Mak Tor

This morning we interview Prey Vannak, director of the children’s rights office for the Cambodian League of Human Rights. He speaks eloquently and passionately about the issues facing the children. Sex trafficking, lack of access to health care, domestic abuse and lack of education are all serious issues that need attention and activism. He is a strong advocate and a great interview. I’m happy to have him on board.
We spend the rest of the day interviewing five street kids. Amazingly enough – things continue to come full circle when two of the girls in the group of street children were two of the kids Theresa and I took to breakfast over a year ago. They are in the photo on the web entitled “Table For Five” We also spot another young woman we interviewed last summer and make plans to talk to her again to see what is happening in her life. She doesn’t have her niece on her hip – whom she was caring for the last time we saw her and I wonder where she is. We stop off to see Yorn and Linna this morning as well, before Yorn heads to her doctor’s appointment. Linna races up to me chanting Mak Tor. Thary, my interpreter, tells me this means “second mother”. She also informs me that Yorn has told her several times she wants me to take the new baby when it is born. I tell my translator to tell her the baby’s place is with her and that she is my Cambodian family. I will make sure she is taken care off. I’m thinking it can’t be much to set her up with a roadside store with goods she can sell, like so many of the vendors I have seen. It may be a way to get her started on the road to self-sufficiency and decide to talk it over with Scott later.
I’m writing this from my favorite coffee shop – alone for the moment – my crew heads off without me to a nearby lake in the city to film a sunset. I have a meeting with Scott Neeson CCF and must miss this little venture and trust my crew to handle it on their own. My motto guy, Ian, is hanging out waiting to take me to CCF and I discover his devotion is not amorous. My sound guy informs me that the $2 I have been paying him is 100 times what I should. On one hand – man, I’m overpaying again. On the other – I have been his only customer all day long. If I only paid him .25 cents, it’s hardly enough to get a bite to eat. I can spare the two dollars.