By Regina Brett Sunday August 03, 2008,
Next time I gripe about $4-a-gallon gas, I'm going to picture Kevin on his scooter.
Kevin Conroy is a Catholic priest who works with the Maryknoll priests serving the poorest of the poor. He came home to Cleveland last month for a break from life in Cambodia.
"I live in the dollar-a-day world," Kevin said.
For two years, Kevin has e-mailed me and tried to describe what life is like there. Over lunch in Cleveland, he opened up his laptop and took me to Phnom Penh, where he works with the Little Sprouts, children orphaned by AIDS. All 270 of them are HIV positive. The littlest one is 3; the oldest one is 18.
For more information: E-mail kevinconro@gmail.com
The children live in a country where communist guerrillas killed 2 million people. Where family members were starved, tortured and executed.
Kevin lives just minutes from the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. He showed me photos of rows of skulls lined up at one museum. In another photo, he showed me a roomful of children learning how to meditate. In another, he's on his scooter visiting people living on a garbage dump nearby. How big is the dump? Ten football fields by 10 football fields with garbage piled five stories high.
"It is the ugliest place in the world," Kevin said.
It smells of mold, must and burning garbage. People wrap rags around their faces to block out the smell as they pick for plastic bottles to sell. At night, they balance lanterns on their heads to find the best trash.
The lucky ones have a tarp overhead to keep out the rain. If you want to put a roof over someone's head, for $10, you can. If you want to feed a child for a day, for $1, she's covered.
Kevin's philosophy is that sometimes it's OK to give "fish" before you teach people how to fish.
If we don't, he said, the kids with AIDS won't live long enough to be taught how to fish.
He believes that serving the poor means you go where you are needed but not wanted and stay until you are wanted but not needed.
Kevin has been a Roman Catholic priest for 26 years. I met him at St. Mary's in Lorain in 1986. He also served at St. Bernard in Akron, in El Salvador, at St. Mary in Wooster and at St. Peter in Loudonville.
He got a master's in community counseling and a PhD in clinical counseling. His dissertation was on resiliency from torture. He's helping students in Phnom Penh treat mental health issues and wants to set up a program for them to get online credits at Cleveland State.
Kevin heads back to Cambodia today.
He's anxious to return to the children who have taught him about true joy.
"Living in poverty, they are still happy," he said. "That's the mystery of the human spirit."
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