Lim’s lifestory is quite horrific. During covid, it was illegal to be on the street at certain times (most of the time), at one point there was a big gang of police on motorbikes riding around randomly hitting people. After around ten days, a video circulated on facebook, someone following this gang filming them and it was a bit of a scandal. A government minister clarified these beatings are illegal and it stopped. I don’t want to be negative about the time because, overall, Cambodia was the best place to be for the pandemic.

Violence toward the homeless is common in Phnom Pehn

But this public beating period was the lowest point. It shows how things can break down. Private security guards looking after empty buildings took the cue that they were allowed to do the same, and of course it was these places that the homeless were trying to live/hide in. It was totally out of control. There were makeshift shelters made along the road, of bits of wood, cardboard, umbrellas, corrugated iron and such, to make little makeshift ‘buildings, or perhaps ‘hides’ is a better description.

People would hide under them all day, kind of a mini-slum on the edge of the slum. My friend Annette was living like this, and I’d go and see her each day, take some money and food (as the street carts had stopped). One day I was talking to her in the street, in the middle of the day, outside one of the derelict buildings and a security guard came out and hit her across the back with a half pool cue. The reason being she was in the street when there’s supposed to be a curfew, except you were supposed to be allowed out for an hour a day for exercise.

It was in this context I met Lim, as she was living in these makeshift structures and a friend of Annette. There were a few back street places open for food (sometimes) so I’d sit and eat with whoever was around, including Lim.

When the situation improved and curfew was lifted, sometimes afterwards I realized she was dating my friend Jim, and I’d be out with him sometimes, and so I knew her via him also. I’ve known her a good few years now, though she often disappears, once for over a year (during which time she told me she was hospitalized). Nowaday she has a long-term relationship with an Argentinian guy, and as far as I can work out, the two of them are homeless, so they stay (apart) wherever they can.

Lack of education make Lim’s situation in Phnom Pehn harder to improve

I get on with her as she’s easy to talk to, I’ve known her so long, and she’s asked for help a lot recently as her housing situation has got worse. It’s exasperated by the fact that she has a serious illness, something that Jim told me. I’m told, concerning this, she’s under the care of an NGO and received daily medication. She’s shown me them and told me she takes them every day. She’s almost impossibly thin nowadays. This increases mortality risk (of her illness) and this worries me deeply.

I interviewed her recently, actually on my birthday. The day after we were talking off camera and she quietly confessed to me that she has a feeling she will die soon, and that she’s OK with it. She was looking away from me as she said this and her eyes were tearing over. It sounds dramatic but I’ve had two Khmer friends tell me this in the past and they both did die quite soon after.

As I say, I recorded an interview on my birthday. She’s keen to do this and have her story public; she wants to do a follow up. I’ve heard the story a few times before. She was born to a fishing family who lived on a boat and one day it went down due to strong winds and she survived alone (I’m not sure if she was on board or not).

She went into the care of a relative who sold her to to a trafficker who held her for years in a brothel in the province where she couldn’t leave. Girls who either were trouble or became pregnant were murdered and mutilated and fed to pigs. I know that sounds like a tall story, but remember that we are talking about a time under the Khmer Rogue when life was pretty cheap. I’ve spoken to other Khmer people from this time who have similar stories.

As far as I remember she got away from there when the brothel owner was killed by a local gangster, and she ended up in Phnom Pehn where she became a freelance prostitute rather than an enslaved one, and as I understand with foreign/Western clients rather than Asian ones. I asked her and she tells me she does not disclose her HIV status and neither insists on condom use (it’s up to the customer).

She let me know about her ongoing accommodation issues. Often when I see her she’s been awake for more than 24 hours in a bar. She has a room she pays monthly and she tells me she paid it but the owner locked her out anyway and she doesn’t know why. It’s not in the slum but actually a little distance away towards Orrussey. She took me there to see it we could do anything but the owner wasn’t there. It wasn’t a makeshift house, more a proper building but up a whole load of stairs, rooms are partitioned into many much smaller rooms and they start at 40 usd per month, but they’re dark, dirty and hot.

She heard of a place nearby where I was hoping to live for 120 a month, four rooms over three floors. It sounds too good to be true, and the owner was away for a week or so. I was already trying to help Arrey and her daughter by getting a two room place and letting them stay, but this would be a lot better as I could help both of them… at least.

Well the reason I wanted to move was the noise at my guest house, and one morning I was woken at 5am by my neighbour yet again, after a night listening to rain on the metal roof and people coughing and hacking all night and something snapped and I called her and said that I would look at the house now.

So we went and the owner was still away but some guy let us in. It was high up, actually as described and near perfect really as I could have got it and housed perhaps six or seven people there at no trouble to me (financially) as there was a big room, then a wooden stairway to a higher level which had another two rooms. It was less then I was paying. I couldn’t get up to the second floor because my bad hips and back, the ceiling was too low, but if there was a toilet in the second upstairs room, I could perhaps have housed ten people there. I easily know ten people right now who would be better off living there with me that where they are.

Well the guy showing me around only spoke French and kept calling me barang and seemed irritated that I can’t speak French also. Lim wanted me to pay 260 now, and get receipts and English contract a few days later (via the translater) and I said no, simply. Just pay this to a landlady who isn’t there with no paperwork at all? It just doesn’t work like that. It was heartbreaking to walk away really because it would solve Lim’s problems, and my problems, and possibly the problems of up to eight or nine other people, which is what I’m really aiming for.

Well Lim was so angry, we haven’t spoken since. I found somewhere the same day, paid and moved in, but it’s a single room, month-by-month lease, and hot. It isn’t really suitable for two as I can’t afford to turn the AC on, although I can’t really afford it even as a fan! The main thing is that I was always exhausted in the past, and nowadays I’m at least sleeping better, and so am better off for now at least.

So how to help Lim in the meantime? In some ways, she’s a good candidate for direct giving as during the interview she actually has a dream, of making clothes and having a shop. She’s never talked about this before, but it’s actually well thought out, she’s looked at some figures. Also, something else she talked about was working at an NGO where she was trained to use the machines (sewing machines I presume) and so she has this practical experience. She also likes my project here at Shadow Voices, she was keen for me to take a lot of pictures and shoot the video and put the story out there, and I guess if you’ve lived a life like hers and no one knows about it, then it must be…. I don’t know. ?Depersonalising to be so, shadow.

Yes, back to reality and the obvious downsides. One is that she’s illiterate, although I don’t think that in itself is a deal-breaker (or unsolvable). The main thing is that she has no business experience. It’s good she thought ahead, imagined herself older, formulated this plan herself, but it would need some experience, in marketing, hiring tax people, knowing the market and a whole load of stuff that I don’t know either.

She keeps asking me to do another interview. She wants to talk about HIV and her experience. Perhaps if I see how this site, my channel and my direct giving idea are received, and perhaps we can add more content. But my interest in a second interview is finding out about this NGO, because clearly she enjoyed it, she had another identity doing this, they told her she was good and she can imagine success (half the battle). Which NGO was it? Are they still going? Could they offer her mentorship? If she could get a little funding and would need a couple of local staff from the NGO to help her, could she be an affiliate in some way? Would they be interested in being interviewed themselves?

Just think if that worked out and we could create updates, an ongoing story, what are the stories of the other people there?

In my mind, I hold the highest vision for Lim, but I’m not sure if she holds it for herself or if the grind of her impossible existence is grinding down her fight to live and keep trying.

To be continued…..