Wednesday, 12 February 2014

Two classes now completed, the experience has been quite extraordinary and quite wonderful so far. Each day at 4 pm, I am driven in one of the guesthouse tuktuks by one of the team of drivers employed here, they act as minder, guide, interpreter and friend to the volunteers and are all so courteous and pleasant and very patient with us. They are called the friends of the foundation and have all been supported and trained through the foundation. Each of them has their own pretty tough life story about growing up in poverty and struggling to be educated. What seems worth more than anything here is the ability to speak English well which they do. However they often like to join the    classes and can be a great help when explanations and crazy miming (on my part) have failed.

We travel out of the city of Siem Reap and into the country near the temples complex, through the loveliest countryside and very good paved roads mostly, it's about 20kms away and takes 45 minutes.  The students range between 18 and 28 years of age, some are still in school, two are teachers and one  boy works as a hotel porter from 4am to 2pm, everything starts early in Cambodia to avoid the heat,  but this is still a very gruelling schedule.

They all live in the villages within the temples complex where their traditional work as farmers has been banned as Angkor has been designated a Unesco World Heritage Site, unless they can learn to  speak  English well they will either become one of the horde of trinket sellers or have to leave a place their family has known for hundreds of years. I have been told that they have a fund of knowledge  and inherited folk history beyond what the archaeologists and historians have been able to surmise. They know about the ecology and uses of all the herbs and vegetation growing there, it would be a tragedy  now to lose all the richness.

We finally turn off the road and down a narrow rutted track between fields and there ahead is the classroom - a little  wooden building with straw walls, as you can see in the photo, it's a pre- school    classroom with tiny furniture apart from the teacher's chair and table, they have to share the tables as there aren't enough to go around but everyone has a chair.
My first students arrive by bicycle, four beautiful smiling girls who shyly say hello and then gesture to me to step outside as they start to sweep the floor and put out the furniture, this it appears is a daily  ritual. Little by little another four students arrive, three boys and one girl, they are extremely pleasant and lively and made up of the same mixture of personalities and abilities as you will find in classrooms all over the world.

Apart from struggling to get to know them, to connect with their prior learning, to assess the level at which to pitch the class, all goes well, they are really proud to be studying English and truly    appreciate having a teacher.

My biggest challenge hits at about six fifteen ( I work from 5 to 7 pm) when night falls suddenly, there is no electricity but I have been supplied with a range of battery powered lanterns and inflatable  solar lights, it is really difficult for us all, the students seem as if they would stay on forever no matter what but I call it a day (or a night!) at 6.45. I will request more lanterns for tomorrow.

I hope you like the photos which I am now
going to attempt to attach.







1 comment:

  1. They sound amazing! Do they come 5/7 days? Do they get 'chosen' to participate or can anyone attend?

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