Mango Rain

MANGO RAIN

GOD’S LOVE BEARS FRUIT IN A CAMBODIAN SLUM S T O R Y A N D P H O T O S B Y A N D R E W G R AY

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When it rains in the dry season, Cambodians say the mangos become sweeter. A “mango rain” is welcome in the searing heat of March.

But it’s different if you don’t have a solid roof overhead.

March 2009: Srey Nao, 14, woke to the sound of water running in rivulets and the touch of a sodden blanket on her skin. Groping in the dark, she joined her brothers and sisters in looking for a dry space under a patch of vinyl. Her neighbors were in the same dilemma.

Nearby, Srey Nao’s best friend, Srey Pek, sat in silence with her fears. A sudden shower in the dry season was nothing compared to four months of daily torrents beginning in June.

Would they be exposed? Or enclosed in suffocating blue vinyl and a patchwork of rice bags? Like others in her village, she wondered what they would eat that day.

Abraham Hang woke at 2 a.m. when a strong burst of wind vibrated the walls of his wooden home. It stands on posts, 3 meters above the ground, simple but secure against rain and floods. He wondered what havoc the wind had caused for his neighbors, and then he sank back into sleep.

At 3 a.m. he heard the rain falling, rolled to his feet, and walked 100 meters from his house to the village. He began his rounds, stopping to help with quick repairs, and peering into doorways to check on huddled families. They found comfort in his voice and his smile. He had been with them from the start, helping to build most of their shanty homes with his own hands.

By 7 a.m. the sun was high and piercing in a clear sky.

Srey Nao, Srey Pek, and several dozen children walked across a dirt road and entered the gate of Andong Village Primary School.They separated into four buildings, constructed of thin beams with walls of tightly woven leaves and high thatched roofs, one for each of four grade levels.

Hang, who founded the school, four teachers, and two older men with gentle faces were already there.

My first visit to the school was in February 2008. They had two buildings then, and had just begun offering first and second grade instruction. Hang had used donated funds plus his own savings to get started, but they still didn’t have enough desks, books, notebooks, or pencils. He dismissed these challenges with a characteristic laugh and a smile.

By March 2009 the school had 120 students in four grade levels, with two new buildings.The staff had expanded to four teachers, each paid a $50 monthly salary provided by a church in Australia.

The children are attentive and obedient. On a typical day, their eyes sparkle with intelligence, and some are clearly leaders. They could be students in a suburb of Los Angeles,

but here they are the poorest of the poor, living in shanty homes across a field strewn with garbage and human waste.

On the morning after the rain, they looked tired and careworn. Even their resilient smiles were heavy at the edges.

They have endured so much.

UNJUST EVICTION Andong Village began as a slum in Phnom Penh known as Sambok Chap, which means “bird’s nest.” Sambok Chap is next to the Mekong River near the city center. The residents were among the poorest in the city, people who live on a dollar a day.

Land prices in Phnom Penh doubled between 2000 and 2005 and then doubled again within a year. Developers planned shopping centers and luxury housing. Land abutting the river was hot property, and Sambok Chap had become a goldmine.

The people had valid claims to their property, but they were powerless when a development company moved in with

Raised in a Buddhist temple, Abraham Hang decided to follow Christ a decade ago–a journey that led him to the slums of Phnom Penh. Here he poses in front of the Andong Village Primary School, which he founded with this own savings and some donated funds just a few years ago.

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government support. A surreptitious deal was brokered with “representatives” of the people, requiring the residents to leave in exchange for a piece of land on the far edge of the city.

Recognizing it as a sham deal, they resisted. At the same time, opportunists moved in hoping for a share in the payout. The situation became chaotic, and the result was inevitable.

Early on June 6, 2006, police in riot gear with tear gas and guns removed everyone from Sambok Chap by force, loading an estimated 1,200 families on trucks and delivering them to an empty rice field 22 kilometers from the city center.

That was the genesis of Andong Village.Thousands of adults and children were dumped in a place with no shelters, no clean water, no electricity, no sewage or garbage collection services, and no schools; and the rainy season was about to begin.

The people also lost their incomes.While at Sambok Chap, the adults could work as day laborers in the city. Some had small businesses and other jobs. But the cost of commuting from Andong Village to the central city was greater than most could earn in a day.

Sambok Chap was a debacle, a case study on how not to clear a slum. But that was a topic for people in offices and classrooms far away.

For a while AndongVillage received a great deal of attention.

Workers from NGOs and faith-based groups showed up in force, distributing vinyl tarps, food, and medical care. Human rights advocates came to document conditions, and journalists took photographs and wrote stories.

The government officially recognized about 400 families with a loosely defined “right” to land in Andong, a number

which advocates consider a gross underestimate.The other 800 families were allowed to remain in limbo. Where else could they go, and who would pay to evict them?

Abraham Hang had been visiting Sambok Chap several days a week for months prior to the eviction, and he traveled with the people on the day they were evicted. When he saw the conditions families were living in, he wept. But the rainy season was coming, and there was no time for weeping.The field was partitioned into one small plot per family. Hang helped organize the villagers and joined efforts to build their first shelters. The hard rains started in at the beginning of July, and the residents completed the last emergency shelters at the beginning of August. The lucky ones had a patch of ground above water level; others literally lived in the water and stepped out of bed into a rising septic flood.

A LIFE TRANSFORMED TRANSFORM S OTHERS Hang was born in 1975 under the Khmer Rouge regime at a time when 20 percent of Cambodia’s people were dying of violence, disease, and/or starvation. He was raised at a Buddhist temple by his grandfather, the temple’s high priest. In 1992 he entered Phnom Penh Royal University. He rose at 3:30 every morning, bought bread at a factory, and sold it outside the train station to pay his expenses. He graduated at the top of his class in 1997 and in 1998 landed a coveted government job in the Ministry of Education.The salary was $25 a month, but much more money could be made under the table. Some deep-rooted impulse kept him off that path, however; he took a side job instead and later started his own company. But just as success and wealth appeared imminent, his business partner absconded with all the money.

Hang’s life felt like a dead end. His country was corrupt and broken, his hope in Buddhism had faded, and he felt like a failure. Although he had never before been open to Christianity, he started a conversation with a Christian friend.

Buddha had said, “I will show you the way and the truth,” but Jesus claimed, “I am the way and the truth.” In early 1999, out of an intense desire for genuine change, Hang decided to put his faith in that claim.

He quit his government job, worked in an evangelical

Along top, left to right: (1) The inside of Srey Nao’s house on the morning after the rain. (2) Children at Andong Village Primary School eat lunch. Many only eat once or twice a day at home. (3) The child raising his hand in the primary school classroom is one of many orphans living in the village. (4) UNICEF donated water after the relocation. Now a private individual keeps them filled with pond water for sale.The local well water is laced with arsenic.

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ministry with university students for a year, and then began training to be a pastor in an evangelical denomination. Along the way, he learned about holistic ministry, which meant loving and serving people as indivisibly physical, social, and spiritual beings.

A holistic perspective matched Hang’s desire for genuine transformation in people and society, but his denomination opposed this view. He left that denomination in 2005 and started a church with a few friends, but he was still working with elites: well-employed college graduates and business executives.

Deep inside he felt a call to identify with the poor and marginalized.

He began visiting Sambok Chap and then followed its refugees to Andong Village. Although the future at that point was cloudy, his calling was clear.

While the attention of the media and NGOs gradually turned away from Andong Village, Hang began spending more and more time there. In 2007, he rented a wooden house on the outskirts and moved there with his wife and son.

During the first two years, Hang worked with a few volunteers from the village to replace the emergency shelters with nearly 500 temporary homes. The materials cost about $100 per house, which was covered by donations scraped together from a variety of sources, including a group of US churches.

The goal was to construct dwellings that would last four years, so families would have time to stabilize their lives and save for more permanent homes (costing at least $800). In 2007, during the dry season, they put in concrete drainage pipes to avert the worst flooding. Money was donated to buy larger pipes to finish the job, but they still lack the funds to install them.

For the past three years, Hang has helped in many small but significant ways: taking sick folks to the hospital, counseling couples and families, helping settle conflicts in the community.

People have grown to trust his wisdom and discretion. Rows of houses testify to his labors, and he treats people with the same loving respect, whether they are Cambodian, ethnic Vietnamese, Buddhist, Muslim, or Christian.

Critical problems remain, such as the need for jobs to bring money into the village. Hang has avoided handouts that undermine the motivation to work, but nine other NGOs also work

in the area, and not all are so careful or aware. People who work from a distance don’t always see the negative consequences of their generosity, like the growing culture of passivity in the village. Hang would like to see a factory nearby, and he is trying to encourage entrepreneurial projects. Late last year he finally raised enough money to buy a truck that transports up to 70 workers daily to and from jobs in the city.

Along the way, a church formed with Hang as the pastor.

Today 200 people gather on Sundays, and many meet to read the Bible and pray during the week.The school has expanded to five grades, and nearly 500 adults and children study English there in the evenings.

The gospel—the good news of God’s Kingdom — is visible.

You can see it in changed lives, in houses built by loving hands, in conflicts settled, and in babies born after late-night hospital Continued on page 39.

Small Voices: The Stories of Cambodia’s Children is a heartbreaking but hopeful look at the lives of Phnom Penh’s street and garbage dump children. Some of these children are forced to work after either being abandoned by parents unable to care for them; others work to supplement their family’s income. Director Heather E. Connell followed the street children over the course of several years.

During a post-production follow-up trip, Connell visited an orphanage that was so under-funded, illequipped, understaffed, and overcrowded that they keep children only up to the age of 6. This spring, Connell embarked on a journey to build Safe Haven, a school specifically for handicapped children, something that does not currently exist in Cambodia.

Learn more at SmallVoicesMovie.com.

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search of the back roads of America or touching down on the ancient soil of the Holy Lands in search of his “true home,” Wilcox has a hunger to explore the broader vistas. Like the red-haired heroine of the title track of Open Hand, Wilcox prefers to stand breathless at the edge of a cliff where “she can feel the wind right now wash away her tracks and plans, if you really want to live this life, gotta hold it with an open hand.”

Wilcox’s music encourages, by its own risk-taking and curious nature, an allout search for the grace and mercy of God. “God is not ashamed to speak in the language we understand. Where you search is where you are searched for,” Wilcox tells me. “We struggle with how to describe the feeling of being fully human, fully alive. Our hearts say, ‘Come on,’ somehow engage with the part of you that has this sacred yearning, a hunger that doesn’t end with you and your

selfish desires. There is a bigger life that we are part of, that we are made for.”

Wilcox fans will attest to his ability to set your heart on fire for great adventure.

Wilcox refers to his music as medicine, an antidote for our common longings. And on his website he literally prescribes songs for various ailments of the heart. Need strength for getting through a shattering experience? Click here to listen to “Perfect Storm.” Need a song that can bear you up after the loss of a loved one? Try “Vista.” How about some fun songs about kids and parenting? Play “I Saw You First.” If you need mercy, forgiveness, or to get free of addiction; if you’re depressed or too hurt to love; if you need to appreciate either “your beautiful quirky self ” or “this wild world”— there is a song for you. And then there are the songs for “the adventure of faith”— for when you’re losing it or are just fed up with

religious institutions — a simple click and the medicine flows.Wilcox’s generosity with his music is another reason he’s so lovable. Treat yourself to a selection of his favorites before you buy a CD. The whole song is yours to enjoy at DavidWilcox.com.

On stage or off, David Wilcox invites us to adventure alongside him. His songs are a passionate exhortation to lace up our boots, trudge the path, wind our way through the wonder and paradox of life with our eyes and hands wide open, enjoying “the high view and the muddy miles, the free wing and the earthly trail, the deep heart and the endless sky.”

I’m in, how about you?

Robyn Hubbard is an in-home therapist working with at-risk kids and their families in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Since she spends a lot of time driving to appointments, she often takes David Wilcox along for the ride.

tin roofs now. Srey Pek is gone. Her father died of AIDS late last year. In January her mother took her and moved away against the wishes of her grandfather. Srey Nao’s father died of AIDS years ago, and her mother has worked hard ever since earning a dollar a day. Srey Nao dropped out of school last December and took a job in a shoe factory. She earns $45 a month, so her family can count on having food on the table.

Transformation is one of Hang’s favorite words. With his limited English vocabulary, he talks about bad people who have become good, like the volunteers who help build the houses.

Some were formerly troublemakers, drinking heavily and gambling, but now they exude strength and dignity as servants and leaders. He dreams aloud about the village no longer being known as a bird’s nest but as a community of peace and hope.

The mango rain is not a suffering rain. It is a gift of life that transforms the fruit. For the people of Andong Village, Hang is like a mango rain, a tangible gift of God’s love in a hard season, and the fruit of it is sweet. Q

Mango Rain continued from page 21. runs.You can hear it when the Bible is read and songs are sung with a simple message of Jesus as the way, truth, and life.

But this story is not a fairy tale, although the homes of Srey Nao and Srey Pek — along with 40 others — have sturdy

Andrew Gray is a founding director of Project Friends (ProjectFriends.org).As international staff with Church Resource Ministries (CRMLeaders.org), he and his wife help volunteers from Japan connect with partners in Cambodia to serve in simple ways, to lose their illusions, and to encounter life-transforming love.

Students and Andong Village friends Srey Nao (left) and Srey Pek.

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