I have returned from another trip to Siem Reap. I have been there at this time of the year for the last few years and there is only one way to describe Siem Reap in April/May and that’s hot!’

During this visit, as with all the times I am with the kids, we celebrated birthdays that fell during or close to my time there. This time it was a special birthday as Srey Mien turned 18. For those of you who have met the kids, Srey Mien is a lovely young lady with a very even and caring nature. However, Srey Mien turning 18 reminded me of a photo that was taken in August 2008 when she arrived at Imagine along with her sister Srey Mom and her cousins Chanthy and Chantha.

The 2008 photo of (from left to right) Srey Mien, Srey Mom, Chantha and Chanthy compared with the 2017 photo of Chanthy, Chantha, Srey Mien and Srey Mom is a reminder of how far these young people have come. In the 2008 photo, Srey Mien and Chanthy were 9 and Srey Mom and Chantha were 7, none of them had any real schooling behind them. Today they are all about to complete year 10 and I can sit with any one of them and have a conversation in English.

As the school year draws to an end in Cambodia we are all starting to realise that for 10 of them they will be entering the final 2 years of their high school in just a few months. In Australia and other more developed countries, there would be counselling and advice for the students because they need to make a choice now between what they term “science” and “social”. As I probed this with them and with Savoun, it became clear that none of them really know the process or understood what it meant to make this choice. I have given Savoun the task of finding out all about it and we can then provide them with any advice and assistance possible.

Most Cambodian kids don’t really have a focus on what they could do and what choices they have. Their view of their careers is very narrow because that is what they see around them and we are constantly battling with them to lift their horizons. That becomes easier and more tangible to them when they see the older ones going to college and working. The boys have friends at school who have very little ambition beyond what they see their fathers doing and very few of them would have fathers who have had tertiary education. It’s even worse for the girls because so few Cambodian women have University education although it is growing. Getting married and having babies is the future so many see. It’s part of our job to help them balance the way Cambodian society is today with an understanding of the possibilities they have.

This visit was very much about spending time with the kids. They love to test their reading with me and they spend a lot of time asking what various words mean. I have grown used to having to explain things in very basic terms over the years. As an example, this time Chornn
was reading to me and the word horizon came up, he also asked me the difference between mist and fog. This shows me that some of them have moved away from the basic English and are becoming more advanced. I bought them clothes, new towels and new shoes. They also went swimming at the local boutique hotel which they enjoy very much. Cambodian kids wear so many more clothes in the water than we do, especially the girls. The spent a between 60-90 minutes in the water and it was very difficult to get them out.

We had a different sort of meal for Srey Mien’s birthday. Usually we have pizza and a barbecue with chicken and some beef and vegetables on a skewer. However, this time we had what I would call a steam boat (see the picture to the left) but they call the “cows climbing the mountain”, which is a reference to the pieces of beef cooking on the slope. It was something really different for them and a big treat. As usual we had far too much food but somehow they managed to eat it all as a variety of snack over the ensuing days.

My visits to Siem Reap these days are mainly about just spending time with the kids. I find myself also having to talk to them about their education but the constant battle we have is with making sure they stay clean and that the house, especially the eating and cooking areas and also the bathrooms, are looked after. Cleanliness and hygiene is not something that is as high in people’s minds as it should be in Cambodia and I found myself again providing a lecture about cleaning the bathrooms. I even had to clean a toilet that the boys said was clean to get them to understand what clean actually means.

But amongst it all we have some fun.

Peter Joyce
Director