TUOL PONGRO, Cambodia - A bone-jarring eight kilometers off Highway 2 there is a commune of 300 families. Hard up against the Neak Ta mountains and five kilometers from the Vietnam border, is where the old life of Socheat Nha ended and her new life began.
Two years ago, Socheat was slowly dying. These days, since she received open-heart surgery in 2010 to repair two holes in her heart, the 4-year-old is a new person - lively, vivacious, whip-crack smart.
Once, she was a child who stayed to herself. Often she had to be ferried off in the middle of the night to seek treatment. Her terrified father would carry her by scooter more than Сто kilometers to a hospital in Phnom Penh.
Socheat's situation was bad enough that her dad, Phin Ken, had to sell his farm land.
Now the girl walks around with a presence and assuredness that belies her age and her still tiny body.
"We never would have dreamed of seeing her go to America," said Phin Teav, Ken's older brother, through translation. "But I was so happy. Happy's not the word, I have no word to describe it. She's so lucky. She's one of the luckiest kids in the area."
While her uncle talks about the child, Socheat stands on the stoop of her house talking and gesturing to her cousins like a teacher in school.
healthy, but she was smart. She talks all the time," Teav says.
Then he adds with a laugh, "The whole village agrees - they think the doctors gave her medicine to enhance her brain."
Socheat is one of four children Long Beach nonprofit Hearts Without Boundaries brought to the United States for life-saving open-heart surgery.
Like the other children helped by the nonprofit, she was living on borrowed time with no access to the technology needed to save her.
suffered from a congenital heart defect that left her with two holes in her heart, plus several complications. The holes caused high pressure in her lungs from oxygenated blood flowing back into the lungs rather than to the rest of the body. The long-term effect of the ailment is a shortened life expectancy and increasing fatigue, breathing difficulty and cyanosis, or turning blue.
While the defect is typically repaired in the first year of a child's life in the U.S., in developing countries like Cambodia it can often go undetected and uncured.
That was the prognosis for Socheat before her family members in the United States learned of her condition and turned to Hearts Without Boundaries for help.
Although Socheat was initially denied treatment in the U.S., a group of international doctors treated the girl in the Dominican Republic, and in 2010 she returned home in good health.
As an SUV pulls into a make-shift driveway, Socheat's family runs out to greet the visitors. Ken trails behind his family, pulling on a shirt as he goes.
"I have been thinking of you," he says in translation to two Americans. "I never in a million years thought of you coming here."
The family guides the visitors to their home, a rough wooden house with a corrugated tin roof. Light pours in through spaces between the planks in the wall.
Socheat immediately begins to play hostess, offering water and chairs to sit in.
pulls out several coconuts and hacks off the tops and passes them out with straws for the milk.
Inside the home are four framed photographs of Socheat's trip to the United States.
Socheat points to a picture of the young son of Paul Grossfeld, her cardiologist in the U.S.
"Boyfriend," she says in English.
Tuol Pongro has become modernized in recent years. Ken's house is one of about a third in the village that is wired for electricity, which came to the community a year ago. He has an electric fan he turns on to shoo flies from the chicken and rice he cooks and serves for lunch.
Over the meal, Ken marvels at the difference in his child and the family's life.
cart connected that he pedals to schools and other areas to sell fruit juices, water and sodas.
"Three years ago I could hardly work because of Socheat's condition," he says. "Now she lives a healthy life. She's very strong and has a lot of energy."
Ken's countenance darkens, however, when he looks to the future. Most people who meet the precocious Socheat agree she seems very bright.
While in the U.S. as a 3-year-old, she built a large English vocabulary. She also learned to recite the alphabet in English, recognize its letters and count into the hundreds.
Ken wants desperately to be able to provide an education for his daughter.
In two years, Socheat will be old enough to attend the school down the road whose sign in English reads that it teaches computer technology, English and pop music.
"Forget the schools around this district," Ken says. "They're only open two or three days a week and the teachers have to work elsewhere. It's such a waste of time."
Ken says he would like to figure a way he could enroll his child in school in Phnom Penh, "but there's no way. I can't afford it."
Left unsaid is whether Ken could bear to be separated from Socheat even if there waswere help to pay for classes for the child if she moved to Phnom Penh.
Ken is remarkably close to Socheat in a way that is uncommon in the Khmer culture. To watch the father and daughter laugh as he prepares the coconuts is to see their closeness.
During the months in the United States, Ken rarely left her side. He took a big riskchance in allowing doctors to perform surgery, which was high-risk because of the damage to her lungs.
Ken was recently sponsored to take driving classes with the idea that maybe one day he could move to the city, work and care for his only child.
Ken would do anything he can for Socheat, but the reality in Cambodia is that upward mobility is difficult and constrained.
As Ken says, "We're not lazy,; we just don't have jobs."
Then Ken considers his blessings and chooses to reflect on his child's health.
Looking toward the Neak Ta mountains, he says almost wistfully, "Life is beautiful."
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