The Easter Visit

The Tiger Foundation in Cambodia
My recent trip to Cambodia with my brother Mark over the Easter break was always going to be confronting and rushed, however I wanted to observe first hand what the conditions and challenges were for the “Tiger Foundation”. By visiting the area myself I could also better understand what support could be offered by the many people who said to me before my departure “tell me what I can do to help”.
We flew into Phomn Penh on Easter Friday – given it was already dark we could only see a little of the city and headed straight to our hotel for a much needed meal and shower. “Raffles Hotel” it was, so not much in the way of roughing it our first night!
Next morning was an early start as we climbed into our pre-booked car and headed off along the main (and pretty much only) road towards our destination in Kampong Province.
The road was as you would expect, similar to others in more remote areas of Thailand and Vietnam, quite chaotic - driving in amongst bullocks pulling carts packed to overflowing with all manner of things, entire families travelling perilously on small cc motorbikes – the best I saw was one mother breast feeding as they drove at about 60km an hour along the road with 2 other kids on the bike and Dad oblivious to everything happening behind him, focused on driving his family to their destination.
The journey took about 3 hrs and at around 10am we pulled into “our school” – Aknuwat School in Kampong Thom village. The school was much as I expected, in need of a paint, barren grounds with large patches of dust and some ramshackle side buildings - more ruins than useful buildings, a scattering of sad looking trees and a few small patches of colour with some potted plants that were clearly suffering under the pale blue/grey skies and scorching sun.
As we pulled up, we were greeted enthusiastically by a group of teachers – including headmistress Molly. We were taken inside to her office, which doubles up as a teachers’ room and I am sure all manner of other things. Surrounding us on the walls were old blackboards, so well used they had turned shiny and were almost impossible to write on (I know because I tried). The school roll was kept on one of these boards, specifying the number of kindergarten and also primary school children. Over 1,000 in all, listed in detail and with numbers next to each class – no computer records here!!
We sat with our interpreter (one of the teachers at the school) and began to “converse” with the teachers. My brother, Mark having been there a few times before was well known to them all and gave them an update on progress around planned projects and new ideas he’d had since his last visit. The teachers listened intently and were clearly engaged with plans to improve their situation.
Next, we walked around the perimeter of the school grounds. The temperature was in the mid 40’s and there was not a breath of wind – stifling hot. The grounds were pathetic, barely any shade, a terrible stench from the 3 toilets for over 1,000 kids and a pile of rubbish behind the school together with more dust. There was just no respite from the heat. The grounds offered no place for kids to congregate, play or just be – it was just too hot and too inhospitable. We checked out the storm water drains that run down the side of the grounds, and could clearly see they were completely inadequate for what must be a deluge of water during the wet season. This is the main reason the school grounds flood every year, rendering the grounds completely useless for play or school activities in that season also. There is a fairly major engineering project required to re-route and re-engineer the area to divert the flood water. Until that is completed nothing much can be done to improve the grounds usefulness. My brother has this as his top priority and is working with local and Singapore based people to get a plan together to do the work. Next a visit to the local well, the source of the school’s drinking water. I looked down the well and all I could see was what appeared to be an oil slick and some indescribable things floating on the top. The only filtering process this water goes through is into a terracotta flower pot (provided by UNICEF) and then straight into plastic water containers for drinking. I watched as Molly the headmistress took some water from this container and thought “my god what is she drinking in that concoction?” They of course think it’s clean and I guess comparatively speaking it is. Oh how they would love access to the waters of Warragamba Dam!!
The school children came out of class en-mass post our walk around. Seemingly a never ending flow of them, holding hands, walking around, forming small groups and congregating as children tend to do. There was nowhere to sit in the shade, little in the way of play equipment and what there was – was rusted and dangerous. In summary, school grounds bereft of anything that resembled a playground or a place where children would want to engage in games, chatter or anything similar. The grounds are so inhospitable and the sun so hot, that children are sent home over the lunch break. Since they come from between 1km and 7km away, parents (and in a lot of cases grandparents) have to come and collect them on pushbikes and motorbikes. They go home and come back again at 2pm. While the kids were away, I took an impromptu English lesson with the teachers and Molly, trying to make them laugh by writing on the board and telling a few stories with it. I was so hot, I was nearly dying but they live in these conditions every day so I just kept drinking from my water bottle and enduring.
Next, we went over the road to see Polly – a local woman whom with her husband’s support has built a teacher training school. There we met about a dozen young men and about the same number of women, who had come in from regional and rural areas to undertake teacher training in an effort to boost teacher numbers. They train under the watchful eye of teachers at “our” school across the road. Their living conditions are absolutely terrible. The dormitory they live in is literally falling down, I had to watch my step as I went up the rickety steps and then edged along the deck as it had rotted floorboards and was full of holes. There were 8 or so to a room, no ventilation and a tin shack which doubled up as a toilet and laundry, its roof was blowing precariously in the wind when we were there, would be great in the monsoonal rains having to perform your ablutions in those conditions!!
The kitchen facilities looked like hell, with birds nests in the rafters and the walls filthy with dust. A relatively clean plastic table cloth sticky-taped to the communal dining table was all the colour and only attempt at brightening up this abysmal scene that I could find.
These trainees are paid US$3 per day – they are the future of this country and not surprisingly the “drop out” rate is high as they miss their families and often head back home to help out or go off to the city to work as a factory worker as the pay is better.
When the children returned from the lunch break, I started to hand out the Easter eggs (not the best treat I could have come up with as they were melting in the heat) and some small koala bears I bought at duty free. They loved these and the 60 or so I bought soon went, I wish I had a suitcase of them, it felt so inconsequential but just seeing their little faces when they got a small gift was priceless. During this, we noticed a small girl crying while holding the hand of another and we asked the translator to ask her what was wrong. She told the interpreter “I am hungry”. That just about did it for me. I looked around and wondered how many other little bellies (just back from lunch) were empty because there was just no food. We managed to get her some dry bread to help in the short term. The diet here is largely rice as Cambodia has to import 80% of its vegetables from Vietnam and as such children get little or no protein and no vitamins and minerals. Vegetables are not cheap and rice makes you feel full so that’s what they eat. Dental decay is rife and general health very poor. Average life expectancy early 50’s……60% of Cambodia’s population is under 15 years – and what of their future? It’s not great from what I saw.
It was clear to me that focusing on the schools and influencing the younger generation through education in the areas of nutrition, hygiene, play etc is key.
I am even more convinced of this now and I am keen to do my part. I am working with a WA company to build some sun shades which we can get shipped to the school thereby providing some much needed shade for the children. I am also liaising with one of the inventors from the ABC’s ‘New Inventors” program who has devised a below ground waste management system for use in third world countries. My brother is working with “Room to Read” – an ex VP of Microsoft who is now running this program full time. He is also working with engineers and architects in Singapore who are volunteering their time to come up with solutions for the other issues in these categories. Mark thinks he has also found 2 teachers (experienced in developing countries) who are prepared to go to the school for some months to spent time supervising some of our early initiatives and to provide English tutorage to the local teachers amongst other things.
What do we need? Well yes – donations will help as we have plans for a number of initiatives in the areas of engineering, clean water, sanitation and waste management. We are looking to be as environmentally friendly as we can in our endeavours and already have some great people working with us out of Singapore on some of these projects. But we also need volunteers, including people who are well connected and have people they know who might be able to help in the areas I have outlined.
My next communication will be to provide more detail around some of the initiatives we have planned and also of our plans for the Australian chapter of ‘The Tiger Foundation” – which I will head up.
Let me know if you would like to be involved and I will invite you to our first meeting and/or just keep you in the loop re our progress via email. If I don’t hear back from you that’s fine too, I just hope that by reading this – the least I will have done is to make each and every one of you be a little more grateful for the life we have here in Australia and to make you more aware that we can make a difference if we choose to do so.
Thanks for “listening”.
Sandra