After a forced break of two years due to the coronavirus, I flew to Singapore on March 13, 2022 with Singapore Airlines and then on to Siam Reap. After an unforgettable antigen test at the airport, I was happily greeted at the exit by Theavy Bun and Patrik Roux. During my visit in February 2020, I was the last and now the first visitor from Europe after two years. The drive to Battambang flew by, not only because it was an hour shorter due to the newly built highway, but also because we had a lot to talk about.
“School days”
The intense program for the week began the next morning. When we arrived at the safe house, the three assistants Thida, Lida and Sanya – together with the older children – were already loading the van for the Chrapkrasang Primary School. For the first time since the start of the pandemic, a so-called “school day” was to be held again. The NGO AVEC has been running this program for several years and the aim is to ensure that children from poor backgrounds attend school regularly. To this end, AVEC secures the support of the teaching staff by providing them with teaching materials and a small extra payment. The school distributes vouchers to the supported pupils and also handles communication with the parents who have to be present on the day.
The pupils and parents sit separately on the floor and everyone is called up and attendance is checked. Then the children with a particularly high number of absences are called upon and their parents have to explain their absence. Theavy emphasizes the enormous importance of school attendance and then each family receives 6 bottles of soy and fish sauce, a box of noodles and 10 kg of rice. The students are provided with a bag, school uniform, snacks, soap and writing utensils including exercise books.
Although I took part in such an event two years ago, I am once again impressed by the perfect organization, which ensures that the distribution to over 100 students and parents runs like clockwork.
After our return to the Safe House, I spend the afternoon tidying up our Femmes des rizières archive.
The next morning we went to Salabalat Primary School, which is also attended by the children from the Safe House.
Visiting the villages
The Roux couple regularly visit the families of the children they support at home to get a first-hand impression. As the WeCare-Association recently received a donation to support three families, we visited potential recipients. Patrik and Theavy are concerned about sustainability in the use of donations. That’s why they spend a lot of time and energy selecting beneficiaries. Specifically, the aim is to select suitable families for the construction of a house. One of the criteria is that the family must own the land on which the house is to be built. If this is not the case, the owner of the land would quickly lay claim to it. For this reason, the first two unfortunately fell through the cracks, even though it was awful to watch. These are two families in which paraplegics live. The 50-year-old father of the family is paralyzed and vegetates on a cot. A metal bowl has been tied around him with a scarf… his 92-year-old mother crouches in a shed in front of the hut and eats. A small success: the last time Theavy and Patrik visited, the old woman was lying unprotected in the blazing sun… and we’re talking temperatures of 35° Celsius and above. The grandson, who is unfortunately not very active, then built this shelter for the grandmother. We brought rice, noodles and soy sauce. In the next family there is a paraplegic woman and mother of 8 children who is lying on a wooden plank bed without any support. She lives in her sister’s hut, the woman’s excrement lies under the cot and she is completely apathetic. One of her daughters is there and cooks for the family members present. The whole situation is terrible.
The next stop is a family with 5 boys who had actually been considered by Theavy and Patrik as recipients for a hut we had built. The family had originally made a good impression as they obviously own the land where they live and the father has a permanent job. The mother was home alone with the children and already the eldest, eight-year-old son was showing signs of rebellion and disobedience – it’s hard to describe, but all three of us had the impression that something was going massively wrong here. Theavy had already tried to gather information about the family and discovered that there were some not very pleasant rumors about the mother. Theavy and Patrik are staying on the case and will continue to follow the family.
Visit to the premises of the garbage company
On our return to the safe house, the van is reloaded because we have to visit the people at the garbage dump in the afternoon. A total of 32 families live on the site of a garbage company and I had become aware of the terrible living conditions of these people during my last visit two years ago. That’s why the WeCare-Association decided to donate relief supplies to these poor families. With a temperature of around 35°C and very high humidity, we drove to the dump, where the families immediately gathered around us and helped unload the donated goods. Here too, Theavy and her team had distributed vouchers in advance to ensure that the relief supplies got to the right people.
The families sat down on the floor and we distributed food, washing bowls, storage boxes, mosquito nets, blankets and mats while sweating and wearing masks. In this way, we were able to make life a little more bearable for these people, at least for the time being. Afterwards, we were invited to visit the families’ homes. As it had rained the evening before and the inside of the huts is often just clay soil, it was soaked and the dampness was clearly noticeable. It is very depressing to see how some people have to live.
Samlot
The following day brought a nice change: we drove to Samlot, 84 km away, to visit a graduate of ngo avec’s tailoring training who we had financed to become self-employed. The young woman now runs a tailoring studio on her parents’ property and her older sister has a beauty salon next door. The young women made a happy impression and their businesses seem to be going well. The older sister was very much looking forward to her upcoming wedding the following week and the whole family was already in a state of preparation.
The way back led us through a wonderfully green landscape, where there are many manioc plantations, mango trees and cashew trees. This area is incredibly fertile!
I spent the next two days in the studio with Theavy, where we worked on new products for Femmes des rizières.
Siam Reap
In the meantime, excitement and anticipation grew among the children at the Safe House as the planned trip to Siam Reap drew ever closer. The younger children in particular had been preparing their clothes for the trip for days. Finally the time had come! The rented bus for the majority of the passengers arrived and was packed full. The children, who suffer from motion sickness, were put on the back of the pickup to get some fresh air.
We arrived in Siam Reap around midday and went straight to lunch. It’s incredible how Siam Reap has changed in two years. A lot of footpaths and cycle paths have been built. However, several hotels and restaurants have also been closed. In particular, the large buffet restaurants with traditional dance performances, which welcomed large groups of tourists before corona, have had to close and will not be reopening any time soon.
This first impression of a lack of tourists was also confirmed when we visited several temples on the two days of our stay in Siam Reap. There are only a few foreign tourists and more Cambodian visitors. This has a disastrous effect on the local economy, which is desperately dependent on foreign currency.
A highlight for everyone was a visit to a local buffet restaurant, where the children were able to fill their bellies to their heart’s content. The sight of these beaming children’s eyes proudly and joyfully presenting their “full” bellies and expressing their sense of well-being was priceless.
I am always amazed at the incredible discipline and consistency that Theavy and Patrik show when raising the children. This also had an effect: when we returned to the hotel, the children jumped into the pool. There were only a few other guests in the hotel apart from us, but the children were told to keep quiet. There were around 25 children in the pool and you could hear… nothing!
A visit to the central Pub Street the next evening brought smiling faces again, as we invited everyone in for an ice cream. However, the number of lively streets in the evening has fallen to just one in two years. A few restaurants and bars are open here and compete for the attention of the few tourists with loud music. It will be a long time before tourism recovers here.
Farewell
It was sad to say goodbye the next day after a very intense and exciting time together. The children showered me with lovingly handcrafted gifts and, above all, with beaming faces and lots of hugs.
The cab driver asked me to take a photo with him, as I was the first customer he was taking to the airport in more than two years. The airport itself was almost deserted and there were only two flights on the board: my flight to Singapore and a flight to Phnom Penh.
Conclusion: I will definitely be back and these already poor people will suffer from the consequences of the pandemic restrictions for a long time to come. I am also enormously grateful that I have the opportunity to experience such intense encounters and that I can contribute to creating unforgettable memories for some children that will strengthen their self-esteem and that no one can take away from them.
