Help The Children

This week I want to talk about a topic that I care a lot about. The education system in Cambodia. Yesterday Chanthou asked me to help her with her English homework for university. It was a text that she had to translate and couldn’t understand. It was so full of mistakes, it made my stomach turn. I asked Chanthou where she got the text from and she said her teacher had written it himself. Just to give you an idea about it, here are some sentences:”Strong as lion, like eagle, like tiger you be and reach the horizon.”, “Like mother of yours able bear hard, painful sorrow when she give birth to you, do the same, hard challenge in life mean get the success.” and “Don’t walk with your friends, they have boyfriend, play the facebook, go out to drink from beer. Walk alone, walk to your good thought and to your hard work alone.” I was thinking by myself, that it was really no surprise that she couldn’t translate it. That is exactly the reason, why the children live under such an intense pressure. Additonally there is no way they could learn English, reading a text like this. The truth is, that children are either caught up in this system, studying and trying their best or fail and stop caring at all. Because of that I try to get them to read, sing and act in English. To show the children that learning should not be combined with constant threat and horror. I honestly only began to learn English, when I finally got an English teacher that made me love going into the lessons instead of filling my head with complicated grammar rules that I was about to forget sooner or later. One of my students said to me, he always dreamed about going on a field trip with school, but this is of course not possible. Just as they are not doing any experiments, group work, presentations… all kind of things that make students become interested in a topic and offer social skills that are needed for later life. Schools have no libraries, the classrooms are filled with way to many students and subjects like art or music are not even on the course schedule.

Every time I ask my students what they have planned for the weekend, they tell me that they are going to study part-time. I never heard of this expression before I came to Cambodia, but since then I happen to hear it nearly every day. After some time had passed, I noted it even as being the children’s most “popular” free time activity. They are going back to school, after they finished school, even on Sunday, and study the things that they should have learned in the actual lessons. One might think they only study the subjects that they have difficulties in, like some kind of tutoring, but this is not the case at all. Whenever I ask my students what they like to do for fun, what their hobbies are, they tell me they either study or do housework. Sounds like a quite depressing childhood, doesn’t it? One might ask now why they spend all their time doing things Western children need to be threatened to do. The answer lies in the depths of Cambodia’s broken and corrupt government. Teachers are never getting paid enough, what leads to them coming late for the lessons, because everyone has about three jobs besides teaching. Sometimes they don’t show up to class at all. One of my students told me she would love to play some sports, football or volleyball, but the sports teacher maybe comes twice a year – if they are lucky. In the actual classes the children are taught close to nothing, the teachers just don’t care. Their own life is complicated enough, their own children have difficulties. Most of the students have a destined future, before they are even born. They will work in the factories or become farmers. They don’t bother to change their life, their parents don’t bother, the government doesn’t bother, so why should the teachers? The ones that actually want to pass a test, need to study part-time. Extra classes that the teachers offer, besides the regular hours that cost so much, that most parents can’t afford it. In these classes the teachers are providing the information’s about the exams and actually teach – sometimes. This means that the children are hanging around in school all morning and early afternoon, learning close to nothing, just to actually study in the afternoon, when they can afford it, to come home totally exhausted, not able to do homework or review as they need to help in the house. It is a crazy system and the government is doing nothing to stop it. Claiming to be a democratic country, with a government that sells the land of Cambodia’s farmers to Chinese enterprises, a ruling party that occupies every inch of national road number 2 with advertisement for them and a prime minister that is since over 30 years “democratically” elected, sending his opposition leader to prison. Where is the hope for Cambodia’s children, the new nation that has to transform the country into a nation that is actually able to compete on an international level?

This year 80 per cent of Cambodia’s twelve grade students failed their exam. It seems like nobody actually learned, or wasn’t prepared enough, for the most important test in early adulthood. It was surprisingly the first time since the beginning of the Lon Nol era that it wasn’t possible to cheat. Unbelievingly but true, the government had provided intense security measurements to prevent the children form cheating. Policeman were barricading the classrooms, nobody could have a mobile phone, in some classrooms there were cameras installed… After there had been cases of parents throwing rocks with the answers wrapped around stones through the classroom windows in the past years, there suddenly came a wind of change. And it is encouraging! The incredible number of failures showed the government that they have a problem, even bigger than they always suspected and that something needs to change. The universities protested because of their lack of new students and parents of high-ranking political heads claimed their right of corruption. The test was repeated. It was officially announced that it would be the only time and for the next year the students either had to begin to study seriously, or fail. Naturally this should also include the teachers that would have to start actually preparing ALL their students for the exam. It is a small step, but at least there is change. The beginning of the new school year was postponed for a full month, not only for the eleventh graders, but for every single child in Cambodia and the test was repeated. The results were still not sunny, but better. Hopefully this drama made some people realize, that there is something fundamentally wrong with Cambodia’s education system.

I can only quote a girl that I talked with this week. She studies English literature since two years in the local university and her teachers are all talking Khmer. She told me, since she began to study she knows nothing more than since she graduated. This is actually frightening. Another boy that studies history in Phnom Penh said he learns all about the glorious ancient history of the Angkor period, but when it comes to the Khmer Rouge, the “k’mai gra-horm”, the information is denied or hard to find. It’s like a curtain of silence was layer over that period, because nobody wants, or is not allowed to remember. I could begin to talk about all the people that suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and get no support or the important Khmer rouge leaders that just continued working for the government, claiming that their crimes against humanity were only committed to save their own families. But this is another topic that should just show how little knowledge about important topics is actually accessible to the public.

The only way to change Cambodia, to stop poverty and despair, is to educate the children. Like Nelson Mandela said: “Education is the most powerful weapon we have to change this world”. Education is one of the few things, nobody will ever be able to take away from you. It’s a human right. And all of us should stand up for it. There is no freedom until we are equal and no equality as long as there is not a good education for every child on this earth.

There is a very organized business of people selling children from the countryside to the big city. The families have no money and can’t afford to spend the little they have on their children, so they sell them for amounts of around 50 Dollar to Phnom Penh where they begin to work for organized street gangs. They are being taught basic English skills and sent on the streets to beg. They sell flowers or ribbons or postcards. Sometimes they carry little babies on their arms, asking for milk. Never far away is one of the bosses of the organization who is organizing the trade and collecting the money afterwards. At night time the children just run around free, sleep in abandoned houses and search for food. They always return to work the next day, as this is the only routine they know, the only stability in their lives. The organization “Friends” in Phnom Penh tries to get these children off the street. They offer education, a home and food to them. A save environment in which they can grow up. With all their efforts, they managed to get around two per cent of the children off the streets. The reason is, that the children have their gangs, the influence of their peers, their freedom and months and months of a living where nobody told them what to do and how to act. They are wild and have no behaviour, they take drugs, they are mentally and physically abused many times. They are outcasts from society, distrusting and have never experienced love. Some realities are more cruel than other realities. Seeing a crowd of 10 little boys, running bare feet trough the streets of Phnom Penh at day time might not seem concerning, what happens at night time, is something entirely different.

So what can we really do to stop this? First of all, we need to learn. There can be loads of money and smiling ladies in beautiful costumes that open up school buildings, donate books, games and footballs for the children, what happens is, that dependence is created. Like Daniela Papi said: “Buildings don’t teach children, people do.” Before we decide to drop something in a community that we are unfamiliar with, when we actually want to help the people and give them something lasting that makes an impact, we need to learn. So many organizations come into development countries and send volunteers that stay for a short time, building wells or shelters, taking pictures with the children to post them on facebook and instagram before they leave again to their comfortable life. What happens to the things they leave in the community? The people will use them, until eventually something breaks, books get lost or the football has a hole and looses air. Locals won’t go and repair the things, they might not know how to, or they have their own lives to worry about. They instead wait until help comes again and they get new things donated. This is what happened in Africa. So many years of foreign aid completely destroyed the country, organizations came to bring food and water, donating clothes… all these things didn’t last, instead they took the peoples confidence and dignity away and left them begging for more. In my opinion all these countries that “need so urgently help” from the West were once proud nations, full of impressive culture and wonderful traditions, older than we can ever imagine. These people were happy. The globalization and our image of how people have to live brought so much despair and grief to these countries. What is the situation in Africa today? The people are still poor, but on so many levels their independence and the hope of creating a better state that is more fitting for the challenges of the new century, was taken away by the foreign aid. Just like the UN operation in Phnom Penh 1992, that Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani described as “scandalous and immoral” or to give a more drastic examples, Americas disgusting wars beginning in Vietnam that were so absolutely wrong and mindless, they were destined to fail from the very beginning. We are doing it the wrong way. We forget that the people we want to help, are human just as we are. We should look them in the eye, face to face, realize that we are no better than them. We are equal, all of us. And coming into a new country, a new environment, we have to realize that not WE are the ones that should come and teach. Who are we to say that everything we do is better? It was proved so many times, that the opposite is the case. We have unemployment, health-care, poverty, migration and many more issues that we face. Why don’t we start in our own countries, instead of going somewhere else? We need to give the people the possibility to develop themselves, to have own ideas and found their own projects or even better, social enterprises within their community. Because they know how things work, they know about the culture, the climate, the language and many more things that we as people from the outside have no insight on. We think we know everything when we come into a development country and break into the life of innocent people, destroying their world in giving the begging children money or opening up a school, that gives the government an excuse to prevent changes, as the foreigners will take care of it. That’s not the right way. When we come into a new country we learn, learn from the people instead of telling them that they need to learn from us. There are around 5000 NGOs in Cambodia and I don’t want to say that all of them are bad because some are doing a good job, but yet there are so many that are just giving up, changing the lives of the people in a community, making them dependent on foreigners that are offering all these new and shining things, leaving the people insecure and vulnerable after they left.

I was talking with one of my students the day before. He asked me if I wanted to go back to Germany, because I didn’t like Cambodia. I was astonished and told him that the exact opposite was the case. I loved Cambodia and was very sad that I eventually would have to leave. He looked at me with a sad look and asked: “Don’t you know that Cambodia is poor? Have you looked around? This is not a beautiful country.” I asked him if he thought money was beautiful. He looked at me confused, shaking his head. “There are many people in Germany, that have a lot of money.”, I told him. “But this doesn’t mean that they are happy. Sometimes it is all their money that causes them to be sadder than before. You should never forget, that money can’t buy you happiness.” “But in Germany you have everything, everyone there has a house and warm water and electricity.” “This is all true.”, I told him. “But people that have all these things don’t know, that this is something they should actually be happy about.”

Every one of us who wants to help the children, should ask himself if he is really willing to learn. Only then we can follow Gandhis path and be the change we want to see on the world.

And They Lived Happily Ever After?

Cambodian weddings are something very extraordinary in my eyes. It has nothing to do with a Western wedding, everything is bigger, more colourful and much, much louder. Linda, the cousin of my hostmum, got married on the 28th of November. Months before the big day everyone was talking about it. It had to be discussed who would be invited (800 people), what dresses the bride should wear (8 different ones for every time of the day) and what colour the flowers of the entrance gate should have (purple). As my family is not very conservative at all and has adapted to the Western lifestyle, I would have never thought of the possibility that the marriage was arranged.

“Half arranged.”, Siphen said. “As Linda is already 27, it was really time for her to get married.” Her chosen husband was the son of an old friend of Siphen and it was known that he had a good character and an acceptable work, so it was agreed within the family that he would make a good catch for Linda. She said yes as it seemed to her as not a bad idea and the two of them got engaged. Seems very easy and uncomplicated and maybe it is. There is this old saying of the teapot after all. If two people love each other passionately when they get married, their teapot is already boiling hot. After the wedding it will either boil over or cool off again. Whereas two people that don’t know each other till the wedding day, or are at least not allowed to date, can grow to love each other after the wedding with the time passing by. That means the teapot is slowly getting hotter and hotter. I would not dare say that this is actually true, but Siphens brother and his wife that live next door, had never seen each other till the day of their wedding and are as happy as two people can possibly be after nearly forty years of marriage.

Weddings are in general known for their wonderful match-making capacity. Olivier, the former Bookbridge volunteer came to visit for the wedding and brought his roommate from Zurich. As they are both single, Siphen decided that she would search two lovely, young Cambodian women for them during the wedding days. I had to laugh a lot when I saw their faces. Siphen gave me a sincere glance. “And you don’t get up to mischief!”, she said. “The earliest you could look for a potential husband is with 20 years of age. I am keeping an eye on you!” I had the feeling that both Olivier and his friend were a little jealous of me then. Especially when Siphen actually made it reality and introduced both of them to some 30 something women that were to shy and too giggly to actually talk to them.

The days before the wedding were really strange. For once, everything was decorated with flowers and paper ribbons. Tents were build, tables were brought, a stage was set up and soon I didn’t recognize the place at all anymore. My hostfamily has such a large compound, that they can have the festivities at home. The day before the wedding seemed like it was already the actual wedding. Everyone was busy, but nobody was stressed. Especially Linda was as calm as ever. Nothing can make these people nervous, a wedding with 800 people is just a day like every other. Around the house where the pond is, a lot of people from the catering service were camping. They had some mats and hammocks infront of the fireplaces and everywhere you could see tons of food. Weddings in Cambodia are a huge business. It is unbelievable how much money they spend in such a short period of time, but it is all part of tradition and nobody wants to break with it. We got our nails painted and prepared the clothes for the next day then. In the morning I had to wear a sampot with a traditional shirt and in the evening I was to wear a dress that Linda gave to me. It was long and green and very sparkly. She said she already wore it to three weddings last year, that’s why I could have it. Early in the morning of the 28th we got our hair and make-up done. I felt like a doll with all these people touching my face and my hair without asking me how I actually wanted to look. I was pretty scared to see myself in the mirror, after they put what felt like tons of different chemical products on me. I didn’t recognize myself at all, I never looked that styled up before, not even for my high school graduation. But as I was glancing around, the same had happened to everyone else. It was so strange, I had to figure out if I had actually seen the person opposite me before or not. When my hostmum saw me she looked just as shocked as me when I had seen myself in the mirror the first time, but then she clapped her hands together and exclaimed: “You look like an angel!”

At 7:30 we began with the fruit walk. This means, that a whole procedure of people is walking towards the house of the brides family. It is tradition that the groom is living in the house of his bride after the marriage. It felt a little bit stupid to walk away from the house, just to turn around and walk there again, but whatever. Everyone had to carry a golden plate with food on it that symbolizes something. Me and the man walking next to me were carrying an eggplant that apparently symbolizes wealth. We waited for about 20 minutes in this strange procedure of colorful people in the middle of the rice fields and then walked back to the house down the dirt road. After taking some pictures we all stepped in the tent that was set up at the entrance and sat down on the chairs there. First we could watch a show of Apsara dancers and after that we all got little flower blossoms to throw on bride and groom as they walked by. We then got to have breakfast before the ceremonies began. For instance the hair cutting ceremony: To prepare bride and groom for their life as a married couple, their hair is symbolically cut, representing a fresh start to their new relationship together as husband and wife. The master of the ceremony performs the first symbolic hair cut and wishes the couple happiness, prosperity and longevity. The bride and groom’s parents, relatives and friends then take turns to symbolically cut the hair and give the couple blessings and well-wishes. (In the old days, the bride and groom’s hair were really cut during this ceremony, but in modern times it is only done symbolically.) Then there is the Seven Rotations ceremony. Only married couples are permitted to sit around bride and groom as the sacred flame is rotated seven times around the new couple. The flame of the pure bee-wax candle represents anger, which the couple should avoid as it can disrupt the marriage relationship. The smoke of the flame is sacred enough to protect them from all evils if they are sincerely committed to each other. Family members who receive the candle, motion their hands over the flame to guide the smoke of the sacred flame over bride and groom. Another important ceremony is the Tying the Wrists / Pairing Ceremony. In this final and most memorable stage of the ceremony, family members and friends tie the bride and groom’s left and right wrists with blessing strings. These knots are tied on both the bride and groom, who were traditionally required to wear them for three days afterwards to preserve the good luck. The praises and well-wishes of happiness, good health, success, prosperity, and long-lasting love are acknowledged and witnessed by the loud sound of the gong and joyful cheers. The ceremony concludes with a shower of palm flowers thrown over the new couple. While the bride and groom’s wrists are tied with the blessing strings, the following song is sung: “We tie, we tie three strings to each wrist of our children. We wish for true happiness and success to this couple, who will always be together like wet grass seeds. We tie your left wrist to make you remember your parents. We tie your right wrist to make you carry on the family lineage and traditions.” It is all very complicated and takes a very long time. After that the couple is offically married. Around four o’clock the first guests came. It got very fast very crowded and soon I had no idea anymore of how many people actually were there. 400, 800, 1000? I helped with serving the beverages and got endless compliments for my outfit. The catering service was very busy with bringing enough food for everyone and I don’t really know how I survived these days because they never made anything without meat.

   

At 7 o’clock the evening programm started. Linda looked very exhausted to that point, as she had changed her dress already 7 times. Everyone got some sparklers and they were stuck in a food pyramid. It was just like on New Years Eve. Some were formed like hearts what made it even more romantic. Then Linda and her husband went to the stage and said some things to the guests in Khmer.I kind of stopped listening and began thinking about everything that happened today. It all went by so fast, every second of the day was totally planned and it was such a new and huge inside to Khmer culture, I was still busy sorting all the new informations. “She is going to throw the rose bucket now.”, the girl next to me suddenly whispered in my ear. “You have to try and catch it.” Just in that moment, Linda turned around a threw the flower bucket she had carried in the crowd. I might have had an advantage as I am so tall, but somehow the flowers landed in my hand. Everyone around me began to cheer happily. “Awesome!” the girl next to me exclaimed. “You will be the next person to get married!” Many hands pushed me forward and somehow I found myself standing on the stage. Linda beamed at me. “How do you feel?”, she held the microphone infront of my mouth. “I guess I feel very happy?”, I said. “Do you have someone in mind to become your future husband?”, she asked. (I had to think of Siphen and how she would keep an eye on me because I was far too young to get married.) “No, not really.”, I shook my head. “Well maybe you will find out tonight. The next song is for you, you can chose your dance partner.” I nearly got a heart attack. I didn’t want to chose a dance partner and I didn’t want to dance infront of 800 people. How does it come I always find myself in situations like this? I looked around and saw one of Stacys friends that is also a Peace Corps volunteer and nearly two meters tall. I really don’t want to be discriminating, but I can’t to dance with someone who is shorter than me. Somehow I got through that dance (some children got hold of my flower bucket and began to throw the blossoms on us while we were dancing). After that part everyone was allowed to join us on the dance floor. A live band began to play traditional songs and everyone was in a very good mood. My hostdad finally climbed the stage and performed a song and somehow more and more people began to dance with him up there. Even Linda changed into a shorter and more comfortable dress and we danced in a mixture of Khmer and Western style, it was pretty hilarious. When the wedding ended around 12 o’clock I wasn’t even tired.

But it should take me 2 more hours, a pair of fake eyelashes and 37 hairneedles to get rid of the whole wedding styling.

Dolphins

Over the Water Festival I had three days off plus the weekend and as I really wanted to see the dolphins in Kratie (a little town next to the waterside), I just took a bus there. It’s five hours from Phnom Penh (I went to the waterside of the Mekong in the morning to see the colorful boats racing down the river to celebrate) and 6 Dollar for a bus ticket in the sharing van. The road that leads up to the north of Cambodia is called the “Death Highway” and that’s exactly how it felt when I was sitting in the bus. Sometimes the street is so bad, it seems like there was an earthquake some days ago as the ground is ripped open. There are more holes in the street than there is even ground, the dust is taking away your sight and the up and down in the landscape is making you feel like you were sitting in a rolercoaster. Of course we have a puncture, of course the roof has a hole through that it’s raining inside and of course there is a women next to me with a crying baby on her lap. There are these things that happen to you every time you drive with a bus in Cambodia. But there is another part that is characteristic for every bus ride: the offering of food (sounds a little bit like a religious ceremony and maybe it is). Everyone is opening his or her lunch and the sharing beginns. It’s as if we had a secret bound that says: “As long as we are driving in this bus together, we stick together.” Yes, maybe it’s even more than that. You become part of a family, the shared food is only the first step. After that the getting-to-know-you-part begins. Everyone tells where they are from, if they are married and how many children they have. That’s the most important thing that needs to be found out. What’s also typical, are questions about the weight, the loan and the boyfriend (when you say you don’t have your own family yet). I am then answering that I don’t get loan, don’t have a boyfriend and don’t know anything about my current weight. After that I get some more banana chips. The women with the baby next to me that I mentioned, that was sitting next to me, was moaning for about an hour, that I didn’t wear appropriate clothes. This means, my shoulders were not covered. In the village this woudn’t have happened to me, but as a tourist I thought that it really doesn’t matter, as hotpants and tanktops are everywhere to be seen. Now that I am part of the bus family though and even speak a little bit Khmer, my clothes are suddenly everyones business. There is the worry, that I don’t look Cambodian enough. A cardigan has to be found. I take one out of my backpack and a wide grin emerges on the face of the women. “Lo-o-na!” (Very good). Nothing prevents her from falling asleep and snoring comfortably against my covered shoulder now.

      

The first day in Kratie, I was chatting a little bit in Khmer with the receptionist of my hostel, and she was completely amazed about the fact that I could talk with her. From that moment on, she refused to speak in English with me again and I only ever understood half the things she wanted to tell me. I don’t know if it is better to travel without letting your tourist image fall. It can be very comforting and easy to pretend you know nothing at all. The first day I decided to do a bicycle tour on the island before Kratie. You can go there by boat for 1000 riel and take your bike with you. The island is very beautiful. The people that are living there are very simple farmers. A lot of horses can be found there too, what is very rare for Cambodia. They are walking over the sandy beaches that are circling the island. This is also the best place to watch the sunset of the Mekong. On the boat I met a group of elderly German tourists that asked me about my work and seemed to be fairly nice. When one of the men invited me to join their bicyle tour around the island. I said yes, because I wanted to take the same route anyway. After we biked for about 10 minutes my chain sprang out and I couldn’t drive anymore. Two of the German women that were riding behind me just drove past, without stopping. I was standing there, pretty shocked and confused, as I had already forgotten this horrible German friendliness. One second later I was surrounded by a Khmer family that started to repair the bike while smiling widely at me. After I asked them how much it would be, they just shook their head to show me, that they didn’t want money. I felt like I was just at the right place in that moment and belonged to the right nation of people.

    

The next day I went to Sambok mountain with my bike. On this mountain should be one of the most beautiful pagodas in the country, so I didn’t care much about the long and dusty bike ride. When I was walking up the stairs, I could see statues of monks that seemed to be walking down the hill while I was walking up. There were surely over 100 of them, it was both impressive and a little bit scary as they seemed so human. On the foot of the hill was a statue of Buddha himself. I always loved the sculptures in Cambodian pagodas. They tell the story of Buddhas life and every pagoda has elephant guards in front of the gates that have skillfull patterns on their skin. When I finally reached the top, sweat pouring down, I could enjoy the beautiful view on the Mekong and the rice paddies. I set down on a bench next to some oversized statues. Before I knew what was happening, I fell safe and sound asleep. When I woke up again I saw a smiling face above me. “This place can lead your heart to inner peace you know?”. What? I was just about to figure out what this face above me was doing there, I was not in the state to think. “It is so far away from the troubles of daily life, you can find calmth and harmony here. This place can give you strength before you walk back down the stairs.” What was happening here? Orange, a lot of orange. I sat up and realized that the face belonged to a monk that was standing a few inches away from my bench, hands folded infront of his robe. He was looking at me with a gentle and open smile and then opened his hand to point to the area around us. “Everything you see is build by nature. There is nothing that gives us a hint about the outside world. This is a rare paradise place and we can chose to stay here and find balance before we move on to the next destination.” I just nodded. It sounded reasonable.

– “So you live here?”, I asked.

– “I do.”, the monk answered. “But only until my soul tells me to move on.”

– “Is it not sometimes lonely here?”, I asked hesitatingly. “What about your family and your friends?”.

– “There are two reasons for loneliness in the world. The first is, that we have nobody who understands us. The second reason is, that we don’t understand who we are, what we want, where we want to go. How can we expect from others to understand us, when we don’t know ourselves?”

– “You think this is the source of humans loneliness?”

– “I know so. It is our task to find ourselves, before giving this exercise on to other people.”

– “Are you the head of the monks or something like that?”.

– “I am a teacher like you. And sometimes it is not easy.” (I had no clue how he knew that I was a teacher)

– “I always remind myself that I don’t force the students to study. I teach them what they need to know and how to receive this information, but nothing else. If they don’t want to learn it is their decision. Sometimes it makes me sad to see someone leave the right path, but I can’t force anyone to do something they don’t want to do.” The monk looked in the far distance, as if to find more answers there.

– “I admire this form of giving knowledge to others. Working without getting money needs a pure, unpoisened heart, a gentle mind and curious eyes. I believe that it is one of the most respectable works human can do on this earth.” Was he talking about me being a volunteer? I never said a word about this to him. Probably he just talked about teaching in general and his own experiences with unpaid work for poor children? As I now had the chance, I decided to find out some things that I was curious about.

– “I have some questions that I would like to ask. At what age can boys become monks?”

– “They can become monks when they are brave enough to scare the crow. Before they reach this maturity, the crow won’t fly away, but when she does when one is approaching, it means that you are ready. Around 10 years of age.”

– “And why are you eating meat when you have such huge respect for the life around you?”

– “We don’t kill and we would never allow anyone else for us to kill. You see, when a women is buying meat at the market and cooking for her family, she brings us the leftovers as a donation. But the meat was bought in the intention to feed the family, not to feed us.”

– “How do you find these words without having a difficulty? You never seem to struggle to find answers.”

– “I always see people fight. Fight in the family, at work, in the politics. All these fights begin because people don’t think before they speak. They don’t think about if they hurt someone with their words. For me, I always talk carefully, weighing every word and trying to find out, if I don’t break the balance of the things around me. It comes naturally.”

– “Thank you.” I said, still pretty confused.

– “Take this with you.” the monk said. He gave me a little paper with a statue of Buddha on it. The Buddha was holding up his right hand, locking eyes with the beholder of the card.

– “Normally, how do you feel when you look at someone who is much higher than you? Your boss, the prime minister, anyone who is beholding an important position? Most people are frightened, shy, insecure. What Buddha wants is taking this feeling away from us with this gesture. It shows, that we are welcomed and beloved by him. Take this with you, it shall remind you that you are blessed and never alone as you walk in this country.”

– “Thank you.” I stammered again.

– “I am thanking you.” the monk smiled and as fast as he had been there, he was gone again. I walked down to the first platform and suddenly there was a crowd of tourists there, taking pictures of the stupas, the preah vihear and the sculptures. I felt like I had just woken up from a dream, and in fact, I had.

        

When I was walking through Kratie the other day, I passed by a little café that had a sign in front of the doors where there was written: “Peanut butter and jam bread, self-made.” I stopped because this sounded just too tempting and I did not yet eat something for breakfast. Behind the counter was a young women with short brown hair. Her name was Suzanne. She told me she was 25 years old and American, but fell in love with Cambodia after her first trip there as a tourist when she was 20. Since then she had wanted to come back. Her idea was to open up a kayak business with tours on the Mekong river, as kayaking was her hobby. In addition she is running a café where she is selling her self made bread. I was really amazed by this spirit and said yes, when she asked me to come along on a kayak tour. At one o’clock the next day I was at her shop again, but we couldn’t start, because the truck had a puncture (what else?). As we finally headed off down the dusty roads, I remembered when I was kayaking last time on the Ardèche where everything had been quite a bit different. Most significant is, that nobody is kayaking on the Mekong, and the whole French river was filled with tiny boats. When we arrived we first paddled to the middle of the Mekong what is hard work as the riverbed is so wide. Finally we arrived and around us were loads of tiny, green, sandy islands. The current was not as strong anymore and we slowly drove through the hidden nature. Never would I have seen this from the bank, I was surrounded by a whole different landscape. Suzanne told me, that we would drive through a flooded forest and I was thinking about the one in Siem Reap. But this was different. The trees that were suddenly in front of us were gigantic, standing in the wide open, not covered by anything, just massive and impressive when the flood water was rushing against the trunk. I could feel the power that was living in them and began to rush into us, as we dipped our paddles right and left in the surface. And then we left the tree giants behind us and were again on the wide open riverbed of the Mekong. “This is the place where the dolphins live.”, Suzanne said and I immediately made a 360 degree turn to see one of them. Nothing. We kept searching the horizon for one of the water animals, trying to catch a glance. The Irrawaddy dolphins are an endangered species, only living in liberty on three places in the world. Then I saw something, diving up in front of us. “Here!” Suzanne said and pointed to the other side. There were three more. Suddenly I could see them everywhere. I didn’t know in which direction to look. They dived up and down again, playing with each other. I saw dolphins once before when I was sailing with my father in Croatia, but this time I had not only five seconds to look at them, but half an hour. When the sun was about to sink, we finally went back to the land, saying goodbye to the black shadows of the dolphins shapes on the river.

    

It was once again a totally different side of Cambodia, and once again I loved it very much. This might not seem very significant, but I also tried an avocado shake for the first time. They are incredibly delicious and super healthy. In the morning of my departure, a phone was ringing in my room. I didn’t even know I had a phone! I was falling out of bed to search it. For an eternity I was crawling on the floor in the dark, until I found it in a shelf in the corner. A Khmer voice was there, talking excitedly in the loudspeaker. “What?”, I asked. “I am sorry, I don’t understand.” I went back to sleep and decided to pack my stuff and go down about an hour later. I felt like I deserved it after the rough wake up call. When I was arriving at the receptionist desk, the women from the first day was sitting there. “Your bus just left!”, she said. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”, I asked confused. “I called you and told you about it”, she said defensively, “But you just wouldn’t listen”. Oh, she still thought I was fluent in Khmer. “All right”, I said “Is there another bus?”. “Chaa, knyom nong suer alojini.” Well, then. When I was finally sitting in my bus on the way back, I was sandwiched in the car between two people, all in all we shared two seats but were four persons. The guy next to me was definitely western, but I didn’t know where he was from. It became evident that he was Italian after he said some words in English with a very strong accent. He told me he was a ski instructor from Northern Italy, could barely speak English but was nearly fluent in French. For the next five hours I was trying to hold a conversation in the language that I had layn down in the graveyard of my memory. It was frightening, but surprisingly possible. That’s why I love traveling, you never ever know what will happen to you. It’s the opposite of daily life and I can understand why words like wanderlust and fernweh were created.

The Incredible in the Ordinary

This week my roommates decided that they wanted some more company without asking me for permission and suddenly I had not only mice and spiders, but also a yellowish frog accompanying me. I guess I mentioned the day when I found one of the mice dead when I wanted to take a shower, what was the most horrible moment in my life. As I would never kill an animal, I tried to build up a friendship with the pregnant spider in my room, that basically carried her babies in a giant white pillow under her belly. She greeted me in the morning and said goodnight to me in the evening. Stacy is really scared of spiders and after I told her that I don’t sleep with a mosquito net, she looked like she was about to faint. Well this week I was casually telling Linda, Siphens niece that is going to marry, that I had a giant spider in my room and she frowned and asked me if I knew that they can bite and insert the spider babies in the skin. As much as I wanted the mommy spider to live in peace and carry out her babies, I didn’t want to be part of it. Linda went into my room and killed it with a broomstick. It took her five stabs until she succeeded, every time I heard a loud “bang” as I waited outside because I couldn’t watch her doing it. Now to the frog, he was suddenly sitting on my window frame and the camouflage was so well done, that I first didn’t realize that it was an animal. I turned around and walked out of my room again. It’s no use to worry about the fact, that I don’t know how all these animals can get inside.When I came back the frog was gone, but there was a new spider on the ceiling. I welcomed her, at least she wasn’t pregnant. (Bugs are being hosted free of charge by the way.)

  

When I am already talking about animals, I could as well continue with that topic. My host family has a dog called Salé, who is one year old and completely hyperactive. He is always running around, chasing chicken and barking at strangers that pass by. Sometimes it can be really annoying because everyone is busy screaming ”Salé! Salé! No Salé! Out Salé!” all day long, but he is also warmly loved by the whole family so nobody is really serious when he’s being scolded. In fact, the family life turns around this dog and his huge dog eyes, that make him get an extra portion of food on a regular basis. The other two dogs, Tino and Lucky are probably jealous, but that’s how life works. The younger ones are taking your place. I must say, that I appreciate it that Tino keeps guard in front of my door every night. Despite the fact that he is the oldest dog and I never ever heard him barking.

I’ve been told many times, that there are evidently many snakes in the rice fields around, but all I ever see are crabs. Yesterday I came home from school with my bike and all of sudden passed two snakes. One of them was flat like a pancake, because she dared to cross the street. The other one was really small but when I was on her height, she suddenly stuck her head in the air and hissed at me. I got a tiny shock and drove a bow to evade rolling over it, what ended in me driving straight into the rice field nearby.

Every morning the market is as busy as an Asian market should be. Sellers are presenting pig heads, cow intestines and frog legs. In little boxes are around a hundred baby chicks that are peeping because they want to get a look over the edge. Baby pigs are being transported in tiny cages, women are standing around, discussing which one to buy. One of the women is always grabbing a piglet by the foot and pulling it out of the cage. Upside down it is hanging in the air squeaking while the customers are trying to talk over the sound, negotiating about the price. Then there are the motorbikes that are hanged with gooses and chickens so that there is barely enough time for the driver to sit. The birds look so miserable what should not surprise, as they can barely breath and have to wait in the hot sun until someone has mercy and ends their life. One time I saw one of these motorbikes fall to the side, so that the whole load was squeezed under the weight of the engine. I just couldn’t look and the desperate sounds of the tangled creatures were ringing in my ear. Finally someone put the motorbike up again. In one of the smaller market streets, women sell fish. Most of them are still alive, the others are halfed and lie on low stalls to dry in the sun. There are flies everywhere and the smell is incredible. Sometimes it happens that one of the fishes is jumping out of it’s bowl, but all the sellers do is pick them up from the ground and put them back in the water.

Everything you can buy at the market has just recently been freshly made. And everything is done by the females. I once saw a picture of a Khmer women with 8 arms, that should symbolize all the things she has to do day by day. For example the housework, the farming, the selling of the products on the market, the raising of the children, the dealing with the money and many more things. Men just simply like to lie in hammocks and play cards with a fresh Angkor beer next to them. I mentioned that I love the sweets that are packed in banana leaves, but there are so many more incredible things that are made of the simplest things and are even healthy. Beans with coconut milk, sweet corn with brown sugar, rice cake… You have to be a Khmer housewife to know when and where exactly in this chaos, what is sold. And then the negotiating begins, nothing can be bought without talking about the price for at least three minutes.

Then there are the tailors. They have fabric in all different qualities and colors and make dresses that look like out of fairy tale movies. Because the wedding will be soon, I went with Stacy to the tailor to see the dress she had ordered there. It’s long, cut open in the front, with pailettes and pearls on the sleeves and a v-neck at the back, enclosed with glass buttons. All she did was to point on a picture of a fashion magazine and the tailor made the dress for her. I am so excited for the wedding, I can’t even describe it. Apparently we will wake up in the early morning to get dressed up, get our hair and get our make-up done (also on the market, obviously). There will be 600 guests coming and this is a very small wedding for Cambodia.

A plant that is very expensive, healthy and can be rarely found on the market is moringa. My hostfamily drinks every evening morninga tea, because  they grow it in their garden, like they do with nearly every herb and spice that can be grown. Moringa is a super food that has 7 times the vitamin c of oranges, 4 tims the vitamin a of carrots, 4 times the calcium of milk, 3 times the potassium of bananas and 2 times the protein of yogurt. My host mum tries to give us a lot from it because it is so good.

This week in school I was drawing pictures of four children on the board to talk about different kind of clothes. One of the girls I drew with curly hair and suddenly everyone started screaming. I was really surprised and slightly confused, but then one boy said: “She has hair like a ghost!”. Ghosts are a pretty huge thing in Cambodia. Every big religious celebration has something to do with the ghosts of the ancestors coming back to earth, every second Khmer legend or myth is about ghosts and everyone is telling spooky stories of obsessed people and abnormal occurances. As soon as it gets dark everyone is talking about the fact that they could meet a ghost on the way back and when I told Sopheak her hair was nice, she said she soon would have to cut it, to not look like a ghost. There are ghosts in every important buliding and offertories where the sacrifices can be placed. Ghosts can basically be everywhere, I wonder why I never saw one. When I tried to tell the class that people in Southafrica all have curly hair like that, nobody would be believe me. I had to bring a picture the next day.

I have a really hard time remembering the names of the children at Bookbridge. I maybe know around 40, but considering the number of children that actually go there, it is not a lot. The thing is, that a lot of the names sound really smiliar and there are simply too many. Sapol, our cleaning women has three children that she all sends to Bookbridge. And to get an extra income she sells sweets in the court in front of the building every afternoon. That is bad because of two reasons: the children get bad teeth and other health problems and the rubbish of the packages is everywhere. Sapol herself is one of the nicest people on earth, I like her so much, she’s simply endearing and her children are very well behaved. You can sense that the family has not a lot of money and so I don’t really know what to do about that. I don’t want that she looses her income, but the situation is certainly not the best.

When I go with Sreydieb somewhere, we go by bike. That’s because we are poor and don’t have a motorbike. She sits in the back while I drive through the muddy lanes. It’s very funny, because everyone stops to stare with us with wide eyes. It seems simply impossible that a foreigner would drive a Khmer girl around, but as Sreydiebs driving skills cannot be trusted, I grab the Lenker myself. Any place I go, where people don’t know me, I can hear everyone from afar screaming “Barang! Barang!” what basically means foreigner. When I love and say “Soksabei Dtee?”, what means how’s it going, everyone changes to “Barang nijiey Khmai!”, what means, the foreigner is talking Khmer. Sreydieb always starts laughing like she’s mad and was about to fall of the bicycle.

Sometimes I feel like even my daily life here, can never be normal, as hard as I try. But maybe it’s good that way, I certainly never get bored here.

Breath in, Breath out

This week I was doing yoga in the rice fields. I will try to make it a habit because it is so mind and soul refreshing. You feel the energy running through your body and afterwards everything seems to be back in balance. Every step you take is more light. I am sure that I am not the first person who discovered that for herself, but for me it was a very special experience. I met this girl named Jael, that is from Switzerland. She was planning to help us in the Learning Center for two days, but as she arrived on Saturday evening, we could spend the whole Sunday together. She is practicing yoga since over two years and when the sun went down a little bit, we decided to do some sport. We walked through the rice fields to the island and lay our mat on the ground there. Paul told me, he thinks this place is a source of natural energy and I believe he is right. The trees around us let the rays of sunlight draw their pattern on the earth while the calming sound of wind was searching it’s way through the rice plants. We began with a breathing exercise. Breathing in and out in four different steps while opening your hands to the sky to receive the energy. The whole atmosphere calms you down and shuts everything stressful out, to give body and soul the chance to harmonize in peace. Jael showed me the most important positions: the downward facing dog, the warrior, the cat-cow stretch and the child’s pose. In the end we just lay down, I felt exhausted in a very good way and every inch of my body was connected to the ground. Just lying there, listening, you can hear how the nature breaths with you. And the world stops turning.

This week we said goodbye to our volunteers that worked at the Learning Center for over one month. They were really nice and as all of them want to become English teachers it was a really good experience for them. Their names were Mony, Makara, Daro and Senath. Mony is the only one who lives in Angtasom. The others come from small villages and as they don’t have enough money to study, they live in the local pagoda where they don’t have to pay anything. Mony promised me to teach me how to drive a motorbike, of course only in the court in front of the Bookbridge building. Now I can already start the engine and drive straight ahead. When I can trust Mony with his promise, I will be able to drive perfectly after two weeks. On the weekend we had a celebration in our pagoda that is traditionally one month after Pchum Ben festival, called Katan. All the trainees asked me to go with them to the festival and cook some food together before we leave. It was the first time I could wear my traditional Sampot. Ratana borrowed me a shirt of her sister and so I actually had a real Khmer outfit. At five o’clock they picked me up from home and then we went to the market. The reason why we didn’t just started to cook with the food Mony already had at home was, that they felt quite overwhelmed with the idea of me not eating meat. I had to show them which things I could ingest. We bought morning glory, cucumbers, carrots, mushrooms and tofu. Actually quite normal, everyday stuff. – Shocking! When we got to Monys home I was quite surprised that his house was so big. His parents sell motorbikes, so it seems like they are one of the wealthiest families in the community. When you go inside their living room, there are incredibly high walls with many, many professional family pictures, that look like the advertisement of a bad reality show. Everything is clean like in a hospital and when you walk along the hallway that leads to the kitchen, you can see an exhibition of beautiful Khmer dresses for every occasion, apparently the mothers wardrobe. I have experienced before, that in Asian houses that are owned by well-endowned people , the ground is made of tiles and everything seems to be so sterile. There is not much furniture in the rooms and I somehow have to say I prefer the tiny, wooden village houses. After the tour through the house, I was led to the kitchen. I greeted every family member with “Chumriabsua” (das bedeutet “Hallo” Mama, ist aber ein bisschen höflicher als “Suerstey”) and indicated a slight bow. We all began to cut the vegetables together, talked and listened to Khmer songs. It was only until Mony asked me what kind of pans I would like to use, that I realized he expected me to cook the food. And not only him, his whole family was standing around, curious glances on their faces. Because it lays not within my talents to find witty responses on short term, I just pointed on the next pan within eyesight and said “that will do”. Five minutes later I was standing in front of the stove, trying to figure out what kind of spices and sauces to use with the ingredients that were put next to me by the anticipating family. I decided to be a little bit creative and threw everything in the pan that smelled delicious. I tried not not to get nervous because of all these people that were standing around the fireplace watching what I was doing. I couldn’t help but to feel a little bit concerned, but not as much as everyone else would have felt, if they knew I couldn’t cook Khmer food at all. I mean I have helped with chopping and watched the steps, but really cooking is something that I might never learn. In the end I made omelette, tofu with vegetable in lime sauce and beans I dusted with an unknown pulver. I can’t exactly describe the taste of the food, but it was definitely weird. Lucky me, that Cambodians are too polite to tell you the truth about your cooking skills. Monys mother even announced, she thinks my food is so much healthier than the one with loads of meet and that’s probably why I am so tall.

Made by Mony

When we went to the pagoda I was quite surprised. First of all I never saw so many people at one place in my life. Everyone from Angtasom and apparently every surrounding village came to join the festivities. And it didn’t matter if the people were old or young, whole families came and blended in the never ending crowd that was swallowed by the holy gates. Inside the pagoda were not only stands with food but also places where you could play balloon dart, jump on a trampoline and go with the merry-go-round. It was just like a fun fair! We walked around for around an hour, stopping every few minutes to greet someone familiar. There was also a big stage where a traditional drama should be performed later in the evening. We all sat down on mats in front of the stage and once again I was surrounded by people talking to me. As my Khmer got a little better, I could even answer them for about 2 minutes. When the actual show began everyone also stopped touching my hair, what was quite nice and focused their attention on the curtain. First there was some Apsara dancing what is part of every big Khmer cultural gathering. The Apsaras are beautiful young women that learn a language, entirely expressed in movements and gestures. There are over 3000 different words the girls have to learn in the dance academy. They begin at the age of six till they end their training in their early twenties, afterwards they are able to tell whole epics without saying a word. It’s a very slow dance and the dresses and makeup they use take a long time to finish. This art is so old, you can find statues of Apsara dancers in Angkor Wat where they decorate the walls of the temple. Back then they were dancing for the king and that’s what they stilldo today, but because they represent the ancient Cambdian culture, they have appearances on various occasions. In buddhist and hinduism mythology Apsaras are women that live in the palace of the god Indra. They are also seen as ghosts of water and clouds, comparable to our nymphs. After the Apsara dance I was completely confused, because the next act featured some guys in capes that were dancing hiphop. Horrible background music and steam didn’t make it better. The elderly women next to me didn’t share my opinion, her grin was showing off her two left teeth and she was clapping in the tact of the music. Finally the actual play began. It was an ancient Khmer legend and the costumes just as the stage design were really magnificent. The story was about this prince who has to rescue the girl, but another guy who is bad wants to steal her and then the good guy has to fulfill three tasks to show his honest character and in the end the gods help him to get the girl back and the bad guy is punished. Of course it’s a little bit more complex, but that’s basically the plot. I still can’t believe, that all this is happening in the pagoda, next to the house where the monks sleep, the studying rooms with the words of buddha and the stupas where the people are buried. Nobody in Germany would allow to throw a party on a graveyard. But everyone is loving it, so maybe that’s something the catholic church can learn from.

  

The exercise programm with Ratana in the afternoon is really exhausting. I am running, jumping, turning and everyone besides me seems to be completely resistant to the heat. When I go jogging in the morning and biking four times a day, I have enough sport for making up the loss of a fitness studio. Just think about that we go to fitness studios and pay for machines to run with energy, that we need to use up our energy, to lose the weight that we gain because we eat to much, while people somewhere else in the world are starving. This is the frightening truth about Western lifestyle and the worst thing about it is, that I was part of it, going to the fitness studio twice a week not long ago.

We are going to make a big Bookbridge party and invite everyone from the community to come to the learning center on the 1. of January. We are rehearsing various things, including a song. That’s why we are practicing in the morning from now on, but I have only two boys that are joining until now and this needs to change. This week school started again and suddenly I see children in black and white school uniform everywhere. They had a really long holiday as the government made the rules about the final grade 12 test more strict and all the corruption and cheating suddenly stopped this year. The result was, that over 80 percent of all students in the country failed the test, the universities protested, some influential people had some conferences and the school start was postponed one month ahead to give the students the chance to repeat the exam. So now, after four moths the children have again access to education. To boast a little bit: in our learning center they studied every day, no matter what the government decided. As my host dad Mach is a school director and my host mum Siphen is an English teacher, everyone was going back to work. Stacy said she would take me to one of her classes soon, as in her opinion the public school and Bookbridge have to be seen as night and day and I should experience it.

On Tuesday I went to Takeo to visit Sopheak. I said in another article that she’s wonderful and I am more and more surprised by her attitude towards every aspect of life. She is confident and funny and making up her own mind about things, rather than listening to others. It’s very interesting what she has to say about politics, but you can basically talk with her about everything. She told me I should stay the night at her house so we could do something together on the public holiday the next day. I already described Sopheaks “house”, it is a tiny room with only a wooden bed without mattress, a little camping stove and a faucet. Four girls live in this room and they all sleep together on the bed. I really love being there as everyone is super nice. We always cook together and eat outside, but this time was the first time we ate lunch together and I stayed there over night. After the dinner we went to a concert that was hosted that evening in Takeo. The singer was apparently very famous and had some hits on Cambodian radio. At the same place you could walk around and visit market stalls where local people sold natural products like fruit, vegetable and rice from the region but also crafts that are being produced with reusable resources. There were little birds made of bamboo and jars out of banana trees. Pereah and Sokna, two of the girls I went with, bought me some things, a tiny box and a piece of coconut shell in the form of a leave. This is so astonishing, they never expect anything back from you, they just see you looking at something and think: “oh, she might like that.” and then they buy it, no matter how much it costs, just because they are such good-hearted people. The concert itself was pretty horriblel. I haven’t got a good relationship with Cambodian music, especially when the loudspeakers are not properly working, what they never do. It was a very interesting experience though, a lot of people were there and the background dancers that were part of the show were moving in a way I simply cant describe. Because moderator was talking the whole time in Khmer, I zoned out and didn’t realize that she was saying something in English, until everyone around me was staring at me more than they normally do, until I felt a little bit uncomfortable. My glance fell on the stage and the women there was waving at me and saying “Hello Miss! Thank you that coming to here tonight. We are so very happy!”. I couldn’t quite believe that she was addressing me, as I had this feeling of blending in this huge crowd, on the other side, I am probably one head taller and a lot blonder than everyone else, so I am not that difficult to spot. I waved back,not sure what to do, and everyone around me smiled and nodded as if I did something great. Some things I will never ever get used to.

The next morning after I woke up facing some spiders on the ceiling (this also happens at home, I don’t even shrink), we headed off to our trip destination, about 20 kilometers from Takeo. It’s a little fisher village where you can go swimming. We all went together, Sopheak, Pereah, Sokna, Chanthou and me. We went with out bicycles through the countryside, I am sure I described it many times but it’s just wide, flat areas where farmers are working on the fields, palm trees are full of ripe coconuts and everything is very green. When we got to the lake we first just splashed in the water, but then Sopheak asked a local family if we could have their boat and of course they said yes. We began taking turns in rowing, until we found ourselves in the middle of the lake. Chanthou tried to teach me a Khmer song, but after the concert I had enough of slow, high love ballades. Every time when we saw some flowers we stopped and put them in our hair. Waterlily leaves became our sun hats and the stalk our snack because it is edible. But that’s not the only thing we harvested and just ate on the spot. Every two minutes Sopheak completely freaked out and pointed to some plant that she evidently absolutely adored. So we paddled there and just started eating right away. I felt a little bit (very much) strange, but all of them were really delicious. For example morning glory is growing there, it’s just as good as when you buy it from the market and there it is for free. The whole boat trip was just a dream of beautiful flowers in the wide landscape of the riceland lake. We let ourselves being dried up by the sun and finished eating the vegetables we harvested on the water. It was one of my most favorite days in Cambodia. Everything was just so simple and perfect, that’s how mans relationship to nature should be. Take as much as you need but leave the rest to live and grow, so that you will find more next time you come back. Afterwards I just fell asleep in the shade under the tress, my head lying on Sopheaks legs. Slowly breathing in and slowly breathing out, just like in the yoga meditation.

      

Nature is the secret place where people can find peace and this shouldn’t sound like spiritual balderdash, it’s quite simply the long known and today too often forgotten truth. And many people just forget to actually breath from time to time.

Teamwork

This week was the first time, that every full time staff member of every Learning Center in Cambodia came together. In Cambodia we have all in all only four LCs. In Mongolia are already many more established, but of course we hope to expand in the future. The LC in Siem Reap consists of a library and does not offer courses. Takeo, Angtasom (my LC) and Tonloab have both a library and courses and are all located in the same province. The workshop itself was taking place in Tonloab and as it is the newest LC (it opened up in April) it was nice to see the progress that has already been made. Of course every LC has a manager, the so called Head of Learning Center, teachers and librarians that are all Khmer. I am the only volunteer that works for Bookbridge in Cambodia, though I was not the only western person at the workshop. There is of course Stacy that works for Peace Corps, an American organization for long-term volunteerism. She is normally teaching at the local high school. She joined the workshop and invited two other Peace Corps volunteers what was in my opinion quite beneficial for the cause, as they have experience in the educational sector. All in all we were 15 people.

On arrival we got our name tags and new Bookbridge shirts, what made me really happy as my blue shirt that I got in spring this year was clearly not enough. Now I can combine my clothes with two new shirts in white and pink. Sreydieb had the funny idea to change our name tags, so everyone who didn’t know me was addressing me with the wrong name. I felt more Khmer than ever. The room Sreydieb and me shared had three giant windows that gave away the view on a mountain. On top of it I could guess that there was a temple, what I couldn’t guess was, that we would hike up there two days later. Just to say the most important thing: nobody brought hiking shoes with them and I wore Sreydiebs sandals. It’s not hard to imagine that they were completely ruined afterwards.

The main goal of our workshop was to find goals and objectives to continue the success of our LCs in the future. We also emphasized what the philosophy of Bookbridge is, to keep our values in focus: building bridges for global education equality, no matter what gender, religion, nationality, family background etc. a child has. Our two overall goals are:

#1: To create sustainable learning centers through high-quality course offerings
#2: To empower each LC to provide high quality courses, learning materials, and information to those who come

We determined 6 objectives during the workshop:

1. To develop course programs to be more competitive and higher quality                                                                                                                                                                                                             2. To train teachers of the learning center more teaching techniques to make their teaching more effective                                                                                                                                                  3. To create a schedule with clear responsibilities for learning center staff and get it implemented effectively                                                                                                                                           4. To increase books in Khmer (Novel, roman, folktales…) to be half of the total number of books in the library                                                                                                                                         5. To organize meetings of students from outside and inside the learning center so they become aware of the usefulness of learning English and It
6. To cooperate with parents of students on a regular basis to follow up student’s learning performance

In the following week every group was given a sort of homework: to find individual strategies to match the objectives that they see for themselves as being valuable for the long-term success of their LC. It was shown how to create strategies to ensure that they lead to the settled objective and later goal and how to determine a timeline that is reasonable. In the working groups everyone could gain profit from talking with other staff members, discussing problems and sharing ideas. Besides the working, several creative games and activities were included in the workshop schedule what brought some change to the course. To end this report-like and maybe not at all interesting talk about the workshop: I think it were some days spent for a good cause that helped all of us to decide how we want to keep on working in the next months.

On the second evening, we visited Sokeuns family. He is the HoLC in Takeo, but he was born in Tonloab. He told me so much about his little son that I was eager to meet him. The whole family lives in a simple but nice house. Like most Cambodian houses it’s made of wood and colored in blue. As always we were heartily welcomed. Sokeuns son looks just like himself and his English is already pretty good for his young age. Their house is surrounded by a sort of palm tree jungle and we all sat together on a low table under the roof and talked for about an hour. I am over and over again amazed by the hospitality of the people here.

We obviously worked in different groups, but no matter who is in my team, I always tend to enjoy working with Rathana, Kadet and Sreydieb most. They are the best colleagues I could ever ask for, always friendly and in a good mood. I can’t imagine that there is anyone who would not get along well with them.

At the workshop I also discovered the joy of peanut butter in the morning to mention this to keep track on everything important. I never ate peanut butter when I was in Germany and all the Peace Corps volunteers, as they come from the U.S., couldn’t quite believe that it’s not popular in Germany. The best thing about it is the fact, that it is some kind of healthy Nutella without side effects like pimples.

Our hiking trip was quite an adventure, as I mentioned our shoes weren’t really fitting for the occasion. The way was partly so steep I had to grab some branch nearby to not slip and often I had to more crawl up than walk as the canopy over me was so dense. I made Sreydieb a turban to protect her from the sun and she said she liked it so much, she would just continue wearing it when we were back in town. On top of the mountain lived monks that were dressed in white and wore jewellery made of things that can be found in the nature. They talk and move with such dignity and when you look into their eyes, you just now that they have seen so much in their long life and are incredibly wise. The view from both sides of the mountain was quite spectacular, my well known ricefields on one and the deep green mountains with their fading silhouettes on the other side.

Meanrith (HoLC in Siemreap and as big a Harry Potter fan as I am), Sredieb and me. We reached the top of the mountain nearly half and hour before the others. 🙂

When we were eating lunch, this centipede was just about an inch distance from my foot. Apparently it’s the most poisonous being that can cross your way in that area…

Sokhan our country manager, Sreydieb, Sopheak and me when we were making a break under a giant ancient tree that had his countless roots everywhere.

It’s amazing to see the variety of nature wherever you go. These flowers grow in front of the temple.

This temple tells a history about a beautiful princess with hair that smelled like flowers who made everyone fall in love with her.

The view on Cambodias endless ricefields.

It’s so close to the Vietnamese border, for 65 Dollar Europeans can get a visa.

Sreydiebs beautiful new turban.

In the end I was also glad to be back home, mostly because of the amazing cooking skills of my host mom that are extraordinarily magnificent. Looking back I can say that the whole workshop was definitely a wonderful experience of teamwork through the nations.

It is not down in any map, true places never are.

Over Pchum Ben and the public holidays the learning center is closed. I met two girls, Katharina from Austria and Theresa from Germany, that are travelling through south-east Asia for three months. We decide to spend the days that I have off in Kep together. I take the cheapest way by public bus and of course arrive two hours later than expected. Theresa and Katharina are already waiting for me in the cheapest guest house of Kep, called Chan Rith. Over the holidays everything is more expensive, but when you divide the sum in three it’s affordable. Anyway, you can’t compare travelling in Europe, with Asia. The whole trip costs not more than 30 euros. Not trying to see as much as possible while you are in this beautiful country would be really a shame. We spend the afternoon at the beach where are crowd of children is following us wherever we go. They give us flowers and want to be carried around. We walk around their little village that is just by the seaside. Of course they don’t want us to leave and we have to plan our escape to get away. When the sun is not so hot anymore, we decide to go on a two hour jungle track. The landscape is just amazing. Everything around us is green and hilly, on one side there are ricefiels, on the other side is the sea with countless islands and far away the border to Vietnam. Soon the forest swallows us in and the only thing left of the view are huge trees on every side of the way and sometimes little signs that might or might not guide us in the right direction. Theresa and me climb up a tree that stands beside a little pond. We are so far up, that you get this nervous feeling in your stomach, but the view that suddenly appears again, is more beautiful than ever. Before we read that in the nature reserve live loads of monkeys. When we finally see one in the tree nearby, I really feel like being in the nature.

The next day we leave very early and stand in time with our backpacks at the harbour. A boat picks us up and brings us to the Rabbit Island. When you look at the shape from above it looks like a rabbit, that’s how the island got it’s name. We rent a little bungalow that is far cheaper than the ones on land and head off to explore the surrounding. There are many small beaches that you reach after half an hour walk. It looks pretty much like on the postcards, the sand is white and the palmtrees have hammocks swinging between them. Of course you can’t miss the fact, that there is a lot of rubbish lying around where the normal tourists don’t go. The environmental pollution really is a huge problem in Cambodia. We find a place where we can lie down and I manage to read over 50 pages of my very old edition of the collected Sherlock Holmes stories. I have to be careful to close it before I fall asleep because it’s quite heavy when it lands on your face. What is also quite heavy and the greatest danger on the island are coconuts. Katharina tells me that a death caused by a coconut is far more likely than being bitten by a shark. The sunset on the island is magnificent, fisher boats are resting far outside, the tourists have all left, everything seems peaceful and calm. At 10 o’clock there is no light on the island anymore. We have to run back to our hut before it’s to late and we have to search our way through the darkness.

The next day we go back to Kep and spend the day lying at the beach. Because of the holidays it’s the complete opposite of what we experienced the afternoon before at Rabbit Island. Everyone seems to want a piece of seaside feeling, the place is totally overcrowded. Each family brings a ton of food and gathers on huge carpets around the lickings. Another thing that I didn’t realize before I came down to Kep is, that Cambodians don’t go swimming in bikini or swimming trunks. They just wear their normal clothes, that’s why we’ve been looked at as if we were aliens. In the evening we go back in the rain forest and walk up to the so called  “sunset rock”. It’s quite an adventurous path, sometimes I have the feeling that we are the only people that ever tried to get up there. For ages there are no signs coming and it seems like we are completely of track. The fact that watching the sunset on top of the mountain will leave us with no light in this impenetrable landscape afterwards, doesn’t reassure me. When we finally arrive, the view is magnificent, you can see every island around and the sea seems to be made of liquid gold. Before the sun is all gone, we have to race back down. The thought that scorpions and poisonous centipedes will be our last problem when it’s dark around us, makes us arrive back in town in no time.

On our last day we rent a motorbike because the Tuc Tuc was once again much too expensive. The motorbike is 4 Dollar, pink and with Hello Kitty print on it. We are all wearing helmets in different colours, blue, red and green. If the people from the beach were spotting us again, they would see their alien image of us to be confirmed. After an hour drive we arrive at a mountain that is marked on the map with “secret lake”. You can go into a tunnel and after five minutes you find yourself in a big crater. Endless rocks seem to reach the sky, they are dark green, overgrown with leaves that crawl up the stones. We are stankright inside the middle of the circle, feeling very tiny in the middle of this mountain. More holes spread in all directions and when you get closer you see that they are filled with water. In the stone are some steps that lead the way down and finally it becomes apparent, that from here on, there is a way that leads deep inside the mountain, to a lake that is hidden from outside. After we are back in the sunlight and have left these ghostly caves behind, we drive to the other side of the mountain. Here we find another cave that can be entered without walking through tunnels that have sharp, toothlike stones on their ceiling. The place looks more like a lagoon and a bunch of children and young adults is jumping from the rocks in the cave. The water is nice and cool, it’s the best place to play, swim and spend free time with your friends. We laugh and splash about, it’s too good to be true. I would be here everyday if I was a child living in the surroundings. Sadly my bus leaves at 2 o’clock so we have to eventually drive back. After the trip I can just say that I highly recommend visiting Kep, it really is a beautiful piece of earth.

Remember

Because Pchum Ben will be soon, everyone in Cambodia is going back to their homeland. Families gather and celebrate during that time. From the 21th to the 25th of September, Cambodians believe the gates of hell to open and the spirits of their deceased ancestors to come to earth. With food offerings the people want to end the period of purgation. Other spirits return to hell after Pchum Ben and continue their suffering. Good spirits that are in heaven or reincarnated, also benefit from the offerings. The monks do religious chanting and everyone is praying for their ancestors and a better life for themselves.

In the mornings Cambodians visit the pagoda and bring food for the monks. The believe, that the monks can give on the food to the ancestors is really old. Eating the earthly prepared food helps them to go to the after life. Grandma (everyone just calls her like this) is even sleeping in the Pagoda, because the people that did bad things in their life (the bad spirits), can only enter the Pagoda at night time. They put the food in the corners and wait for the spirits to eat it. With Ratana I visited her family when they went to the Pagoda. It was a really interesting experience. As they live far on the countryside, we had to travel there for over an hour. The landscape is so beautiful that it doesen’t matter, but the small paths between the rice fields are often difficult to drive on. We were three people sitting on the motorbike, but I soon got used to it. After all it’s nothing strange to see five people and more people on moto.

We visit the Pagoda and as soon as I walk up the steps to the room where the religious ceremony is taking place, I am surrounded by old women, that grab my hands and tell me things I don’t understand. I turn around in search of Ratana but I can’t find her. I think it is my destiny here, that I am always surrounded by many, many people that try to tell me something important. My strategy has been to smile back and nod to everything they say. Finally I can spot Ratana. She is at the end of the hall, adding her food in a big rice bowl and putting the rest on a table where a giant amount of all kind of dishes is already prepared. The monks will start eating after the entrance ceremony, when they have finished everyone else can join. After 12 o’clock monks are not allowed to eat anything of substance anymore. Ratana is walking to the front of the hall, taking some joss sticks and lighting them to thank Buddha. When they start smoking, she puts them in an altar that is outside the Pagoda. Everything is smelling like it. No wonder since the smoke is wafting around all of us. Finally there is a gong and everyone is sitting down. Also Ratana, what makes me feel a little bit more normal. She is starting to point at some of the people that greeted me before, explaining in which ways she is related to them. Then the monks approach. They are dressed in orange, as usual and take their place infront of the food table. Everyone is paying their respect to Buddha with folding their hands and bowing three times. Soon a man that is somehow important in the village is taking a microphone and the religious chanting begins. He is saying something and everyone else answers. Then the monks start eating and everyone is wishing for a long and happy life.

Afterwards we go to the house of Ratanas parents. They sell little biscuits at the market and I help to make them. We take the doug, roll it out and form it so that it looks like we are eating tiny crabs. Then we boil the dough and wait. In the meantime we go to harvest oranges. We have a long branch that helps to let the highests fruits fall down. We struggle to bring them back to the cooking place as we picked so many. Before lunch we have to go to buy some things. As the market is half an hour away by motorbike, we go to the local “store”. Our way leads us through backyards and to small paths under palm trees until we find a a little hut where around 10 people stand chatting. They seem to live in many different directions and that the hut is the meeting place because eventually everyone needs something from there. The most important things can be found there, we buy some fruits, vegetables and a fish that is prepared freshly in front of our eyes.

All in all I went to the Pagoda three times during Pchum Ben and it’s pretty much always the same thing. We say that Cambodian is so different from Western culture, but it really isn’t. Pchum Ben reminds me of christmas, when the whole family is coming together, celebrating for three days and remembering the ancestors. And being in the Pagoda, listening to the chanting is just like sitting in the service. What makes both celebrations really identical, is the huge amour of food that everyone is eating. I meet so many people, but I forget how they are related to another and I don’t even try to keep their names in mind. I have to eat everything that is not vegetarian (not that I would mind) and desperately try to convince everyone that I don’t want to sleep. Maybe I look like I am of a very weak nature, but apparently most of the people want me to rest as much and work as little as possible. After I persuaded Ratana for about half an hour, she lets me cut a coconut. About 20 people are staring at me and I am quite nervous as it always looks so easy when I see Cambodians do it. As my first two strikes are a hand length apart from each other, I am not allowed to touch a knife anymore.

Pchum Ben ends when everyone wishes the spirits farewell. In the evening little boats are set in the rice fields, symbolizing the way home of the ancestors. In the boats are small lights, it’s beautiful when they are illuminating the whole countryside. Just like this, candles are lit in the Pagodas.

Peace Is Our Right

This week, everyone was very busy. Not many may know that, but on the 21 of September is the international day of peace. To contribute something to this cause, we had a variety of projects going on. First of all, we folded peace cranes. There is this story about a japanese girl with the name Sadako Sasaki. Today she is a symbol of the innocent victims of war. Her faith moved many people that still keep her spirit in their hearts, trying to convince others of the madness of killing. The atomic bomb was dropped near Sadakos home in Hiroshima. She nearly died from the explosion that blew her out of the window. 10 years later she got leukemia and had to stay in hospital. An ancient japanese story says that anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes is granted a wish. She began to make paper cranes, using every material she could find because of the lack of paper. She never finished the birds before she died, but the 644 that she made before her dead were completed in number by her friends and buried with her. Since 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane is standing in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. A sign on the statue says:

“This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.”

It took me ages to learn how to make the little paper birds, but looking back I might have folded nearly thousand. If I was allowed to make a wish, it would of course be peace on earth. Every child in the learning center had to make at least one peace crane. All week you could see them everywhere, in all different kinds of colours. Afterwards we colored them and wrote “PEACE”, in capitol letters on them. The organisation “Armed with the Arts” has the idea to connect people from around the world with using peace cranes. Posting pictures and videos of schools that participate should demonstrate how we are all standing behind the idea of a united world. The paper cranes have a high emotional impact, what makes the idea quite outstanding. I think in the end of the week, when everyone learned about the project, we were all happy to be part of something bigger that connects children from so many different places all around the world.

As we had to take a picture, we all came together in the court. Sreydieb and me drew a big peace sign with chalk on the ground and everyone was taking their place in the circle. Of course with holding a paper crane. It’s a nice memory that doubles the meaning of peace.

In one lesson, I drew different situations on the board and the children had to tell me what they would do if they found themselves in it. It was all about daily life experiences that give us the choice to spread peace around us or to live with closed eyes for others. We talked about sharing, caring, uniting, helping, connecting and inspiring. And we said why we wanted peace on earth to happen. In another lesson we pinned papers on our backs that could be inscribed with the thoughts about the others person anonymously. Everyone could keep their sheet with many nice compliments about oneself on it. With the smaller children we made a peace poster and with the older children we were singing a song called “Peace is our Right”. Everyone had to write a little story about the content of the song. It’s remarkable that everyone understood the message. And we all hope that we can spread it further. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zg9jvvpafd0keef/Right%20To%20Peace.wmv?dl=0

In the end we should send our paper cranes in a big box to a partner school. As this is not really in our budget we want to try exchanging e-mails and building up friendships throughout different cultures in that way. I hope this will work out because it’s a way of continuing what the peace project started.

Angkors Hidden Glories

Four days I was going to experience the ancient city Angkor, the forgotten Khmer Empire, the land of gods. Looking back I can just say, that everything that is told about this magic place is far more than true. I originally wanted to go there to meet my friend Salome that lives in Mexico. I don’t see her often and as she was in Laos one week ago, we decided to meet each other somewhere in between Luang Prabang and Phnom Penh. It was obvious to chose Siem Reap, the modern city that is today the gateway to Angkor.

My bus ride there was quite a long trip. I left Angtasom at 6 o’clock in the morning and arrived in Siem Reap at 7 pm. To begin with, driving with a Tuc Tuc in Phnom Penh is an adventure itself. The streets are so crowded, I just couldn’t believe that the whole queue of engines that was slowly moving towards the city center was not falling like a domino row. Not speaking of the potholes. When the bus to Siem Reap finally arrived nearly two hours late, I was the only western person and a small television in the front was playing 8 hours non-stop romantic Khmer music. Babies were crying, we stopped five times in small villages to pick someone up or let someone out of the bus and eventually we had a puncture.

Besides the fact that both Salome and me were tired after our trip, we were so happy to see each other that we talked until it was nearly midnight. She couldn’t stop to go into raptures about Laos and I might have talked quite as much about the south of Cambodia. The next morning we left our hostel at 4:30 to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is the biggest and maybe most impressive religious monument on earth. “Angkor” means city and ”Wat” temple. When it started raining, we realized that we would probably have the whole site for us alone. Nobody was as crazy as us, trying to resist the storm. We tapped through the temple halls, hoping to find our way through the corridors. With a torch light, Salome tried to light the mysterious shapes of warriors and kings that cover the walls in front of us. Never have I felt like this, it seemed like we were both far away from civilization, tumbled in another century. The old statues of beautiful, dancing women seemed to be alive, in a heartbeat they could have continued the movements in which they were once captured. I nearly got a heart attack as I was stepping outside in the courtyard and suddenly saw a giant Buddha enlightened by moonshine in front of me. We left the temple when the sun was about to rise and finally saw the silhouette appearing through the rainy fog. It was a seemed so out of this world, I couldn’t quite believe I was actually there. Then suddenly thunder began to roll and lightning was flashing over the sky. Salomes biggest fear are thunderstorms so we decided to run back to the Tuc Tuc that brought us there and come back another time. It should be in the daylight and with crowds of tourists everywhere.

Fortunately the gods had mercy with us and the rest of the day the sun was shining. The temples we visited in the middle of the jungle, were described by many people before me adventurers, explorers, travelers and dreamers before me and all of them said that words alone are not enough to express what you are feeling when visiting this long forgotten kingdom. When walking under the shade of big trees that seem to lead you into a dense forest, suddenly a temple emerges in front of your eyes and you are amazed by the simple fact that it could be build in such beauty, so many years ago, at a place like this. Each monument is more impressive than the last and you could just stand there in awe, watching the work of craftsmen and sculptors that lived 1000 years before. There is Bayon, one of the most famous buildings of the Angkor period, built by Jayavarman VII. On top of the many towers that cover the temple, are four stonefaces that look in all four corners of the earth. Or Ta Prohm, a labyrinth surrounded by nature. You could stay there for a week and still find new things that astonish you. The special charm of the temple is that it was left jus the way it was found. It’s like walking through an old fairytale, strangler figs grow on top of the walls and dig their roots deep in the stone. Everything you see is made of such accomplished beauty, it really seems to be a city made by gods as the legends say and not one build with human hands.

The next day we loaned mountain bikes to explore the area around the main temples. In the evening we did 50 kilometers and I couldn’t get off my saddle because everything was hurting. But it was an experience that I would not like to miss. Far away from the traveler groups we could chose our own routes and see the whole variety of nature around the temple complex. It’s unbelievable that over a million people lived here in the 12th century. Lakes and ricefields, giant trees, small rivers, beautiful flowers, everything is part of the landscape. In the morning we met a group of monkeys and took pictures of the smallest eating a banana. They were not more than a meter away from us. Then we drove over a bridge that was surrounded by stone soldiers, garding the entrance. Every temple you see is different. Some are like pyramids that give you an overview on the whole area, others look like little towns, some are surrounded by water and you can’t even step inside. The local people don’t have to pay entrance fee to get inside the world heritage site and so it happens that you see little boys driving their cows through the gates like their ancestors did many years ago.

On our third day we visited a mine museum. It is a horrifying history journey to learn about the bitter truth of the Cambodian mine fields. We had a guided tour from a man that moved with his wife to Cambodia to support the people defusing the mines. He told us that only two weeks before a little girl lost both her legs as she was playing outside of her village in the woods. Still there are six million mines in Cambodia, preventing people to live in freedom and safety. And to carry on with their lives.

In the evening we went on a boat trip. The Tonle Sap is the biggest lake in Cambodia. It’s famous for the floating villages where the people live from fishing and let their homes being washed in different directions so that you never find where the exact location is. We were first driving along the coast where interested people go to watch birds and soon came to the flooded forest. You have to change to a smaller boat that looks like a nut shell and can sink pretty easily (no I didn’t fall in the water but nearly). The women that was rowing showed us her house. You have to go by boat when you want to visit the Pagoda or want to buy food. The children just travel by sitting inside the washtub. Looking outside of her living room window you only see water, but between the houses are little bridges that make it easy to visit the neighbors. The kids just swim around and laugh like it is the most onderful things on earth. It probably is. The flooded forest itself is pretty enchanting. There are trees everywhery but onlu the upper half of the trunk and the crown are looking out of the water. Under this roof of leaves above you, you begin to believe that fairies live on the branches. When the sun is going down our boat drives on the middle of the Tonle Sap. The water turns this shade of orangly-pink and of course I can’t resist jumping in the water, despite the nameless animals that call the lake their home. But swimming towards the colored horizon is something I can’t possibly miss. When our boat driver wants to help me back in, he loses his balance and falls in the water. I feel VERY sorry for him because he was dressed from head to toe. When he swims to the water surface he bursts into laughter and I can’t help but join in. Salome is probably the one that laughs the loudest from her safe place on the top of the boat. I can imagine that our driver has a lot of people that he has to bring down to the lake everyday, but not many that actually go swimming in the water. It’s like the ice is broken and he starts telling us about his life when we are both back on the boat. He is 19 years old and turns shifts with his brother. They both sleep in the boat and work from early morning to late evening, every day. His toothbrush and everything he needs (not much) is hidden under the planks of the boat. He would like to learn better English and get another job, but he has no money. Despite all this he seemed to be okay with his destiny. When he was talking with us he began to smile what he didn’t do before and when we were driving back, he gave us a mat to lie on so that we could watch the stars that glittered brighter than I ever saw them before on our way back.

The last highlight of our holiday was the temple Beng Mealea that is far outside from Siem Reap. You have to travel over two hours to get there and comparing the temples, this one remained a secret the longest time. Of course we had another puncture on our way there and had to wait in the middle of nowhere until we had a new wheel. At least we could fix it, to emphasize this, I heard stories where people were stuck for hours with no end after something like this happened. Going inside the temple is a climbing adventure. Swings made of roots are everywhere, little sideways and windows reveal chambers and moss is growing over the old architecture. Behind the temple you can find a small river with huge round rocks where children go swimming. It was by far my favourite temple, but because it was the last it doesn’t say much.

Before we had to go back ”home” we visited the Artisants d’Angkor. This are people from the rural areas around Siem Reap that learn the profession of Angkors architects and artists. They make stone sculptures, paint pictures, carve wood Apsaras. Some of them are disabled and all of them from very poor families. This was a great last stop because it shows that the culture is being saved by the local people and that the skills to build wonders still lie withing their abilities.

It was very said to tell Salome goodbye because it might be again some years until we see each other again. I had to say goodbye to often in the past months and yet I always found myself on good pathways, with wonderful people around me. I would not have wanted to miss any of it, so I think it is best to just carry on and see what will happen next.