A cool monk, orphans, and cockroaches

I'm back after a very spotty two days of Internet connection. I have so much to write about it's hard to even begin.

One of peculiar, but logical aspects of Cambodia is that many children do not have grandparents. The reason is because during the Khmer Rouge era, Pol Pot and his men killed so many of the population (estimated 1.7 million) that the children today are left with no or only one grandparent. Also, the medical and dental care here is horrible! There is a hospital in Siem Reap in the middle of the town, but it is really of the bare minimal. People will carry their sick to the hospital for treatment on carts, scooters, or in their arms. We say a very old lady being tranported in a cart-she looked like she was dying. We also saw many people walking to the hospital with IVs stuck in their arms-just walking down the street. It is a sight we never see in the U.S.

As I mentioned above, the government does not provide any services to its citizens, so NGOs (non-governments organizations) that are non-profits have established themselves here and fill in these needs, as much as possible. We visited one yesterday-The Life and Hope Association-that is run by Buddhist monks. They run five different centers: a vocational sewing school, a children's development village, street kids project, an orphanage, and they are starting a junior high school. The director is a very cool monk named Somnieng Hoern. He is 27 and studied for a couple of years in Iowa until he lost his visa. He speaks good English (which I find very difficult to find here) and is really impressive with his focus on the orphanage and his foundation. We visited the orphanage yesterday and today, so we are starting to get to know some of the kids there. Today we spent about 1.5 hours playing games with them. There is one little boy there who attached himself to me and when I came back today he immediately ran to me and hugged me really hard. He then proceeded to just follow me around the entire time holding my hand. The kids there were so great-just wanting interaction and love. The orphanage is outside Siem Reap and it felt like it was in the middle of the jungle, but I don't think it was that far outside the city. We get to go back to the orphanage two more times this week.

Also, last night I went and interviewed a man who lost his dad to the Khmer Rouge when he was 7. I met his wife at the night market the previous evening and we struck up a conversation while I was in her stall of locally produced goods she was selling. She asked what I was doing in Cambodia and from there we started talking about the tribunal coming up and she then told me about her husband's father. I asked her if he would be willingly to talk to me about his father and she arranged for him to be at the market last night for me to talk to her. I ended up interviewing him for nearly 40 minutes-asking him questions about his recollections of that period in his life. He remembers the last time he saw his dad was when he was running after his dad crying to come back as the Khmer Rouge (dressed in all black) were taking his father away on a bicycle. He never returned. His dad was educated, so part of the Khmer Rouge ideology was to eliminate the educated class. He also said that there were very little older men in his village because the KR had "taken away" most of them. I also aked him of his awareness of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal that was forming and what most villagers thought of this. He said that he had heard some about it, but not much, and that most people don't know anything about it and aren't really concerned with it because they don't trust the government and think nothing will come of it anyway. They don't teach about this in the schools here. Most kids do not understand what reall ocurred in this country during the 70s.

Today, we went to a tree planting event in the fishing village of Kampong Kleng. This was amazing! The people of this village sustain themselves with fish and some farming. They are very poor-many of the kids only go to school through 2nd or 3rd grade because they are needed to help work to support the family. Their housed were very simple wooden boxes built on stilts to avoid the floods during the rainy season. It looked like a row of tree houses. They had no flush toilets and literally pumped water from the river into their homes. They had no refrigerators, t.v.s, radios, no phones, etc. I can't even begin to explain what it was like to see this village. Many of the villagers let us climb up to their houses and look inside. So far on this trip, it has been my favorite aspect of the program.

I met a man in the old market of town that was a former policeman who stepped on a landmine. He was selling books on the streets. He modeled his scared up torso and limbs for arms.

Tomorrow morning we have a Cambodian language and culture lesson. I wish we could have a cooking lesson! Afterwards, we are going to explore Siem Reap with local guides to practice our Khmer on the locals. At night we are viewing Rice People by Rithy Pan.

I rode an elephant yesterday at Angkor Wat.

I saw a monkey and took a picure with it yesterday.

Cock roaches are sold in the market for consumption.

The village families have designed cricket catchers that captures crickets so they can eat them.

Today's An American in Cambodia Interesting Fact of the Day: Kayli's boyfriend is a rock star!