Take-Aways

I am staying two nights with Don and his lovely Cambodian wife Kreagh on a small village outside Kampog Cham. This is one of those impromptu and completely unplanned detours. Part of an effort to find inspiration and experience new things. Ii found out about this homestay on a little faded poster photocopy at my guesthouse in Kratie. It intrigued me. It claimed to be an authentic glimpse at rural life in Cambodia as well as an opportunity to talk to survivors of the country’s turbulent and disturbing history. It is all that. Even disturbingly so. It is not a picture perfect postcard of a little hut in a village, glossed over and beautified by organised tourism. It’s staying at a family’s house. A family that lives next to the highway, that is the product of a mixed marriage with all the difficulty and challenge that represents, a family that does not have a lot of means but has a common project. To share the reality of their lives with the outside world. When I first got here, I was the only guest. I must admit that I panicked. I could not imagine how I would spend the two days I allotted to this place. I felt a bit awkward, an intruder. Then a lovely other couple arrived. Nicole and Benoit. She is South African and he is French and they look great together. At least the pressure was off me. It takes time to feel at home, to get into another person’s life. But Don is a good American. One of those that talks enough to put you at your ease. That answers and encourages questions. That honestly shares the reality of his life. And Kreagh is just beautiful, a sparkling reed of energy. She speaks exceptional English in a voice as clear as a bell rolling the “r”s as in her native language. Her eyes that light up when she smiles and eveb more when she discusses her experience during the Pol Pot years. She was only a child then, when she was sent to forced labour. Now she can laugh about the heavy stones she had to carry every day to build a damn that was never of any use. She laughs at the porridge they got to eat twice a day and at the fact that they added any sort of leaf they could find to make it more palatable. She remembers how she got punished for trying to steal food by being made to work at night and being scared by the sounds of the wolves howling. She also remembers the friend that stuck with her and how they always tried to help each other. All this we find out in a session that Don organises. Somethingg like an informal chat with Kreagh and her mother. Kreagh acts as interpreter and we get to ask her mother questions, about anything. What was the worse things you experienced during the Khmer Rouge years. Being apart from my family she says. Can you remember anything that was good during that time, anything that gave you hope? No she says, there was nothing. The next day, we learn some more of the bleak reality of life in rural Cambodia by talking to Kreagh’s sister who is a school teacher. She remembers with excitement the time she was sent to Vietnam as part of a delegation to observe a model school. It was exciting and fun to be treated like a special foreign dignitary but there is nothing she saw there that she could apply. That school had computers and spotless classrooms. She has 56 children from 10-14 years old in her class and no parent really wants them there. Teachers get paid a pittance and children get an education they never see the value of. They will never get out of a farmer’s life and anyway there is nothing to read. It is a sad country, a hopeless place. NGOs do they help or do they make the matters worse? They do not empower people. They make then feel like they do nothing on their own and they make the fact cats fatter. What is the solution then? As always, grassroots action. Pick a cause and help at the micro level, one person at a time. For those interested to see more about Dom's homestay http://rana-cambodia.blogspot.com/