This woman runs the orphanage

[Guest guest]

Where our precious foster daughter lives in Cambodia.

 

She is one of the 5 that may go to college.

 

Aloha,

Alton

Some of you have asked me about Phaly Nuon, the woman that started and runs Future Light Orphanage, where we sponsor our foster children and built the Sunrise Library. The following tells part of her story which I have taken from the pages of a book by Andrew Soloman called the Noonday Demon. In the early seventies, Phaly worked for the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce. In 1975, when Phnom Penh fell to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, she was taken from her house with her husband and her children. Her husband was sent off to a location unknown to her. She was put to work in the countryside as a field laborer with her twelve-year-old daughter, her three-year-old son and her newborn baby. The conditions were terrible and food was scarce, but she worked beside her fellows, ³never telling them anything, and never smiling, as none of us ever smiled, because we knew that at any moment we could be put to death.² Having discovered Phaly was educated, she and her children were packed off to another location. During the transfer, a group of soldiers tied her to a tree and made her watch while her daughter was gang-raped and then murdered. The following day, her baby in one arm and the three-year-old in the other, she bolted deep into the jungle of northeastern Cambodia. She stayed in the jungle for three years, eight months and twenty days. As she wandered she picked leaves and dug for roots to feed herself and her children. Her breast milk soon ran dry and the baby she could not feed died in her arms. She and her remaining child just barely held onto life and managed to get through the period of war. Phaly and her son eventually ended up in a refugee camp filled with women and children who were equally traumatized. Many were suffering and dieing from post traumatic stress and depression. During her years in the camp Phaly set up a kind of Psychotherapy center using traditional Khmer and western medicines, meditation and message, helping hundreds of women regain their sanity, self respect and allowing them to love and take care of themselves and their children once again. She eventually walked out of the camp with five of these women and 94 orphans and began to build the Future Light Orphanage. Her days are now spent improving the lives of hundreds of children, inspiring them and those she lives and works with to make the best of each day and build a brighter future for themselves and their country. Phaly inspires me each day.