So, here we go, the G.D. (Good Deed) part of my world trip : volunteering at an English school and eco-project in a small Cambodian town.

The aims of the GNO :

– teaching English to every one who wants it, every level,

– teaching those students how to take care of the planet specially by avoiding throwing plastic waste on the ground because here they were so used to throw every sort of waste on the ground and seen Nature do it’s work (animals eating it or decomposition happening, sometimes helped with a fire) that when plastic arrived in their lives, they never bother changing their habits…

– building a new school for the poorest kids with plastic bottles in stead of bricks. A school the neighbors will be proud of because they helped building it, either by stuffing plastic bottles with other plastic waste or by helping on the working site.

Lots to do then !

And, as you can expect from an experience that promise to be very different from you usual life, lots of difficult moments, specially at the beginning. Lucky enough, Cambodia hosts some of the nicest population in the world. Khmers are warm, not just because they say “Hello” when you come across them, they will provide you with shade if you where waiting for something under the sun (even if they don’t know you or what you’re doing there), they will provide you with a seat if you were doing some long building work just standing, they will make sure you wear long sleeves to protect you from the sun while you work, they will come to you and try to tell you they like your face and your long nose… Yes people here are quite surprised and curious to see you but they’re also very kind, warm, happy and easy to live with.

But let’s go back to the difficult moments : you came to live in a town with no real running water and where 1/3 of the population has running electricity. So you have to learn to how to take a “shower” with a bucket of water in a room full of mosquitoes (so lovely when you intend to get naked!), which also means it will be quite difficult to explain the meaning and differences between a shower and a bath to your students (changing the sentence “waiting for the school bus” in “waiting for the school motor taxi” was a quite funny experience actually).

You also have to learn to live without a fridge. Lucky Nalice is such a good Khmer cook used to this way of cooking! just see what our kitchen looks like :

That also means you’ll get ingredients fresh from the market everyday.

You have to learn to sleep through the pigs slaughtering of 4 A.M. (and yes, pigs do yell terribly while being slaughtered), the roosters singing every few minutes from dawn to twilight, the dogs barking at every strange move, the geckos laughing (and when a huge dotty gecko decides to laugh just behind your bed at 2 in the morning, it’s a quite a surprise) and so on.

You have to get used to get at least 10 new mosquito (or whatever else) bites a day because whatever you do, with all the repellent in the world, all the mosquito nets in the world, they will always find a way through to bit you. That’s when the Siang Pure balm becomes really handy.

It’s difficult but if the villagers can live like that and have actually been living like that for all their lives, why couldn’t you for a couple of weeks?

Sure, not being able to talk properly with your neighbors doesn’t help, but you get used to it : you learn a few khmer words and for the rest you rely on the hands language (or, in extreme cases, you call a friend : a Khmer teacher to translate for you).

It’s difficult but it’s worth the experience.

It is worth seeing so many enthusiastic kids, eager to come spelling a new word on the board, struggling with letters from a new alphabet to try to write something that would sound like what they hear (hate-egg for headache for instance), trying to listen to what letters the other students shout at them and sometimes failing to find the right spelling so waiting for an other kid to come and write it and “punish” him for his failure by a little squeeze on the hear. They’re all fairplay and taller kids will bend to let smaller ones punish them, no one really tries to hurt the others.

It is worth going to the building site every morning and tie up some more bottles on the chicken wire with the neighbor’s son to see the walls of a future room growing up quite quickly. Worth seeing the young girl from the poor family on the other side of the road coming to watch us work, playing with the dogs around us, juggling with some bottles, playing hide and seek or patiently looking at us. Worth knowing the fresh coconut (oh so refreshing when you have no fridge!) you take for your break creates an income to the same poor family.

Worth seeing the wonderful colorful matching outfits the Khmer women wear everyday. Worth seeing so many smiles and so many happy people around you everyday.

It makes you wonder why Parisians look so unhappy when they have so much more.