Chandon's story

“Life was very difficult for me growing up,” 18-year-old Chandon recalls. From the age of just twelve, she had already experienced the toll of poverty. Every day, she would pluck vegetables from her garden and take them to one of Phnom Penh’s many markets, in the hope of earning enough money to feed herself and her sick parents.

“It was never enough,” Chandon admits, remembering how she was also forced to work as a plastic collector (“Ajay”) when the vegetable selling was slow. “Some days we only had enough for one meal.”

Her parents, both of whom suffered from severe lung and liver problems, had already sent Chandon’s brother to live with her Grandmother as they could not afford to look after both siblings. Their poverty was compounded by an illness which required daily medication and a steady source of income to pay for it.

Chandon’s parents eventually succumbed to their illness, passing away in the winter of 2004. Whn her Aunt in Baray, Kompong Thom, heard about her situation, she immediately arranged for Chandon to come and live with her in the village along the main road between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.

With no parents and no possessions, Chandon arrived in Baray to start her new life. Her first opportunity to rebuild came when her Aunt arranged for her to undertake weaving training at the nearby Khmer Life Centre. Before long, she was offered permanent employment at the project, which had already become a second home to her.

“Even though my parents have died, I have a better life now,” Chandon explains. She is not only learning new skills and earning a fair wage, she has also discovered new friends and a renewed sense of confidence and self-belief.

Chandon is pleased that Khmer Life is a Christian organisation, seeing it as part of the reason that her life has improved. As she puts it: “I now know that there is a spiritual life that I need to look after. It’s not just about making money and looking after my health.”

 Socheat's story

35-year-old Socheat has not had the most straightforward of lives. Recalling his days as a boy growing up during the Pol Pot regime, Socheat is quick to point out that he is a very different person now.

Socheat’s first encounter with the Khmer Rouge came as a toddler, when his parents were taken away one night and killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers. “To this day, I still don’t know why my parents were killed,” he explains. “I only know that this is what my brother and sister told me several years later.”

After his parents death, Socheat and his two older siblings went to live with their Grandmother on the other side of his hometown - Kompong Thnorr in Kompong Thom Province. The next few years passed relatively incident-free, until Khmer Rouge soldiers came knocking once again, this time for Socheat.

“They wanted me to join them.  Even though I didn’t want to, I had no choice,” he recalls. As he was only seven at the time, the soldiers asked him to clean their weapons and the implements used at the nearby clinic before he becoming a fully fledged Khmer Rouge soldier.

“Most of the time, I was very bored,” he admits, recalling almost ten years of working as a KR dogsbody. That all changed when Socheat turned 16. The Khmer Rouge decided to make a soldier of the boy they had taken from the village and Socheat joined a KR troop on the retreat in Pailin Province, one of the last outposts of the Khmer Rouge before it surrendered to the Vietnamese army.

“I did not want to fight but now I was Khmer Rouge and the (Vietnamese-controlled) Government were coming for us,” Socheat says. His troop was one of the last to continue fighting in the forests of Pailin until a surrender was negotiated in 1991.

As part of the deal brokered between the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese occupiers and the UN, Socheat and his colleagues were offered jobs as Policemen in the area in which only a few weeks ago they had been guerrilla fighters.

But after working for the Police for two years patrolling the border between Cambodia and Thailand, the newly-appointed Cambodian Government made him and many of his colleagues redundant.

It was a blow for Socheat and one that forced him to go back to his ex-Khmer Rouge colleagues for help in finding a job. They arranged for him to be hired as an escort for trucks that were transporting cars across the Cambodian-Thai border.

After only a few months in his new line of work, disaster struck. Socheat was injured by a landmine while accompanying a truckload of cars. He believes the landmine was laid by a rival group intent on stopping the prosperous trade of Socheat and his colleagues.

He was fortunate to be taken to a hospital in Phnom Penh, where doctors amputated one of his legs and arranged for him to be given a prosthetic. It was to be the beginning of Socheat’s new life. Without a home or job and severely restricted in his movement, Socheat became eligible for a vocational training programme in Phnom Penh which provided sewing training for landmine victims.

After completing his training, a friend from Kompong Thom told him about a project located just a few miles away from his childhood home, which was looking to employ  a sewer to work on a range of handicraft products. He began work with Khmer Life in 2004, initially as part of a team of sewers but now as the master sewer and designer for all Khmer Life products.

“Everything is better for me since I arrived at Khmer Life,” he exclaims, going on to explain how much he enjoys the new responsibilities at Khmer Life as well as his involvement with the nearby church.

After more than two years at Khmer Life, Socheat is renowned for his gentle manner and sincere prayers, a far cry from his life struggling to survive during years of civil war. “I regret the years I wasted with the Khmer Rouge,” he admits. “Years away from education, away from work, away from life! But if I always look back on the past, I don’t think it’s good for me. I want to look ahead to the future.”