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Published: January 25th 2010
I have been in Cambodia for 3 weeks now which seems hard to believe although so much has happened. Firstly sorry about the lack of photographs. I have just spent ages trying to upload them only for it to fail on many occasions. I will try again tomorrow.
Changes in my class are happening which is great. A volunteer from Australia has nailed bright boards to the sides to display children’s work and attached wire so I can hang things. I have also been to the market and bought 20 little plastic chairs for the children. The look on their faces when they saw they had chairs to sit on instead of the floor was just brilliant! I can also see the Khmer teacher picking up on ideas I have previously carried out with the children which is fantastic. Last week I gave ‘teeth brushing lessons.’ The children in my class hadn’t previously had the opportunity to own a toothbrush but one of the volunteers kindly bought 100 toothbrushes for them. It was so lovely, I got all the children to sit in a circle and gave them a toothbrush each which was marked with their name. Then I demonstrated
how to clean their teeth with my own toothbrush and they all copied. They were so excited despite the fact a lot of them had bleeding gums. From now on as soon as the children arrive at school they collect their toothbrush and clean their teeth before they come in for lessons. The children’s teeth here are rotten and black, this is because very few own toothbrushes and to add to that they eat lots of sweets and drink fizzy drinks as parents aren‘t educated to understand the importance of dental care. I have now been nicknamed ‘the tooth fairy.’
All the voluntary schools (along with a few international rich schools too) across the Siem Reap area have come together to form a football league which runs for 10 weeks every Sunday afternoon. This is brilliant for the children. It is held across the other side of town upon a huge patch of sandy land. It is incredibly hot in the midday sun so each match only lasts 20 minutes. All the children from the school are crammed into a big truck which Globalteer hires and are driven to the pitch. I went for the first time last week.
It was so exciting and the atmosphere was great. I felt quite emotional because these children have nothing and were just so excited to be there. The children didn’t have a proper kit and just wore a red or yellow globalteer t-shirt. It would be fantastic if the children could just have a proper kit so I am going to see if I can sort out some sponsorship in order to get one.
I have been spending a lot of time with a little boy called Brul. Brul is not supposed to attend the school but just wandered in last week. When I first met him he was a jittering mess with no inhibitions and just walked into every classroom picking up objects and dropping them. All the Cambodian children were poking fun at him. I spent my lunch time with him and showed him my mp3 player. He loved it and was dancing around to ‘Police - Every breath you take..’ I spoke to one of the teachers about him as it is very much a tight knit community of people. Poor Brul, apparently his parents don’t look after him and he has never been to school, he
is now apparently 9 years old although I can see all his adult teeth so I think he is probably more like 11. Right from an early age his parents neglected him and gave him alcohol and cigarettes for ‘a laugh’ so he has spent most of his childhood permanently drunk. Speaking to the teacher he said he is worried it has affected his brain and that is why he is so odd. Brul apparently speaks very good Khmer and understands instructions but just comes out with the oddest statements. It seems that his community just use him as something to poke fun at. It is heartbreaking. So since then I have taken Brul into my class. I have to keep on at the children about ‘being friends with one another even though we are different’ because none of them would sit near him. It is very difficult as Brul is not accepted by the adults of the community and so their children do not accept him either. Brul is painfully thin and wears the same clothes everyday so today at lunch I went to the fruit market with him. He was all excited and walked along the road barefoot
chattering away to me in Khmer. You should have seen the locals faces. They looked gob smacked as they saw a western girl (westerners are totally looked up to here) with Brul the crazy child whom everyone uses to poke fun at buying fruit for him to eat. Brul munched away at his fruit and when we got back to the school the manager said to give him a bowl of the staff food which the local women make. He ate the whole bowl up in one flash. I am going to offer to pay the $2 everyday that Brul comes to school so that he can eat the staff’s food because at least that is one meal he is getting. Brul was so grateful and off he went with a big smile on his face. Despite what the Cambodian’s say I believe that Brul is just a normal little boy whom is simply suffering from neglect. He is not crazy or stupid but just has never received any love. All I can do is show the Cambodian’s that I accept him and then maybe they will too.
The weekend I went with some other volunteers to visit a
place called Battambong. After a crazy 2 and a half hour taxi ride to Battambong in which I feared for my life as it was like a constant game of chicken with no seatbelts we arrived unharmed. When we got to the hotel the guy behind reception suggested we hired moto’s for the following day. So the next day I went downstairs at 10am only to be greeted by the guy who was working in reception the previous day with a motorbike and 3 of his mates. No wonder he was so keen for us to hire moto’s for the day as it was him driving! Anyway despite this everyone had a thoroughly enjoyable day. It was really good because the moto drivers drove us all through the countryside and through the back ways that tourists would never see. We even went over one of those dodgy rope bridges. The motodrivers firstly took us to this mountain/hill with a large temple on the top. When we got there all the local people surrounded us and just looked at us because we were westerners. The moto drivers rested and these local boys pulled up on scooters and offered to take us
up to the very top of the mountain because it was a 2 hour walk. I agreed. Literally I was clinging onto the bar at the back the scooter for dear life. The scooter zoomed up the mountain and I don’t know how but we made it to the top almost driving vertical on a footpath. When we got to the top there were monkeys everywhere. There was a big Buddhist temple and the monks lived in huts around it. One of the local boys guided us to these caves called the ‘Killing caves.’ It was horrific, during the Khmer Rouge they made thousands of educated people troop up the mountain and then dropped them from this high ledge right into a cave deep right under the ground. There was even a special cave just for the children of educated families. It makes you feel sick to wonder how anyone could do such a thing. Anyway, for 20years afterwards the caves were left and finally during the 1990’s the Buddhist’s whom had originally been there moved back in and cleared the lot. Imagine doing that. I went down the steps into one of the caves and at the bottom was
a little temple cupboard with human bones just spilling out. There was 2 monks meditating down there. I gave them 2 dollars and they gave me this special red thread to go round my wrist which means ‘good luck.’ Although this place was haunting there was a peaceful feel about it and it felt as though where the Buddhist monks had moved back in they were slowly restoring its previous peaceful energy. So I got back on my scooter and literally we zoomed down the mountain at a hell of a pace. I am not convinced those breaks were working properly. The moto drivers then took us to another temple where I met this remarkable lady who told me about her life during the Khmer Rouge. She was a child but managed to survive it even though her entire family were killed at the killing caves. Apparently in Asia the Pol Pot regime isn’t mentioned in schools but passed down from people although some understandably do not mention it at all. We then went onto the ‘bamboo train’. The bamboo train is literally two axels and bits of bamboo screwed together which you sit on. A boy sits at the
back and seems to prod the engine with a stick. The train runs on the original train rails which were used before the Khmer rouge destroyed the network of trains. There is only one track so every time you see another bamboo train you have to get off, lift the bamboo up in the air and take the axels off the rails and then when the train has past put them on again. At one point we drove over a fire which was literally 1 inch from our legs. When we arrived back it was 6pm and we had been with the moto guys since 10am and they had been great. Not thinking straight I tipped my motodriver $5 which is like £3.50 . He was over the moon. Then I realised that $5 is half a weeks wage in Cambodia. The following morning we had to leave at 6.30am for the boat back to Siem Reap and who was waiting outside for me but my moto driver from the previous day. He handed me a love letter which said that he was in love with me with all his heart and had his phone number on there. I am
putting it down to the fact that I am a westerner and he doesn’t come across many of those, I have pale skin and he probably thinks I am mega rich because I tipped him so much.
The boat trip took almost 9 hours! It was incredible sailing along the rivers and seeing the real Cambodia. All the half naked children were running along the banks and waving to us. The boat was this rusty old thing and we almost crashed into several floating houses (literally houses made of palm tree leaves built on planks of wood floating on the river and lake.) The people inside the houses didn’t seem to flinch when the boat was about 2 inches from knocking their flimsy houses down. On the way we picked up local people and dropped them off, most were carrying cargo. One boy got on with a sack which began to move and squawk. Inside was some chickens and ducks with their legs tied together which also shared the boat with us. I climbed onto the roof of the boat and spent most the journey there. It was so much fun because one side of the boat was heavier
than the other so it was lopsided. I sat on the right side of the roof and dangled my legs over the side.
Anyway I need to go as I have been typing for ages and I need to get some dinner. Hope you are all well J
Ellie xx
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Sam
non-member comment
Best blog yet!
Cracking read! I want to be friends with Brul! Sounds like your doing good thing there. Well done Ellie! Very proud! Sam