We had been in Siem Reap for nearly a week and were leaving Cambodia in another day. We had gotten a few suggestions of places to deliver the dolls but none of them quite felt right. On our tour around Angkor Wat Ed had noticed a sign for an orphanage, but we didn’t know exactly where it was. So we hired our favorite tuk-tuk driver to take us there. We somehow got the idea across to him of what we were looking for and he acted like he knew what we meant. “Sign language” is a beautiful way to communicate. But, when we got to where we thought it was he kept driving. We started to get anxious but stayed patient and waited. Several minutes later he pulled up in front of a rustic building. We walked up, and sure enough, it was an orphanage for about 50 kids. There was a young Cambodian man who came out to greet us. In perfect English he explained to us that he grew up an orphan himself and now lived here helping to raise these kids. The COSO orphanage had been started a few years earlier to help take care of orphans and other children whose families are just too poor to raise them. The need in Cambodia is great and the government just doesn’t have the resources.

  
The young man took us on a tour of the two-room building, complete with outdoor kitchen. The ones old enough all go to school and take English and other lessons right there. The kids bathe in the lake across the street. They don’t have much, but it is more than what they had before. We wished we had had enough dolls for all of them to get one of their own, but judging by the room they all slept in, we could tell that they were used to sharing. We had barely given out all the dolls before the girls, and boys, were already taking off the dolls’ clothes and swapping them, redoing their hair and having a ball. We knew we had found the right place. It’s a great feeling when it all comes together.

Tags: Cambodia, delivery, dolls, orphanage, rag dolls, Siem Reap, Southeast Asia