Good Intentions

Namaste,

Hugo in France recently connected with his thoughts on the Orphan Tourism article. This is what he wrote.

Hugo met Benoît sailing over The Silver Sea to Uruguay. 

"It happened Benoit made a trip in a neighboring country named Cambodia.

"And there he saw. He saw the refugee camps on the border. He saw and he realized.

"He began the first Cambodian foundation to help children. The task was huge and often thank less.

"He had to deal with a lot of people, customs and beliefs. Blind or deaf children were considered as useless and cursed beings. You have no sight because you have a bad karma. You have a bad karma because you were evil in your previous life. You have what you deserve, so I must not care. At the time, there wasn't even a Braille system for Khmer language. They had to create it, with help from the Thai Braille language.

"He had to use his trust with great caution. Try to explain long term big projects to people more interested in small time big money.

"And however, here he is. Here they are. Twenty years later, they have their first few bachelors. Those who don't pursue studies do traditional work, earning money for their families, who don't see them as useless anymore. The foundation is recognized by Unicef, and its staff is mostly Cambodian.

"We discussed about humanitarian associations, and he said to me a lot of them are runby either unprincipled or too naive persons. Due to his financial work experience, he was able to give his own association a solid and viable structure.

"But this kind of practice is not so common in such organizations. He also told me about the complete stupidity which is called child sponsoring. Attract western compassion, but create division. I am a sponsored child, you are not. The road to hell is paved with good intentions..."

Cambodia roads are red dust.

Thank you Hugo.

Krousar Thmey

Metta.

Addictions

I was the only addict in detox taking notes on a yellow legal pad.

I needed raw unfiltered evidence and truth.

I was addicted to writing, photography and traveling. 

Heroin, smack, booze, pills and love addicts were wolves crying and howling in their self imposed vast wilderness of pain, hatred, agony. Looking for self love in detox, trying to get their lives together. 

Some lived as if they were already dead.

“Before I checked when I was growing tired of it all,” I said.

“I lived with a woman in a disastrous, self destructive relationship. I played the rescuer, a father figure. My victim turned on me. They always do. My writing was empty. I drank to avoid the truth facing the real work. Before coming here, I submitted to therapy.

"If I was going to survive and be healthy, I acknowledged the fact, the hard cold realistic truth that I wasn’t responsible for my mother’s death. I needed to confront this guilt at the heart level, not the head level.

“You have to break down before you break through."

“What happened?” said Tom Vodka.

"I broke down, cried, talking out old fears and self destructive behaviors, old angers and resentments. I realized my integrity, my self-reliance. I accepted more responsibility for my life.”

So it goes.

Orphan Tourism

Namaste,

According to an article by Charlotte Turner, there are 269 orphanages and 12,000 orphans in Cambodia.

"Visitors see some poverty and they feel bad about it," said Ashlee Chapman, a project manager with Globalteer, an organisation that matches volunteers with local organisations.

"They want to do something," she adds, saying they might visit a children's project for a few hours, donate money and toys, "take a holiday snap and feel that they've contributed."

"Constant change of caregivers gives emotional loss to children, constant emotional loss to already traumatised children," Jolanda van Westering, a child protection specialist at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) told AFP.

Read more.

The Cambodian children pictured here are not orphans.

Metta.

Bayon

Namaste,

The Bayon from the 12th century at Angkor Wat features 48 faces. All directions. 

Immense and powerful.

This slide show also includes images of detailed carvings from the main Angkor temple, depicting "Churning The Sea of Milk," an ancient Sanskrit Hindu story.

Metta.

slide your show

Namaste,

The crazy geniuses at Squarespace just made Earth a safer environment with visual impact.

They added a new dimension.

It can be revealed here for the first time in recent history, like three days ago in the long now, that SS designers, engineers and artists using electromagnetic pulsars from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)  in Switzerland have created and released the highest energy-particle slide shows in the web community.

Here's a gallery entitled Laugh. Art. from Laos.

Enjoy.

Metta.