Koh Ker and Srayang

The definite highlight of my Cambodian experience was a day trip we did to Koh Ker 125 kms north-east of Siem Reap. This is the ‘real’ Cambodia that most tourists don’t see. Sparsely populated, much of the region is covered in jungle. It was once the capital of the Khmer empire and is a developing tourist attraction with many ancient temples, although not yet fully de-mined.

However, seeing temples wasn’t our goal for the day. Feeding some of the local children was. The average monthly income for Cambodian rural families is $2. Twice a month, two PLF vans loaded high with lunch supplies and equipment (paid for with donations), leave Siem Reap at six in the morning for a three hour journey on half-formed roads and narrow dirt tracks through villages impassable in the wet season with little traffic other than bikes and scooters, for the primary school at Koh Ker.

This is another of the Foundation’s ‘adopted’ schools.  When they first got involved, teachers were sick with disease and the kids were starving to death. First, health care was set up and now the focus is on feeding and educating. At present donations allow lunch to be provided twice a month, usually noodles, vegetables and chicken. Everyone joins in on the preparations – school children, local women, Ponheary’s sister and the van drivers.

Once cooked, we filled plastic buckets with the steaming noodles, took them around the classrooms  and ladled them into the kids’ bowls which they keep under their desk. The kids are tiny, thin and serious, intent on their food and shovelling as much in as they can. Some of them have brought a baby brother or sister along. Time after time they raise their hand for more. There is complete silence. They look at me with their huge brown eyes, but there is little response or connection. Food is the priority.

After lunch our next stop was Srayang about ten kilometres away where there is a high school and where next door, the PLF has built a communal living complex to provide accommodation for teenagers from the village who were living in unsafe situations at home and who did not have the means to get to high school. Thirty-two boys and girls live in dormitories, cook, shop, clean, keep house and grow vegetables together, and attend the high school just down the road.

A ‘house mother’ lives on site along with Canadian volunteer, Torsten Tabel, who takes English lessons and mentors the kids. You have to go there to appreciate his generosity of spirit. He is living in basic conditions, in extreme heat and in the middle of absolutely nowhere. He has a bicycle, infrequent visitors and no hope of any friends or social life.

But, the kids are thriving. In the safety of this sanctuary, they are free to learn and to dream of where they might go from here. The girls proudly show me around their spartan living quarters, eight to a room, nothing in it but the bunks they sleep on. Many engage me in conversation in their rapidly improving English. Something about them touches my heart. They have been through so much and have so little yet a remarkable strength still burns within them.

A quote from Torsten’s blog says it all:

I’ve learned a great amount from these 32 students about what it’s like to come from a place where there was very little future beyond their immediate surroundings. Now they are looking at the world in a different light because the light within them is shining through. They are changing their world in a way I find hard to put words to.

It is the most powerful experience to witness and be a part of. Their radiance and confidence to face this new world is evident each time a visitor shows up. Providing a setting like the PLF Canada dorm for these students to have the freedom to grow into themselves is paramount in breaking the cycles many of them  were born into. When you give someone space free of worry about shelter and food, you open the door to the horizon. These students here in Srayang are proof of what happens when people are given access to those opportunities.

My trip to Koh Ker and Srayang with the PLF the day before I left the country really summed up for me my whole experience there: crazy, hot, uncomfortable, mind-blowing, frustrating, totally humbling and so emotional. It didn’t take long for Cambodia and its people to find their way into my heart and I’m not sure they’ll be letting go any time soon.