The Healing Fields

KAMPONG CHNANG, Cambodia - The outspoken prostitute walks into the women's center with a purse full of surprises.

Boeun Long has come to find out more about this place built by Setan and Randa Lee, to see if it holds any promise of a better life for her and her 16-year-old daughter.

She introduces herself to Setan and the other staff members, who pull up chairs outside a dormitory to chat. Boeun, with her hair pulled back and no makeup, wears a soiled, pink gauze blouse, a black skirt and dusty sandals. She's confident and outgoing, but she's a little frayed this afternoon.

Boeun quickly takes over the conversation. As she talks, she begins pulling out the contents of her purse: a photo album, a certificate in a plastic bag, a package of condoms.

And there's one more thing in the purse. With a twinkle in her eye, Boeun nonchalantly pulls out a penis carved of dark wood, on a stand made from the same wood. She plops it on her lap, talking nonstop. The group sits back, eyes a little wider, slightly embarrassed, bemused.

Some of the staff steal furtive glances at the carving. Others concentrate on Boeun's face as she tells them about herself.

A freelance prostitute for about two years - she doesn't stay at one particular brothel - Boeun says she has been certified by a women's nongovernmental organization to visit brothels to teach about AIDS and safe sex. The NGO pays her 3,000 riel, or about 75 cents, for each visit. The certificate is from the NGO. The condoms and carving are for demonstration purposes.

Setan and the staff are relieved by her explanation. But their chuckles die as Boeun begins to tell her story.

She had an abusive husband and eight children, including two sets of twins. Three children have died. Her husband was a drunk who cheated on her and beat her, Boeun says. "All he wanted was sex."

She finally left with three of the children and wound up two years ago in Kampong Chnang, near the women's center.

"I came here with not even a penny in my pocket," Boeun says. "I was desperate."

She found work in a karaoke shop - another front for prostitution - and began her life in the sex trade.

Now, Boeun goes from brothel to brothel - she says there are about 30 in Kampong Chnang province - doing makeup for prostitutes and teaching them about AIDS.

"If a man comes in and wants me, I'll have sex with him," she says. "This town isn't very big. Sometimes it's only one or two a day, sometimes one every two days. There's a lot of competition."

"A lot of men now are looking for older women," says Boeun, who is 32 but looks older. "They're looking for character, experience. Even though I'm no longer young, I can please them."

Boeun's children are her biggest concern. Her sons are 14 and 15, but her 16-year-old daughter, Leakhana Hi, worries her most.

"I'm not ashamed to tell people I'm a prostitute. I just want to see my children grow up healthy, so I'll do whatever I need to do.

"But I'm afraid my daughter may become like me.

"Sometimes all I get is 2,000 riel (50 cents) from a man. Some men are completely drunk. They stink. They throw up all over my face, all over my body. They fall asleep on top of me. It's very painful. When you do it like this, you have no pleasure. It's just painful, painful misery."

She wants to come to the center "today - I don't even want to wait another day."

But she can't. How will she support her children?

She can't afford to send them to school. Instead, they cook rice every day and put it in plastic bags to sell in the village.

Boeun invites Setan and the staff to meet her daughter, so they all pile into Setan's gray pickup truck for the ride.

In the village, Boeun's daughter seasons and roasts frogs and pig ears over a makeshift stove, fashioned from a piece of rusty metal. The air is smoky and pungent as people crowd around the food. Leakhana and her mother work side by side, putting the meat on sticks and talking softly to each other.

"She likes to cook," Boeun says proudly. "A lot of the sex workers from the brothels come here and ask her to cook for them."

Boeun's children stay with a 76-year-old widower and his grandson. Boeun pays them what rent she can and shares her food with them.

Boeun impresses Setan. "She speaks with conviction," he says.

He tells her they must find a solution for her, and they say goodbye reluctantly. Setan isn't sure she will return to the women's center.

Once again, children are the sticking point. Setan and his staff know they must solve that dilemma.

"Their average need is $20, $30 a month. That's it," Setan says. "If we could provide training for them and income for their kids, they'd all come to the center today."

Or as Boeun put it earlier: "This place would be packed with prostitutes."

A test of wills

Within days, Boeun leaves the boys with the widower and shows up at the center with her daughter, Leakhana. Setan will try to find a way to pay Boeun as the center's liaison with the brothels in Kampong Chnang.

Leakhana, who enrolls in the cosmetology classes, delights the staff with her ready smile and eager interest. She latches onto Son Put, the young woman who had found Setan after escaping from a brothel. They make quite a pair: petite, delicate Leakhana next to taller, sturdier Son.

But it's not long before Boeun begins to bristle at the rules. By late November, Setan has gone home to Colorado and Randa has arrived at the center. She finds herself in the middle of a test of wills between Boeun and Phally Mam, the center director.

Phally tells Boeun she must quit smoking, quit drinking alcohol and quit going back to the brothels to have sex for pay if she wants to stay at the center.

The battle goes to the heart of what Randa is trying to instill in the women. Her vision is not just about work skills, health and hygiene.

It's about courage, self-respect and dignity. A measure of control over their lives. Principles of morality.

As Setan says, "We teach life, not just a trade. I want them to be able to stand on their own. To know they have value."

To no one's surprise, Boeun decides to leave. But she asks Randa to let Leakhana stay and complete her training. Randa gladly agrees.

If the mother is lost to them, there's still hope for the daughter.

Catching them early

Reaching young women at risk of falling into prostitution is a new strategy the center adopted last fall when it recruited 24 young women from remote villages with the help of World Vision, an international Christian humanitarian agency that focuses on poor children.

The women are uneducated and unskilled, barely able to make enough money to eat. Many, like Sinane Lun, 18, are orphans.

Three years ago, Sinane lost both of her parents to AIDS - they died within three months of each other. The youngest of the family's five children also died of AIDS. Sinane's father had contracted HIV in Thailand, where he drove a taxi for a year.

After her parents died, Sinane moved in with her grandmother and an aunt. She collected firewood or did other labor for about a dollar a day. With only a third-grade education, she can read, but she can't write very well.

When the people from World Vision came to her village, she didn't hesitate to take them up on their offer.

Now Sinane has discovered her passion. She has a knack for sewing, and she loves making what Cambodians call "modern clothing." She tries to keep up with the latest fashions and designs clothing in a notebook filled with carefully drawn patterns for shirts, pants and jackets.

She has made close friends. She has unearthed a talent that the staff has nurtured and encouraged. She hopes to get a sewing machine eventually, and make clothes to sell at the markets in her village. Or perhaps she could work in a garment factory in a city.

Sinane is poised for a more productive and creative life than she ever knew was possible.

She hangs on tightly to her notebook and her new dream. "I like everything about sewing," she says. "I like everything here."

Buying and fixing

On her first trip to the women's center in two years, Randa has her work cut out for her.

She has barely settled in for her visit in late November when she learns that half the sewing machines are broken. Eight machines for 16 students just won't do.

She figures out what's wrong, goes to Phnom Penh to buy the parts, and, with the help of one of the center's guards, repairs every one of the broken machines.

"It cost me $30," she says, a little frustrated. "And" - she emphasizes the word - "I bought a button-holer and a part to make seams."

While Setan imagines the future of the women's center on a grand scale - adding buildings, buying more land, expanding to accommodate 500 women some day - Randa rolls up her sleeves.

Setan travels the world, attracts financial backing, has the cell phone number for Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen - and isn't afraid to use it to cut through red tape. He's working on opening a Battambang branch of the women's center, where students could live while attending the trade school.

"I'm the big dreamer," Setan says. "Randa is the doer."

With her own money, as well as donations from friends and supporters, Randa heads out to buy blankets, sheets, pillows and mattresses for all the bunk beds in the dorms. She piles them onto the Kampuchea for Christ pickup truck and drives the whole lot back to the center. She buys an extra-large rice cooker and a stove with an oven to replace the kitchen's little kerosene two-burner.

Always conscious of propriety, she installs a clothesline behind the dorms. "Not in front," she says. "I want the place to always look nice." She wants to make sure the students have a proper shower, too.

Randa coordinates management when she's there - and even when she's not. She installs a computer program at the center that makes it easier to keep track of the women after they leave. The girls have no telephones or addresses, so follow-up visits must be done in person.

Randa wants to find more experienced teachers. She wants a stricter schedule. She wants students to stay longer if they haven't mastered the needed skills in six months. She wants to find volunteers who will stay for a year to teach reading, writing, computer training, English.

"I wish I could go two times a year," Randa says.

Setan wishes Randa could be the full-time coordinator.

In the five years that the center has been open, Setan and Randa and their staff are still finding their way.

They know they must do more to help the women become self-sufficient once they leave.

During his last trip, Setan met with an American factory owner in Sihanoukville and a Korean factory owner in Phnom Penh. He toured their plants and came away impressed with the conditions, the hours and the pay. "These are not sweatshops," Setan says.

He is working on a deal with them to hire women trained at the center. Teams of four will live together, share expenses, support each other and perhaps have money to send home. Setan will hire a staff member to help and keep an eye on them.

Students who prefer staying in their villages talk about finding a place together where they can live and earn money sewing. The sewing instructor will hire some to help in her business.

The center can't yet afford to provide cosmetology supplies or sewing machines - which cost $55 to $75 - when the women leave. Setan is searching for donors.

The cosmetology instructor has established a wedding service. She takes some of the young women to a bride's home to dress her in clothing provided by the center and do hair and makeup for her and her bridesmaids. "This is very popular in Cambodia," Setan says.

The Lees remind each other when their dreams exceed their means. "We can only do so much," Setan says.

It is Randa's perpetual lament: "We can't save them all."

Waiting at the gate

Leakhana misses her mother. Every day after class, she stands at the center's entrance gate and cries, waiting in vain for Boeun to come. But the girl never asks permission to visit Boeun.

"She didn't want her mother to go back to her old ways," Randa says. "And if she doesn't get some skills, she's going to end up just like her mother."

But Leakhana is smart, Randa says, and it helps that she has just turned 17. Randa is coming to understand that the odds of success are greater if the girls are "in their teens - ideally 13 to 15 years old."

When they're older and have been on their own for a long time, "sometimes they're just too set in their ways."

When Setan returns to the center in January, he has changed his mind about Boeun.

"She told us different stories," Setan says. "I don't trust her. I know she said she didn't want her daughter to become like her, but I'm afraid she'll sell her daughter to be a prostitute."

With the bright-eyed, happy Leakhana, however, he is smitten. "She is so precious," says Setan.

So his "selfish plan," as he calls it, is to keep Leakhana at the center another year, until she turns 18. She tells him she loves it there and never wants to leave.

Maybe in a year, they can hire her as a part-time staff member or at the new medical facility that Setan hopes to have built near the center by then.

"I feel that little girl is my daughter. She has the brightest smile," he says.

Randa has gone back home to tend to their own children, 19-year-old Ben and 14-year-old Sandra, in a world separated by far more than miles, where the Lee children are surrounded by caring, comfort and security.

It is a world that the Lees, especially Setan, often must leave behind to help save their fellow Cambodians, as Randa says, "one by one."

They have paid a price to keep their vow.

"It's a family commitment, a family sacrifice," Setan says. "It's not easy. But we believe in what we are doing."