Sophy Village

Hi everybody,

Following a moral quest to prove I’m not inflicting myself upon Asia, I found myself volunteering in a small Village in the Siem Reap district called Sophy.
The objective was obscure, I got the contact in the form of a name and address in Siem Reap, I knew it was something to do with going to a scholl and helping out with whatever they needed – and whatever we could do.
We started with a few failed attempted to find the contact man “Chaa” and in the meantime got ready for the mission.

As you can see – this is me, being ready for the mission

I was confused about what it is that I can actually do to help, I wouldn’t consider myself a teacher of any sort,
I didn’t consider myself even as somebody who has good access to children.
The confusion prolonged as Chaa wasn’t too informative about what we’re going to actually do there… He told us that once we’re in the village, we will meet the local teacher and he will take care of everything.

The car stopped and we spilled out of it into the front yard of a wooden house, standing on 2 meter high poles, with some hammocks hanged under the house and a horde of children and animals roaming around – bearing systematic havoc.
It didn’t sink, it looked like another village, another guesthouse, more people you can’t really talk to, more of the usually beautiful country side images with nameless faces on them.
We met the teacher and he took us for a walk around the village while food was being prepared for us. He told us in general about the school and the village. A very nice guy, my age, it’s not too often that he gets out of the village.
The food was delicious, seriously one of the best cooks I’ve stumbled upon in my whole trip.
And thus she became our new Mama(or Gi – for the Hindi speakers that read this), her name is “Tai”, later it turned out that she’s the Head Mistress of the school.
We would get a far-too-big meal everytime we would come back from school and vitrually at the moment we woke up.

My pink cocoon mode

Breakfast

In the morning we marched to the school, not yet knowing what is supposed to happen.
The teacher explained in two sentances that there’s no plan, mostly what he needs from us is talk to the kids so they can hear the right pronounciation and practise understanding and talking.
I found myself standing in front of a class of 49 cambodian kids, aged from 6 to 13, gazing at me with expectation and excitement…

Then it became clear, what is going on here is not some sort of organized program that defined the rules and criticised your moves according to them.
This was an effort, nobody there knew how to make it happen, it was just a group of determined people with good intentions – a most powerful combination as it seems.
I started talking to the kids, because that’s what you do when you stand in front of the class…
Starting with an unsecure “Hello, How are you?”… The kids were so excited by our presence, they were going out of their mind to get attention, to get to say something… You could see how cute were the ones that were too shy to speak but at the same time too fascinated not to!
So it went on and on, talking about colors and animals and food and every possible subject that crossed our minds…

Before every lesson we were completely oblivious as to what we are going to do. We talked, played games and sang songs… everything worked at the moment your got into it. The kids were overjoyed with any activity whatsoever, including sitting quietly and staring at us trying to figure out what to do now. It is clear now, in retrospective, that all we actually did was smile and talk. The learning part was a side story, the main story was curiosity… and love.
Those kids loved us for being there with them, we would recieve a thick pile of drawings in the end of each lesson (that is what they were really doing besides staring at us). The drawings resembled the usual repertuar, princesses, houses and english captions over flowers, trees and the sun.
The breaks between the lessons were all about shaking endless tiny hands and throwing paper airplanes at each other.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, knees and toes…

and….. the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhwcrI1vPts

Then, after the lesson was finished we would get picked up a bunch of kids and led back to the house holding hands and singing songs…

By the time we would arrive home (which was about 100 meters away from the school), the front yard always looked like a playground for the hyperactive

Now, I don’t know if I’m weird, but at this point I had an inner conflict to overcome. I was always a little bit afraid of children, usually I would use the fact they cannot explain what’s wrong when something is wrong… and then they might start crying… and then I wouldn’t know what to do.
In addition to that, there’s the danger of hurting them or them hurting themselves – and that is one scenario I believe no one wants to participate in.
In this case, I couldn’t talk to them because most of them didn’t really speak enough english for us to communicate properly.
This conflict was not resolved with any amazing spiritual insight, I was picked up by a bunch of kids… and they made me spin them and carry them around, chase them and be chased by them… so intense was this action that it made all of these thoughts from before completely irrelevant.
They were like little springs driven by an endless engine and emitting love to every direction!

Now, I tend to beautify my stories, I admit. But what I am going to say now is 100% true although it will not sound believable.
In all the time we spent in the village, I didn’t hear a single child crying! I was surrounded by them every single moment of the day except for when I was sleeping. This seems to be the generally true about asian children, at least everywhere I have been.
I don’t know what is their education secret, beside the fact that they seem to treat their children as small people unlike the westerners. In the west children are treated as second class people, they are screened from parts of life (for the purpose of their own protection of course).
In Asia you see babies on motorbikes, on public bus rides that are dozens of hours long, piled on cargo carts, tied to their momies while they are working in whatever job they have… At some point of their life, their mother puts them down on their feet… and they never climb back.
They stay on the ground, like all the others… just small people.

I overcame my fear of children, if I could be promised asian-style educated children, I would like to make some right away
The amount of love they are capable of giving is overwhelming, I was ready to adopt a couple of them…
As cheesy as it may sound (and it does sound very cheesy) I completely fell in love with them.

So, for all the ladies that ever doubted my parental potential, for my mother and mozes… here are the some happy moments with the kids from Sophy:

A couple of pictures from the celebration at the local Pagoda (Temple):

Nothing I can write will ever describe the feeling of having this smile directed at you…. just look at her…

I would like to thank Anne-Sophie, you made it all possible, I wouldn’t be experiencing these feelings now if it wasn’t for you.
You are an exceptional person, an Agent of Good.

Thank you people for reading my blog,
I am coming back to Israel in less than a week… see you all soon!
me.

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