Like many in Bar Harbor, Gail Gutradt will be somewhere warmer by the time you read this. But don’t expect her to be playing shuffleboard in Florida — she’ll be busy doling out hugs in Cambodia.
Gutradt plans to return to Cambodia early in 2007 to continue working with the Wat Opot Project, a rural center serving Cambodian HIV positive children and adults, orphans of the disease, and endangered street children. This will be her second trip. She previously spent five months working with the project in 2005; long enough, she said, to need to go back.
“Being there that long, you get a feeling of having to see things through,” Gutradt said.
Gutradt previously had no ties with Cambodia before volunteering with the project. She learned of Wat Opot through a friend in California, who suggested that Gutradt volunteer there. Coincidentally, Gutradt was battling depression at the time and recently had prayed for a change in her life. She knew immediately upon hearing the suggestion that she needed to go.
“I asked for something, this is what came,” she said.
Still, Gutradt was nervous when she arrived at the orphanage in rural Cambodia. But she didn’t have a chance to stay nervous for long.
“The first thing [I remember] is this little boy comes running up and he gives me a bug hug,” Gutradt laughed. “What a welcome!”
Though ostensibly given the position of English teacher during her stay, Gutradt soon learned that hugs were her real job. There were 63 children at Wat Opot when she arrived, and 80 by the time she left. Hugs were always in short supply.
“With that many kids there’s always somebody in the dust crying,” she said.
Gutradt said it was hard for her at first to accept the unstructured feel of each day.
“It took me forever to realize that a day when you stepped out the door and you hugged a couple of kids, it was a good day,” she said.
As Gutradt returns to Cambodia, she’ll still have to grapple with a language she has yet to master. She tried during her previous trip; one young girl daily would attempt to teach her Cambodian words. Though the girl sometimes repeated each word 20 times, Gutradt still couldn’t get it right.
“We’d both wind up laughing,” she said.
Gutradt also will have to contend with sleepless nights. Anyone picturing rural Cambodian life as a quiet affair is mistaken, she said. The local custom for any community event is to rent loud speakers and blare music all over the countryside. This was even true at the local Buddhist monastery, she said.
“It goes on all night,” she said.
Gutradt said the Wat Opot clinic is vitally important for combating the stigma of AIDS in Cambodia. She said people with AIDS are often shunned by family members and even can be stoned by their community. She said the disease largely spreads in the country through heterosexual contact. Out of a population of 14 million, 170,000 Cambodians were infected with AIDS in 2003.
An American Vietnam veteran and a Cambodian social worker first started the Wat Opot Project in 2001. They chose the region because of its poverty; they hoped money spent on the clinic would stimulate the local economy.
Since then, the project has expanded to include home-visiting, food relief for families affected by AIDS, outreach education, anti-retroviral drugs dispensing, and a school. The project’s mission continually expands because many children with AIDS are living longer, Gutradt said. She said no one is turned away.
Since returning to the States, Gutradt has created an exhibit of her photos and experiences with the Wat Opot project. Rather than bleak pictures of AIDS victims, the photos show the beauty of children at the orphanage and the surrounding village.
“The real beauty of the place is the spirit of the people,” she said.
Gutradt is selling exhibit photos to raise funds for the project. The exhibit was recently on display at Reel Pizza and the Criterion in Bar Harbor. All proceeds go directly to the Wat Opot project; Gutradt pays her own travel expenses.
Gutradt said she’s looking forward to her trip back to Cambodia.
“I miss my kids,” she said. “I mean, that’s it in a nutshell.”
If you would like to make a donation to the project or buy a photo, please contact Gutradt through her email at acadialady5@yahoo.com or leave a message at 207-288-0235. She will later be available for talks on the project, as well.
You might have to wait a while for a response, though. She might be too busy giving out hugs this winter.