leng and his youngest son
so much for stopping by.
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as we rode our bikes in, we saw a few kids gathered around a large palette and an older man with them. once he saw us, he stood up and greeted us. after introducing himself as the founder, leng showed us around a bit. we felt slightly awkward at first, as leng spoke english but not a whole lot, so we were a bit confused with some of the things he was telling us. but the kids watched us intently as he gave us a tour.
oda, orphans and disabled arts association, is run by leng, and has been in operation since 2003. he himself was orphaned during the khmer rouge, and since then has devoted his life to helping other orphaned kids. he and his wife take care of twenty orphans, fourteen boys and six girls, and two of their own boys. the kids range from four to eighteen years old, and as long as a child is contributing or in school, he or she does not have to leave the orphanage.
leng is also an accomplished artist. he went to a four-year school for art and is a wonderful painter. therefore, he teaches all of the children how to paint, and even the four-year-olds have little masterpieces. along with this, they have english lessons every day. they sell the paintings, which are generally of temples, villages, or other regional and cultural subject matter, to fund the orphanage. they sell the paintings both in the gallery on the premises and in ta prohm, where the kids take turns setting up a stand. on a good day, they can sell 10 paintings, but these ten might only bring in fifty or sixty dollars, and a large bag of rice costs thirty.
twenty-four mouths eat a lot of rice.
they also survive on donation. i was surprised at how far the usd goes for them. with one-thousand dollars, they were able to build a brand-new gallery.
and pay the bribe to the police for building.
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leng doesn't really turn any kids down for the orphanage. the only requirement is that they need a place to stay and they are willing to learn art, learn english, and go to khmer school. in fact, he thinks he will have three more girls within the next few weeks-- as he says, "i can't turn them down, they have nowhere else to go," and though he doesn't really have any more bed space, he does have food, school, and education and hope to give them.
not all of these kids have been orphaned by the khmer rouge, either. they are here because either their parents died, or even worse, their parents didn't want them anymore. sometimes when a khmer man decides to marry a second wife, he abandons the children of his first wife. since she is generally not able to take care of them herself, they are left to themselves, which is very difficult for these children, as family here is the center of their worlds. to know that their parents are alive and will not keep them is heartbreaking.
after leng showed us around, i began asking him how he teaches the kids art. he did not yet know that i had the ability to paint, but he told me that he teaches them first to draw, but also to paint at the same time as well. he starts with watercolor, as their style for watercolor is very simple, and the kids can generally catch on. once they start to use acrylic and oil paints, the pieces become much more involved and detailed.
as he explain this to me, i watched traiven paint.
he began with a nearly fresh canvas when i was there. traiven is a fourteen year old boy, but i would have guessed him to be eleven. most of the kids here look much younger than they are, as i'm sure the inconsistency in their diets throughout their lives has had a physical impact on them. traiven's day began with english with shirley. shirley is an austrailian woman who volunteers from about nine am til three or four in the afternoon. she has helped make improvements to oda and spends a great deal of time with the kids. after english, he has a lesson on painting in the morning, then after lunch he goes to khmer school. some of the kids have the opposite day though-- they begin with khmer school, then come back to have lunch, learn english, and paint. either way, the kids always have lunch together.
traiven worked very quickly and intently, and after only about two hours, his painting was coming along nicely.
the more i talked to leng about his teaching methods, he began to catch on. once i told him i had gone to school for art, his eyes lit up. the next word out of his mouth was simple, and nearly dictated the next three days of alex and i's stay:
abstract.
not knowing what it would do, i replied with "yes, abstract, it is my favorite and i love it!" he began talking in khmer to his students, and they got excited as well. abstract art is not taught here, and though they know it exists, they know almost nothing about it. he asked, "you teach me abstract? yes?" and i told him i would try. but the more i thought about it, the more unsure i became. how do you teach abstract art without history? leng sat me down, gave me a canvas, and told me i could paint whatever i wanted. i smiled, honored, but said i haven't painted in so long that i'd like to watch the kids paint first. so i sat down on the tiny stool, which i wasn't sure would even hold me, and kept watching.
it was now around eleven-thirty am. the kids started coming in from school. one by one, they walked up the driveway to leng, put their hands together in front of their faces with their palms at chin level, and spoke khmer to leng. then they turned to alex and i and said "ha-looow, how aah youu?" with their hands still high. first bak, then jassmen, then polly, and they kept coming up the driveway.
leng asked me if i would mind teaching the lesson later that day. he said we could come back around three o'clock, and we agreed. after asking him where the closest place to get food would be, he said "you eat here with us!" we were skeptical to accept, but leng insisted. they set up a table separate from the kids, and we ate with leng and his wife. leng sent one of the kids out to get cold bottles of water, and alex and i ate til we couldn't move. every time we put our spoons down, leng put the bowl of rice in front of us, "please, eat more!" he loved showering us with food.
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after lunch, alex immediately went to the kids. now that they were all around, the youngest ones were out of school and ready to play. the two youngest just couldn't stay away from her. they all laughed, spun in circles, played patty-cake, tickled, laid on the ground, rode big wheels (minus alex), and laughed more.
the smallest girl was so much to see. sunchai. she was huggably cute, but so beautiful, the way young kids always are. nothing ever came out of her mouth except a laugh or giggle, which was always whole-hearted and so candid, and the smile across her face never disappeared. she was the happiest little girl at the orphanage, and with her wide, dark brown eyes and the waves in her dark hair that framed her round face she might have been the prettiest too. she was warm and true, such a high-spirited child. she played with the four-year-old boy even more mercilessly than she played with alex, not worried about being bullied at all. her brightness was radiating and could easily be felt by anyone around her. she was the little girl everyone wants their own to be, so genuine, and her smile, and we loved the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed. she was, to put it plainly, just so happy, you'd never guess that she could be anything but.
and you surely would never have guessed that she has hiv.
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not only did she, but the boy did too. in fact, our first day of visiting was his first day back to school. he had fallen off of his bed and broken his leg so badly that he was in a cast for three weeks. it had immobilized him, and leng is still very worried that his leg isn't healing properly. though these two are not brother and sister, both lost their parents to hiv, and their mothers passed it on to them, their children.
but they were just so cute. the little boy liked playing with the puppies, but when he was bored with this one, he wasn't sure what else to do with it besides put it in the desk.
as alex played with them, one of the older boys kept questioning me on "abstract art," but their definition was much different than mine. since terminology in art can be so remote and khmer words are much different than english, it was difficult to explain it. he wanted to know about color, so i tried to teach him about how we can use color to express mood, but he didn't understand the moods i told him. i tried to tell him about composition, and though i know he uses movement and emphasis in his paintings, he can't acknowledge this with english words.
instead, he gave me a canvas and told me to show him. he handed me a paintbrush, but i turned it down and ripped a piece of cardboard off of a box. with it, i painted the entire background black, then started building colors on top of this, much like the way i did for my senior show. he kept asking me, "background? background?" but it was hard to say that no, this is the painting. i tried to tell him that purely abstract pieces cannot have resemblance, and he kept asking me about picasso. but though his human figures were nearly perfect, the boy knew nothing about di vinci or michaelangelo, and looked very confused at the name jackson pollock. i tried to throw some paint, but he didn't understand. i kept painting my canvas, and he stared in awe at it.
feeling like i wasn't getting anywhere, i sat it out in the sun and asked him to paint instead.
but he wanted no parts of this, and what he said next was so touching i couldn't not paint. in broken english, he told me, "we have lots of visitors through the orphanage, but few from the west, and they are never artist. you are great artist, you know about abstract. this is so rare and so great. i am very lucky to meet you." he handed me another canvas. i felt worthless without the ability to show what i truly know and love about the art world.
i didn't even know what to do next. so instead of showing a style, i decided to show a technique. i grabbed alex's camera, found a simple photograph of sunchai's face, and roughly drew it on the canvas. instead of painting the way they do, which uses a lot of blending and building, i split large areas up into values-- white, light blue, a little darker, dark blue, and black. i painted in blocks of color, so the piece looked like a puzzle closer together but a person from farther away. it's a simple method we learn the first day in painting class, but something that they don't really learn to do here in cambodia. he was highly appreciative, and stood in front of the piece just staring. alex told me she even caught him touching the abstract black piece a few times when i wasn't looking. at home, i'm just an art major who can pick up a paintbrush, but he was astounded with what i did in only a matter of hours.
i hated both pieces i turned out, but they loved them.
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after the afternoon english lesson, a few of the kids started painting again. leng wanted me to help, but i didn't know what to do. so i sat down beside a few of the kids and just watched them. one of the older girls was getting very frustrated with her trees. she looked at me and i smiled at her.
then she handed me the paintbrush.
i kind of laughed, but she wanted my input. she and i never spoke, but i worked with her for almost an hour. i had no idea what kind of look she was going for or what she really wanted me to do. in fact, most of the time i felt like she hated what i did to her canvas, and i felt horrible because at home we never touch another person's artwork. i didn't want to change her piece, but every time i handed the brush back to her, she would touch the piece, then hand it back to me.
her name was sok maly. i remembered watching her during their english lesson, as she eagerly answered every question she was asked, and then some. she was the girl who headed up lunch-making, cleaning up, and organizing the kids that day as well. she, too, had a bright smile and did a lot of laughing during our lesson. leng said that she is never unhappy, and it sure seemed that way with her as well. i never saw her upset, and by the third day of alex and i's arrivals, she would nearly jump out of her chair to greet us. her eyes would light up and she would yell my name, "ah, heh-low ray-shell!" it was so heartwarming.
but the weekend prior to our visit, she had a breakdown. the orphanage did a small celebration for the chinese new year by having a big meal and playing some games. it turns out that sok maly has a brother, younger than herself, that lives about two hours away. she hasn't seen him since she left home, and she misses him every time they do a family gathering. leng and shirley found her in the girls' room in tears, something unusual for her. alex and i felt awful, but leng told us that he's tried to bring her brother a few times. unfortunately, he's too shy to spend time around the other kids, and sok maly knows it's better for her to be with leng than alone. but i loved my time with sok maly, and though all of the kids were fascinated with alex and i, i felt that she really appreciated what i tried to teach her. she mimicked every technique i did and would hold her painting up with pride gleaming from her face.
alex and i spent three days at the orphanage. at the end of the third day, i did a small lesson on pointillism, serat's method of painting. he uses dots of color to create a huge painting, rarely using the color that he wants to create. so, if he wanted to make green grass, he would use more blue and yellow. after watching me for a few minutes, the kids all picked up paper and paint and joined in.
after the lesson, we watched as the kids did some traditional khmer dancing. we listened as they chanted along with their movements. i even find that i have the sounds of the words and the beat stuck in my head sometimes.
before we left, i looked through some of the kids' paintings and fell in love with traiven's watercolor. the kids like to have their pictures taken with their paintings, so we posed for a few. :)
i couldn't resist buying it. when the time came, alex and i were sad to say our final goodbyes. leng wanted us to keep coming back, but we had to move on.
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of course, when there are monkeys, we have to stop.
i'm always surprised at how close they'll let us get. aside from the fact that they jumped on alex's bike last time, i was up close and almost too personal with them. this little guy was only about a foot in front of me, and i wanted to touch him, but didn't want to risk it.
and even though it's sad, i like watching them play with things that they're not sure of. like this cup. i think it had some kind of crushed flavored ice in it, and the little monkey was so determined to figure out how to open it.
he eventually did, but as soon as he got bored, he threw it to the side and climbed a tree instead.
how cute.
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our next journey was to the tonle sap lake. tonle sap is quite interesting-- it's the largest lake in southeast asia and only measures 3,000 km during the dry season. but after the rainy season it more than triples in size to 13,000 km, covering rice fields and filling the empty spaces under the houses built on stilts. but when we got there and learned it would be $15 for a one-hour sweaty, cramped tour, we decided against it. we felt bad for our tuk-tuk driver, but he was getting paid anyway, and we had enjoyed the twenty-minute ride to listen to my ipod and watch the fields pass by.
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after a long few days of temple visits and playing with kids, alex and i decided we deserved some drinks. we had seen advertisements for a bar called "angkor what?", which was run by englishmen, and we figured we could probably hear some familiar music. when we got there, we saw that they had a free t-shirt deal. if you bought two buckets, you could get any t-shirt, any size. we figured we'd do the deal two nights in a row, once so i could get one, once so alex could.
but the buckets had 4 straws. because it was big enough for four people. and by the end of the night, i "had to drink the t-shirt to get the free bucket."
instead, we simply bought the shirt for $5 the next day.
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Y rae. racho. d.
