Phnom Da 1/19

Today was a very eventful day. Chenna and his wife Sophal picked us up in the morning to drive to the village. After three hours of a very bumpy and dusty drive, the last 20 minutes of which was on a terribly uneven dirt path which is only drivable during the dry season, we arrived at a little settlement of a few houses and two totally dilapidated small (one classroom) school buildings. One was wooden and the other was a brick building with a plaque announcing that it was a gift from the government of Japan built in 2000. We had a conversation with two teachers who told us that they have no curriculum, no materials and they both teach two groups of students at the same time. What bothered me was that the classrooms were dirty, ugly and disorganized. In my book, it doesn’t take money to keep a place clean and organized and beautified with students’ work. Luckily it turned out that these were not the schools we were going to renovate. After this visit, we unloaded school supplies, bread, water and other gifts from our car to a boat, which took us a couple of miles down the river to another small community. When we got out of the boat, we saw a gathering in front of a big and even more dilapidated school building. Obviously the village prepared for our arrival. School children were sitting in rows and there was a long table for us to sit at, and behind our chairs there were about 10 local dignitaries, including the village chief. There was even a microphone there hooked up to a car battery (the village has no electricity) and a huge megaphone. Chenna introduced us to the village chief and then speeches began. First to speak was the village chief, who talked about the community, people who live in it and the school situation. Then Laurie spoke and Chenna translated. When she finished, the village chief came up to the microphone to thank her and he was wiping off tears. Then we started distributing bread, water and the gifts for kids. The kids were great – very polite, respectful, well behaved and sooo cute. Then the chief, the teacher and school director gave us the “tour” of the unusable school building. Three temporary classrooms have been set up in front of it by putting up a canvas “roof” and dividing “walls” with a blackboard on each “wall”. It probably works OK in a dry and cool season, but not in the hot and wet season. After the tour, we took the boat again, this time to the house of the village chief who invited us to have lunch in his place. We brought food with us (Chenna got up at 4 am to cook it) so we set it up on a table under a tree in front of the chief’s house. His wife brought some additional dishes and we started the feast. We had 5 or 6 different dishes, including two kinds of fried fish, veggies with salty fish, pork with veggies, duck with some unusual spices and our absolute favorite – sticky rice with mango. Chief’s 5 dogs accompanied us. One of them just had 3 tiny puppies, and under a tree nearby was a water buffalo cow with a day old baby. Unfortunately, all the animals looked rather malnourished. Fortified with food, we took the boat back to the place where our car was parked and drove to Phnom Da. We stopped there for just 15 minutes so I could walk up to the top of the hill where the oldest temple in Cambodia is located. It’s older than Angkor Wat, but not many people visit it. Then back to Phnom Penh on the same bumpy and dusty road.