What a city Phnom Penh is! Population of 2 million and who knows how many expats and tourists add to this vibrant bustling city. Lexus's, mopeds, and tuk tuks dominate the streets while clogging the uncontrolled intersections. After settling in at Diamond Palace Hotel we took and evening Tuk Tuk to a nice french restaurant. You can see the influence of french colonization, especially in the architecture, food, and language. Met up the next morning with Chhourn, our friend Anne's old driver from when she was working here running one of the international schools. He's quite a happy driver-do-it-all guy working for the Australian consulate. Chhourn took the day off work to tour us around and give insight on Phnom Penh and visit his wife's village about 15 km away. The village of Koang Thmey is where Anne spearheaded a wonderful legacy of starting a free English School. With help from family and friends the school now has 150 students eager to learn. Anne and Chhourn are also responsible for 11 wells that are sturdy and clean. It has been 6 years since she started this project which has greatly impacted this village. We were also able to meet the family that our friend Patti has been sponsoring and the son she has been helping to get to grade 12 with university in his future. This whole experience was incredible as well very humbling. We were treated like royalty. Chhourn took us to the simple school with old well worn wooden tables and benches that sit on the dirt floor. It is actually part of his mother in laws home. It's open to the elements with a roof top covering while the simple library is on the 2'nd floor of the house. There is a large white board for the teacher to instruct on and not much else. The students arrive peddling their bikes and line them up neatly in a row. They are very polite and eager to learn. No attitude here! We were introduced and the children all said "hello" and one added a big "welcome to Cambodia". The class started on time but a few minutes later a straggler came in and apologized to the teacher for being late. It was like a military drill as the teacher would ask questions and the students would raise their hands eager to answer, once they did she would say ok now sit down. They would clasp their hands together in front of their face giving a wei symbol, along with a bow. Wow have we lost that respect thing in our own country. The school helps out 150 kids with classes throughout the day and into the evening. Later we were shown around the village plus the village next door. Everywhere we went people came out of their simple homes to say hello and check us out. If any of them had a hat or scarf on their head they would quickly remove it showing yet again a sign of respect. The children in the villages would follow us around and were very happy to see us. We were also taken to the public school where the kids came over to see us and also follow us around while we toured. Corruption prevents proper funding where very little money gets into the hands that should be receiving it. We were told that over 1000 students attend the public school which lack everything. When we were there the kids were playing outside on the dirt playground well before any teachers had arrived. We wandered around the villages and were shown the crops of rice, palm fruit, cabbage and herbs to name a few. We watched one family work while the husband chopped into the palm fruit while the wife peeled away the hard inner layer. We were given some to try and it was yummy. The outer shell is then dried for later use as firewood for cooking and they also feed it to the cows.They had two teenage sons that took off on an old moped to climb the very tall 60 foot palms to pick fruit. As the tree grows they attatch a single bamboo pole that they use as a ladder. No easy feat. We were able to try the palm fruit, which was very tasty. We saw a machine the village uses for dehusking the rice. The owner lets the villagers use it for free if they leave the rice powder for him. We also came across a young man working with his Grandmother making rice milk for rice noodles. This antiquated system consisted of a large granite bowl attached to a wheel that was turned by hand to spin the liquid. Hard working farming community. Then later we went to the killing fields. This is were thousands were executed and buried in graves dug by themselves. Babies where beaten against trees , children and teens along with their parents were murdered after being tortured. Their is now a memorial set up on site where they have built a tall glass stupa which holds 8000 skulls. Some showing signs of holes and slices on the skulls from the blows that killed them. As we walked around bones and fabric are exsposed on the ground as years of monsoon rains bring more to the surface each year. They wiped out whole families of educated people as to not have family members survive that would seek revenge. Later we spent some time at the genicide museum also known as S-21. It was once a neighborhood school that was seized by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge and turned it into a holding prison and interrogation center. We wandered through rooms where people were tortured and could see some rooms where blood stains were still on the floor. They had shackles and tools that were used for punishing people while interrogating them. There were too many rooms filled with pictures of the many people that were murdered. We kept our sunglasses on to hide tears. With spending a few hours previously in the village and with the kids, it was so sad as they looked like the many faces we saw earlier in the day. What tragedy these people had to endure. Do we really know how lucky we are? This all happened in the 70`s. Hmmmmm I was skipping out of high school while Steve was jammin at music school.
