We now have a new logo for the Wat Opot Children’s Community. I have been trying to design something on my own for several months but nothing ever seemed to work. I really wanted to impress the American Ambassador when she visited our place for THE BIG EVENT but with only three weeks to prepare, it seemed hopeless. And than, like an answer to Prayer, the Universe sent us Agathe Troussel, a graphic designer from France, and within a few days she accomplished what I had not been able to do. The Khmer letters spell “Sahacom” or Community in English.
T-Shirts were printed with the logo on the front and this quote from Gail’s article in the Kyoto Journal on the back. They drew a lot of attention from the guest and one of the shirts would even have been presented to the Ambassador… had she stayed around long enough to receive it.
We even have our own flag now and it flies right below the flag of the USA.
Thanks Agathe for sharing yourself and your talents with us. We wish you all the best as you continue your travels through South America. Hasta luego!
Wayne Dale Matthysse
http://wayne-matthysse.blogspot.com
Oh thank you Wayne ! I m really happy to see picture of the 3 flags together… It s really nice. I send you kiss from Argentina for you and all the children. Hasta luego
I was happy to see the new flag and to see the quote from the Kyoto Journal article on the back of the tee shirt. It’s funny how this happened. The words are Wayne’s, something he said to me one evening when i was asking him a question for the book i am writing abut Wat Opot. I wrote them in my journal and later in the article because they seemed to capture something important about the community. When i was looking for a title for the article that phrase seemed perfect. Seeing this, i am struck by how i was merely the scribe, recording some words that Wayne said and might have forgotten, then serving them back to him so he, in turn, could use his OWN words in this context. I love how this works!
Sometimes i see Wat Opot as a moment in time, a response to a changing need. Before ARV medicines it was a clinic and crematorium and a gentle place for AIDS patients to die. Then it was a home for people who might survive and for orphaned children, with and without HIV. Now it has grown into a community and a family, with three kids in college and twenty in high school. I come back now and then and love to watch the changes.
Here is what Wayne said:
“Don’t write about me. It’s their parents that died. I just happened to be there with them. That’s what created Wat Opot. That’s what made us a family…the things that we’ve gone through together.”
Great logo and flag!
Like Gail, I’m deeply moved, over and over again, by how organically things happen at Wat Opot. It’s a lesson for how it could be everywhere, when we can be open. Let it be. With love.