Thursday, 5 June 2008

Siemreap : The orphanage needs you










Here is a little bit info about the orphanage, the kids and the conditions they live in. I have posted a couple more pictures about the kitchen the living area, the "house" in general so that you can fully understand how important it is that every one of you contribute by making a donation.

The kids are simply amazing. I really wanted to state how wonderful this experience is and how heartbreaking it can be as well. The kids are always smiling, ready to play and learn as much as possible. They have so much energy.

After the english lesson the other day, they wanted to learn French, so to work out both languages at the same time, they had to tell me in english what they wanted to know in French and I was to translate and help them with their pronounciation. The first sentence they wanted to know was, of course, "Hello, how are you ?".

The second one, yes, you have guessed, was " what is your name?" and the third one was, no, this one, noone can guess..." I want to eat rice" ! After that, we had to reverse the teaching and I have learnt all those sentences in Kmer. Well. I can tell you the kids are far much better at French than I am at Kmer.

God, that language is difficult to pronounce, never mind the writing and reading.We also organised games in the lake and the kids really wanted me to come along for a swim, so, yes, I did.

Fully clothed, as this is the way you do it here (especially for women who should not show any part of their body) and I do not really want to describe the colour of the water, nor the things floating on it, nor the animals swimming in it, nor the soft, sweet, warmth of the bottom, but I am sure you got the idea.

It was a lot of fun no matter what I was swimming with or in. I also had to share their eating habits, or at least try to. You simply can not refuse when they are want to share their food with you.

So far, I have eaten snake, crocodile, grasshopers, ant soup, cockroaches and a lot of other things but I still have no idea what they are nor was they are made of. In general, everything is very tasty, apart from the cockroaches, I have to say, as you can feel all the different parts of their bodies under your tongue, especially the legs and that was quite a sensation.

I had to refuse the neighbour's dog that died in a car accident the other day but they did not force me into that one.Last but not least, the orphanage I am at is one out of thousands of orphanages within Cambodia, left aside all the other countries. The one I really did not have the strenght to stay at is the landmine victims orphanage.

Cambodia has been and unfortunately is still filled with landmines from the 20 years civil war that devastated the country not that long ago. Thousands of kids are left with missing members. They have lost their parents, are too poor to eat and have only one arm, or one leg, or for some of them no arms and no legs at all.

This is really hard to imagine when you are comfortably sitting in front of your computer at home, in good health and with way more than those kids could ever dream of, but this is true. I have been there, I have seen all this and that is why I am asking you to help those kids as much as you can.

Even if some orphanages are well corrupted and not properly run, you can trust the coso orphanage, you have seen the pictures of the kids and after all that, I hope you will realise how important it is for you to make donations and I really count on all of you to help.

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