Arriving and exploring in Cambodia

COUNTRY: Cambodia
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Community Healthcare & Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Amy Kay

This week has been huge for all of us, travelling to Siem Reap from all over Australia and New Zealand, getting to know everyone, immersing ourselves in the Cambodian culture, adjusting to the heat and humidity, as well as starting our placement at MHDC and Krapeu Village.

The first couple days were filled with orientation activities, tasting delicious traditional Khmer food, exploring the markets in Siem Reap, watching traditional dance and learning Khmer. We also visited Angkor Children's hospital, which is a hospital that provides free service to the children of Cambodia. It was amazing to see the standard of 'Western' facilities and the multitude of mothers with children waiting to be seen by a doctor.

The group also took part in the ConCERT child protection program for a full day, learning about the effects of volunteerism and tourism on the children of Cambodia. The program was very extensive and definitely made us aware of what to look out for and when to take action.

We visited Aki Ra's landmine museum on Wednesday, which was incredibly surreal, seeing thousands of disarmed landmines and learning about Cambodia's violent history. Aki Ra has dedicated his life to removing the landmines he was forced to implement as a child soldier, he also educates children who have been victims of landmines. It's so important to be able to connect the country's history to how valuable education and health promotion really is in relation to the idea of rebuilding Cambodia.

The introduction to the Military Handicap Development Centre (MHDC) and Krapeu Village, has taught us many things in the last two days. Being spontaneous and ready to adapt to the children's or villager's needs is incredibly important. We are in groups rotating between teaching English, health promotion and home visits, it's wonderful to see how we can help or change aspects of MHDC school and Krapeu Village in our short time here. Everyone in the group has been inspired by the children's and adult's incredible willingness to learn, which makes teaching such an amazing experience.

Andrew and I have been taking the women in the village for health promotion classes, just getting them to open up to us about their problems has been a challenge in itself as they can be quite shy and the language barrier is difficult to overcome. However, after teaching them parts of the body in English, we had all the women in the village singing 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' - which just makes your heart melt, as they are women who cannot read and are living in such difficult conditions with extremely limited resources.

The first week in Cambodia has been amazing, the country itself is so vibrant and full of culture, the people's strength, despite their country's history is just incredible. The people here are so much happier with less than what we have - they are teaching us greater lessons than we will ever be able to teach them.

This weekend some of us are planning on exploring the temples of Angkor Wat, Tonle Sap floating village or bike riding - so we will keep you posted with photos next week!