Save the Children!

My mom just returned from her trip to Cambodia, which according to her is certainly a heaven for those interested in history and architecture. Since she's not particularly into either, in the conversation she spent most of the time talking about the extreme poverty she saw there.

Clearly in her life she had seen extreme poverty when she was in the remote countryside of China, but what she saw in Cambodia still surprised her.She said that there were so many little kids no more than 4 to 6 years old accompanying all these Chinese tour groups, helping older people pass a bridge so that they could receive a tip or a few candies. They also peddle little souvenirs. They all learned to speak a few sentences in Chinese, such as "you are so pretty" to girls, "you are so handsome" to boys, and "I don't have money to go to school" to anyone. The minute they received a tip, they would run back to their moms who were waiting quite some distance away. I felt such heartache for these kids when I heard the story. My mom said that she heard Cambodians all had lots of kids, and therefore seemed to pay little attention to anyone of them in particular. They were running up and down the mountains, standing on the edge of boats, or doing other things that could be quite dangerous. But no one was watching over them carefully or closely.

I always find it hard to hear about people's sufferings, but I absolutely cannot bear to hear about sufferings of any children. It just breaks my heart. It makes me want to do something about all of them, only to realize that not even the most powerful people can do anything about all of them. Sometimes I want to adopt a kid from the poor area of China so that I feel that I will have done something good. But when I think about it, the kind of kid I can adopt and want to adopt will be adopted by other American or European families anyways - in other words, I am not sure that I want to adopt a kid with severe disabilities, as that will be heart-breaking for me every day. I guess I belong to the faint-hearted people who desperately want to save these poor children but don't want to be painfully reminded on a daily basis about all these unbearable sufferings. Perhaps that makes me rather a hypocrite.