I remember the morning sun barely cutting through the dense canopy near Angkor Wat, when I first met Anna. She was on her knees among the moss‑covered ruins, cradling baby Ara in her arms. The baby’s cry—a thin, desperate wail—echoed softly against the ancient stone walls. My heart twisted as I approached. She looked at me with hollow eyes.
Anna had always been proud, always believed she could take care of her newborn daughter no matter what. But now, hunger hovered over them like a dark cloud — and without food, there would be no milk for Ara. Anna rubbed her swollen breasts and whispered: “I’m sorry, little one. I’m so hungry too.”
They had fled their village after floods destroyed their home and crops. Their small savings had vanished in days. Food was scarce. Work was nowhere to be found. And the baby… the baby never stopped crying.
I offered what little I had — some stale rice, a small packet of clean water. But Anna shook her head. “It’s not for me,” she said, pressing rice into my hands for herself. “My strength… maybe then I can feed her.”
The hours passed. Ara’s cries became weaker, more pitiful. Her tiny fists clenched, her body trembling with hunger. Anna tried to nurse, but her body simply didn’t respond — she was too thin, too starved.
I suggested boiled water, even coconut water from nearby palms. Anything. Anna agreed, though her eyes held defeat. I warmed a few drops carefully over a small fire, held the water to Ara’s lips. She tried — a faint, almost imperceptible suck. Then spasm of cough, nothing more.
My throat tightened. I looked at Anna — her face streaked with tears, ancient stones behind her, the forest alive around us. It felt like time stood still.
In that moment, I wanted to reach across the world — to mothers in the U.S., in Europe — to ask them: imagine if your baby cried, and you had nothing but hunger to comfort them. Imagine the tears, the helplessness.
Night came. The forest darkened. Anna wrapped Ara close, skin‑to‑skin, offering her warmth instead of milk. She rocked her gently, humming a lullaby she remembered from her own mother. “Sleep, little one,” she whispered. “Mama will find milk.”
But would she?
By dawn, we heard the soft steps of a traveler, a kind soul who offered a small can of powdered milk — the kind sold in towns, rarely affordable for people like Anna. Her face lit up, hope trembling in her eyes. She mixed it carefully with boiled water, cradled Ara, and pressed the bottle to her lips.
I watched as Ara gulped. The first swallow was messy, hesitant — but then came another. Her fragile body relaxed, her cries stilled. She closed her eyes, heavy with sleep.
I stepped away so Anna could have this moment alone. Tears blurred my vision. I bowed my head.
That day, under the watchful stones of Angkor, a baby survived. But this story isn’t rare. Hunger, poverty, desperation — they haunt mothers like Anna all across rural Cambodia.
If you read this, maybe with your child sleeping safely in a crib, maybe with milk ready in a bottle … remember Ara. Remember Anna. Because somewhere, hunger still fights to win their days.
