Volunteer Work in Cambodia

Rewinding to our first day….

We took jetstar and arrived at Siem Reap Airport. It was damn small and there was no aircon. I think there were only 1-3 belts .

We went straight to check in at Thunborey Hotel and i was snacking on my granola bars. I was famished. During the bus ride to the hotel, i was wondering how the hotel would look like, and how the surroundings would be like. Then suddenly we were told that we have reached the hotel and i looked out of the window just to see a small building right in front of us.

It was pretty good for an ocip hotel, i wasnt expecting anything much other than wifi.

The only problem was the lack of sockets. And i wore my insect repellant wristband to protect myself from mosquito bites. I must say that the wristband was relatively effective, but it did not last as long as i have expected. It only lasted me for around 4-5 days while the packaging stated that it should last around 1 week. But i guess it was because i accidentally wet it which caused the smell to disappear.

We had dinner at Angkor Night Market and shopped a bit around.

I bought my night pants, but i regretted not buying more. Damnnnn.

We went to Bayon, Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat , Horse Riding

The temples were huge and magnificent. The scenery was beautiful but the sun gave us no mercy. It was sweltering hot.

The horse riding was ok but a little boring for me, cos i couldnt communicate with the cambodian guy , i wanted to follow xiao hui and the rest to learn to control the horse on my own. But the moment the horse canter a bit, my camera bounced and i had trouble keeping the camera from bouncing and hitting the sadle and myself. So i gave up trying to ask him to teach me how to control the horse and just sat back to watch the scenery.

Due to the intense heat from the sun , the all day out in the sun, i fell ill and was having a terrible headache. Apparently, i didnt know the mineral water bottle was only 500ml. I thought it contained around the same amount of water as my 800ml water bottle. And i only finished one bottle for that day. After that, i spammed myself with water daily.

We checked out to go to the Srok Village , which is the village where we will be doing our cip at. Prior to the trip, i had low expectations for the living conditions. I expected to dig hole in the earth to do answer all my nature calls and was prepared not to bathe, bringing all my dry shampoos and cooling powder. When we reached our accomodation and found out that we had a basic toilet, i was super relieved and happy. We had sleeping mats and cushions for sleeping. I did not even need to use my sleeping bag . The pants that i bought at the angkor night market became my sleeping pants. We were brought around the village to interact with the villagers and visit the homes. Along the way, we saw many animals, cows, dogs, chickens, hens, roosters. Basically, all the animals you need for agriculture.

For the rest of the days spent in srok village, most of the time we had our meals at the guys’ dorm. And after that we would return back to our dorm. As Cambodians sleep early at 9pm and wake up early too, we followed their sleeping cycle. Our first night was horrible as we kept waking up whenever the cat comes near us and we kept hearing the orchestra from the dogs and rooster. The boys had it worse, they had accompanying orchestra from the cows.  But later on, we solved the cat problem as we realised its because we had stacks of tuna cans placed right beside our sleeping mats thats why the cats keep coming near our mats. After we moved it away, the cat no longer disrupts us from our sleep. And we got used to the daily orchestra from the dogs and rooster. Initially, sleeping at 9 was hard for us as we are too used to sleeping at 1-2am back home, but with so much activity in store for us everyday, we gradually adapted to sleeping and waking up early.

We started teaching basic english alphabets to the children. The first day when we met the children, they were shy and dare not approach us. When we approach them , they ran away from us. But as time passes, the children became less shy and did not run away from us anymore. As we were told that the first day of teaching will be during the holiday, so in order to attract more children to come for subsequent classes, we tried to make it as engaging as possible. For every lesson we had, we brought the children out to play for awhile as a break for them. We played skipping, tug-of-war , flying paper aeroplanes with them.

A few things that left a deep impression in me:

1) when we announced the start of lesson, the children ran to their classes. When i saw them running as soon as they could to their classes, i suddenly thought of myself, when i was of their age, i have never ever ran to my classes before. The only time i ran was when i was late for school. It got me thinking that, i had the priviledge to study and i have my own pencilbox, bag pack, but i sulked at going to school. I suddenly felt ashamed that, these children, they dont have a pencilbox nor a bag pack. Some dun even have any writing materials and they used plastic bags to substitute as a school bag. I felt that, when i go back to singapore, i should really cherish my school.

2) The children were so happy just by skipping or tug-of-war or flying aeroplanes. Back home, surrounded by gadgets, iphone, s3, whatever, you name it. We wouldnt be happy with a skipping game/ tug-of-war game. We would be rolling our eyes. That was when i started to appreciate the simplicity of life.  Like what charmaine said, we hope that the children, will be like the aeroplanes that they have folded, soaring into the sky with their abilities. We hope that there will be a day whereby they are equipped with the skills to progress in life.

3) We were told that school teachers arent paid well, so the probability of teachers not coming to school to teach students is quite high. Instead, the teachers moonlight as tourguides, whereby they could earn much much more. i cant really remember how poor their salary is.. hmm i think around 80usd per month? thats their pay as teachers. and the pay for being a tourguide for a day is around 30usd. So you can see how deprived the children are of educaton. It made me feel very ashamed that when i was in singapore, i was always thinking of how to pon school/classes when my teachers come to school everyday to conduct classes. We are given the privilege to have education and yet we dont cherish it. Here, the children go to classes with so much enthusiasm, running to classes. But of course, some may say, oh cuz the chance of teacher conducting class is so low, so all the more , they would be eager to go for classes. But, i feel that, they must first have interest to go for classes, so they would run to classes. Otherwise, even if the probability of teacher conducting classes is low, if the student is not interested, she/he wouldnt even bother going.

At night, while the rest are preparing to sleep, the always-have-nothing-to-do LeeYin and Joanne will accompany our hosts in teaching them english.

As there was only a fluorescent light, and it provided limited light, our host had to use her phone as a torchlight to shine on her book in order to read. Back home, i usually read about these kind of incidents in newspaper on the sad plight of people, but i have never seen it first hand. Seeing it first hand made my heart ache, i guess a lot of things, seeing it first hand as compared to reading it on newspaper or virtual internet affected me alot. When i saw them peering over the book, i just broke down silently. Later on that night when me and leeyin were sleeping, i was telling leeyin about how i felt when i saw them studying under the torchlight.

I have personally never ever studied under a torchlight. If the light is too dim, i dont even bother to study as it hurts my eye and i didnt want my eyesight to deteriorate. So after seeing her studying under the torch light, i told myself, i cant really complain about studying in singapore. I cant really complain so much anymore being a singaporean.

We went to kampong cham to stay in a hotel for a night as there is no school  on that day. Before this trip, i was wondering why such a weird timing to go for hotel stay right in the middle of the ocip. But after wearing the same bermudas for so many days(i refused to wear my jeans that i have brought, they were too warm and thick for a 38 degree celsius weather), i was relieved to be able to stay in the hotel to wash my berms and other clothes. Earlier on, when i was packing my luggage to go to kampong cham , i discovered 2 cockroaches in my luggages. So i was desperate to wash my clothes at the hotel before going back to the village.

At kampong Cham, we carried out the rice-soup programme whereby we delivered 80 sausage bread with eggs to the less fortunate children. Some of the places we visited: slums, rubbish dumps, HIV home.

Visiting the rubbish dump and slums really gave me a shock. I have watched on tv how poor the children are living in dumps and slums, but it is the first hand experience, standing in the rubbish dump and slum that affected me.  Some of the children walked barefooted in the slums and there were glass lying about. The glass were from the alcohol glass bottle that the adults threw on the ground.

Before going to the slums and dumps , i thought that the villagers were not as privileged as us. But after going to the slums and dumps, i realised that the villagers are much much more privileged as compared to the people living at the slums and dumps.

If the people living at the slums and dumps were to stay in the village, it would be like a hotel for them.

When handling out the bread, i felt very helpless and useless. What could i do other than just handling bread to them? Is there a way we, as students, with no income, can help them?

If you ask me if i would return, there is a possibility. Its just a matter if i have the money, and time to do so.

After that,we had a short R&R, we visited the Man-Hill and the Expressway.

The last place we went to for the day was the Boys Home. I am not quite sure how it works, i dont know the students are there for what reason. But i think it works differently from the Boys Home in Singapore. If you know what i mean.

It was also at this place, i realised the fragility of life. One of my friends collapsed , i saw her fingers stiffening at odd angles and i felt something was very wrong. She couldnt stand up and was later on, sent to the clinic and put on IV drip. It was chaotic when it happened, the children were shocked and crowded around trying to figure out what was going on. If i was the one, i would be very frightened, falling terribly ill in a foreign country, coupled with limited access to internet and a less developed country, it would have been a total disaster for me. But thankfully, she recovered speedily. phew.

As normal classes have resumed, and with a lot of spare time, we did painting for the school during our spare time. On occasions where we had to do teaching but painting has yet to be finished, we split ourselves into 2 teams. One team to do teaching while the other to complete the painting. Before painting, we had to sandpaper the wall, it was damn dirty and required a lot of strength. My arms were super tired from it. And as we sand, we could finally see some whites in the wall. Before that ,the wall was completely brown.

Sometime when we walk from the girls’ dorm to the guys’ dorm, we will pass by many villagers’ home. And children will be playing nearby. Whenever we pass by, they would greet us. Sometime they would make gifts for us. Bracelets made of flowers, necklaces, rings from the girls and bouquets of flowers from the little boys. 

Everytime i receive the small little gifts, i would be super happy. It is not the monetary value of the gift. Its the sincerity from them, the children thinking of us when they made the gifts.the many little gifts from the children, its a pity i couldnt keep it as the flowers started to rot as time pases. But i kept one with me cos it was dry and was connected together by a wire.

Today marks the last day of us teaching the children. In the morning, we blew some balloons and played with the children in the house before going to school to conduct our final lesson.

so heres a photo with him!