I’ve known NIza a few years but didn’t know her story until the interview. I remember the first time I met her, although only for a moment really, she opened up very quickly back then and told me she is lonely and doesn’t have any real friends, which I found surprising because she always seemed to be hanging out with other women.

This time I met her recently and she told me she was soon to be homeless, again in passing, so I asked her if she’d be interviewed. Once I told her what it was about she agreed instantly. I told her the focus was homelessness and I took out the mics and she started talking immediately, before I’d set anything up. She simply didn’t stop. When the camera and mic was ready I found it hard to even get a pause in the conversation to get a proper beginning with some background information.

I felt that she was happy talking forever, so I chose to stop it when I felt I had the full story. Afterwards she thanked me and said it was good to talk about it and get it all off her chest.

The initial catalyst was possibly the sudden death of expatriate partner

She had two children from an American man who died from a stroke. She talks about taking him to the hospital, so they were together at the time. I wish I had have asked when that was. Well she has a family in the province who are farmers and she stayed with them previously but felt that she was a burden, and that it was her fault for ending up with two children, so she left and was previously unhoused in Phnom Pehn.

But now she has been in the province, with her farming family, for an extended period – and she wants to put the boys in school, in the province. She needs a document to do this, which seems to be a birth certificate. She talks about it being a Japanese hospital in Duan Pehn. Previously she had the document but lost it. She returned to Phnom Pehn now specifically to obtain this document, but the hospital refused to give it to her and she isn’t sure why or what to do.

Bureaucracy is a common cause of homelessness

When she obtains it, she will return to the province, but for now she’s staying here with enough money for a day or two, and then will be homeless. I’ve mentioned this problem elsewhere on the site, that getting proper ID’s and related documents can be a problem here, for various reasons, but it means that access to government and NGO services can be difficult to obtain.

Cambodian school fees are a common need

So the initial problem isn’t really financial, although the school isn’t free and the yearly cost is 1200usd, although there seems to be a free government option, or at least lower cost, which she discounts as being low quality.

She also brings up the wider goal, of using the father’s nationality to get US citizenship. The plan seems to be to send the boys alone to grandparents, permanently – although I know nothing of this relationship or the practicality/reality of that, and again it revolves around obtaining this birth certificate document. She refers to being ‘stupid’ and never having been schooled, so I assume she’s illiterate and doesn’t know how to navigate the bureaucracy.

Again, it’s another case where money isn’t the essential problem causing the homelessness, it’s the common problem of bureaucracy. In a way that might make it a bit easier to help her. I’m pretty sure that if I ask anonymously on forums what to do, perhaps go the hospital also to be sure what the problem is, then there would be other expatriates that would know how to obtain this document and make the schooling options clearer to me. Of course, like pretty everyone featured, she has no permanent location nor phone, so weather I’m able to do anything depends on bumping into her again.