As I was asking in my previous post …

How do the people of Cambodia feel about upcoming attempts at justice regarding the Khmer Rouge?

Hopeful, it appears, at least regarding the trials. The future, however, is never to be trusted.

My good friend Gay is now sponsoring a college student she met while in Phnom Penh earlier this year. Sek Peov works at the hotel where she stayed and acted as her moto driver and guide. His intelligence, hard work and honesty inspired her to help him with his future. With the trials forming, she asked him in one of the many emails that go back and... more

With so much going in Cambodia these days, and seeing as how it is my kids' birth country ... and because of the suspension on Cambodian adoptions that's been going on for almost five years there's very little info about the country here on Adoption.Com ... I feel an obligation to write about it, to pass on news, and to keep a dialog going that has Cambodia at least mentioned occasionally.

The topic may not be top of the pops for many ... it certainly isn't... more

Continued from a previous post ...

Ask almost any Cambodian adult how the genocide happened and they'll shrug.

Unlike every other genocide, the almost two million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge were not separated from their torturers by race, religion, ethnicity, cultural identity, or anything else. Those that did the killing were exactly the same as those that died. There was no, Red/White, Hutu/Tutsi, Shiite/ Sunni, Serb/Croat, German/Jew ... pick a genocide,... more

It's off to a slow start, but at least it's something. An event a whole generation has been waiting for is finally beginning to begin in Cambodia.

Maybe.

The genocide of the 1970s is close to fading into history without retribution. The perpetrators, Khmer Rouge leaders personally responsible for the deaths of close to two million people over a three year period, have been comfortably sliding into senectitude for almost thirty years. While the world dithered and officials wrangled, time... more

It's spider season in Cambodia, and we all know what that means ... CHOW TIME! Come and get 'em.

That's right, spiders are back on the menu, boys, and selling like ... well, hot cakes? (If hot cakes had eight hairy legs, bulbous bodies and the ability to pull fabric out of their middles ... )

During the years of terrible deprivation caused by the stranglehold the Khmer Rouge had on virtually the entire Cambodian population, spiders, frogs, water beetles, crickets ... basically anything that could be caught ... became food. Nutrition was where you could find it, and... more

Lots of news from Cambodia lately ...

Let's start with this report on the World Bank's plan to reform Cambodia's corrupt forestry industry.

Global Witness found the bank's US$4.6 million program that ended last year did nothing to alleviate poverty and focused on creating a regulatory framework in the forestry sector at the expense of "environmental and social aspects."

The World Bank's program was ostensibly set up to help... more

I wrote recently about a couple of Seychelles families bringing Cambodian children home and how very happy we all are about their new additions.

Both were adopted from the orphanage where my kids were cared for (AOA, near Phnom Penh), and since they were going there to get their little ones, we asked them to take some things for us. AOA gets quite a bit of support from adoptive parents, with some contributing monthly, others donating... more

Within the past two months, two more little ones have arrived in Seychelles from Cambodia.

Yes, Cambodia is closed for adoption to those in the US, the UK and a few other countries, but that is by their decree, not that of the Cambodian government. Adoptions from other countries have, thankfully continued.

We shared Cj's G&R (Giving and Receiving ... the official Cambodian version of the entrustment ceremony Coley talked about earlier on her blog) with a Swedish couple and their new... more

“I love the smell of diapers in the morning!”*

(*A very different Robert Duvall in “Apoopoolypse, Now” speaking over the wail of a wet and hungry baby, a Barney sing-a-long blaring at full blast, and a never-ending loop of See n’ Say doing farm animals.)

Some people aren’t fond of kids. They may go all squishy inside at the sight of a newborn, but that’s just nausea. Sticky fingers scare folks like this and can have them avoiding contact as though melted chocolate contained a deadly virus. And diapers? Don’t even think about diapers!

My... more