Cambodian Monday at Khnar Char School

It is Monday. The Cambodian sun shines. Skies are once again blue. A troupe of tuk tuks potter out of Siem Reap city heading for the countryside. Again the roads are dusty. One of my Chinese companions manipulates her green checkered Cambodian scarf, wedges it behind her large sunglasses, and masks the dusty, warming air. The further out we go from Siem Reap, the worse the roads are. The stretch of road immediately before the school we are visiting today, is laden with craters, it’s like we are rinding moon-buggies, but tuk tuks have little or no suspension. We bounce with every bump, slide with every swerve, and truly experience the questionable delights of Cambodian road transport.

Khnar Char School is an old friend to Colors of Cambodia, My partner has been teaching there as a volunteer, for years, but it is a new one for the sponsoring of children’s education. Recently taken on, Colors of Cambodia now supports 77 children at the school. Today we come to see those children and give them blue ‘goodie bags’ full of school equipment and clothing. Firstly, a classroom is organised. The children line up in two rows - girls and boys. They wait patiently in line, some wearing shoes, some not. White blouses and white shirts are no longer white, but grey or browning with stain from the reddened earth. Blue shorts are loose, threatening to drop with each step, or simply by waiting in line. One girl has a prosthetic leg. The children all have identically coloured hair and eyes.

The children are led into the classroom, seated. Colors of Cambodia volunteers help the children place their names on ‘thank you’ cards that have their photo, ready to send to the sponsors. Seney, our art teacher, writes what is required of the children on the blackboard, encourages the children to colour in small pictures and to add stickers, to make it all more personal. Eager children dive into their given bags, pull out small bags of school equipment - rubbers, rulers, coloured pencils etc. They investigate the clothing, comparing them, looking at others, seeing what they have. Everyone is busy with their bags, too busy to notice the growing crowd of children peering through the iron bars at the school windows. Those children are not sponsored and therefore ineligible for such bags, and attention.

Outside it is break-time for some children. A group of boys play kick-fighting in the dusty, leaf strewn playground, emulating films, TV. They smile, happily, under the imposing Cambodian sun. Mostly the children play barefoot. Rubber slippers are discarded all over the patch of grassless ground, to be collected before class for those that have them. 

Towards the rear of the ‘school yard’ are vegetable beds, neatly placed into rows with shoots just visible as plants. Elsewhere around the school are raised beds with some small bushes and flowering shrubs. It is all very basic, simple, easy to maintain. A small ‘tuck shop’ is adjacent to the last classroom. Like those in other Cambodian schools we have visited, it is staffed by a woman with small children. It sells some Western items - crisps of many varieties, and locally made jellies and other morsels or savoury snacks for momentarily hungry children.

 I sit and watch young girls playing. They sport small gold looking earrings, ‘Hello Kitty’ embroidered blouses, and one - a small craft made bag. She is a little smaller than the others. Her eyes are bright, intelligent. As I sit on a concrete seat, in the playground, she approaches me. Other children gather too, and watch as I write. She starts to read my writing, aloud, in English, stopping for me to prompt her when she had difficulty, not with English, but with my handwriting. The others copy her. Soon I have a large group of small children gathered around me, reading what I write. I write more carefully to help them read. That young girl presents me with a thin green book. In good English she asks me to read to them all. I am a little overcome with emotion. The moment is too beautiful for my clumsy words.

The book - Reading Books 2011 - The World of Stories - Phnom Doh Kromon is in dual language - Khmer and English. The children listen intently as I read to them, correcting me when I mispronounce the Khmer names, repeating after me as I read the English. When I stop, the girl thanks me most politely in English then Khmer. Another child places a small bunch of picked yellow flowers on my thigh, as I sit. Another, a boy, not to be outdone, goes off and comes back with a mixture of small yellow and pink flowers, which he has inserted into a straw to make a posy. He presents it to me and I almost cry, it is so touching. The school bell rings and the children have to go to class. I walk back to the waiting tuk tuks wearing the small posy in my hatband. My friends and my wife have many questions. I tell them this story.