Team Technical Highschool students are building a house in Cambodia. Theage.com.au
Miki Perkins Education Reporter
November 29, 2008
THE tail end of the wet season has eroded the soil of the killing fields near Phnom Penh.
It has washed away the mud, revealing pieces of sodden clothing — trousers, skirts, shirts — worn by Cambodians who were killed and buried there during the murderous Pol Pot regime between 1975 and 1979.
This sodden field was the first place 17 Australian teenagers visited when they arrived in Cambodia this week on a different kind of schoolies trip, far from the beer-soaked antics on the Gold Coast.
These students from the northern Victorian towns of Kerang and Cohuna and the Northern Territory town of Jabiru are in Cambodia to build houses — specifically, 15 simple timber-framed houses with concrete floors and corrugated iron roofs for people in the tiny village of Chhak Khlan, about 100 kilometres south of Phnom Penh.
During the past year, students in year 12 from Kerang Technical High School, Cohuna Secondary College and the Northern Territory Open Education Centre, and members of the Kerang Rotary Club, scraped together $20,000 in donations from businesses in their small rural towns. The students also had to find their own air fares.
Yesterday, as they nailed down the final boards and nursed their blisters, an elderly woman told them that the Khmer Rouge had shot her husband in the rice paddies behind the hamlet and killed her son.
Now she will live in one of the new houses with her four grandchildren.
"This has been fairly overwhelming — there are so many things you take for granted, like the life we've got," Cohuna Secondary College student Kasey Barker, 18, told The Age.
"Doing this has definitely opened my eyes to the fact there is more to life than materialistic things."
Kerang student Pearl Dunn, 17, described the sweeping view from the village — forested mountains, green farmland, a lake, silent buffaloes and a gaggle of children who run rings around the visitors.
None of the villagers speaks English, so there is lots of smiling and flowery hand gestures.
"I think it's a lot better (than schoolies) because you don't just go away and drink and take drugs — you see these people," Pearl said.
The Australian students count themselves lucky, but some are familiar with hardship in an Australian context.
Many are from drought-stricken farming families whose incomes have nosedived over the past 10 years. And the town of Kerang remains synonymous with last year's tragic rail crash.
This week the students and seven adults visited the killing fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and will visit other sites to deepen their cultural understanding.
Kerang Rotary Club member and trip leader Sharon Champion said it was all part of a two-week experience she hoped would help the students bridge the gap between school and the rest of their lives.
"This gives our kids a way of looking at the world that's not self-centred. It really puts the focus on issues outside of what they've grown up with," she said.
Kerang Technical High School students made their first alternative schoolies trip to Cambodia last year. They hope to build a partnership with the Rotary club in Phnom Phen.
The houses were built in conjunction with the Australian-based Tabitha Foundation.
Miki Perkins Education Reporter
November 29, 2008
THE tail end of the wet season has eroded the soil of the killing fields near Phnom Penh.
It has washed away the mud, revealing pieces of sodden clothing — trousers, skirts, shirts — worn by Cambodians who were killed and buried there during the murderous Pol Pot regime between 1975 and 1979.
This sodden field was the first place 17 Australian teenagers visited when they arrived in Cambodia this week on a different kind of schoolies trip, far from the beer-soaked antics on the Gold Coast.
These students from the northern Victorian towns of Kerang and Cohuna and the Northern Territory town of Jabiru are in Cambodia to build houses — specifically, 15 simple timber-framed houses with concrete floors and corrugated iron roofs for people in the tiny village of Chhak Khlan, about 100 kilometres south of Phnom Penh.
During the past year, students in year 12 from Kerang Technical High School, Cohuna Secondary College and the Northern Territory Open Education Centre, and members of the Kerang Rotary Club, scraped together $20,000 in donations from businesses in their small rural towns. The students also had to find their own air fares.
Yesterday, as they nailed down the final boards and nursed their blisters, an elderly woman told them that the Khmer Rouge had shot her husband in the rice paddies behind the hamlet and killed her son.
Now she will live in one of the new houses with her four grandchildren.
"This has been fairly overwhelming — there are so many things you take for granted, like the life we've got," Cohuna Secondary College student Kasey Barker, 18, told The Age.
"Doing this has definitely opened my eyes to the fact there is more to life than materialistic things."
Kerang student Pearl Dunn, 17, described the sweeping view from the village — forested mountains, green farmland, a lake, silent buffaloes and a gaggle of children who run rings around the visitors.
None of the villagers speaks English, so there is lots of smiling and flowery hand gestures.
"I think it's a lot better (than schoolies) because you don't just go away and drink and take drugs — you see these people," Pearl said.
The Australian students count themselves lucky, but some are familiar with hardship in an Australian context.
Many are from drought-stricken farming families whose incomes have nosedived over the past 10 years. And the town of Kerang remains synonymous with last year's tragic rail crash.
This week the students and seven adults visited the killing fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and will visit other sites to deepen their cultural understanding.
Kerang Rotary Club member and trip leader Sharon Champion said it was all part of a two-week experience she hoped would help the students bridge the gap between school and the rest of their lives.
"This gives our kids a way of looking at the world that's not self-centred. It really puts the focus on issues outside of what they've grown up with," she said.
Kerang Technical High School students made their first alternative schoolies trip to Cambodia last year. They hope to build a partnership with the Rotary club in Phnom Phen.
The houses were built in conjunction with the Australian-based Tabitha Foundation.
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