Today was an incredible day, with some amazingly happy and sad moments. It is a day that I will never forget. After breakfast at the hotel we went to the Room to Read offices in Phnom Penh and the staff there gave us an excellent overview of their programs and challenges as well as opportunities in Cambodia. From there we went to see a reading room on the outside of Phnom Penh which gave us a chance to experience traffic here at its worst. It took us quite a while to get there which was a shame because we didn’t have as much time at the site as we’d hoped. We were greeted in the most amazing way. When we pulled up, the school’s students were lined up to greet us, and they placed flowers around our necks and then led us in to one of the rooms where we were greeted by the school director. Walking in really choked me up, it was a very special experience. The school director gave us an overview of their school and asked us about ourselves and Room to Read. They gave us each a coconut with a hole drilled in it so we could drink the juice (yum!) and some nice little sweet cakes that were delicious. From there we went to the reading room and some of the students there were listening to a story. They put on a little show for us with a play acting out one of their books and it was adorable. They all had masks with different animals and were running around squeaking and meowing. When they were done they asked us to show them on their globe where we were all from. They would all repeat the name and luckily Colorado was an easy one. Not so “Minneapolis, Minnesota”! We had some time after to talk individually with some of the students and then we went to lunch. We ate at a place called Romdeng Restaurant, which functions as a training opportunity for disadvantaged children. I thought that was really neat, and the food was excellent as well. We’ve been able to share a lot of dishes per table at all of the places we’ve eaten so far which was a great way to try lots of different things.
After lunch we did some tourist stops, starting with the Royal Palace (amazing!) and then the Toul Sleng genocide museum. Toul Sleng was a secondary school until the Khmer Rouge took it over in 1975 and used it as a prision. The former classrooms were converted into cells/torture chambers and it is, I think, the most sad and horrible thing I’ve seen in my life. Some of the rooms have the original cots and torture implements that were found in the rooms; others have photos of the people that were arrested and imprisioned there, tortured there and died there. It was very, very gruesome, though I’m glad that I saw it because it made a big impression on me. Our guide, Kim, told us some of the personal stories of his family, and how his mother was arrested. It is so easy to take our freedom and our safety from such atrocities for granted.
For dinner we went out on a big boat to the place where the Mekong and tributaries intersect in Phnom Penh. The dusk was really beautiful until it got a bit too dark and the lights on our boat began to serve as a beacon to every insect in a 50 mile radius. We were litterally covered with bugs, which made eating a little difficult, but the food was nevertheless delicious, and after a while we all found the darkest section of the boat and gathered there.
I’ve been taking a lot of photos but they are taking ages to upload. Keep checking back here or watch my flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/annedirkse) to see the latest, as they get uploaded.
