Street Life

This is unfortunately still a common sight in Siem Reap, Cambodia with children and whole families living on the street. These two children had been left to sleep by the roadside while the mother probably headed off to try and find or beg for some food.

Portrait of an Orphan

I met this young orphan boy at the perimeter of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I think his vacant and blank gaze tells us a lot about the difficult life he leads.

Orphans are found in many of the poor and underprivileged Third World countries but Cambodia has a significantly high proportion of orphans and abandoned children. This disproportionate number of orphaned children is a result of around thirty years of war, foreign occupation, civil war and the infamous Khmer Rouge Regime which had some dramatic and deadly effects on the people of Cambodia.  In addition to the brutal events during those dark days one of the current ongoing problems is the continuing effect of land-mines on victims and the healing and rehabilitation of Cambodians who have suffered through land-mine incidents. Cambodia is a country with one of the highest occurrences of death by land-mines. In addition, deadly diseases such as AIDS, coupled with the scarcity of health care resources, compounds these problems into leading causes of death which all contribute greatly to the increasing orphan population in Cambodia.

Guilt Marketing

It seemed that at every church in the large cities in Spain you would find one or more people standing begging. I guess they are preying on the guilt of people who have just completed their visit to the church and hoping for a kind donation.