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Phare Ponlue Selpak Circus
An amazing organization that trains the local children in many art forms. It started out in refugee camps in the Thai/Cambodia borders and the refugees came back to their homes and continued spreading what they learned[Pictures best viewed full screen. Keep scrolling down beyond the text for more pictures.)
After Phnom Penh, we headed to Battambang, a rural area in Cambodia, to volunteer as English teachers at a local NGO. The program director asked us to be at the community center at 8 am so we set our alarms for 6:45 am (definitely a change of pace... but the center was in a village 14km from the city and Simo needed time for his morning coffee before he could utter a complete sentence.)
Most of the children that were part of this program were local village children who were rejected from public school due to too many absences (some worked on the fields with their parents) or kids who needed a place to go to to stay away from trouble, many of their parents left to Thailand looking for jobs and were now living with very old grandparents. It's very apparent that children are much more self-sufficient here then the kids back home. Siblings are a big part of raising children, you see a lot of 5-6 year old children caring for babies.
The week we spent working at the community center was
Amazing kid
They're going to be going on tour in France very soon! exhausting but so much fun! We had 20-25 students and they were between 5 and 13 years old, all in one classroom with no windows, just a door, so you can imagine how hot and humid it got especially around the recess time when the boys would climb on Simo for a ride and the girls would drag me to play chinese jump rope with them. The first day we got there, we were a little surprised because the teachers, who were volunteers from the local village, asked us to take over and start teaching right after having introduced ourselves. Simo and I looked at each other, gulped, then told the teacher we'd want to watch her first but that didn't work. So here we were in front of 25 attentive, hyper students ready to start the day, not knowing where to start. The first day actually went pretty well except a couple hiccups here and there, like when we asked the kids for their birthdays but the teacher said they wouldn't know or when we tried to teach them "what time is it?" and the teacher turned to us to say "oh no, no one has a watch here."
After our first day though, we went directly to an internet cafe, did a lot of research about teaching English to non-native speakers and made lesson plans for the week. The ipad came in handy with a bunch of really helpful applications full of pictures, which helped A LOT with the language barrier. Simo also had applications with some American songs for his sister and we got ahead of ourselves one day and tried teaching them "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands," but we ended up with a handful singing it in English because they already knew it and the rest singing it in Khmer, quite a sight 😊
These kids would be any teacher's dream really, they never EVER complained or whined about anything. They had an endless amount of energy and were all so eager to learn, some of them would even stick around during their recess time to ask questions, practice writing etc There were some really really really bright kids and I was just dumbfounded by how much they knew and how fast they learned considering the minimal amount of resources they have. They were also so incredibly supportive of
each other. I made them take turns in giving answers to a set of exercises we were going through and every time one of them would get it correct, I would say, "Very good!" and the rest of the group would get so excited, start clapping and imitating me, "very gooood, very gooood!"
It was very hard to leave at the end of the week. It's not easy to find words to describe it... it was an amazing and humbling experience. One thing's for sure, these kids have the BIGGEST smiles and hearts ever!
There wasn't much to do in Battambang when we left the center. The "downtown" area with the restaurants and hotels was pretty small so after a few days we started recognizing people, waving hands to those we had met, it felt like we lived there. And again I just have to mention how I am in awe of Simo's sense of direction. I mean being able to read a map of a big city where street names are clear is one thing but being able to do it in a rural town where 90% of the street names aren't written anywhere is just something
else. Within 30 mins in a new city, you would think he's a local, not only by the way he drives 😊
We got to experience a ride on the bamboo train in Battambang. So yeah it sounded weird to us too and we really didn't known what to expect but what the hell when in Rome do as the Romans do. Basically it's a bamboo plank placed on two axels with metalic wheels, powered with a well motor hooked by a simple belt. And... voila that's about it then you're ready to roll! It's usually used by the local villagers to transport goods, cattle etc from one area to the next. What we didn't expect either is that we would be driving at 50km/hr clinging on a tiny rail as we hurtled through the countryside, passing by areas where track was actually missing. Oh and did I mention that it started pouring as soon as we got on? And that when it rains here, some creepy looking insects invade your private space? The best part was that there is only one track for all traffic, so when another bamboo train came from the opposite direction, the raft with
The helmets..just in case :)
We didn't actuall wear them for safety reasons, it was just to protect us from the dozens of bugs flying on our faces the least amount of cargo had to get off the track (that was us). The driver of the other raft joined ours and took the train apart and removed it off the track for the others to pass through. They're closing it down in two months to build real train tracks, so definitely excited that we got to try it!
From Battambang, we headed to Siem Reap to visit the temples of Angkor. The city has French colonial and Chinese-style architecture. There are a lot of tourists here, younger European/American/Latino tourists travelling in very small groups and then you have the bus load of older Chinese and Japanese tourists. The temples don't look like much when you see them from far away but they're pretty intricate when you get a closer look. It is way too hot to be visiting temples when the sun is out, so we've been visiting them either before the sunrise or before the sunset and in between we spend our time eating and reading 😊 There are quite a few good "western" restaurants in this city so I'm taking a break from rice and noodles this week!
We're in Siemp Reap for another
couple days before we head to the Northeast of Cambodia where we'll be swimming in volcanic lakes... Stay tuned!
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Othman
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Most inspiring yet...
Didn't know you guys were gonna teach! A truly inspiring and warming post. Les photos du lac et des temples me donnent l'eau a la bouche; mais ceux des gamins, surtout le petit sur les epaules de Simo ... pffff. And yoga in your own private temple away from tourists in front of a forest and that sunset? Bordel, fuck me man, ca y est c'est game over quoi... How long are you there for? Hope all's good with the insects, seems a recurring thing with your posts. Remember desert trip in 7th grade and how AXE deodorant killed them? Might be useful. Grosses bises from law school library.