Hello my dear friends,
it’s been quite a long time since you’ve read from me. I’ve been in Cambodia the month of April working in a poorer province called Kampong Thom with the Good Seed International School. For this blog, I pick a few exciting and impactful moments I would like to share with you. Hope you enjoy reading it.
1) Good Seed International School
I got to assist a beautiful teacher and spend time with cute and energetic kids at the age of 3 to 5 years old. In the evening, I had the opportunity to substitute a teacher’s English evening class. How I enjoyed being a teacher and having my own classroom (yes – I’m excited for coming back home and teach again!). The classroom can’t be compared to Swiss standards. It was simply equipped but what truly matters is that the kids had a good place to learn, be with friends, have fun and have passionate teachers. Also the way of teaching needs to be adapted in the shame honor culture. For example, children would usually raise their hands for not being exposed of not knowing an answer. Or you shouldn’t pick a child to answer a question who doesn’t raise the hand. When a child comes late, they say sorry but would never look you in the eyes out of shame.
2) Painting Project
Besides teaching, we had for one and a half week a painting project going on. We repainted the alphabets, numbers and shapes on the school playground. We did art work at the front wall of the school and on one panel of the wall inside the school. It was the first time on the race so far for me where I could do labor work for more than only a few hours or two days. I really enjoyed having this project going on: Figuring out the design with my teammates, scraping walls, putting effort into detailed outlining, painting and finally I loved to see what we created.
3) Tarantula
Yes, I ate a whole tarantula. And yes, I would do it again. It was fun to try this exotic kind of food with my whole team and our host gathered. For us Westerners it must sound crazy. But when you are there in the country you get to understand that the people there had in earlier times no choice to eat something different. They were starving so they ate what they could find: crickets, tarantulas, snakes, even dogs and cats.
4) HOT HOT HOT
On average, we had 34-38°C (93-101°F). The humidity of 63% made it feel like 39°C (103°F), sometimes even over 40°C (<105°F). There was no air conditioning, only fans. Every day, the power went out several times for a few seconds or minutes, rarely for more than 5 minutes, once for almost 1 hour. In this conditions you sweat only once a day. Especially during the outside painting the sweat was dripping from our skin literwise.
5) Cambodian Wedding
The first night we arrived at the school we got invited to the wedding the next day from Chhy, one of the teacher staff. This was my second wedding I could attend on the race. So much fun to experience weddings in foreign cultures!
6) Khmer New Year
This is the name of the Cambodian holiday that celebrates the Lunar New Year. There was a big celebration at the school with food and drinks and dancing. In the evening the whole teacher staff was together to eat and drink and dance more. Most fun part of it: It’s tradition to splash water on each other and to powder each other faces. How fun it would be to do so in Switzerland as well! After the celebration, the school was off for a week.
7) Siem Reap – Angkor Wat
Because of the holiday week we had the opportunity to go to Siem Reap where the world’s biggest religious site is found: Angkor Wat. We got up at 3:30am to see the sunrise there. We booked a tour for having some historical context and it’s a place with a great setting for taking pictures. Although it’s hot in all the stony walls, if you go to Cambodia one day, I totally recommend to make your way to Angkor Wat.
8) Kep Beach and Rabbit Island
We made also our way to the south of Cambodia during the holiday season. It was the Easter weekend when we went to the beach. It was a relaxing timeout with my teammates. Rabbit Island is a 30 minutes boat ride from the mainland. It has a beautiful beach and hammocks to relax. Three of my teammates and I decided to walk around the Island. It ended up being a little walk “through the jungle”. A lot of ways were hard to find and overgrown with grass, reed, trees and whatever plants. In my head I was always thinking “please God, let there be no snake”. At some point, Sarah was leading the way and heard something rustling in the bush on the left side. I could not get over my fear and my teammate CC gave me a piggyback for a hot second. Later in the evening we enjoyed a beautiful Easter dinner and sunset at Kep Beach as a team.
9) Genocide Muesum and Killing Fields
A quarter of Cambodian’s population died in the years from 1975 to 1979. The genocide was happening under the Khmer Rouge who wanted to turn the nation into a socialist republic. I visited the Tuol Sleng Centre also known as the Prison S-21 where the people were tortured and held in separate little cells made of brick or wood, later on in mass detention because of the huge number of persons. It was impressive to meet survivors there in person. From the prison the prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields where they were executed and buried in mass graves. Other reasons for death were starvation or diseases. It’s always emotionally hard to hear stories of torture and suffering, to see pictures of innocent people who were killed because of an ideology of a regime. Stories that should have never happened, pictures that should have never been taken. If you’re interested in learning more about this horrible piece of history I could recommend you to watch the movie “First they killed my father”.
On my birthday, we crossed the border to Vietnam. This is my last ATL (Ask The Lord) month where we have no host. I’m with a new team for the last two months of the race and excited what we’re going to experience together.
Send you love,
Fabi or Fabily (these are my American nicknames)
