Walking tall: 15-year old orphan Aurm Aun leads a riding lesson at the Cambodia Country ClubHorse riding is giving HIV-positive orphans in Cambodia hope for a better future.
By Clive Graham Ranger
25 Jun 2009
The car park at the Cambodian Country Club on the outskirts of Phnom Penh was an upmarket showroom of top-of-the-range Mercedes, Hummers and Cadillac SUVs. The tuk-tuk parked alongside them seemed out of place. The capital's high-rollers and diplomats had turned out to watch their children compete for a place in the Cambodian national team at an forthcoming gymkhana in neighbouring Thailand.
Among the youngsters in jodhpurs, polished leather riding boots and tailored jackets was another contrast: two teenage Cambodian girls in torn jeans, outsize cut-down Wellington boots and battered riding hats. They had arrived in the tuk-tuk.
Rapturous applause greeted the first group's efforts as fences were cleared; disappointed "oohs" and "aahs" followed refusals and crashing fences. Then the first of the two 15 year-olds, Kim Srey Neang, her face taut with concentration, entered the arena, followed later by her friend Aurm Aun.
Both girls had hesitant but clear rounds and the few remaining spectators looked on in mild disapproval as Aun and Neang hugged and kissed, laughed and bounced up and down with joy.
"They have cleared more than these hurdles," said Dr Kaing Sophal, the director of Anakut Laor, the girls' HIV/Aids orphanage in Stung Meanchey.
It is estimated that 335,000 Cambodians below the age of 15 have lost one or both parents, mostly to HIV/Aids. In 2007 it was estimated that 20,000 women aged over had the disease, as did 4,400 children.
It was in recognition of these bleak statistics that Jean-Yves Dufour, a former director of Pharmaciens sans Frontières in Phnom Penh, founded Anakut Laor in the spring of 2005 to house, educate and care for five abandoned girls from remote rural areas. Their crime? They were born HIV positive, had no close relatives and were social outcasts.
But Dufour knew that a daily cocktail of medication and retroviral drugs would keep the full impact of the disease at bay and ensure it did not become the death sentence of Aids. In less than four years and in a country where disease, poverty and malnutrition are an everyday reality, it's hard to look on the cheery faces of the Anakut Laor girls and believe you are in the right country… or that they are in their right minds. Even more remarkable is the ready and open-hearted welcome they have given the nine girls rescued by Sophal and Dufour over the years and the fact that those girls, not the original five, live on the same property in a house built last year to accommodate them.
Despite their vulnerability and dependency on a cocktail of controlling drugs – readily available in Phnom Penh and not the outlying provinces – the girls seize every advantage from every day. They used to have nothing to live for, now their life expectancy is much the same as other girls their age. Their smiles are the outward sign of a secret, inner confidence that they will now see, savour and enjoy another day.
Aun and Neang attend Maddox Chivan school where they study English, IT and sports and are regarded as hard workers, quick learners and doing well academically. All work and no play, though, can make for a dull life so when, two years ago, the French embassy offered free riding lessons at the CCC's equestrian centre, Sophal was quick to accept the opportunity on behalf of the girls.
The scheme was the brainchild of Soraya Ourrais, French-born director at the centre, who wanted to introduce disadvantaged Cambodian children to horse riding. It has been a stunning success, as the two Anakut Laor girls' high percentages in their practical and written exams to date have proven. The centre's instructors were also struck by their perseverance and enthusiasm.
"They are tough as nails," said Ray Fisher, an Irish instructor at the centre. "For kids with no background or experience of horses, never mind riding one over jumps, they are fearless. They fall off and there's no crying or tantrums, just a bruised ego and a need to get back in the saddle and try again." Ourrais is rightly proud of the way in which her idea has flourished and in turn produced young riders on the cusp of winning rosettes for their country. She has in her sights the prestige of fielding a Cambodian equestrian team in the 2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore. If that dream becomes reality it will more than repay her belief in the future success of the centre which, she points out, is the only one in Cambodia.
For Neang and Aun the search for their birth certificates has started, because those vital pieces of paper will ensure they get passports to pursue their dreams in another country. Mention it to them and the giggling starts all over again; another adventure beckons.
Whether they go to Bangkok or not pales into insignificance against their achievements, which transcend the restrictions of a disease that only a few years ago condemned them to a life without hope.
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