My new home for a month!

As is the way with travelling, sometimes great opportunities present themselves which cause all current plans to go out of the window. Whilst in Phnom Penh, I was told about a school and orphanage about 7km from the city centre which was looking for volunteers. I decided to check it out for a day, and fell in love with the place and the children. The NGO is called SCAO (Save Poor Children In Asia Organization), and I have been living and working there for the last two weeks, and plan to stay for a month in total.

It is an orphanage and school in which 17 children who are either orphans or from very poor families live and nearly 200 children from the

local area come to learn English. It is run by a Cambodian family and

the father and director Mr Samith is an orphan himself who wants the lives of poor and orphaned children to be different to how his was growing up. The school is very basic, with a dirt floor and tarps for walls but it is a great place and it is helping many Cambodian kids get a leg up out of the poverty they live in. I have been teaching for 4-5 hours per day, everything from ABC to much more complicated grammatical rules. The students range from 3-24 years old, but all have the common goal on bettering their futures by learning English. Behaviour is so much better than children back in England, it’s incredible how enthusiatic they are to learn even though the recources are so limited.

At the centre, there are currently 4 of us volunteers living with the children and family, and getting fed some serious amounts of rice each day (yes, for breakfast, lunch and dinner!!). It feels like such a big family, I’m really glad I heard about the place and had the time to stop and do some teaching.

At the moment SCAO is about to open a second school and community centre further out of Phnom Penh in the countryside. It will reach a further 450 or so children and be a great centre for the local community. All of the projects are supported purely by fundraising, so any donations that any of you could make would be massively appreciated.

If you want to know more and see what the lovely children, school and centre look like, have a look at the facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/SaveChildrenInAsia or the website http://www.savechildreninasia.org/. .
 

Phnom Penh

I've only been in Phnom Penh for a day but feel the need to write about what I've seen. Today I took a tuk-tuk to the killing fields and S-21 (the prison used by Khmer Rouge for torture and interrogation). I've never been to Auschwitz but I can imagine that it has a similar feel - the evil that had been there was still looming over the area. These are a few of the facts I learnt today (not for the faint-hearted):

In Cheoung Ek (the killing fields), 8,895 bodies have been found so far. The largest mass grave had over 450 bodies found in it. One of the mass graves was full of bodies of women and children. The children and babies were often killed by hitting their heads against the tree next to the grave, they were then throw in with their mother. In the centre of the killing fields, a large stupa has been erected which contains around 5,00 skulls. You can get really close up to them so that you can actually see how they died- a lot of them had cracked skulls from being blugeoned to death. The KR rarely shot prisoners as they needed to conserve bullets.

In Tuol Sleng (otherwise known as S-21) only 7 of the 20,000 prisoners survived. Some were killed at the prison, most were taken to Cheoung Ek to be killed. A lot of the prisoners were women and children. The prison is particuarly haunting as it has been barely altered since it was closed in 1979, except that the mug shots of all the prisoners are now on the walls, as well as many pictures of the prisoners just after they died. There are different cell blocks there, some of which had large rooms which held 30 or more prisoners, others which had been seperated with brick or wood walls to create tiny claustrophobic cells. The way that the 7 prisoners who survived did survive is because their skills were needed. For instance, one of the prisoners was called upon to paint a picture of Pol Pot. As he entered the painting room, there were the corpses of other painters whose work had been deemed inadequate. Luckily, the survivor painted well enough to be kept alive to paint portraits of the top KR officials until the Vietnamese forced evactuation from the prison.

I find it absolutely mind-boggling that the Khmer Rouge were allowed to commit these acts of genocide without any retribution from the international community. In the 1970's, there were only around 7 million people in Cambodia, and the KR killed 2-3 million of them, targeting in particular intellectuals (to the point were someone would be executed if they wore glasses, as this was seen as a sign of intellect).The KR were even allowed to represent the Democratic Kampuchea at UN meetings, so the murderers were representing their victims. Pol Pot was never tried, and died in Thailand in 1998. So far, only one of the top ranking officials (the chief of S-21) has even admitted guilt, and he was given a measly 35 year jail sentence for his crimes. The trials of 4 other top ranking members of the KR are still taking place now. Crazy.

Mekong Delta to Cambodia

Instead of taking the typical bus route from Saigon to Phnom Penh, we instead decided on a 3 day Mekong Delta trip to get us to the Vietnam-Cambodia border and then to go south first before going to the cities. The Mekong delta was quite interesting, we went to a floating market, which was basically hundreds of boats full of fruit, veg and whatever else anyone had to sell. On our first night of the trip, we stayed in a homestay, very basic accommodation but we had a fantastic meal, with fresh spring rolls and a massive fish caught that day, delicious!

The good food continued as we crossed the border. No more bland pho for me! Although also no more bia hoi, regrettably. Vietnam was a brilliant 3 weeks of this trip, I have so many funny memories!

We arrived in Kampot after a couple of hours bumping along non-existant roads from the border. It was a quiet riverside town, with the outlying areas being very rural, quite a change from Vietnam. Oh and there are loads of cows again, its a bit like being back in India! I've been eating so much fish since arriving in Cambodia. Fish amok is one of the most classic Khmer dishes, it tastes a bit like Thai green curry (so of course it's divine!).

I'm now in Sihanoukville, a gorgeous beach town with an awful lot of cheap food and drink. Last night I went to see 'Dr Fish' - one of those tanks full of fish that bite all the old skin off your feet. My feet are as smooth and clean as babies feet now, it's incredible! Quite an unpleasant experience (don't try it if you're ticklish!) but well worth it. All that remains to be said is that so far, so good for Cambodia!