Day 3: New Hope Community Centre, Siem Reap

Well, the mud squelching of previous days was nothing compared to today. We arrived at school with completely caked feet.

Today brought uncontrollable sobbing for a few minutes. Before class, through a translator, I talked to a woman who was there with her daughter to visit the doctor. Both had shaved heads due to the loss of their husband / father two weeks ago. The woman showed me a hideous rash on the child’s back, the result of stress / grief from her father’s death, from what I could understand. The woman then explained how she had lost her husband and that she had five children which she now had to look after by herself. She has no other family to help her. No income. Nothing. It’s devastating. Just as I teared up, the doctor called them. I had to run around the corner and have a good old cry before the bell sounded.

I also spoke to Kerry, the Director of New Hope. She is an amazing woman - a true angel with the most incredible sense of humor. What she has to deal with on a day-to-day basis would be unimaginable to most. One of the things she does is oversee the “Outreach program” which involves interviewing and assessing families who have applied for support from New Hope. They assess the level of support and for the most desperate cases, they attempt to raise sponsorship of families (check the website: www.newhopecambodia.com if you’re interested). Surely the widow described above will qualify. There’s an opportunity for me to visit some of these families in their villages at some point but I think I need to toughen up a bit before I get to that stage.

The other volunteers are great and all really helpful and keen to share their experience. Only a couple are actually teachers, and those, secondary teachers. So, it’s a true case of jump in the deep end and swim … really quickly!