“You are a voyeur,” Scott Neeson wrote to me. He is right, if a very broad interpretation to the word ‘voyeur’ is used. All documentary filmmakers that take viewers into the lives of others are voyeurs. So too are the viewers of these documentaries. We are social animals. We like to know how others live their lives. All literature, all drama, all film, all forms of story-telling are a way in which we can enter into the lives of others and, to the extent that it is possible, to see and experience the world as they do.
The dictionary definition of ‘voyeur’ is:
“A person who derives sexual gratification from observing naked bodies or sexual acts of others, especially from a secret vantage point.”
I doubt that Scott, in calling me a voyeur, was suggesting that I get sexual satisfaction from observing the naked bodies of others. I suspect he was inferring that, like a Peeping Tom, I filmed with Sokayn and her family without their knowledge or permission.
So why was I filming in the Phnom Penh rubbish dump? In brief:
In 2007, whilst filming CHANTI’S WORLD, I found myself with a few days at my disposal, with no commitments. I wondered if anything had changed (other than the location) at the Phnom Penh rubbish dump since I had last visited it a decade beforehand. It occurred to me that the number of families living and working in a rubbish dump says a lot about how well a government treats its own citizens. With an annual injection of around US $600 million from the international donor community, how much of this money was trickling down to Cambodian men, women and children so poor that they had to eke out a paltry living scavenging in a rubbish dump?
On my first visit to the dump at Stung Meanchey I walked, in sandled feet, (not a good idea!) through the slush and mush to film what I would refer to as ‘generic images’ of men, women and children at work, of garbage trucks unloading, of bulldozers and so on. Figures in a landscape. I was shocked by the sheer number of children working in the dump, by the putrid smoke-filled air they had to breathe, by working conditions that would have to be amongst the worst that any human being has to work in on the face of the planet.
I returned to my hotel in Phnom Penh and wrote an email to my son about what I had seen. I told him that I would go back the following day; that I felt as though there was a story in the dump waiting to find me. A human story. It is often this way with stories. You don’t go looking for them. They find you.
The following day I went to the dump again and, within a couple of minutes, caught the attention of a grubby young girl in a dirty skirt. She smiled and waved to me. I smiled and waved back. I turned my camera on. The young girl walked up to, took the camera in her hands, bought her face right up to the lens and stared into it. This was Sokayn. She was 7 years old and spoke very rudimentary English. She instructed me to follow her. I did. My camera was still running. She took me to a line of rough dwellings made from scrap wood, rusty corrugated iron and cloth to where her family lived. Their home rested on a hill close to the entrance of the dump. The hill was a 30 ft high pile of old rubbish.
Over the next couple of years I filmed sporadically with Sokayn and her family. On each occasion I bought them rice, some other foods and gave them a little money. I let them know, through an interpreter, that I hoped one day to be able to help them in a more substantial way. (At the time my filming of CHANTI;S WORLD was being funded by my job as a taxi driver in Sydney)
So, when I found myself in a position to be able to make good my promise but could not find Ka and Chuan, I began what has become the convoluted correspondence that you are reading now – correspondence that has as its primary purpose finding a way to make contact with Ka, Chuan, Sokayn and Sokourn.
Scott ’s and my email exchange is, as will be apparent, cyclical. I keep asking that Scott and CCF act as a conduit between myself and the family, whilst Scott places every obstacle he can in my way – justifying his doing so with a mixture of insults (“You are a voyeur”) and by leaping to conclusions about my motivations based on no evidence at all.
Scott’s obstructionist approach has inevitably given rise to new questions. And, when Scott refuses to answer these, yet more questions.
In fairness to Scott he did answer a few questions in an email of 8th August 2012
8th August 2012
EXTRCTS FROM AN EMAIL FROM SCOTT NEESON
3 – All parents/guardians have an agreement with CCF regarding CCF’s duty of care to the child.
This contradicts what Ka and Chuan told me, on videotape – namely that they had entered into no written contract at all with CCF. I have no way of knowing where the truth lies.
5 – Over the past 6 years, CCF have provided financial, social and material assistance to the family, in order for them to start lives independent of the garbage dump.
This contradicts what Ka and Chuan say. Again, I have no way of knowing where the truth lies. I do know that Scott’s previous assertion that CCF had helped the family start a new life in their homeland was not true. And the question arises: “How effective has CCF been in enabling the family to start lives independent of the garbage dump if, after six years of such help, Ka and Chuan are still working in the dump?
6- CCF is available to address any comments made by the parents regarding "their relationship with CCF".
7- CCF can provide the case file on Sokheng if you provide written permission from the parents. We are unable to provide this information without the parent's consent. With such a good relationship with the parents, I assume they would consent to this.
Best
Scott
18th March 2013
EMAIL TO SCOTT NEESON
Dear Scott
In relation to two of the points you make in this email:
(6) 6- CCF is available to address any comments made by the parents regarding
"their relationship with CCF".
I am in Phnom Penh, in the final stages of finishing off filming. I would be delighted if you or any representative of CCF were to provide your perspective for CHANTI'S WORLD.
(7)- CCF can provide the case file on Sokheng if you provide written permission from the parents. We are unable to provide this information without the parent's consent. With such a good relationship with the parents, I assume they would consent to this.
I have, today, been to the home where Chuan and Ka were living. They are no longer there. One set of neighbours believe that they have gone to live in the provinces. Another believes that they are working in a garment factory. The phone number I have for the family (***********) no longer works. Or, perhaps the family is in the province and out of telephone range.
I have money to give to Chan and Ka and would appreciate it if you could pass on a message to them that I can be contacted at 098208184
best wishes
James Ricketson
23rd March 2013
EMAIL TO SCOTT NEESON
Dear Scott
I am not really all that surprised that you have not responded to my email of six days ago. This is your style. Ka, Chuan, Soyan and Sokourn, the entire family, ‘belong’ to CCF and how dare an upstart such as myself think he can make contact with the family!
I went through this before, you will remember, and managed to track the family down despite your best efforts to prevent me from doing so. I’ll keep trying and perhaps will be successful. Perhaps not. I do know one person who may be able to tell me where Ka and Chuan are but she will not be back in Phnom Penh for another week or so. Time will tell.
When last I saw Ka and Chuan I promised them that when I had sold my film I would buy them land and help them financially to set themselves up in their province so that the whole family could be together. I am in Cambodia with money to give them fulfill my promise but you, in your inimitable fashion, are determined to make it as hard as possible or, if you can, impossible.
I will put the money into a bank account where it will accrue interest. It will remain in this account until such time as I track down Ka and Chuan or, when they are 18 and allowed to take control of their own lives, freed from your paternalistic neo-colonial clutches, when I can track down Sokayn or Sokourn.
If it takes years to track them down I imagine that the family will wonder why it was that you and CCF put so much effort into preventing me from fulfilling my promise.
If you should have a change of heart, you have my email address that you can pass on. Or, if no member of the family has access to or knows how to use the internet, there is the postal service. My address is 316 Whale Beach Road, Palm Beach, 2108, Sydney, Australia.
CCF is not, of course, the only NGO that has adopted your form of paternalistic approach to caring for kids – a form of caring that is designed to break up families and to give you complete control of the kids lives. There are many others. Many. Too many. It is not just the government of Cambodia that exploits the Cambodian people. There are plenty of NGOs doing so also – taking advantage of the lack of a functioning legal system and the lack of a properly functioning Ministry of Social Affairs to make up whatever rules suit them.
On the basis of my experience with you to date, you are just such an NGO –making decisions on behalf of Ka and Chuan (two adults) because you do not believe them capable of making decisions on their own behalf regarding whom they should associate with and whom they can communicate with. This is the very worst form of paternalism, Scott, and if you just stopped for a moment to think about it, you would see what you are doing for what it is.
This email will either be ignored by you or result in one of your arrogant pontifical responses. Such is life!
Cheers
I received no response to this email. Five months later, during my present trip to Cambodia, I wrote to Scott again:
12th August 2013
EMAIL TO SCOTT NEESON
Dear Scott
A few days ago an acquaintance of mine, wishing to make a financial contribution to an ‘orphanage’ in Cambodia, asked me what I thought of the Cambodian Children’s Fund. I told him straight up that the CCF was not an ‘orphanage’. He was surprised. His impression, from his online research, was that it was. I checked online to be sure and my friend is, definitely, wrong. The CCF does not advertise itself as an orphanage. However, given how little there is on the CCF website about the parents of the children in your care, perhaps my acquaintance’s confusion is understandable.
In response to his question, ”Is the CCF a good NGO,” I could only reply, honestly, that I did not know. Like him all I had to go on (other than my first hand experience) was what I had read on the CCF website. It all reads well and sounds impressive but then I had had, I told him, an experience with yourself that left me wondering how much of what is on your website is true and how much of it is the CCF telling potential donors and sponsors what they want to hear?
I suggested that he ask questions and make a decision for himself based on the answers he receives. Number one question, I suggested, should be “How many of the kids in the CCF are orphans?” Number two question should be, ”What is the CCF doing to help the parents of the CCF kids become sufficiently self-sufficient that they not longer need to grow up in a large institution but can grow up within the loving embrace of their families?”
My acquaintance was shocked by the implications inherent in my questions. He admitted to his own naivete and asked for more information. I provided it. Or, should I say, I provided only the information that has come my way through personal experience. And this personal experience is, in a nutshell, that for close to two years (since Sept 2011) you and Patrick and CCF generally have gone out of your way to prevent me from having any kind of contact with Sokayn and Sokourn’s parents Ka and Chuan. You have advanced all sorts of reasons as to why this should be so but, with the passage of two years, they do not hold water.
It would have been very easy, at any point since Sept 2011, for CCF to contact Ka and Chuan, let them know that I was trying to make contact with them and let them know how to make contact with me should they wish to do so. (This is all very well documented in our correspondence). I provided you with my email address, my phone number and my physical address in Australia. It would have been so easy for the CCF to have passed my message on to Ka and Chuan and then passed their response back to me. You did not do so.
At first I thought this was just you being an old-fashioned colonist, Scott, but when I did find Ka and Chuan , another reason occurred to me. Whilst Sokayn and Sokourn were being treated to a first world education, with access to computers, three meals a day etc. their parents were living in a box with no windows, working six and sometimes seven days a week in the dump to earn, in one year, a combined income of $1,000. Why, I wondered, was CCF doing nothing to help Ka and Chuan?
In the meantime, CCF was receiving (this is 2011) around $4 million in donations. In short, there was quite a bit of money floating around. The question in my mind was (and remains), “How much of this money, in reality, goes to helping parents such as Ka and Chuan retrain and/or become self-sufficient such that (a) they no longer need to work in the dump and (b) no longer require the services of the CCF to take care of their children?
I asked some questions of you along these lines but you did not answer them.
It was around this time, when I made contact with Ka and Chuan working in the dump (at the same time that you were declaring that you had helped the family start a new life in the provinces!) that I asked Ka and Chuan what there was I could do to help them become self-sufficient and so able to get Sokayn and Sokourn released back into their care. Their answer was that they wished for, wanted and would be very happy if I could buy them a small block of land and a house in their province. This I promised to do. I made my promise for two reasons. One, I had become fond of the family and two, I believed strongly that if I were able to sell my film that those who appear in it should reap some benefits from the sale. I extended the same offer to Chanti and she and her family are now the owners of a small block of land, a house and a tuk tuk.
With Ka and Chan’s phone number and knowing where they lived I had no need to use the CCF to pass messages on for me. This was just as well because you had made it clear, for the most spurious of reasons, that you had no intention of doing so. Then, earlier this year, Ka and Chuan moved from their box out near the dump (to refer to it as a home would be a gross exaggeration) and the phone number I had for the family no longer worked.
Again, I appealed to yourself, Patrick and CCF to put me in contact with Ka and Chuan again so that I could fulfill my promise to them. You have consistently refused to do so all year. I have tried in every way I can think of to track Ka and Chuan. Without success.
As I have mentioned previously, I will put the money aside for the family, in a bank account, in the hope that one day, somehow, I will track them down – at which point they will wonder, with good reason, why CCF put so much effort into preventing me from fulfilling my promise to them.
In reading through your website contents over the weekend, making sure that CCF was not passing itself off as an ‘orphanage’ (it is not) I came across the following:
Pages and pages of children (with photos attached) being advertised as available to be sponsored.
QUESTION:
“Do these children have parents? If so, how much of the money raised through sponsorship of them goes to assisting the parents of these children become self-sufficient?
Another sentence of interest that I came across was:
“We provide cash and rice support to a family for one to three months.”
QUESTION:
“Given the level of dire poverty experienced by the parents working in the rubbish dump, how effective is one (or even three) months of rice in alleviating this poverty and helping the families become self-sustaining?”
The third sentence that I found interesting was:
“For child protection and other reasons, it will not usually be possible to visit the family home. But rest assured that your visit to CCF will enable you to appreciate the reality of the life of the child and family you are helping.
QUESTION:
“What ‘child protection matters’ are being referred to here? What ‘other reasons” exist for not allowing sponsors to visit the homes of children living in a CCF home? How can a sponsor possibly appreciate the “reality of the life of a child and family” without visiting the family home?”
One possible answer to this question is (and please correct me if I am way off beam here) that CCF does not want sponsors to see and experience the hovels that the parents of CCF kids live in as this would be both distressing and raise the question:
“How come the kids are being looked after so well whilst their parents are living in squalor?”
There were a few occasions when I was filming in the dump, a few years ago, in the hovel that Ka and Chuan called their home, when Sokayn and Sokourn came home for the weekend from CCF. It was at this point that I first began to wonder how and why it was that CCF could treat Sokayn and Sokourn so differently to their parents? Was CCF’s breaking up of the family intentional or was it merely a byproduct of CCF’s belief that the kids would have a better quality of life and greater opportunities for the future if they grew up in an institution rather than with their poor parents? Why, I wondered, was CCF not helping the entire family lift itself out of poverty, as opposed to lifting two children in the family out of poverty and leaving the rest to wallow in it?
Because there is no independent monitoring of ‘orphanages’ in Cambodia, there is no-one, no body, to whom the CCF is accountable for the way it treats children and families. I have no reason to believe that CCF has anything other than the best of intentions in the way it treats the children in its care. What I do wonder, however, is whether it is necessary to break up families in order to help the child members of them.
Good intentions are not enough. We all know that the pathway to hell can be paved with good intentions. I am sure that the vast majority those involved in taking Aboriginal children from their families in the 19th and 20th centuries did so with the very best of intentions. However, we now know that this experiment in social engineering was traumatic for both the parents who had their children ‘stolen’ and for the children themselves – all too often forced to grow up in large institutions. It is six years since Australia formally apologized to the ‘stolen generation’ for what was clearly a misguided policy. And yet, today, with the rapid growth in ‘orphanages;’ in Cambodia (orphans who have parents!) this discredited form of social engineering is alive and well.
The Opinion piece in today’s Cambodia Daily (“Orphanages Make Children Vulnerable to Many Types of Abuse”) expresses, with more eloquence than I am capable of, the dangers of warehousing large numbers of children in institutions as opposed to the much cheaper and more humane alternative of assisting these children within a family context.
If you should have a change of heart regarding putting Ka and Chuan in contact with me I would be delighted.
best wishes
James
I received no response to this email
…to be continued…
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