positive for HIV in 1997. She was tested because her husband was very sick with AIDS. He died in 1998. Together they had one child, a little girl, who died when she was 7 months old, just before her husband died. She also had an adoptive child, who was given to an orphanage when she herself was very sick. When she came back to get the child out of the orphanage, it had been adopted away.

Shortly before she was HIV tested, she had been accepted into a Maryknoll skills training programme for the handicapped. It was through a Maryknoll volunteer there that she became connected with Seedling of Hope. She was visited by home visitors and was provided medical care and some small financial support.

However, her life was difficult after she received the positive results of her test. The other trainees at the programme would not get close to her, and where she lived at the Wat, she was isolated and finally chased out because of her disease.

The training programme was for one and one half year and after that she did not have a job, but lived on her small support from Seedling of Hope.  She was one of the two ladies to start the present sewing programme in April 2000.  She lives now in a small "apartment" for $15 per month.  She shares it with her half brother who is a cyclo driver.  He is not nice to her, but it looks to the neighbours as if they are married, and that is a kind of protection.  She started treatment for TB in August 2000.

She says that she is now happy mainly because she can be with people who accept her. Also she has enough food to eat and she can even save a bit of money for when she gets more sick.

When Kheum was six years old her mother died and her aunt and uncle took her in.  The uncle was out working every day and she worked around the house cutting grass for the animals.  When her uncle came home in the evening her aunt would say that she hadn't worked at all, and she would be beaten almost every day.  She has never been to school.

In 1996 her husband got very sick and they spent all their money and investments on medicines.  Before then they had been doing fairly well, but they had to sell their household items including a TV, and eventually they had to sell their house for $120 to pay for the medicine bills.  They did not know what was wrong with him until shortly before he died in 1997.

Seven days after his death she was taken by a health worker to be tested for HIV and she was positive, too.  This was a very unhappy time and she cried and cried.  Her husband's family would not have anything to do with her, and she did not have any family of her own. She was very thin and weak at that time.  A Maryknoll health worker visited her and they helped her with a little financial support and medicines. She is 30 years old now.

There were no children in the marriage, but she has an adoptive girl, who is now 9 years old.  She feels very strongly that she wants to give this little girl a good childhood and so the girl will not be alone as the mother was as a child. She is very happy that the girl is now going to school.

She likes to work with the sewing programme. She has enough to eat, and so does the girl.  All that she earns goes to the girl so that she can be happy.

Sous Youn is 30 years old.  She has never been to school.  She tested HIV positive about a year ago.  Her husband is also positive.  They were tested because they were both very sick and losing weight.

Before she came to Maryknoll Seedling of Hope, she was earning her living by collecting leaves used in Khmer soup.  She would earn about 5000 riels per day (about $1.25).  Her husband did not have a job.  One day when she was collecting leaves, she met one of the Maryknoll Fathers. She talked with him and explained how tired she was. He gave her the address of Seedling of Hope and money for a moto to go there.

A few days later she had an accident, falling from a tree while plucking leaves, and she started bleeding per vaginam. She was four months pregnant.  That was the first time she came to Seedling of Hope.

Sous Youn was one of the two first women in the sewing programme. Her totally hopeless situation having to collect leaves from trees being four months pregnant was the inspiration to develop a programme where women with HIV/AIDS could make a living for themselves in a supportive environment.

Sous Youn had her baby on 13 September 2000, a beautiful little girl born at 2800 grams (about 6 lbs).  This is her second child.  She also has a 4-year old boy, who is also HIV positive.

Since she started working she has moved to a better (but still very basic) housing.  She does not have much family of her own. Her mother lives in one of the provinces with her two brothers.  She does not know whether she is still alive.  She does not want her mother to know that she is sick.  Her husband has a big family, and she has been able to help them after she started working.

She has also been able to build a stupa at a wat for herself and her family. This was important for her to do before she, her husband, and her son die of AIDS in a few years.

Serey Pov is 24 years old.  When she was seven years old her parents died, and she lived a few years with her grandmother.  Then the grandmother died.  Serey Pov finished 4th grade of school and can read and write simple things.

After her grandmother's death, she was on her own and earned her living planting rice and working in the fields.  When she was about 12 years old she started working in a brothel where her job was to look after the ladies' children.  If anything happened to the children, for instance, if they fell down, she would be beaten badly with a shoe.

When she was 15, the brothel owner took her on a trip to show her the other provinces of Cambodia.  She was brought to Battambang where the brothel owner sold her to another brothel.  During the years she was in the brothel, she never saw any of the money she earned.  The owner took everything.  She would have around 10 customers per night.  If the girls did not have "enough" customers they were beaten.

After three years she tried to escape through a hole in the fence at the back of the house.  The brothel was lying next to the river and she had to cross the river.  She does not know how to swim, but she managed to cross using a big plastic bag with air in it to help her float.  When she reached the other side she was caught by the brothel owner, and brought back to the brothel where she was beaten severely.  She still has a big scar in the back of her head.

After one more year at the brothel she escaped again.  This time a customer helped her.  He drove her away and dropped her quite far from the brothel.  From there she arranged for a moto driver to take her to a bus station.  However, the moto driver did not take her to the station but wanted to sell her to another brothel.  Luckily they passed some policemen and Serey Pov called for help. The moto driver tried to escape with her, but the police shot at him, and she managed to jump off and run.  She did not have anywhere to go and she was taken by the police to Phnom Penh, where she lived in the center of town.  She had no money and she supported herself with begging.

When she was in Phnom Penh, she became very sick and went to Center of Hope (a charity hospital).  She was tested for HIV/AIDS and was positive.  This was in 1997.  Through the Center's home care programme, she met her husband.  They met at evening support groups and took a liking to each other. As she puts it, he has AIDS and I have AIDS, but we can still be together and help each other.  They got married in January 2000.  He is not well these days, but she feels strong.

Before joining the patchwork sewing programme, she did odd jobs in her neighbourhood as well as sometimes being "watcher" for people with AIDS in the hospital who have no family.  It was through this work that she met one of the health-care workers from Maryknoll and was introduced to Seedling of Hope.

What is most important for her now is that she can live openly at her job and that she does not have to hide the fact that she has AIDS.  Also she has now enough to eat, and so does her husband.

Ly Kim Chien is 30 years old.  She was born in Vietnam as the first of nine siblings.  In 1982 she came with her family to Cambodia because living conditions were better here.  The family earned their living by collecting garbage.  Years later the father made a living from driving a moto.  The family would eat well if he had earned enough money that day.  Chien went to school while they were in Vietnam and made it through the fifth grade.

In 1997 she was married.  She and her husband did well until he fell sick in the middle of 1999.  During the following six months they spent all their savings on medical bills.  Her little child of about 1 year was also very sick.  She came to Seedling of Hope Clinic at the end of January 2000 (that was 2 weeks after we started our new clinic in that neighbourhood).  Prior to that they had taken the father and the baby to many clinics--private and public, but nobody could help them.  Not only was the family poor, but they had the added problem of being Vietnamese, which limited their chances of being seen in public clinics.

When they were tested for HIV, both she and her husband were HIV positive.  The little baby, now 1 year 2 months old, was not tested but clinically clearly has AIDS.

Ly Kim Chien says that when she got the result she wanted to kill herself.  Only the regular visits of the home visitors from Seedling of Hope (three times per week) helped her to go on with her task of taking care of her dying husband and baby.  Moreover, she had her three year old healthy boy.  The situation was not made easier by the fact that they had to stay with a relative who did not really want them there.  The family had an area of about 2 x 3 meters (a little more than 6 feet x 9 feet) to live in.

Both baby and husband became increasingly weak, and in April her mother-in-law convinced her husband to go to where she lived in a province to get some medicine there, and some money.  She never saw her husband again. He died shortly after arriving in the province.  Three days before he died, the baby--still with Chien--also died.

Chien started working with the Seedling of Hope Patchwork project in June 2000.  She now lives with her father and mother and six of her siblings as well as her three-year-old son.  The family used to live on houseboats on the river, but together with many other Vietnamese families they were told to leave that area.  Her father is still working as a moto dup, and Chien can help the family finances through her income.

She likes to come and make the patchwork blankets.  She particularly enjoys putting the material together in beautiful colours and patterns.  As an outside observation, she is now gaining weight--and she smiles and sometimes she even laughs.  She never did that before.