A bit about my Cambodian home....

The end of the 1st work week has come to a close and I am glad. I arrived Monday night after travelling for almost 32 hours and was exhausted. Because my flight from Vancouver was delayed and I had to be rerouted through Bangkok, my luggage was delayed even more. I was informed that it was on the next plane to Phnom Penh and it would be arriving at 10:00pm, and did I want to wait for it. I said no thanks, just send it to the country coordinators office and I would get it from there.

I was taken to where I would be staying here in Phnom Penh. I am living with a Cambodian family. There is Lorn the mother, Raksmey the eldest son (he is also one of the country coordinators for the volunteers), Theary the daughter and Phana the youngest son. I was told that Lorn is 54, Raksmey is 29, Theary is 22 and Phana is in grade 12. The language spoken in Cambodia is Khmer. This family is an extremely close family. There is no laziness on anyone’s part that I can see and they genuinely like being with each other.

The house is like a row house and is 4 stories tall. It is long and narrow. The kitchen is in the back and then the living room/sleeping area for most of the family, the dining room and then a space for the motos and the bicycles. My bedroom is a single and I have my own bathroom in my room. It is very good, although I don’t have a sink. When I brush my teeth I spit in the corner of the bathroom where the floor drain is and then wash it down. That feels a bit weird but I am sure I will get used to it.

There is another volunteer here and her name is Jody. She is from New Zealand and is travelling for about a year. She is a volunteer teaching English at an orphanage here for about 3 months, then she is off to Vietnam where she will be volunteering for 1 month, and then she is off to India and she is planning on living at an ashram for however long. She said that a person can live at an ashram and be given room and board in exchange for labour. She said that there are lots of ashrams and that you don’t have to reserve in advance.

There are a lot of families that live in the same row of houses as us and they all have a wooden bed or platform outside their doors. These are used as a sitting and gathering place for them and their neighbours. They will sit outside on it and peel their vegetables, or just sit and visit. They are a very social and hospitable people.

In our kitchen there is a gate that separates us from the neighbours, that when they are cooking they can talk and visit with each other. It makes it very handy for borrowing a cup of sugar or bit of spices. I have also seen my host mother prepare us a dessert and even before our supper give a big bowl of it away to the next door neighbour through this doorway. We also were the recipients of such an event when we were having lunch one day and then the neighbour called through the doorway and gave us food that equalled a full lunch. There were many choices of food that day.

The food here has been very, very good. We eat rice as a staple and then usually a soup to put over it and then a meat dish, a fish dish and sometimes a noodle dish as well. Lorn and Theary are amazing cooks. Everything has been delicious. For breakfast the volunteers usually have one fried egg and a piece of toast and the family will usually have the leftovers from the night before.

We have wireless internet here at the house, but I have only been able to access it by being plugged in. Jody says that she can get it sometimes in her room in the morning, but the signal is very weak. I am just glad that we have it because it is so much easier for me when checking my emails or blogging.

I feel truly blessed to have been given this homestay here in Cambodia. They are wonderful and Lorn and Theary are beginning to let me help them in the kitchen. Jodie said that she has been here for 3 weeks and she has not been able to help, but yesterday I got to set the table and even help cut some chillies, as well as peel some garlic. It is nice to be able to help even if it is in small ways.

Prayers: Can you please pray for contacts to be made and networks to be established with regards to rescue houses and with those still in bondage. That sate house workers are able to rescue more girls from their captors and that God will provide the necessary funds for the shelters and rescue houses to be able to help more and more people.

Also that we back home become involved and think of creative and innovative ways in which we can help the poverty stricken who are suffering.

Please pray for contacts from me here in Cambodia. That God will enable me to locate and help in some of these safe houses in a real and tangible way.

Also pray that I am able to connect with Chomno, the coordinator of Cambodian Hope Organization in PoiPet and that I am able to go one weekend and visit and see the work that they are doing there in the poor rural communities.

Arrived safe and sound

I made it here safe and sound. I have a very nice host family. There is the mother, a full grown son (who is the coordinator for the volunteer program here in Cambodia), an older teen age daughter and then a son who is in his early teens. Apparently, there is also a grandson who lives here for the most part as well, but he is visiting his other grandparents, I think.

The older son and the daughter speak english very well, but the mother doesn't. The language that is spoken here is Khmer and the alphabet is completely different. It is more scrollie, kind of like the Hebrew language. It is interesting looking at signs and having no clue as to what they say.

My travel here took a little bit longer than anticipated. The flight from Vancouver was delayed by about an hour. My connection in Hong Kong was so tight that I would not have made it, so I was rebooked and flew from Hong Kong to Bangkok and then from Bangkok to Phnom Penh. I arrived at about 7:40pm local time. There is a 15 hour time difference here and I am already living in your tomorrow. It is 7:25am on Wednesday and today is my first day at my project. Raksmey is the young man who is the country coordinator for volunteers will show me how to get there today and introduce me around. We drove there yesterday, just so I could see the way but there was a lot of turns and I can't quite remember all of them. It will be interesting trying to get home tonight in a tuk tuk. Tomorrow I will borrow a bicycle from the family and ride there and back. Raksmey said it should only take about 20 minutes or so on bicycle.

Yesterday, was day two of the orientation, but day one for me. We talked a bit in the morning about the roles of volunteers, why a project would want a volunteer and some of the cultural differences that could be expected. We were then shown around the city, to some of the places of interest, stopped for lunch and then looked around a bit more. I was given the Powerpoint presentation about Cambodia in the afternoon and a sheet of common words and phrases in Cambodian and how they should sound when you say them. This morning I said "Sua s'dei" which means "hello" to my host family. "Thank you" sounds like "aw kuhn".

It was smokin' hot here yesterday afternoon. I don't know how hot but it sure felt hot. My skin seems to have a permanent dampness to it and by the middle of the day I can smell myself and it is not a very pleasant smell. I can tell that I will be washing my clothes very frequently here.

The people that I have met here in Cambodia have been all very nice and very friendly. There are scooters and motorbikes by the tonne here. Sometimes there is only one person on a motorbike and sometimes there are more, up to four. I rode on the back of Raksmey's yesterday and that is how I am getting to my project today. The drivers seem quite aware of everyone around them and a quite accepting of being cut off, etc. Interesting. It would be nice to see such tolerance and acceptance on the roads back home.

I have to go now as it is almost time to go to work. Please pray that God helps me in my day today and that I am open and willing to be used in whatever way He wants to use me.

Take care and God bless you and all those that you love.

Preparing my heart before I go

Cambodia is a country I knew nothing about until about 3 months ago. What I have learned seems like a lot to me, but I am sure it is virtually nothing.

Cambodia was first placed on my heart when I went to Peru. While in Peru I began researching 'human trafficking and the child sex trade'. It didn't make sense to me how people could so easily sell and use children for such evil purposes. How could they sleep at night, I wondered. Didn't they know and care that they were destroying a child's childhood? Then I heard about a group called the Khmer Rouge. I didn't know anything about them. I didn't even know that they had existed. When I found out a bit more about them I couldn't believe that it was true. How could a group who had been in power for a little less than 5 years have caused so much destruction, and all in my lifetime. It began to make sense to me the value of a child as a commodity and not as a treasure from God. It sickened me to read about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge's reign.

Why did the world let it happen? Two million people died either from war, torture, starvation or diseases all in about a 5 year period, that was 1/4 of the Cambodian population....1 in every 4 gone! There were mass graves, the killing fields, buildings designed for torturing people along with other horrors for people to endure. Unimaginable. Why didn't someone step in and stop the insanities? Why did I not know that this was happening or had happened? What can I do  now?

From some of my readings and research it is said that 70% of the Cambodian population today is under 25 yrs old. A whole generation was lost during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. A very important generation that is not there to show the people the importance of the family, to mentor them and to love them.

Can you imagine a life where if you were lucky only one member in four of your family was either killed or died? The fabric of the family was ripped away - spouses were separated from each other and their children, children were separated from their parents and their siblings all for the purpose of destroying the people's support systems. Family, religion, education were all outlawed. My mind in my limited experiences of growing up in a very safe and stable environment with loving and supportive family and friends, I can't even begin to imagine.

I am thankful that God placed Cambodia on my heart and that He saw fit to educate me a little before I went - to prepare my heart to not judge but to love. I pray that I will be open to be God's instrument of love and understanding while I am there.  All for His glory!!