Collie Mail
COLLIE Rotary Club is lending a helping hand to local woman Halina Hebb who is consumed by the need to ease the poverty in Cambodia. Club members will run a huge garage sale in the Scout Hall on September 10 from 8am to 2pm. People who have items for sale are asked to phone John Vlasich on 0428 341 470 or 9734 1470 or Harry Wiggers on 9734 2704 to arrange delivery or collection.
Halina spoke to the club last week about her awakening to the need.
FOUR years ago Halina Hebb was staying in a five-star Cambodian hotel while her husband Des played golf in a pro-am event on a manicured tourist golf course.
The word “manicured” was appropriate, the grass was trimmed with nail scissors, Halina said.
Before arriving she knew nothing about the country except there were famous temples at Angkor Wat and that “Angelina Jolie had made a movie there with rocks falling all over the place”, she said.
“At the hotel two girls asked me if I wanted to visit an orphanage so I grabbed some soap and fruit (as gifts) and went with them.”
What she saw en route shattered her. “Absolute despair — many kids on the way to the orphanage were naked — the conditions were dire.
“I vowed I would never go back with so little again and that’s how my fund-raising began.”
Cambodia was once known as “the Land of Paradise” but is now one of the world’s most poverty-stricken countries.
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge seized control in April 1975 and more than two million people were killed in the next four years.
All of the country’s intellectuals and educated people were targets. When the starvation, torture and blood-letting began, Cambodia (which the Khmer Rouge renamed Kampuchea) had 4000 trained doctors. Only 40 survived.
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