The Venerable Duch Tel with Wayne Dale Matthysse October 2024
We were both renegades of sorts… non-conformists to different belief systems that at the time were being challenged by the HIV and AIDS epidemic that was taking the lives of so many Khmer citizens, back in the early 2000s. Duch Tel was a subordinate Buddhist Monk sleeping on a cot in the run-down temple in the small hamlet of Sramouch He. I was an uneducated Christian missionary with some medical background who was interested in working with HIV and AIDS victims. The community had permitted the organization I was working with to build a small clinic on the temple grounds to treat the symptoms of the Virus and offer some assistance with food for the families. There was no treatment at the time to cure the Virus… palliative home care was all we could offer.
It wasn’t long before the dying started and it became obvious that more had to be done. It was decided to convert the clinic into a 12-bed hospice, which would require my moving out to the temple grounds to live full-time. My mission organization and the local community met this decision with considerable resistance. They both agreed that it was inappropriate for a Christian to live on a Buddhist Wat but for exactly the opposite of reasons. Duch Tel came to my rescue, with the community leaders, by suggesting that help for the victims and their families was far more important than any proselytizing I might do… and so it was that I was permitted to make the move. My mission board, however, was less accepting of my move and eventually fired me.
In those early days of the epidemic, Buddhist Monks were prohibited from working with HIV and AIDS victims because it was considered a “dirty” disease. Duch Tel was very interested in helping out at the hospice but was told by his Abbot that he could not. He took his case to the Buddhist Ministry and asked them if they believed the Buddha would turn his back on the victims of AIDS… they had a change of heart and Duch Tel became one of the first Khmer Monks to work in hospice care. Over the next few years, he sat with me day and night holding the hands of the dying and together we performed the cremations of several hundred victims.
Today Duch Tel is one of the main Monks at the Wat Opoat Pagoda… and the land that they once loaned to us for the hospice and children’s community, will now be returned to them. In our conversation, I asked what their plans were for the buildings and property and he said it would be used to provide education for young monks and possibly daycare for community children. I am presently staying at Wat Opot but there is no one here after working hours and I am considering getting an apartment in Phnom Penh. I will keep you posted.
If you haven’t seen this documentary on the early stages of the Wat Opot Project you can view it here.
