In My Wildest Dreams

Wow. It's been 3 or 4 days since my last post. Feels like 3 or 4 months. Weird. Well, let's see.

Saturday morning after I last wrote:
Jennifer and I hired a tuk-tuk and went down to the river. We at at the Press Club, which I guess was where the journalists spent a lot of time during the past twenty years or so covering the civil war, etc. Anyway, was a nice restaurant overlooking the river. Then, we went for a massage/facial/body scrub combo. (I know, I know, rough life!) Was 2 hours of body work for $50! Kind of on the higher end of the price range here, but well worth it. Then...we went to dinner with the people who are sponsoring us here, at which point I (and, I think, Jennifer, too) decided that in order to continue working here in Cambodia we will have to make a complete break from this org. Jennifer had informed me that this group was religiously affiliated, but before coming here, she interrogated them several times as to whether or not the school at which we would be working was connected to any sort of outsider religious endeavor/agenda, to which they reassured her, that, no, the task was only to help with the science curriculum. AND, SOO... let me just put it this way: We ate dinner with the organizers who had invited as well a group of students from Jerry Falwell's Liberty College. NEedless to say, I didn't eat much, and pretty much completely lost my appetite when they started talking about the importance of Christian witnesses in such remote areas, particularly in a 95% Buddhist country. We walked out before the meeting was over and waited outside for our ride back to the hotel. However, we remained as diplomatic as possible (I let Jennifer do the talking:) ) and kept our plans/promise to go up on Sunday to the province to assess the curricular need and do some science teacher training while there.

Sunday, to the Banteay Meanchey Province:
We rode up with several other Cambodian workers and 2 very ambitious Bible teachers from Singapore. I endured the attempted conversion in the van on the way up, and managed to survive without biting a hole through my tongue (although just barely). On the ride up, though, we quickly lost our paved road in Phnom Penh for the bumpy dirt roads of rural Cambodia, which is most of the country. The similarities between the countryside here and that of Guatemala were absolutely uncanny. I felt like I'd been transported back in time.

We made it there after dark, and Jennifer and I declined an invitation to attend the (Pentacostal?) service and went to bed early, staying in one of the villager's huts--which was very nice. We each had a mat the size of a double bed on the second floor of the hut (well, the only floor of the hut, which is on stilts, but there are hammocks on the first floor). We slept under queen-sized mosquito nets as well.

Monday in the Province:
Monday morning, (pleasantly) awoken early by the chanting and prayer from the Buddhist wat (temple), I went for breakfast with some of the other visitors. We went to a restaurant "downtown"and I had rice noodles with pork. Ten of us ate and drank for a total of $4....

Later that morning, Jennifer and I went for a walk in the village. We met several of the kids and were invited into the houses of some of the elders. They were the most amazing people--one of them was toting me down the road exclaming to everyone that I was her daughter. We didn't know what she was saying until we ran into one of the children from the local school who spoke some English. When she realized we now understood what she was shouting (My daughter! My daughter!) she cracked up laughing. One older jovial woman who wanted us to come see her house said that her house was very very old (we borrowed the kids who spoke English for the rest of our walk). We asked how long she had been here, and she said she was born in the house. Of course, she has the strength of a survivor. I can only imagine the things she must have seen.

Afterward, we rode a tractor/trailer (no, not what you think--no semi's here) to the rice fields to see the kids from the orphanages working in the fields. Apparently, it is harvest time, so everyone goes to work in the fields all day for 2 weeks to a month, depending on the amount of land they have. All of the kids (orphanages or not) and families go; the children go at 3 or 4 in the morning and then come back to school for the rest of the day. I asked some of them if they ever play sports, but they say there's not much time for that. It was about 45 min to ride on the bumpy dirt road to and then through the fields before we came to the orphanage's plot. Jennifer and I asked if we could help, and though our request was met by sheepish grins and chuckles from the kids, they were patient and kind teachers. We harvested for a bit and no one lost any limbs due to our inexperience with the sickle, and then we rode back to the orphanage. We were incredibly impressed by the children. After just a short time in the field, Jennifer and I were ready for a long rest.

That afternoon, I met with the science teachers to discuss problems they were having. Only about 6 of 25 are actually teaching science right now, so we talked about some of the problems (materials, teacher training) and discussed some simple lessons they could start with, based on resources/problems in the community (sanitation, bacteria, dust, water contamination, etc). The teachers are phenomenal and very eager to learn, but the need here is very huge.

In the evening, we went for another walk in the village. I brought a Polaroid camera that I'd borrowed from a friend. It was a huge hit!!! Some of the families, once they saw some pictures, went inside to clean up and then came back out for family portraits. The kids loved the photos, of course, and I think we nearly started a riot. Wish I had brought more film!

That night, I took an all-too-familiar bucket shower, again taking me back to L. America, but it felt sooooooooo good. I was pretty ripe :).

Well, I've got to continue these updates but I think we're going to eat so I'll finish later. We are now in Siem Reap. I'll explain more tomorrow.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LARA!!!!!!

Love,
Sara

posted by Sara @ 4:05 AM