Textual Location Update

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Hello everyone, I'm minus pictures at the minute. I am in Cambodia where the internet can be described as slower than a snail. Picture uploading attempts have failed at most every turn.

However I shall share with you the story of some of the begging kids I've met:

Meet the current bane of my life for various reasons including pity. As soon as I set foot on the beach at Shiounkville, they swarmed around me, trying to get you to buy bracelets and fruit. Now ignoring them doesn't get them to go away they keep pawing at you, saying how much they need the money. The worst bit is you can't really buy from them, if you buy one thing from one, then all the others demand that you buy something from them. And while one dollar isn't a lot of money, fifteen dollars is!

It does tug at the heart strings though. There was one lovely fifteen year old who wants to be a tour guide and from her height and bone structure she barely looked twelve to me. She sells all day long and goes to school for four hours in the evening. School costs 25 dollars a month and a good day of selling only gets her $5-10. Apparently she is lucky if this happens two days a week and any money she makes also needs to help support her family. I felt so sorry for her and yet there was nothing I could really do to help.

Or that was what I thought. When I returned to the beach the next day A usual throng of kids joined me as soon as I set foot on the beach, along with two adults who were there to do threading on us (I had under arms and eyebrows done but sidetracking here). The girl who wants to be a tour guide was there and I gave in and got a funky little hairband from her and she pressed another free bracelet on me.

The kids seemed to multiply as the older kids noticed there was a group and herded the younger ones towards a likely source of money. Result, very crowded sun beds and plenty of giggles. Everyone else bought one thing off them during the course of the afternoon but there was a real sense of connection when we ordered a pizza for lunch.

We started on the pizza and looked at the kids. They didn't even seem interested in staring at our food. So we tentatively offered a couple of slices of pizza for them to share. My favourite was the first to make a move and she said with a puzzled smile,

'thank you but we don't know how to eat it'

Kids who have never had pizza. Well we set that to rights, showing them to use their hands and where we start on a slice of pizza. They broke three slices up among them. I'm never going to forget their faces as they took their first bites. Some smiled, some looked cautious and some pulled faces. Over all they decided it was different but not really for them.

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Photos

The kids
Captured in a brief moment we were not being crowded by them (shrunk in size so it will upload)