If I say “Poipet”, what are the first things that come into your mind? Hellaciously boring visa runs? Pesky little scamps with umbrellas begging for money? Dusty roads and blazing sunshine? The Poipet you’ve experienced might have been only the surface of this border town between Thailand and Cambodia. It’s not an obvious choice of destination for a weekend out of Bangkok, but taking a bit of time to explore the place reveals a land of contradiction: in the shadows of the enormous casinos are people who have nothing. Yet amongst those people there is happiness and there is a zest for life that you might miss during a fleeting border pass, skirmishing your way past children.

I’ve heard people swear never to set foot in Cambodia because they’ve had a phone stolen or someone’s picked their pocket at the border. The children you encounter while getting your new stamps give a misleading impression of the area. Most of them have their homes several miles away. They travel to the border area, often with rented babies to help boost their chances of income, and they beg to get money. The children, for the most part, enjoy their time there because they can hang out with friends and are free to roam unsupervised.

A recent survey conducted by an NGO (the Carpets for Communities project) found that, on average, the children who beg earn 63 baht a day, sometimes more depending on how lucky they are. Occasionally the children belong to gangs, whilst others have been sent there by their families. In the case of the gangs, the children will hand over all of the money they earn.

You might have experienced sudden pangs of guilt when a child has come begging for money. “Brother, brother, I need money to eat. Give me one dollar.” How do you react to this? What do you do if a young girl shades your path with an umbrella? Do you choose to give money, or do you sheepishly refuse? It’s a similar situation to when you come across a child at one of Bangkok’s nightspots. Do you buy the candies, or do you ignore the child?

I remember once seeing a foreign man throw a handful of coins in the air, laughing as he did so, to cries of glee from the children who were about to benefit from the shower of shrapnel. I’ve always felt uncomfortable giving money to the children, but on occasions I have given bottles of water. Jay Lamey, interim program manager of the Carpets for Communities project, had this to say about the situation:

“All the NGOs who work here agree that money should not be given to children begging on the border. In fact, the giving of money is a major source of the problem and absolutely no part of the solution. Giving money entrenches a family’s dependence on the child, all but eliminating their chances of attending school. Once a few years of education are lost during the formative years, they are very, very hard to catch up on. Furthermore, the border is a dangerous area, where young children are exposed to drugs (particularly yaba), gangs, police brutality (I know of cases personally) and, in extreme cases, prostitution.”

I read this on a traveler’s blog about visiting Poipet:

“One cannot witness such poverty without doing something. The best way to be prepared for this is to fill a change purse ahead of time with all the coins you care to give away, and then give them away till the purse is empty. Holding up the empty purse after you have gone through the change will get across the idea that the well has run dry.”

This is exactly the sort of act NGOs warn against, but by doing so they warn people against their own compassion; it’s a difficult one to call. One should bear in mind that loose change is not the last resort for these people in the long run, as the NGOs will argue.

Walking a little deeper into Poipet, through the actual villages where the locals live, paints a different picture to the scene of the begging children. In fact, the children in the villages, away from the daily influx of tourists and travelers, rarely beg for money. On seeing foreigners they cry out all the English words they can remember and wave. Some even have looks of fright on their faces when they lay eyes upon the strange, pale bodies of farang.

I walked through the villages with two friends and whenever we came across a group of children they swarmed us playfully, never asking for money, never suggesting they lived deprived lives. Some were wearing their school uniforms. These children had not been trained to ask for money or view foreigners as a source of income.

However, this is not to say that life is rosy in the villages. There is poverty. Children and adults smuggle their way into Thailand. Think about all the construction workers you see in the city. Many of them are from Cambodia. They pay up to 3,000 baht to be smuggled in, work until a job is complete, and then face arrest and deportation. Girls often make their way to Thailand to work as prostitutes, occasionally returning to their homes with Aids. It’s a dangerous world and people are desperate. Sometimes children move continuously between Cambodia and Thailand.

With more than half a dozen casinos in Poipet, the money does trickle down to the locals, but the real solution has to lie elsewhere. I can’t sit here and write this saying that NGOs are the only way to eliminate poverty in Poipet, but from what I’ve seen there are organizations there, and across the world, that work to do a lot of positive things. If you want to help, take the time to do some research and make a donation. The money will go to an organization working to benefit the people by offering scholarships and apprenticeships, providing jobs and resources, and giving means of education. Relieving poverty takes time and there is no instant solution.

I read an interesting story about a New York Times journalist named Nicholas Kristof. He spent some time interviewing prostitutes in Poipet and became so wrought with feelings of despair at the girls’ situations that he freed them from their plight by buying them. Rather than uphold some moral code of the school of journalism, he became involved with his story and acted out of compassion rather than professionalism; and what a decent act it was. My point here is that there is not a single, easy solution. Poipet is just one example of a place where people are in need. Human trafficking, drug abuse, child abuse, extortion, prostitution: the list of problems is endless.

Visiting Poipet is an experience. There is no infrastructure; there is rubbish everywhere (when the piles get too big they are simply burnt if they can’t be recycled); disease and hunger are widespread; and yet amongst all of this there are children hanging out in the arcade playing Winning Eleven, there are games of volleyball going on, and there is the hope that comes from happiness within poverty. Seeing all of this and then spending some time in the casinos made for an involving, yet unsettling, weekend. I’d recommend anybody to go there.

Techno' tags: Poipet, Cambodia, Poverty, Street kids , NGO