Heal The World

The Learning Center was closed over Chinese New Year and I naturally took it as an opportunity to travel. On the way to Phnom Penh I sat next to a monk that had three different phones in his bag. One oft hem was an Iphone. I sometimes wonder what is happening to the traditional images of Eastern spirituality. Monks that are on facebook and order food from a street kitchen. I always think I am far more reluctant towards them than them towards me. I happens to me that a monk is smiling at me while I am trying to walk a respectful bow around him, trying to avoid eye contact by any means.

It is easier now to find my way around in Phnom Penh. When I waited for my bus that should bring me to the north-western town Battambang, I talked a little bit to some Tuc Tuc drivers that waited for work. When they heard I could speak Khmer they immediately changed their entire manner and asked me a whole bunch of questions. One of the men had an English grammar book with him and wanted me to practise with him. It was quite funny to have grown up students, instead of little children that listen to my explanations. When we came to the grammar topic of places, one of them helpfully changed his position and everyone was shouting “behind”, “next to”, “opposite of” as he hopped around a chair. Everyone who walked passed us gave us strange looks. They were all super excited and had so much fun, I honestly considered to offer free English courses for tuc tuc drivers. When the bus finally came I sat down next to a boy of about 14 years who wouldn’t stop ask me if I wanted to share my food with him. I wasn’t really hungry, but eventually I put the Leibniz cookies from my grandma out of my bag and lay them in front of us on the table. He happily took five cookies and gave me some strange looking fruits and some chilli sauce. After we had been driving for about an hour, the bus driver turned on a movie. It was about a small village where a dog suddenly went crazy and tried to eat all the inhabitants. It was so loud and the quality just as the story line so poor, I felt like I might as well be easier to jump out of the bus and walk to Battambang. To my infortune, the man behind me suddenly began to ask me what I was doing in Cambodia and when I said I worked as a teacher he asked me if I wanted to come and visit his university somewhere in the middle of nowhere to help. I told him, if I should ever find time I would try to come, but he insisted to get my e-mail. I don’t understand why foreigners, no matter how unprofessional they might look (an 18 year old girl with an old backpack and a strange mix of clothes), are always being invited to come to teach only because they have white skin. No matter that English teachers in Phnom Penh have a bad reputation, as really everyone can come and start to work there. When I had written down my e-mail address for the man, I tried to sleep, but of curse I was interrupted again. The man on the other side of the aisle pointed on himself and said he was part of the Muslim minority in Cambodia. Then he told me his whole life story and showed me pictures of his family. He wanted to know if there were many Muslims in Germany and if I had ever thought about changing my religion. I told him that I wasn’t religious at all, what just made him sigh in a “the youth of today”-way. The drive should take seven hours but to that point, we were already on the road for eight. Well, that is not exactly true, we spent a lot of time stopping, so we had time going to the toilet or buying something to eat. When we stopped this time though, we were really in the middle of nowhere. I looked out of the window to see if I could spot something, but I couldn’t. Around us were just fields. In that moment my phone began to ring. I looked at the display and saw that it were my grandparents. Perfect timing of course. I answered the phone and could barely understand anything because it was so loud. The guy next to me looked curious as if he wanted to take over the phone and the Muslim man looked as if he wanted to say that we really had other problems and I should be reasonable and turn of the phone. I stood up and went to the driver seat to get away from the noise, but it just got worse. I turned around them and faced the whole bus load full of people. “Som siem sniet!”, I said like I do it with my younger students (please be quiet) and immediately it was silent. What classroom words can do is really magic. I then asked the driver to open the door to explain my grandparents that we apparently just got a engine breakdown in the middle of nowhere and it was about to be pitch dark in about five minutes. I said it in a nice and reassuring way though, of course. Soon everyone else realized, that we wouldn’t move away from here for some time and got out of the bus. It took two hours until another bus arrived to pick us up.

The next morning I rented a bicycle to drive to the Bamboo Train outside of Battambang. No matter where I go in Cambodia, it looks the same. High palm trees and people that sell their fruits in front of little wooden houses, that are covered in advertisement for beer and blue plastic chairs. There is also an orange box with beverages and some candy that is hanging off the ceiling, waiting to be sold in front of nearly every house. There are motorbikes and lost cows on the way and crowds of children that say hello to you. And then there are men lying in hammocks and women feeding chicken. I asked some people for the way, but just seemed to move farther away from the place I actually wanted to go. Suddenly I saw something small and black coming towards me. I closed my eyes and felt a burning pain. Directly under my eye, a bee had stung me. I am allergic against bees and know so, since I once stepped on a bee when I was six years old and my foot got swollen three times the size. I wasn’t going to just stop looking for the bamboo train though and was in the middle of nowhere so it wouldn’t make much sense to just stop. The train rail seemed to be centuries old and the actual “train” was just a wooden table with little wheels under it. Two men moved the thing on the rail and off we went, much faster than I ever imagined it could be possible. The Cambodians had used the train to transport goods from one place to the other when the streets were destroyed and there was no infrastructure after the time of the Khmer Rouge. The whole landscape looked horrible, after the harvesting season there was no green anymore to be seen and instead everything was dark black And old Khmer saying goes like this: “If you want to learn, kill the master; if you want the fruits, burn the foot of the tree. This seemingly paradoxical assertion actually means that the student should outperform his master. One used to put ashes at the foot of the coconut tree in order to fertilize the soil. Furthermore, some make a fire at the foot of the tree because of the fact that under stress plants tend to increase their fruit production. That is why Cambodian farmers set fire to their rice fields, to improve the next harvest. I was nevertheless shocked to see the never-ending area of burned soil. I wish it would be possible to drive with a train through the whole country, but it might take years until this is possible again. In the mean time my eye got swollen worse and worse.

In the afternoon I met Stacy who was in Battambang for work and she was shocked when she saw my eye. She couldn’t believe that it was only a sting, as I could barely open the eye. We sat down in a little restaurant to eat something and were talking as suddenly a boy emerged and introduced himself to us. He said he was from Norway and in Cambodia for two weeks. We were a little bit confused that he came to talk to us out of the blue and then I realized that two of his friends were behind him. When I was mustering them, it occurred to me, that they were all looking at my eye. Then the first guy asked me, if he could pray for me. I looked very confused and Stacy seemed to be so shocked, she didn’t reply either. The guy might have thought we didn’t really understand him. He asked me again, if he could pray for my eye. I slowly shook my head and explained to him, that it was a bee sting and that I would try to get a cream for it or anti-allergics. I thought of the story in the bible when Jesus healed the blind man and the way that the other guys crowded behind him, made me think of the disciples. Scary. He looked deeply disappointed when I rejected his request, came to me and took my hands in his. Needless to say, that the whole restaurant was staring at us and Stacy still didn’t react. He looked at me as if he wanted to hypnotize me and said: “I am a Christian. I can heal people.” At this point I started to laugh. I was sure that somewhere had to be a hidden camera. But when I saw the disappointed look on his face, I kind of felt bad and told him I was sorry, but I was going to be fine without his prayers, too. Then they left one after the other, following the modern day Jesus from Norway who had come to Cambodia to heal people.

The next day my eye looked so horrible, I nearly regretted not having let Jesus pray for my eye. The whole staff in my hostel urged me to go to the hospital, so I said yes. It took ages until the doctor had time for me and I had to give what felt like a litre of blood. Then a doctor who could barely speak English asked me a whole bunch of questions about my eye and then he wrote down about twenty different kinds of remedies for me. I told the women in the pharmacy I only needed the anti-allergica and gave everything else back. Weird looks followed me wherever I went. I was not only taller, whiter and blonder than everyone else now, I also looked like the female version of Quasimodo.

In the afternoon I decided to go with a group of people from my hostel to a bat cave. It was on top of a mountain, about half an hour away from town by Tuc Tuc. On the mountain was also an incredibly beautiful pagoda, with towers carved with flowers, shining in gold. When we arrived on top of the mountain I saw a tree that grew just next to the stupas. It was the same tree that my host family has in their garden. The so called Moringa leaves are growing on the branches and it is one of the super foods that contain all kind of vitamins and minerals. Buying it in a shop is very expensive and eating the wild grown leaves is even better. I told everyone about it and a minute later all four people that came with me there started to eat the leaves of the tree as if they were starving. A girl from Australia asked me if a little package was really 20 Dollars and when I said yes, she put another hand full in her mouth. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. What was very sad on the other hand was, that the place had been used by Khmer Rouge as “Killing Caves”. There are thousands of holes, tunnels and carvings in the mountain where bats live and where in former times prisoners had been tortured and thrown down the in the darkness to rot. There are still bones and skulls everywhere, it is truly terrifying to see. When it was about to get dark, we sat down on a rock and waited for the bats to come out. We had seen some little ones before, flying over our heads and hanging from the ceiling above us. They were really cute, but suddenly, there was a giant black cloud that came out of the mountain, so that you could barely see how many there were coming out at once, it was just a cloud of black wings. It didn’t stop for about an hour, until the last bat came stumbling out of the mountain, it was impressive, but creepy at the same time. There had to be so many holes, so much dark, undiscovered space that nobody ever saw before, the thought of it made me shiver. Matched with the horror stories of the Khmer Rouge, even the beautiful pagoda couldn’t convince me to stay any longer.

In the evening I went to the local circus school what was very impressive. It was all about the processing of the past and the crimes against humanity under which the society had to suffer. Today there are barely old people to be seen on the streets, so many died and the society is young but nevertheless influenced by their parents, which suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. I never realize it that much, but a girl told me that she had been so shocked to come to Cambodia for the first time as she had travelled in Vietnam and Thailand before and she couldn’t see old people anywhere. It seemed to her that something was wrong and odd about the country and only after some time she realized that this was the things that had bothered her. In the circus school there was singing, dancing, acting and acrobatic and I was highly impressed by the talent of the young children from the villages. When they continue to be trained in the circus, they can later work in the official, professional circus in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. I was lucky to see the performance, as they only have one per week, but that was surely the reason why it was so good and the children seemed to have so much fun with everything they were doing.

The next day I left Battambang and went to Koh Kong. As I love hiking, I wanted to go and see the Jungle there. A man whose name is Alex Gonzalez-Davidson that comes originally from Spain has lived there for 20 years and founded an NGO with the name “Mother Nature”. He speaks fluent Khmer and has prevented the jungle from being destroyed by deforestation many times just as raised awareness with making many movies in Khmer to show the people the preciousness and rarity of the area. He was so popular within the Khmer people, because he really made an effort to learn their language and culture and became one of them. Today he is a celebrity, especially on facebook you can read only positive response towards the things he is doing. When the Cambodian government wanted to build a dam in Koh Kongs rain forest area, he organized a protest with so many people, that it was not possible for the send people to take the measurements and plans. After that, the government refused to extend Alexs visa and he had to leave the country, by military force. The response of the Khmer people was heart breaking: “I was there to protect him and went with him to the airport to protect him from the military. I wanted to protect him as he protected our nature.” Or “We should not kick Alex out of the country, we should give him a citizenship. He did more for the Khmer people than all of the politicians today together.” I was very interested in his case and what happened to him and the project then. That was also why I wanted to see the place with my own eyes. I hopped out of the bus on my way to the provincial capitol of Koh Kong. From there on I had to take a little boat that would drive me down a river and to another village from where on it was possible to walk in the jungle. With the fisher boat I was two hours on the water. It was the most amazing landscape and I could see, why people would risk their life to preserve it. Cambodia is so flat, that you could see mountains nowhere I have been before. Now they surrounded me. It was like floating in a giant valley down into a world where there is no sign of civilization. Now and then there were huts by the waterside, framed by the long branches of giant trees. The people there lived with the nature in a way I never saw it before. The boat driver explained to me, that the river was their source of life, where they found nearly all their nutrients. When I arrived in the small village and got off the boat, I was welcomed by a family that told me I could stay the night at their house. I always thought hat my family lived in humble conditions, but this was a whole new level. I was sleeping on the floor and all we had to eat was rice and potatoes. The next morning I went with a group of five, two locals and two other people that had come to the village the day before, in the jungle. The path first led through a valley and it was incredibly hot. Our guard told us we should watch out for snakes and five minutes later a giant yellow animal passed our way, about 20 centimetres from my foot. The locals showed us which plants we could eat, which were poisonous and which you could use as a remedy. We cut some branches that contained drinking water and found sweet berries that we ate all day long. After the valley we came in the jungle and it was just like one would imagine an authentic rain forest to be like. In the crowns of the trees you could see colourful birds flying, the trees were so thick that five people could not lay their arms around and giant stones in the shapes of animals kept lying in our way. Every time we passed a smaller stream, the guides just lay down in the water and drank with their bare hands. In the evening we arrived at our camp, a little hut where we hang up our hammocks. Nearby was a giant waterfall and we all went swimming there before the night fell. From one point that was about seven meters high you could jump in the water and it just felt amazing to get a jungle shower after the whole day walking. Then we brew tea with the things we collected and cooked some rice with vegetables. Before we all went to sleep, the guard told us that we should be prepared for tigers, bears and even elephants to interrupt us at night, but I was so tired, I fell asleep in two seconds. The next day we continued our way and had to cross a river over stones that were so slippery, I was sure I was going to fall. Then we climbed up a rock and suddenly had a great view around the whole area, as it was still early morning, the fog was hanging in the trees and the screams of monkeys filled the air. All you could see was a green landscape, but it was like the air was vibrating with all the hidden life underneath. I was so glad to having come there and seen the place that I heard so much about in the media with my own eyes. It is a world so innocent and untouched, it would be crime to destroy it for the sake of money. I felt like I had to do something, change something myself. But it sometimes feels like it is far easier to do bad than good. I imagined the elephants dying when the river had no water anymore and the tigers not being able to hunt anymore, because there were no trees to hide behind. All the beautiful flowers smashed under the weight of a steamroller. It was so hard to leave the jungle again to go back to reality. I knew I could never come back and see the place like I left it.

Robinson Crusoe Alias Me

Cambodia’s kitchen is made of such an impressive variety of flavors, I never get tired of it. I remember when I was travelling in Thailand with my family, I adored the food so much, I would wish to be able to beam myself back there for every lunch break. I imagined how many wonderful things I could buy myself I could get in Germany maybe a disgusting potato salad for. Especially for vegetarians, the Southeast Asian countries are like heaven. Of course there is meat in every traditional meal, but when you make the effort and cook yourself, there are millions of spices, herbs, fruits and vegetables to buy at every market. I came to the conclusion that I actually like rice more than noodles. Not without reason do Cambodians say: “Nijam bay” (eat rice) when they say they are going to get a meal. One time when I was eating with Sopheak, Chanthou and Pereah lunch on a bask mat on the floor; I stood up to get some water when suddenly all of them began to scream. I looked around in panic, expecting to find a rat somewhere, but then I realized they were all starring at me. I was confused, what had happened in the two seconds since I stood up? I touched my head, because I thought that there might be a giant spider. But no, no spider there. “You can’t walk over the rice!”, Pereah finally exclaimed to reveal the secret. Walk over the rice? Oh sure, as we are eating on the floor, I had put my foot over my plate to get to the other side of the room. “The rice is holy!”, said Chanthou. “It’s like our mother!”, added Sopheak. I remembered when Sopheak told me the story of when she once let the rice get burned and her mother got really angry at her and said she would never find a husband when she couldn’t cook rice. Rice is serious business in Cambodia.

One of my favourite desserts in Cambodia is pumpkin in coconut milk. In Germany I didn’t like pumpkins at all. Especially pumpkin soup was one of the worst dishes I could possibly imagine. In Cambodia I suddenly love the vegetable. There are so many never thought of dishes that you can make with it, there’s no way to get tired of eating it. The pumpkin dessert is very easy to make, you chop the pumpkin and then boil it in water. Afterwards you add sweet milk and pour coconut milk over it all. It’s like heaven. I don’t know how I should ever survive coming back to Germany and not having the amazing food anymore. I will continue wishing to be able to beam myself back for having lunch, probably.

One thing that everyone who has spent some time with me knows is, that I really love quotes. I’m not sure if this is really of any value for my future life, but once I like them they are stuck in my head and I can’t get them out even if I wanted to. I decided that we needed some inspirational quotes in the Learning Center and began to draw posters in different colours to underline it. I started with Ghandis “Be the Change You Want to See in the World” and “Educating the mind Without Educating the Heart is No Education at all” by Aristotle and finished with “A Good Education Will Stay with you Forever”. I was quite pleased to see, that the children are actually stopping to read the quotes.

Once I wrote about the short movie that I made with two of my students, Nareth and Lisa, about the rules in the learning centres. Now Sokhan asked me to do one more, but this time in Khmer. We might be putting the movie on the tablets that we are getting donated next year. I still think that it is a very good idea and having the movie in Khmer, in that way you can make sure that everyone understands it.

I am learning the present continuous right now with my students from 3 to 4 and I gave them 20 new verbs to learn with it. They insisted that they would only learn them for the next day, if I learned them in Khmer. I thought it was a deal and sat down to learn them all. When I came in class the next day, I had to pronounce every single one of the words in five different words before an “aaaaah”-sound went through the class. It is so frustrating, really. Just to give one example of how hard it is to pronounce the words is the sentence “Can I help you?” – “Dta knyom juiy neak?”. When you pronounce it just a little bit different it ends up meaning “Can I f*ck you?” – Dta knyom joiy neak?”. I can’t understand how they can make two such words so similar, but whatever. Maybe they wanted to have something to laugh about.

For New Year I went to Sihanoukville, to meet Sam and Garlaine there, two girls that are volunteering for the same organization as Stacy and that I met at our Bookbridge workshop. I left at the 31^st of December to not be missing in school longer than necessary. First I put my backpack on my shoulders (I don’t know how it survived the last year with me, I didn’t have much mercy with it) and biked all the way to the bus stop down national road number two. When the bus finally came (one and a half hours later of course), there were no seats anymore. I told the bus driver that I could sit on the floor, because it didn’t make much of a difference to me. The man looked at me completely shocked about the fact that a ‘barang’ would sit on the floor. I ended up in the alley between the seats on a tiny plastic chair. I didn’t turn out to be the only false passenger. Behind me were 10 other Cambodians on plastic chairs. The chairs were very low of course, so I kind of felt like a giant on a dwarf furniture. When we arrived in Kampot, I had to change to a taxi. The taxis in Cambodia are really incredible. They try to fit as many people inside as humanly possible, meaning that there is one person between the driver and the door, one person where the hand break is, two people on the second chair in the front and surely five people in the back. So it’s nine people in total in a tiny car and I was told that it’s not unusual for them to put eleven in it. Don’t ask me where the people are then, probably in the trunk.

During my time travelling I had desperately tried to call Garlaine. She left for Sihanoukville the day before, but every time I dialled the number, I got a message that it was not possible to build a connection. When I finally arrived in Sihanoukville at 4 pm on New Years day, I was pretty much in the worst mood imaginable. I had been for more than two hours in a car without air conditioning, squeezed between a pregnant women and a stinking man, not being able to move an inch just to find myself alone in a town I didn’t know without anyone I knew, on New Years day. Additionally I was hungry and thirsty and still sweating. I began walking down the road and went through some backyards to get closer to where I suspected the beach to be. I got a coconut from a women that seemed to sense that I was feeling miserable. I just sat down on the roadside, sipping my coconut, looking like seven days of rainy weather. I began to wish I had stayed at home. Now I imagining myself sleeping in a horrible cheap guest house, celebrating New Years all alone (part of that was to become true). I felt so miserable; I nearly started to cry and pour tears in my coconut. Suddenly I heard a voice behind me. “Do you know if there is any place where we can sleep this night? We asked everywhere, but it seems like everyone on this planet is in Sihanoukville for New Years and it’s all booked.” I turned around and looked at a girl that had the same hairstyle like my little sister. Brown and cut under the ear, so that the top would look mischievously up from under the chin. She smiled at me and raised her eyebrows at the same time expectantly. Her friend next to her was smiling too. She had curly blonde hair and a lot of freckles. “I have no idea.”, I said honestly. “So where do you sleep then?”, asked the blonde girl with a French accent. “I don’t know… honestly”. I told them the story of how I couldn’t call Garlaine and didn’t know what to do. The girl with the brown hair smiled and shrugged her shoulders: “So you are going to sleep at the beach with us?” I considered what other choices I really had and stood up. “my name is Malin, nice to meet you.” Their names were Loelia and Emma and they were both French. Sometimes I feel like travelling is not about arriving somewhere and taking pictures of the things that millions of people saw before you, but about meeting people along the way. That’s what really makes a journey unique and unforgettable. We headed off in direction beach when we walked past a cheap looking guesthouse. In fact, the most abandoned looking guesthouse I ever saw in my life. The guy that was standing in front of it, with barely any clothes on and a yellow sign in his hands to advertise a New Years Party, screamed at us when we were barely standing two meters away from him: “Rooms for only one dollar!! Don’t miss this chance and don’t miss our party!!!”. “You still have rooms?”, asked Emma astonished. It turned out that the room he had talked about was a tiny chamber with a story bed in which an infinite number of people could fit, as the matrasses were not divided. In the door was a guy that was just shaving his head and the drawer that we could use to put our important things inside was half-broken. Well then. I kind of didn’t care because we wouldn’t actually sleep there as it was New Year and we could find something else the next day. We tried to get away from the bald guy and get to the beach as fast as possible. We could already see, that it was completely full with people. I don’t know how many, but it was gigantic. We decided to go swimming with the last rays of sunlight that shone down on us. We climbed some rocks to get away from the crowd and jumped in the water. I always loved swimming, no matter where I am and no matter how cold the water is, I always have the urge to jump in. That’s probably how I ended up swimming in the Tonle Sap. It was just wonderful, I somehow didn’t feel so miserable anymore and I seemed to just click with Lia and Emma right from the start. Afterwards they explained me that they didn’t have a lot of money and were therefor mainly eating coconuts what was absolutely fine with me. Coconuts are just amazing. (I might have mentioned that before). We were talking about all kinds of things, realizing that we had a lot in common, beginning with our love for spontaneous decisions. When we walked to the part of the beach that was filled with people, it was already dark. Once again I was overwhelmed by the number of people. There seemed to be no empty spot left on the beach. They had already begun with the firework. Of course you normally start to send off the firework at midnight, but here the whole sky was filled with more lights than I ever saw before in my life at seven o’clock. They also had lanterns that were floating in the sky, mingling with the real stars. They looked just like the ones from Tangled and seemed to be the last thing missing to create this special atmosphere. I was astonished to see them all. Lia, Emma and I got a heart shaped lantern and lit it in the water. The whole sky was spectacular and it should go on like this till midnight. We tried to find our way through the crowd, passing by hundreds of people. At one place we got free drinks, at another we could paint pictures on ourselves with glowing colour and at another we were invited to build a sandcastles, decorated with hundreds of candles. Then we went dancing to WESTERN music and basically laughed the whole time, imitating all kind of dance styles from different parts of the world. Suddenly I saw Garlaine and Sam and the world was okay again. We greeted each other and Garlaine told me that she went swimming in the morning and when she came out of the water, her whole bag was gone, with mobile phone, key, cards, money etc. She didn’t seem to be bothered about it. I don’t think anyone could be sad at this place at this time. Half an hour later it was midnight and when it wasn’t all crazy before, it was definitely out of it’s mind by then. There were colours everywhere, people dancing shouting, screaming and in front of the shore was a giant construction that was carrying the words “Happy New Year 2015”. I don’t have to explain what happened when they set them on fire.

All in all I managed to get one hour of sleep in the prison chamber and then I escaped with Lia and Emma. We decided to take the morning ferry to Koh Rong, the island in front of Sihanoukville. We were basically the only people on the boat, behind us was a hung-over guy who was splashed with water every time we hit a wave and didn’t care about it at all. When we arrived at the island, we were greatly disappointed. The whole beach was plastered with guesthouses that had signs outside, advertising daily parties and cheap flat rate drinking offerings. We went to one of the bars and sat down. The guy at the table next to ours had a long beard and was reading a newspaper. Lia tapped on his shoulder: “Sorry, you wouldn’t know if there is a calmer place on the island, would you?” “Calmer place?”, he asked. Then he looked at us judgemental as if to make up his mind about something. “How good are you on feet?” “Amazing!”, said Lia immediately. The guy brought a map and showed us a way that seemed to lead straight across the whole island and to the other side. “This beach is called long beach. That has two reasons. First: it is a very long beach. And Second: It been a long time since anyone went there and actually came back”. He started to laugh and winked at us. “How long to get there?”, asked Lia. “Depends on how fast you are. Maybe two hours?” “Let’s go!”, I said. “The sooner we get going, the sooner we are going to arrive.” After some time we found the right track and left the tourist hell behind us. The path was really steep and we passed two water buffalos that were having a nap right in our way. We kept on going and soon the sweat was pouring down from everywhere. That was nothing like going hiking in the Alps. My backpack seemed to be 10 times heavier and the air felt like it was actually so hot, it could burn my skin. When we were enclosed by the jungle it was a little bit better. Not so hot anymore and it was possible to breath. Several times the way parted in front of us and we had to choose which way we should take. It was like in a labyrinth, so we decided to always walk on the right site. We had to climb over fallen trees that blocked our way or push branches to the side that were scraping our faces. Soon we were so high up, we could see the sea again. It was a beautiful day, the first of the New Year. We kept walking when we suddenly saw a sign in front of us. It said, “This is the windy rock. When you feel like you are son going to die, just sit down for a while and enjoy the view!” I walked closer to inspect the rock. Under the rock it just went steep on into nothingness. Maybe this was the highest point of the island. The rock was very long and the surface cool. I climbed up and let my legs hang over the free space. Lia and Emma also came up behind me. From here on we could see the turquoise water of the shore of the long beach. This was just too good, the breeze tussled my hair and I drank a big sip of water. Emma learned German in school and we started to talk in a mixture of French, German and English. They started to teach me “Aux Champs Elysees” and I taught them “Über den Wolken”. When we were able to keep walking, we were singing as loud as possible, certain that nobody could hear us. Fortunately we only had to walk downhill from now on and soon arrived at the beach. All of us were stunned. I didn’t believe that beaches like these existed any longer. The sand was really purely white, no rubbish, no waste was there, the water was crystal clear and the palm trees were full of coconuts. We started to walk down the beach. After an hour we saw two people that had hung hammocks up in the trees and were cooking lunch. They greeted us friendly and when we had gone out of ear sight Emma exclaimed: “Let us do the same! We can build a house here!” Lia and I immediately enthusiastically agreed on the idea. From now on we kept watch if we could find a good place to stay. After another hour we found one. Two trees had grown bended to the beach with their branches intertwined. We ate the rice with vegetable that we had bought in Sihanoukville and began searching for wood. There were unexpectedly, a lot of things that we could use to build our hut. Wood, strings, palm leaves, coconut shells… We worked hard, especially Emma who came several times with monstrous trunks out of the jungle, and soon we had a true Robinson-Crusoe house. I was in love and when Lia put out her mosquito net and we installed it on the point where all our poles came together in the middle of the house looked like we had just made a new invention of a traditional Indian tippi. When the sun began to set, we lay down and watched the colours in the sky. “Isn’t it incredible that the sun is doing this beautiful show every morning and every evening and people are to busy to watch?”, Lia asked. “Yes, incredible. I feel like this is a present that is just for us, that the sun is doing this because she knows she has an audience that is truly watching now.”, I added. I can’t really describe it and even pictures can’t tell what we experienced that evening. It was the most spectacular sunset I had ever seen. It was really as if the sun wanted to say: “Hey! My New Years resolution was to start the month with everything I have.” We didn’t talk any more, everyone of us just stared at the sky, that was changing every moment, to let us see even more spectacular formations. The firework the day before was nothing compared to this. We just laid there for what seemed like an eternity. Emma was the first of us to talk again. She pointed down the beach and there we saw a fire. We realized that we would get really cold without a fire and decided to check out who was there. When we arrived we saw three people sitting around a fire. Their hut looked even nicer than ours. They had made a kind of hut that the Vikings would have appreciated and hung little flowers in empty coconut shells, fruit and vegetable from the ceiling. The two girls, Eleonora and Georgia, that were sitting around the fire were Italian and the guy, Jake, came from Canada. He was dressed like a real hippie, with long colourful clothes and a long grown beard. In his hand he had an ukulele. Eleonora and Georgia, told us that they were camping here for one week already, besides the fact that they had only intended to stay for two days. Now they were planning to stay for one more week and skip Siem Reap on their route, as this place was truly magical and not worth leaving for anything else. We sat down and the guy asked us for our favourite songs by the Beatles. We ordered “Penny Lane”, “Hey Jude”, “Can’t buy me love”, “Eight Days a Week”, “Yellow Submarine” and finally “Let it be”. He could play them all. He asked us for a song that all of us were able to sing. We couldn’t think of any. I suggested that we should try a Disney song. “What about ‘Bare Necessities’?”, Jake asked. Every one of us could sing the lyrics to the song, but only in their own language. First Jake started in English, then Lia and Emma continued in French, then in sung it in German and then Elli and Georgia ended in Italian. It was incredible. We had so much fun, we didn’t even want to walk all the way back to our hut. We decided to meet up with them the next day to explore the island.

In the morning we did yoga at the beach and then meditation to let the soul calm down. I felt like I was buzzing with energy afterwards. After our traditional coconut, we began trekking. There was a way that should apparently lead to a very small fisher village on the island. We found a path and took the chance. Jack had his Ukulele in his hand and invented a new song that went somehow like this: “We don’t know where we are, we don’t know where we go, but we will find our way. We don’t live in the past, we don’t live in the future, we live in this moment as if it was our last.” Jack can play 100 instruments. Whenever he is travelling somewhere he tries to learn the instruments of the country. He already released an album called “Wanderlove” in which he plays songs with a combination of unusual instruments. Completely unexpectedly we stepped all of sudden on an actual road. Half an hour later a truck drove past us. It stopped and the driver gestured for us to climb on top. When well al sat on the loading space the truck continued driving and Jack was playing “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. I looked over the landscape of the island. We drove passed lakes and endless areas of trees. When we finally stopped, we were at the end of the road. In front of us was jungle again. The driver gestured us to walk through the branches. There was a tiny path that we followed down the hill. The beach that we finally arrived at was not very big and the waves were really high. We went swimming of a big flower in the sand and when we came out of the water we began to make a mandala. I drew the outlines in the beach and then we searched shells and flotsam and jetsam that got spilled on the beach to decorate the lines. We put leaves together, searched wood and see tang. It looked stunning in the end. We kept on walking in search of the fishing village and I found about five giant seashells on the way. They were all beautiful and looked like the ones you can buy in stores. The fishing village was just like the one in Takeo that I’ve bin to with Sopheak, Sokna, Pereah and Chanthou. Little huts of wood were built in the water and coloured boats were secured to them with strings. The children came running to greet us and outside of the huts were rows of dry fish. The water seemed to be nor very deep, for meters on no end it seemed to reach in the distance on ankle height. We drank coconuts and played with the children while listening to an old man who was playing the flute.

This night we decided to move to Eleonora and Georgia, simply because we didn’t want to walk all the way back again and because they had a campfire. We went for a night swim and grilled marshmallows with sweet potato and eggplant over the fire. When the moon was high above us, making the stars look pale, I had the idea of making a wish coconut. We all wrote down a wish on a paper and put it in an old coconut shell. Then we put flowers in the opening to close the nut. Everyone of us wrote down the wish. It was then when we realized it was actually full moon. At about three o’clock in the morning Lia shook me awake. “Malin, Malin! Look at the sky!”, I looked up and saw that around the full moon was a kind of white ring, similar to the ones you can make with smoke but it had to be giant. I stopped breathing. It was a kind of natural phenomenon that I never heard of before. “Do you see the green lights down there?”, Lia pointed in the distance, the open sea. “This are the aliens that are coming for us.”, she whispered. We both started to laugh. But then it really seemed like aliens had just arrived from another planet and were about to visit us. I don’t know when we fell back asleep, to continue dreaming about aliens. The next morning we started with our yoga lesson at six o’clock and ate bunch of fruits. Mango, banana, dragon fruit, papaya. I figured that I would get so healthy when I stayed there longer, only walking around all day and eating fruit and rice (and marshmallows). On this day we went snorcheling at the riffs. We couldn’t really see much besides three o four fishes, but the water was so clear, that we could see each other even in 20 meters distance and tried to make handstands and somersault. When we came back to our hut we put our bikini tops on a line to let them try in the sun. We then went to search some coconuts. When we came back the bikini tops were gone. Basically all of them. I couldn’t believe it. We decided not to worry about it, there are worse things to loose than bikini tops I thought, thinking about Garlaine. Lia brought her colours and we began to draw. Emma and Lia are both at an Art Academy in Nancy and very good at drawing. We tried to draw our sunset from memory and then we tried to draw each other. When it was about to get dark again I rushed to the jungle to collect some firewood. I just dived up from under a low branch when I suddenly saw something colourful. In the trees were our bikinitops. All of them hanging from the branches. I called Georgia and she took a photo of it. We couldn’t believe it! We spend the evening decorating our house further. We wrote “Ukulele Bungalow” on the main branch and I added “Million star accommodation, no money wanted.” When we sat around the fire this evening, we played the game when one person has to start telling a story and the other has to continue it. We made up 10 different ones, each crazier than the other. Emma then pointed at the beach and we all fell silent. This evening I saw plankton for the first time. The whole beach was glowing like someone scattered neon colours along the water.

The next morning I took a photo with the ukulele in front of the bungalow. Then I said goodbye to everyone. I had to be back in school Monday. It was really hard to leave, I had the feeling like everything I really needed had been there the last days. When I think about how many wonderful and unusual things happened to me over the passed days, I would never have treated them for a luxury accommodation on the other side of the island. I walked the whole way back, down the beach, to the path we took on the first day and up the mountain. It was even harder than the first time. I told myself I couldn’t stop if I wanted to get the ferry by 9 am. I felt like I was positively about to faint and be surrounded by hallucinations in the middle of the jungle. I was breathing like a locomotive. When I finally arrived at the other side, I felt like I just woke up from a dream. Around me were tourists again, drinking sweet smoothies in the beach bars. And my ship, the backpacker ferry, was just sailing away. Then I saw the fancy speed fairy was at the peer and people were getting in. I rushed to the queue and waited in the line with the suit-case-tourists. The guy at the boarding looked at my ticket for about a nanosecond and I hopped on board. I put my backpack in a corner and took the coconut with our wishes out. I just stood at the reiling, watching the island becoming smaller and smaller. I knew deep in my heart that I would never come back there. In one year they would build a hotel chain on the long beach, the guy with the long hair that had told us about the place had added before we said goodbye to him. I imagined how umbrellas and sunloungers would fill the beach and the jungle where we found our bikinitops would be cut down. I imagined that they would find our little huts and laugh about them, before putting the cement foundation at the very same place. When we were in the middle of the sea I whispered “Let our dreams come true.” and threw the coconut in the foaming waves. I watched the coconut till it was only a tiny dot in the middle of the sea. When I arrived in Shanoukville I was the first to go off board as I never really occupied a seat and headed off with the first motodub driver. I explained him that he should bring me to a Khmer restaurant with traditional food. The best thing about the local places, besides from the good prices, is the free cold drinks that you get there. After I ate I went to the sharing taxi. When I arrived in Kampot, I asked my driver where the bus was. He pointed to a minivan and said that it would drive past Angtasom. The vans are about as big as our VW bus and there are never any tourists in it. I figured I could as well go for it instead of taking the official bus line. I asked the bus driver how much it would be from here to Angtasom. He looked at me and then said it was 10 dollars because of New Year. I told him that New Year had been last Wednesday and today was Sunday. He said it didn’t matter; people like me were still travelling from one place to the other because of it. I shook my head and told him, that this price was crazy and even on New Year itself I wouldn’t have paid that. He didn’t listen at all. I looked him in the eye and said that I didn’t understand why I had to pay more than a Khmer person, as there was no difference between me and them and that I worked as an English teacher and didn’t get paid. This whole conversation we had in Khmer. To that point all the tuc tuc drivers and other hammockers around us were laughing. The driver was raising his eyebrows. “You are the same as a Khmer person?”, he asked me. “I told him that he understood that right. He took my hand and shook it enthusiastically. “You Khmer, I am Khmer! Nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you too.”, I said. “Two dollars.”, he said and gestured for me to get inside. I breathed out, relieved that this conversation was over. I could live with that. The bus that would have maximally provided space for 6 people in Germany was already stuffed with 15. With horror I watched more and more people get inside. To the time we arrived in Angtasom we were 21 passengers as we stopped for everyone waiting by the wayside. When I got out of the bus I saw that there were 4 people and 10 coconuts sitting on the roof.

When I got home I put my seashells as decoration in front of the door. And then I fell asleep. I had woken up at six in the morning, made yoga, went for swim and a hike before even having had breakfast. This night I dreamed of a pandemonium of impressions that I had collected over the last days.

I felt like I had been kissed by the moon and the stars and would and could never again forget my Robinson Crusoe Days.

Sensational Thoughts

The harvesting seasons is coming to an end. The beautiful Cambodia that I grew to love, with it’s green plains as far as the eye can reach, has suddenly turned into a bald wasteland. Comparable to a head that lost it’s youth and full hair with the years, like strands of color, day by day. I luckily know that in the next year the fertility will return like the phoenix out of the ashes. Still I miss the picturesque view that welcomed me on my first day.

In the Learning Centers, both Takeo and Angtasom, I began with educating the students about Health and Environment in little workshops. For example by letting them design a picture of their ideal environment with watercolour. There was no factories, no rubbish by the wayside, no advertisement on the paintings. Just nature in it’s purest form and happy people doing simple work. Then we talked about what we could do to make our planet a better place for humans, but also animals and plants to live on. We collected ideas like using recycled paper for school and a bag made of fabric for going to the market, collecting the rubbish, taking the bicycle and many more things. For the health workshop I brought a paper with a child that had dirty hands, uncombed hair, a running nose and long fingernails. The children should point out what they didn’t like about the picture and then we drew the same child how it should actually look like. Afterwards we discussed why it is important to wash hands, comb the hair etc. It is a beginning to make the children aware of the importance to act in certain ways, that help them to change their own future and appear as role models for others.

On Tuesday I was staying over at Sopheaps house. Sokna, Phearey and Chanthou welcomed me as if I had not seen them for months and we cooked a lovely dinner together. I love how all of them are eating vegetarian food because of Sopheak. We made beans, pineapples and of course morning glory. There really is nothing quite as delicious. Then I had to explain to them what Beyoncés song “If I Were A Boy” was about and then we washed the dishes and clothes together, cleaned the floor and swept the stairs what is part of their daily life routine. After we finished the duty tasks, Sokna taught me how to knit and Sopheak and I were reading some chapters of “The Fault in Our Stars”. Though the four only have a tiny room, no mattrass, more mosquitos than ricecorns and no shower, it is my favorite place in Cambodia.

As Christmas is coming soon, I began to decorate the Learning Center a little bit. I made Christmas stars in four different colours with the children and secured them on the ceiling. Then I brought some of the decoration that my grandmothers sent to me and placed it at every place I could hope to not see it being destroyed. I am actually not allowed to celebrate Christmas to not force the Western culture on the children, but I have no intention to talk about religion in any way, so I guess it is okay. The children are all eager to do Christmas stuff. They ask me teach them songs and show them pictures of snow.

From everything I have heard, Cambodians imagine Germany consists of many castles that are high up on mountains, covered in snow. Somewhere between the mountains are guys playing football and guys drinking beer and then there are cars that drive up and down from one castle to the other. I was recently talking to an Australian couple about German food. They wanted to know what kind of stuff we were traditionally having for a meal and I stated, that first of all, it had to contain loads of meat. I began to count down all the German sorts of sausages that we have: Bratwurst, Thürniger, Nürnberger, Butwurst, Bockwurst, Knackwurst, Lanjäger, Leberwurst, Teewurst, Weißwurst, Gelbwurst… while I saw their faces turn from interested to confused to slightly amazed-disgusted. They wanted to know what kind of stuff I was eating, when basically everything seemed to be made of meat. I tried to explain to them what Knödel were. “It’s like a potato ball, but sometimes it’s also a ball made from bread, you boil it. And sometimes it’s a ball, but the ball is stuffed with meat, for example the Leberknödel or the Speckknödel, so I can’t eat that, too.” After they didn’t seem to get the point of Knödel, I tried to explain to them what a Germknödel was, (a cake ball, with jam on the inside), but finally gave up.

I might have mentioned Grandma. She is over 80 years old and more sporty than anyone I know. She is working from dusk till dawn, never ever stopping. She caries water, brings the cows from one place to the other, cuts the rice, makes fire… it is incredible. And one thing is very good to know before making her acquaintance: you should never, ever mess with her. One time when Salé wouldn’t move from the chair he had comfortably rested himself on for a short nap, she hit him with a tree branch and chased after him when he tried to escape his fate. Another story that Siphen once told, is about a neighbor who came home very drunk at night and tried to enter the house. There was a little bush by the gate, that was growing so that it’s highest branch barely reached the knee of the man. He was convinced that it was not a little bush though, but in fact a tree, so high he could not pass by. What he did in his drunken state of mind was, to rip the tree out by its roots and throw it away to get by. When grandma saw that her bush was torn out of the soil the next morning, she immediately new who the culprit was and went with another tree branch to his house to beat him up. Despite the fact that he insisted it was not him who came the night before and after, when he cried for mercy, grandma didn’t stop punishing him, so furious was she with his behaviour. The conclusion of this story is: never, ever mess with grandma.

My hostaunts mother on the other side, was only ever lying in bed since I arrived in Cambodia. Last week she died and though everyone was expecting it to happen, it was still a great shock to everyone. I mentioned that the belief in ghosts is very strong and widespread in the kingdom, but I was confused that even Siphen announced that it was a very good time for her to die. And with that they don’t mean the season or the month, they mean the time of the day. The grandmother died at 10:15 what seems to be a very good sign for the family and will bring them luck and possible fortune in the future. I didn’t understand it exactly, but it has something to do with the fact, that the whole day is still lying ahead then. It brings misfortune over the family, when a person is dying at night time and even in the late afternoon hours it’s a bad sign. When the celebration for the funeral was, they built a huge tower in front of the house. It is kind of hard to describe, it looks a little bit like a pyramid, the steps are covered with white blankets. On top they place the coffin. Death is grief as much to a Cambodian as to a Westerner. Cambodians as Buddhists do not view death as the end of one’s life but rather as the end of a life cycle. It is a passage from one stage of the cycle to the next. The better the karma is that was collected through the years, the higher the position of the person will be after the reincarnation, up to the Buddha. Many people believe that Buddha is a person that exists right now, spreading his presence over the people on earth that follow his theories. But Buddha is just a state. It means that you are being reincarnated so high that there is nothing above you than the Nirvana. Every Buddhist should try to become a Buddha himself, but it only happens every 2000 years. It is not important if you are man or woman and both ways, the Theravada and the Mahayana Buddhism can lead to the goal.

In Buddhist tradition, it is part of the belief, that rituals have to be performed, because otherwise, the deceased will not be able to move onto the next stage of the cycle: the rebirth. Because of this, many Cambodians would be upset if they are not able to perform correct rituals for their loved ones. In Buddhist rituals, in life and at times of death, a monk always plays and important role. The monk performs blessing ceremonies at births, weddings and times of sickness. It is not unusual that a monk or monks are invited to recite sermon at the bedside of a seriously ill or comatose patient in order to chase away bad spirits and try to help the sick person to recover. The monk is also at the bedside of the dying person in order to prepare him or her for the next life. It is very important, that a monk is present at the time of death, because this is when the soul exits the body but still stays nearby. It is believed that the soul is in a state of confusion and fright after exiting the body. The monk is needed to calm the soul. In Cambodia, when a person dies, the care of the body is undertaken by the family. The body would be brought home, washed, dressed, and placed into a coffin. The body is not to be dissected and organs are not to be removed because it is believed that would affect one’s rebirth. The body is not embalmed. Traditionally, the body is kept in the house for seven days or longer before cremation. Today, it is common that the body is kept for only three days. In my family it was only kept for one day. Monks come to the home and recite sermons every evening by the side of the body. A funeral procession is organized to carry the body to the temple for cremation. The crematorium is usually on or near the temple grounds.

A funeral procession consisting of an achar (priest), Buddhist monks, members of the family, and other mourners accompany the coffin to the temple. The oldest descendent has to shave his head to show his mourning and by wearing white clothing. In the case of my family, Lee (the brother of Linda) had to shave. White is the traditional color of mourning for the death, opposed to black as it is common in Western cultures. After cremation, the Buddhist ritual requires a funeral/remembrance ceremony to be held on the seventh and on the one-hundredth days after death. It can be held at the temple or the home, but usually it is held at the temple. My family did both ceremonies at home. In the end of the remembrance ceremony, there we had a special firework and all the people that came to join had to be provided with food. That’s why the preparation for the day began two days before the celebration. It is believed that cremation allows the soul to part away from the body and to go to hell or heaven in order to wait for reincarnation. After cremation, the ashes are collected, cleaned and usually kept in a stupa in the temple compound. The belief is, that at this place the deceased is close to Buddha and to the monks in whom the soul would be able to be reborn sooner. Some families keep the ashes at home (like my family). Other people have a piece of their beloved one’s bone or tooth gilded as amulets, worn around their necks. This is done in love for the person, or in belief that the parting ancestor will protect them.

We have a huge pond in our garden that is filled with tons of waterlillys. During the time of the Khmer Rouge a bomb landed at the exact same place and tore a giant hole in the ground. Instead of filling it again, they just decided to take advantage of the situaton and create something new. Eric learned swimming in there and from time to time Pou Pon (Siphens brother) is fishing there with his fishing-rod. Last week Siphen and Mach came with four buckets of fish that they got from someone who’s pond is too small and threw them all in the water. I don’t know the exact number, but surely more than fifty fishes. So when I was sitting by the waterside the next day, the sun had already vanished and the stars were reflected by the surface of the water, I saw something bubble. I decided to throw some corns of rice to the spot and suddenly about fifteen catfish appeared and fought for dominance. I couldn’t belief that they had lived in the peaceful pond for all this time and I hadn’t known about it.

On the weekend I went to Kampot, because for once I had to buy some stuff and I also finally wanted to see the little river-side town. It’s just two hours with the bus, so I figured it was worth it. I went in the morning on Saturday and checked in a dorm room of a youth hostel. The first thing I did was race to a kind of café that I read about on the internet. The name is “Epic Arts”-Café and they not only sell brownies there, but also stuff that disabled people are making as crafts. It is a kind of NGO that has the same name as the café and they bring people with diseases and disabilities together and do really cool dance and music classes with them. I talked with a girl who worked there for some time and was really amazed by their concept. Then I borrowed a bycicle and bought spaghetti for Kadets family and peanut butter for me. After I stuffed it in my bag I cycled further outside of town and down to the salt fields. Kampot is known both for it’s pepper and it’s salt. The people that work there have a really hard job, filtering the salt out of the water with shoves that they stick in the soil. It is an incredibly exhausting labor. The filtered salt is brought to a kind of storage room in a wooden hut. Huge amounts of salt are stored in there, waiting to be brought to other places on earth for being processed. I cycled past the huts and was astonished how different the whole landscape was here. The mountains by the waterside were absolutely green, a lot of birds were flying around the peak, dragonflies were humming and beautiful flowers grew everywhere. I was probably on my way since three hours, but I didn’t want to turn back towards Kampot. The countryside was just so stunningly beautiful. Finally I arrived at the foot of a mountain and decided to climb up, because the path on which I was driving had suddenly ended. When I reached the top, I could see the sea under me, the waves crushing at the shore. I breathed in the fresh air and had this crazy feeling of being at the end of the world.

    

When I arrived back in town in the evening, I bough a ticket for a boat tour down the Kampot river. I met two girls from the Netherlandson the little boat and they asked me out about everything that had something to do with Cambodia. Politics, history, religion, culture, tradition… only then I realized how far away I actually was from the people that are travelling the country. I had loads of stories to tell them and so many opinions on things, I had not known anything about four months ago. We watched the sun settle behind the mountains next to the river and the little fisherboats returning home to their houses by the riverside. The two of them asked me to come along for dinner after boat trip and I agreed. The place we found had some music show in the evening and the two man who were singing had obviosuly written their own songs. One was called “Apsara You Beauty – Forever Engraved in Ancient Stone”. We were basically laughing all evening, about the texts and other things and before they left I told them Machs Guava story. Back in the hostel I saw two girls sitting in the court and as I had already seen them when I arrived, I waved at them. They waved back and asked me to come and sit down and once again I had to tell the story about where I come from and what I am doing here. Their names were Meitar and Karin and they were both from Israel. We agreed to go on a trip together the next day and met each other at 8 o’clock at the reception. I persuaded them to come with me to the Epic Arts Café. After we had each a piece of chocolate cake for breakfast we went up a mountain and visited a waterfall. The waterfall was spectacular, around 50 meters high and the stones around were all shaped round by the water. Meitar and I were talking a lot about the history of our countries just as the past our relatives. It was interesting and somehow relieving to talk with her about all the things that happened so many years ago and to learn about actual people behind the statistics and numbers I know from the time around World War II. They were more than astonished to hear that we talked a lot about Israel in history class. I had to be back at the bus at 2:30, but before I left they both told me I could come to Israel any time. It was such a nice encounter, it felt strange to leave them and go back to Angtasom as if nothing had happened. Sitting in the bus where I just caught the last seat, I tried to read the book by Haruki Murakami that I had just started. Besided the fact that I was very much in love the way the story was going, I couldn’t really concentrate. Everyone around me seemed to be asleep and I couldn’t help but sense that a strange scent was in the air. I might have been drawn too much into the story, but when I woke up I saw smoke. My luck – everytime I go somewhere with a bus in Cambodia, something weired happens. We all had to get out of the bus and as I looked around we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Standing by the wayside I watched the bus driver discuss something with a man who just came out of one of the houses nearby. Everyone in the bus looked super exhausted and annoyed about the problem our bus had. From experience I can say that you never know how you will get out of a situation like this. I looked down the road and suddenly started laughing. I was maybe 50 meters away from Sopheaps gas station where I had left my bycicle before I had hopped on the bus to Kampot the other day. I persuaded the bus driver to give me my backpack and walked across the street, followed by the looks of the whole bus load. I said hello to Sopheap, took my bike and drove down the road. I have no idea how long everyone was stuck there or what the hell they thought I was doing, but being back home with a cool shower 20 minutes later was definitely worth it.

      

I found a new game that I absolutely love. It is called “Truth or Lie” and it goes like this: you have to state three sentences about ypourself. One of them is wrong and two are true. The others have to guess which sentence is which. I made an example when we played for the first time, saying:
1. I have three little sisters
2. I love onions
3. My favourite sport is volleyball
As I hate onions this was obviously the lie. The students really liked it and come up with much funnier things than me. One boy who walked in front of the class and said: “I hate football”, “I’m very good at math.”, “I am so in love with my boyfriend.”, what got everyone to laugh hysterically.

As it was Stacys birthday this week, I decided to make a banana cake for her. I got a recipe and changed some of the ingredients. It was a struggle to get them of course. I drove to the next bakery that is on the wayside of national road number 2 and bought flour there. Eggs and bananas I had and then I just took vegetable oil instead of butter. I was a little bit scared to see the outcome, but besides the fact that it looked more like banana bread than cake it was fine. This really motivated me to try out more bakery stuff in the kitchen. I also cooked for the first time at Kadets house and as everyone wanted spaghetti with tomato sauce, I figured that there were not many things that I could easier make and agreed. Back from Kampot it was the first thing I did with the spaghetti. Before I went home with Kadet for lunch I went to the market and bought onions (Yes, I hate onions, but this seems no be a necessary ingredient), garlic and some herbs. And of course tomatoes. Kadets whole family (8 people, it reminded me of the time when I was at Monys house) watched me cooking and followed my every step. I was glad that I had bought so much spaghetti for this occasion, because after I gave everyone their first portion, they all wanted to eat more. It was a struggle to explain to them, that I am not doing a very difficult dish here, but they all thought it was incredible. The leftovers were packed in boxes and given to the Bookbridge staff that didn’t join us for lunch.

I would like to end this blog article with a quote by Oscar Wilde that makes me laugh every time I think of it: ‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.’ Though my life could not be compared to Oscars, I hope this weeks article was sensational enough to be enjoyable.

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.

About The Human Nature

One day when I was coming back from Takeo by Tuc Tuc, I met a women named Chani. She told me she worked in a hospital in Takeo and after around 10 minutes she began to call me sister what means that you show affection for someone who is not part of your family, but could as well be. She seemed like a really nice person (although a bit overly affectionate) and before the driver dropped me off, she told me she hoped that we would see each other again. To be honest, I kind of forgot our encounter until the next time we crossed paths. It was this week and I was on my way to school by bike and she was sitting on her moto. She called my name, stated she missed me and that she had told her whole family about her new sister. Then she asked what my plans for the weekend were. I told her that I didn’t really have any, not wondering too much about the question. After some minutes we said goodbye, as I didn’t want to be late for school. Some days later I was writing with a girl named Naome from Phnom Penh, that I met nearly a month ago. We decided to see each other again this Saturday and that she would show me the big city life. Everything came kind of different though.

Chani was waiting in front of my door at 7 o’clock on Saturday morning, telling me she wanted to invite me to a pre-wedding ceremony. But not just that, she had brought her brother with her, who ensured me he was incredibly glad to finally meet me. It was all quite overwhelming, considering the fact that I only ever talked to her for a total of 20 minutes. After she assured my guestmom that she lived not far away and would bring me back around 11, I hopped on her moto and off we went to the unknown location of the celebration I should attend. I have to admit, that she was telling the truth when she said she lived not far away. As the crow flies. In fact we were driving from one little village to the other until the way became so impassable we had to stop. Behind some bamboo and palm trees I could finally see a house and I felt incredibly relieved when Chani pointed to it and said that this was where she lived. I was welcomed by around 50 people and immediately led up some stairs. The house consisted of only one big room crowded with more people than there was space for. In the middle the bride and the groom, both in colorful, glittery dress were receiving the blessing of the invited monk. Then the chanting began. Chanti tried to translate a little bit for me. It was basically all about the hope for a bright future and a happy and prosperous life. Afterwards everyone had to step forward to sprinkle some water drops on the folded hands of the happy couple. I felt like the whole attention of everyone in the room was on me and not on bride and groom but I got used to it after the two months. When the ceremony was over I had to take pictures with the whole family. This is kind of strange for various reasons. 1. I am taller than everyone else, 2. I always look horrible on pictures, 3. What are they going to do with my face afterwards? Put it in their family album? On Facebook? (Probably the later). When I suggested that I slowly should be driven back home, everyone looked at me in horror and told me they thought I would stay the night. I tried to explain to Chani that I actually had kind of a meeting Phnom Penh, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I was brought to a kind of pavilion where there was more food served than I ever saw in my life. I had to eat three plates before I was allowed to say goodbye to everyone. Before she left, Chani gave me a big basket full of fruit and vegetables. This is one drastic example of Cambodian hospitality. Imagine someone in Germany acting that way! . Some people might expect, that being treated in such a way means automatically, that the family wants to have money in exchange or some kind of materialistic nonsense. But honestly, all they want is to spend their time with you because they are curious and they don’t know anything else than being friendly and openminded to others. I believe that we can learn so, so much from these simple village people. Maybe much more than they from us.

After negotiating with the driver about the price for about half an hour, I headed of to Phnom Penh. I met Naome at the Russian market, where you can find basically everything your heart desires. The thing is, that I had a rat in my room the week before. And by rat, I mean a huge thing that crawls inside when you are not there (hopefully, I don’t know what happens when I’m asleep), and eats your clothes. I know this seems hard to believe, but my trouser, my skirt and my dress (so basically everything I really need to go out of the door) are now full of holes. That’s why I desperately needed something new and having Naome with me, I got the Cambodian discount that every Western tourist is dreaming of. Naome is 19 years old and works for a media company that makes short movies and advertisement with special effects. One day she wants to make real Hollywood movies with cool features and she already knows a lot about this stuff. I found a blue trouser on the market that you can tie in the front. After we finished the shopping trip, we took Naomes pink moto to go to a church meeting. I know this sounds a little bit crazy, I couldn’t really believe it when she was telling me about it. The thing is, that a lot of people in Phnom Penh are Christian what I didn’t know before. On Saturdays everyone from the community who is under 25 comes together, talks and plays games. The church itself is located in a normal sky scraper and they have an electric cross that can glow in the dark. On this day there was a movie event and we were making popcorn outside. Most delicious with caramel flavor. It was really astonishing how many people came together, every church in Germany would be happy about that number of visitors. In the evening Naome drove me back to the hostel where I spent the night. I shared my room with two girls, one from Vancouver and one from Texas who were really nice. We decided to make a historic journey the next day and visit the Killing and Fields and S21.

    

Our Tuc Tuc ride the next morning was just about the craziest thing I ever experienced. It had rained the day before and the streets were filled with water. Out Tuc Tuc moved so slowly and was stuck about five times in some hole that appeared in the middle of the street. One time we were nearly falling to the side, so much was the Tuc Tuc tipping to the left. I can never believe, how unsafe traveling in Cambodia is. Not only in the city but also on the countryside. Families drive with 6 people on one moto, nobody wears helmets, there are animals on the streets, not a single person is caring for traffic rules… the government actually turns off the traffic lights after eight o’clock what is just insane in my opinion. After an eternity finally we arrived at the Killing Fields. To explain a little bit about it: during the Pol Pot regime (I talked about it in my article “Brave New World”), the prisoners from Phnom Penh were brought outside of the city to a field where they were basically slaughtered. So many people found their death at this place, in the whole of Cambodia 2 million died in these years of madness and cruelty. There was not enough money for guns, so the Khmer Rouge soldiers let the prisoners dig holes in the ground, split their head with an ax and buried there bodies there. The skulls of children were simply smashed against a tree, as this was the fastest way to get rid of them. The whole place is basically a mass grave and the scariest thing about it is, that it looks so idilic, green with lots of flowers and a lake nearby. It’s only when you see a bone coming out of the soil or a left over piece of clothing, that the truth lets an ice-cold shiver run down your spine. The end of the flatly is a memorial Pagoda filled with skeletons.

      

It was especially hard for me to walk around the area because all of it reminds me so much of the concentration camps. My day didn’t get much sunnier when I visited the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh afterwards. Before the Khmer Rouge transformed the building, it was a school. Later there was suffering, torturing and inhumanity where children were learning the ABC before. The thing that left me really on the edge of crying was a photo gallery of the victims. The Khmer Rouge took pictures of every prisoner before killing them. There were pictures of mothers with their babies and small children. I will never understand how genocides can happen, how people can transform into violent, mindless roboters and forget all about the love for people around them. All we can do is do everything that lies in our hands to prevent this world from another tragedy like the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia or the Holocaust in Germany.

  

My weekend was full of impressions and I honestly sometimes feel like everything that happens to me is too surreal to be true. I don’t know what will happen in the next four months but I am thankful for everything that I can take with me along the way, every person I meet, everything new that I learn. Thankful for every memory.

And for every person that cares enough about me, to read my blog every week.

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.

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.

 

Brave New World

On Tuesdays I will go to the BOOKBRIDGE learning center in Takeo from now on. It’s a bike ride from about an hour. I would describe the road as rather hilly and muddy, sometimes there are cows in front of me and I have to try to drive a bow to not fall in the ditch. Of course the 15 kilometer are, like the whole country, a landscape of contrasts. Sometimes I want to stop and watch the endless fields that are glowing in the morning sun, surrounded by palm trees, enclosed by the faint silhouette of mountains. This is where children are laughing, farmers are waving and elderly people are smiling their gentle smile. It seems like a perfect paradise, nobody would ever think that the coloured houses were all empty about thirty years ago. That after three years, in between 1975 and 1979 about 2,2 million Cambodians were killed in an unprecedented genocide.

Historians speak of a Middle Ages communism when they want to describe what happened during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. After the independence from France, the Cambodian army embraced 35.000 soldiers. Culturally seen, the country was in a very good state to that time. There were art exhibitions, the Khmer classical dance flourished, more and more students could go to universities abroad… but military wise, the country was not more than a crumb, surrounded by war-nations. King Sihanouk tried to stay neutral to keep himself out of trouble, but this role was very hard to play, as the Vietnam war was going on next door. When the Viet Cong began to use Cambodia as an arsenal and hiding place, America began to throw bombs where they suspected the camps of their enemies to be (as always only the civilian population suffered). This was in 1969. They continued throwing around 539.000 tons of bombs on the country each week until 1973 (twice as much as the amount of bombs over Japan during the second world war). 1970 there was a putsch against King Sihanouk from the America friendly side, the new head of state became Lon Nol, the former premier. His government began the war against the Vietcong and North-Vietnam, with the help of South-Vietnam and America. In the main time, the Khmer Rouge already began to gather in the outer provinces in the north. The heads of the organization were young men that studied, thanks to scholarships from the king, in France. There they were introduced to the ideas of communism and returned to Cambodia with a huge amount of idealistic and most of all, mad ideas. Their hate was focused on the current, America-friendly government, their role models were Marx, Engels and Mao Zedong. Saloth Sar, the leader of the Khmer Rouge went underground and changed his name to Pol Pot. For many, many years nobody, not even his family, new who he really was. There were no pictures of the man who was ruling the country, he was the mysterious brother number 1, without heart and sense for humanity. The Khmer Rouge began to reform Cambodia in the rural provinces. The young adults that lived there wanted to join the guys that were taking revenge on America, the country which scrupulous war policy had destroyed their country and left many of them as orphans. The Khmer Rouge took the chance and made them child soldiers. The children were easy to influence and so the circle around Pol Pot became slowly more and more powerful. And a larger amount of people joined them day by day. Without all the sorrow that was caused in the years before, there would have never been as many people following this black dressed forest army. 1975 the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh (20.000 soldiers, on average 13 years old). First the people were celebrating in the streets, happy that the war with the Americans was finally over. But the real horror was yet to begin. The thing that hurts me the most when I read and hear about the years of the Khmer Rouge regime is, that it reminds me so much of Nazi Germany. Everyone had to leave the city, the people were told, that the Americans would attack the city and the evacuation was just a safety measure. Pregnant women just as death sick people in the hospital had to leave Phnom Penh within 24 hours. Who didn’t obey was shot immediately. First they were taking everyone to camps outside the city, later everyone had to work on the countryside. The idea behind it was to insure the equality of all people by letting them all do the same, traditional, simple work of farmers. Because what everyone has to offer, is human labor. They destroyed the schools, hospitals, banks, libraries. Cambodia should be isolated and able to provide itself with basic food to keep the population alive (the most common death cause to that time was starvation).  There was no private life anymore, no comfort, no private property, no happiness. Just work from early morning to late evening. In this agricultural communism state, nothing should be higher than the organization with the name Angka. Nobody knew who was standing behind it, but the cruelty and suffering was justified by saying that this was all order from above. Members of the royal family, artists, intellectuals, monks, anyone who could speak a foreign language or just read the time, was killed. All of them were people who, by the opinion of the Khmer Rouge, could not be “integrated” in the new state. During the following years, there was no way to communicate to the outside. Everyone had to wear the same clothes and haircut, there was no religion allowed anymore, no gatherings. Children spied on their own parents, marriages were formed by Angka. Foreigners who could get in the country were killed. There was no punishment anymore, besides the death penalty. In which forms, I would rather not explain. There are countless reports about the inhuman cruelty of the regime. Especially in the state prison Tuol Sleng that reminds of the concentration camp Auschwitz. The Khmer Rouge regime ended when the Vietnamese army invaded the country. This year the last leaders of the Khmer Rouge were condemned. They are over 80 years old and could live for many, many years in freedom after they committed their crimes against humanity. And even in prison they had an unbelievable luxury, could even meet another to chat. What made many Cambodians really angry about this was, that only five of them were standing in front of the court (Pol Pot himself probably committed suicide in 1998) and that billions of dollars were spent on the cases. Today a veil of silence is drawn over the period, the children don’t learn about the Khmer Rouge regime in school and most of the people have the opinion that they can’t change what happened anyway and that they eventually have to carry on with their life. This might be difficult to believe, but considering all the problems that exist in the country today, it might be easier to comprehend all this.

When I drive farther down the road to Takeo, I see huge shoe factories on the wayside. So many people work there and gain so little money. The sister of Sreydieb works in a factory like this. I met her one week before, her voice was destroyed by the toxic she breathes in every day, her children can’t stay with her, she is always exhausted, lives in a tiny room and gains only 130 Dollars each month. This is another dark side of Cambodia today. Of course there are many more: child prostitution, drug abuse, pollution, corruption, an insufficient school system… The road gets a little bit better, when I’m about three kilometers outside of town. I pass some hens that are sleeping in the shade next to a little lake full of lotus flowers, travel past a beautiful Pagoda, greet a little boy that is eating baked bananas. The people here really deserve to live a good life, but so many things seem impossible to change. When I get to the BOOKBRIDGE learning center, Sopheak (she works there as a librarian and teacher) and me are reading books for the children that are half Khmer and half English. Later we play Chinese jump rope and talk about animals. It’s not so different from the work in Ang Tasom. During the lunch break I go to the market with her. I am surprised by how big the place is. Nothing compared to the tiny local market where I usually buy food. As she is a vegetarian too, we decide to buy everything we like, mix it together and hope it will taste. Luckily we also buy sweet rice in banana leaves (here they add coconut flakes onto it) and I can’t decide which version I like better. Sopheak is renting a room that she shares with four other girls. They all sleep in one bed and cook together. Everyone is friendly and in a good mood, I can’t help but think about how much we complain in Western countries while these girls are happy with so little. Back in Germany I bought a present for Sopheak. It’s my favorite book, “The Fault in our Stars”. As I promised I would learn a little bit English with her, we use the minutes we have left before we go back to work and read the first chapter. Next week we want to continue reading together and I’m very happy that she seems to like the book as much as I do.

Arriving back in Ang Tasom in the evening, I feel like I just came back from a long, long journey. Everyday I learn so much about the life of the people here, it’s like doors are being opened for me and I am able to see yet another part of the life here. It takes time but it makes me want to help and learn even more. Of course it also makes me fall in love with Cambodia more and more every day. With all it’s ups and downs, the good and the bad sites. And everyone who lives here knows, that it is a beautiful place in so many ways.

Where it all began

It’s really hard to fall asleep, the night before my departure. I kind of feel like being in a strange dream. My room seems like it would belong to someone else, everything is packed and the colourful pictures and photography’s that covered my walls before, are now removed.

I can’t believe that I will leave everything I’ve ever known behind, to go living in a new country, a new continent. But there is also an other feeling. I guess it is anticipation. It makes my thoughts spin around in my head, letting me imagine everything over and over again. I think of the stories I’ve read about Cambodia. Travel reports, legends and myths, biographies. It seems like I know a lot about this place and yet I know so little. I can’t wait to leave the book pages and breathe in the real air. Learn about the culture, get to know the people, improve my language skills, experience the daily life and of course working in the learning center.

At this point I would like to explain my work in Cambodia a little bit. The organisation that sends me to the learning center in Ang Tasom located in the southern province Takeo, is called BOOKBRIDGE. The basic idea is, that a book can be a window to a new world. We want to build bridges with books, enable children, no matter where they are from, to get the same chances of education. It is a dream to give them the possibility to go to university and chose what they want to become by themselves. In some ways BOOKBRIDGE supports the local schools in what they are doing. Of course it is voluntary to visit the learning center and completely free. Besides the library and the free activities, BOOKBRIDGE also offers English courses. They are not for free, but in that way, the learning center can finance itself and does not depend on donations. And of course the money they have to pay is not much, in that way as many children as possible can afford to study on a high level.

After having said goodbye to everyone at the airport, what was not easy at all, especially when it comes to my little sisters, I take my first flight to Vienna. It is winding and raining and the plane begins shaking so badly, they can’t serve beverages. I hope that the weather will be better on my flight to Taipei. After having found the right gate for my transfer, I begin practicing the Khmer alphabet, what always takes me hours. When I look up again, the whole room is full and I see nobody who looks western anymore. The girl that sits next to me in the plane is called Yuka. She is from Japan and very nice. The air hostess is asking her several times what she wants to eat or drink in chinese and she answers every time patiently, that she can’t understand what she is saying. We talk about god and the earth and find out that we like a lot of similar things. Travelling for instance. All in all, the flight is luxury, compared to the first. The only problem is, that I didn’t preorder vegetarian dishes and have to take the normal ones now, which are, of course, all with more meat than rice or vegetables. But I knew before that being a vegetarian would be anything but easy and that this is just the beginning.

The last flight finally brings me to Phnom Penh. When I look down, I see the country swimming in what looks like a mud soup. Everything is flooded and the little green dots that peak out of the water, are in fact the crowns of trees. Here and there is a little house, also surrounded by water. I wonder how people manage to live like this. Suddenly I see the Mekong, bigger and browner than I have imagined, it is hard to see where the river begins and the land ends. When Phnom Penh appears underneath us I am actually surprised that the city is dry. We fly what feels like 2 meters above some living houses and I’m starting to get scared that we might take a roof with us as we land safe and sound at the airport.

 

Checking out is no problem at all. My visa allows me to walk past the bunch of passengers that still need theres to be accepted. Sokhan, the head of BOOKBRIDGE in Cambodia, picks me up from the airport. We wait nearly half an hour for our taxi driver to arrive. What I see when we start driving, are tuc tucs, bicycles, mopeds, cars and cows on the streets and on the side stores with clothes, food and a surprisingly huge amount of cappies. The pagodas (Buddhist monastery compounds) that we pass are even more beautiful than I have imagined. I make a secret note in my head to visit one as soon as possible.

The home of the family I stay with is on the countryside. I have a little bungalow on my own and it is more than I have ever expected. There is a hammock in front of the house and everywhere around are flowers and in the distance rice fields. It’s one oft he most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. After I met everyone we eat lunch (the food by the way is amazing and there is something vegetarian just for me) and discuss how we can improve the teaching strategies, by sending the people from the learning center teams to workshops. Right now there are also two other people from Munich (Johannes) and Zurich (Stefanie) at the homestay, they are friends of the last volunteer at the learning center and very nice. They want to stay until next week and help in the learning center.

 

Finally we head to BOOKBRIDGE. The children are all smiling and waving, saying „hello teacher“ and waiting for a high-five. We go by bicycle as it is not to far away. After having met the whole team, Sreydieb, Ratana and Kadet, I join my first English class. After my introduction to the children that are between eight and twelve years old, they want me to sing. Of course I can’t say no, when 30 children are looking at me in anticipation. We are learning the song „head and shoulders, knees and toes“ and everyone is joining in. One boy even sings the whole song with me infront of the class, because he could remember the words so quickly. Afterwards I spend my time in the library and try to get to know my new colleagues better. The next class is for advanced learners and Johannes is joining me. We are looking at the homework and try to explain the imperative with vivid examples. It’s a lot of fun and the time is passing quicker than I expected.

The next morning I wake up very early. There are some festivities nearby and the music that blasts through a megafone so loud I can’t sleep anymore. It is 6.30. I meet the daughter of my guestmother Siphen, at the cooking place. Her name is Amy and she is making pancakes that are absolutely fluffylicious.

After breakfast Sokhan is showing me Ang Tasom. The center of the small town is next to the road that we passed the day before. There is a market where barely moving chicken are lying in the sun, bunches of bananas are covering the streets and some children that I already saw in the learning center are running around, greeting us. Afterwards we are visiting the local buddhist monastery compound. It is a beautiful place. One building is for the monchs to eat, one for them to sleep. The smallest monch that is passing us is a small boy, hardly 10 years old. He is walking barefeet what is part of the traditional appearance and winking at us. You can find stupas everwhere, buildings that look like small temples that every family owns. The ashes of the ancestors are brought there.

Then Sokhan shows me the Preah Vihear. It’s the place where you can go to pray and where the monchs are also studying the buddhistic philosphy. The life of Buddha is painted on the walls and Sokhan tells me the whole story of his enlightning. He also shows me how to show respect to Buddha when entering and leaving the Preah Vihear. I have to sit down, put my legs to the side and touch the floor three times with my hands that touch the forehead lightly. The last building is the Tomasalla that is mainly for ceremonies.

Next we drive through the villages and stop every five minutes to talk with somebody. The houses are simple but often colourful and next to small canals that help providing the rice fields with water. There are a lot of lilies and I enjoy the bike trip very much, as the nature is beautiful and everything is very peaceful.

Back in the homestay I am very tired because I barely slept in the last two days. I give the guest family the gingerbread hearts and the Munich mug that I brought for them and finally go to bed.