Yes well, not hard really was it!
Around a week ago we realised that in all the time we have been away we havent actually sat on a beach and vegged out once. We thought about it for a while and then came across this project. It's about 2km from Siem Reap and is in a village called Atvea. They have sorted out nursery, school and labour ward with midwives so far and are now into maintaining those and building houses. They work with the monk and village elders to identify the most needy people in the village who then get a house built for them. This is a really big thing as the people are living in little bamboo huts that are knee deep in water during the rainy season. They get a house like the one behind me in the picture.
We've arrived in time to help finish this one off so we spent the morning making bamboo shades and whittling bamboo for more shades. Hopefully we will have it all done by Tuesday and we will get to see the monks bless the house and the handing over ceremony!
Its for a widow with two little kids.
Siem reap is a lovely place - much more chilled out than Bangkok. Great dinner with the other volunteers last night - vegetable spring roll in a tapas bar - only in SE asia!
Anyway, we are going to hang around here until next weekend so we don't have the added hassle of finding somewhere to stay for Khmer new year (which is also when everyone celebrated their birthday as courtesy of the Khmer rouge many people do not know when they were born). Have been here one day and already have too many sad stories to tell about the history. There is no-one here aged between 35 and 60ish. There is massive illiteracy in the adult population......it's pretty bad and that's before you even start to think about the land mines. The teaching volunteers all have stories about orphans and trying to teach the words 'mother' and 'father'. The teacher at the nursery school is one of 12 kids born from what we an work out from their mother being raped by the khmer rouge soldier she was given to after they killed her husband. The teacher works 8-12 in the nursery and 6-midnight in a bar in the nightmarket and supports mother and her 11 siblings (and two orphans her mum has taken in) she would like to work longer for the nursery but tips at the bar are too good!
That's enough sad stories for now- this is a beautiful country with beautiful happy smiley people. We might get stuck here for a while!
You never know - we might even fit in the odd visit to a temple - apparently there is a big famous one here somewhere :)
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