From a Child’s Eyes
The Paradox of Phnom Penh
by
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After returning from Phnom Penh, the stirring images and experiences from that city presented a unique predicament. It was a decision on how to choose from 5,000 photographs to best balance a story between the city's tourist trade and the children living on the streets. Furthermore, too represent the financial support from abroad for Phnom Penh, to continue developing the tourist industry, and then to broach the suffering of the children's deplorable living conditions --- was a challenge I had to justify both equally. The limited number of pictures to illustrate both aspects of the city, and the kids offered hard choices of the 24,000 children living on the streets, and against that, Phnom Penh's continued efforts directed toward increasing commerce. There were children and family moments that needed telling, so it was necessary to decide which ones that would represent their story, while awarding equal space for the city's pride. Additionally, the photographs covering the aftermath of the Vietnam/Cambodian War, should give tribute to Cambodia's return to a picturesque city, and the slums today spawned from that horrific era. It was to demonstrate a huge and skillful balancing of Phnom Penh --- the city of growth, and Phnom Penh --- the city of haunting memories. ~~~ ~~~
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About the Book
Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, grows rich through tourism and economic development and yet denies food and shelter to thousands of children living in squalor on its streets. The city’s government and high society are uninterested in the problem or its solution, leaving these children to fend for themselves in a harsh and uncaring world.
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In From a Child’s Eyes, author John A. Stancik recounts his experiences of traveling to Phnom Penh for a month. He provides not only firsthand accounts of the deprivation he witnessed among the children of the city but also striking photographs that demonstrate the widespread nature of the problem. As the thriving city struggles to balance its economic growth and tourism with an increasingly poor population, religious family values, and the shame of its shantytowns, few among well-off Cambodians recognize the problem at all. Until capital from tourism can be used to build social programs for everyone, the homeless population will continue to live in the city’s landfills, and dirty and crippled children will roam the streets without hope or help.
In this personal narrative, one man recalls his time in Phnom Penh and reveals the depth of the problem facing thousands of homeless children in an otherwise prosperous city.
About the Author
John A. Stancik was born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He retired in 2006 and moved to Galveston, Texas, in 2008, six weeks before the landfall of Hurricane Ike. He is the author of two other works of nonfiction, Escaping the Horror of Hurricane Ike and Project Seven of the Common Man, and a novel, Hydra’s Secret.