Cambodia Day 2

Tiredness was still blowing through the windmill vanes of ours minds. Reluctantly we arose to catch a breakfast that we really wish we had not, at the hotel, before heading off in a rickety tuk tuk to a school we help sponsor, near Siem Reap airport.

Breakfast at Tan Kang Angkor hotel was a most unusual mixture of impoverished British seaside B&B, and an equally impoverished, not to say forlorn, Chinese eatery, where customers had long since ceased visiting. The kindest thing I could say about the hotel breakfast was that it was just, barely, edible if you were desperate enough to consider doing so.

It was the usual Cambodian journey, passed roadside sellers of bottled petrol, mushrooming hotels and posters proclaiming this or that political party to be the one choice for the people of Cambodia. Thai Zo school was down a dirt track off the main road. It was built by a Japanese company to educate children in that very rural area. The children were having a school break when we visited, but the art class children came as usual, and a couple of dozen children milled around helping to clean the school grounds. While my wife diligently helped Colors of Cambodia art teacher Narong teach the children the wonders of ‘sand art’, I took photographs for our records and wandered at will around the very functional shoebox like school.

It was the rainy season. It had rained when we arrived. It rained the previous lunchtime and evening. Rain had accompanied our breakfast with large drops splashing into the dolphin tiled swimming pool. This had slightly delayed our start, but at the school all we experienced were grey clouds and a distinct lack of sun. It was just as well, as the tuk tuk ride would not have been as pleasant in rain. The overall temperature was much cooler than my previous visit, almost bearable. 

Having snapped away at all that needed snapping away at, I sat with the two school Headmasters (elementary and secondary), a collection of teachers and our guide/interpreter Saroeun. Idly, as Sarouen translated, I watched a small group of girls playing Lort Koe Su. Lort Koe Su (Khmer) is a jumping game where the jumper has to kick a stretched string, or elastic, held aloft by two children. The string gets higher and higher until it is eventually held at arms length, and the jumpers leap to touch it. The girls were of all sizes, big and small, younger and older, but it was one small girl, her rubber slippers in hand and ponytail lashing out as she jumped, who eventually beat all the others. 

The game wound down. Those children dispersed. Some wandered off to the classroom where my wife has been volunteer teaching, on and off, for over five years now. Other children continued to tidy the grounds, unsupervised, in between bouts of play. Within minutes some of the girls returned. They pressed their treasures - packets of ‘sand art’, to their immature chests while chatting furiously, and beaming radiant smiles at each other. 

As I sat, the teachers drafted proposals for things the school was in need of - a new floor for classrooms, computers for when electricity eventually reaches the school and playground equipment for the elementary school, which has none. As I was digesting the school’s needs, I watched as a cowherd sauntered through the school grounds, bringing three white Asian cows with him. He was on his way to collect the fourth, which had been laying at the far end of the school playing field. I had to remind myself of the differences in school life in Cambodia, Malaysia and in Britain - where few city children had actually seen a cow, let alone four within their school’s playing fields.