Cambodia, and all it's taught me.

"There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those."  - Mother Teresa

It’s 6:50 a.m. My alarm clock rings, gradually increasing in volume, beckoning me to get out of bed. I got up, braided my hair with eyes half-open, and savored the last few minutes I had to myself. I hurried down the narrow, tiled stairway of the small restaurant we were living on top of and sat down for breakfast. The metal gates of the restaurant were wide open, inviting in sunlight and hungry customers. My friends and I quickly ate what we could to fill ourselves up just enough to feel hungry by noon. By 7:20 a.m., our tuk-tuk was waiting outside the restaurant doors.

We got in, held on tight onto our belongings, and sat through an hour-long journey to a village called Kandal. This was our morning routine for the next six weeks.  

As we journeyed from the city of Phnom Penh to the outskirts leading to Kandal, we witness the immediate change in our surroundings. In just a couple of minutes, there were no buildings, no motorcycles, no tuk-tuks – which were the primary mode of transportation for Cambodians. The tar roads transitioned into gravel roads that, soon enough, led us to the school where we were to teach English.

It was a wooden room on stilts with metal panels pasted on the outside walls. The slits between the dark wooden panels used as flooring exposed another classroom beneath it. A green plastic tarp hung on the ceiling to protect the children from rainfall. It had bright blue walls that made the place a little more inviting, and a few windows that acted as their source of light and ventilation. This school was located on a riverbank and was no larger than an average American living room. The children were free to come and go as there were little supervision, but most chose to stay with eyes glued to their cracked white board, memorizing every English word on it.

It still boggles my mind that my team and I came here to teach English with absolutely zero qualifications. We were nervous, and we didn’t know where to begin. There was a girl in the class I taught who saw that we were struggling to figure out what to teach them. Because of the huge language barrier, we communicated with gestures and drawings. Through that, she showed me her notebook so I could continue on from where their last teacher left off. This girl was the first friend I made. Her name was Srey Saw. I used the little Khmer I knew to ask her what her name meant. Immediately, her face lit up as she covered her mouth in astonishment because for once, we finally understood each other. In her native language she replied: “'Srey Saw' means 'beautiful girl' in Khmer,” and indeed she was.

I quickly learned that being able to speak English was an enormous asset and skill to have in Cambodia. It is so highly demanded to the point where just being able to speak English can bump up one’s social class and eventually drive them out of poverty. Learning English was their way out of the environment they were born into. These kids saw the tuk-tuk that arrived every morning as their key to a better life, the kind that comes with a little more freedom, a little more wealth, and a little more comfort.

I also learned through asking many questions about the upbringing of these kids that they do not have parents who care for them, or give a second thought about their safety and well-being. All my life I’ve been given the privilege of having parents who took up roles as my caretakers, my providers, and my educators. To imagine growing up without them is a scary thought as I would not know how I would survive.

There was a little boy, too young to be in school yet, who often snuck into our class just to mouth a few words the other kids were learning. He was bashful and timid, but confidently roamed the streets wearing only a t-shirt that was two sizes too small for his frame. At first it was funny, and kind of cute, because he would get mad at the other kids for trying to get him to wear his pants. But what I learned is that his parents were absent for most of his life due to their responsibilities at work, so he never learned how to dress himself. The lack of clothes is not a form of rebellion, but rather something that wasn’t provided. I’ve seen him everyday wandering around the streets with no parental guardian. He’s four.

The girls in this village would often get pregnant by the age of 15 and drop out of school to carry the responsibility of starting a family in their early adolescence. “It’s the faster way out of poverty because they can start working,” my local friend explained.

Not too far away from the school lived a family who had to sell one of their twins because two babies were too financially straining. That was a hard pill to swallow. This was their harsh reality. The overarching point is, children here just want somebody to care for them.  

I felt an incredible weight on my shoulders after learning about this community. I was actually staring into the eyes of these kids who were going through these painful circumstances, and not just looking at them from afar, from some non-profit brochure asking for donations. I was there, and I was present. I pondered on so many questions: “why do they not know what it’s like to have dinner on the same table with their family?” “what did they do to deserve to be born into poverty?” “why don’t they know what it’s like to feel cared for unconditionally?”

I wasn’t given the privilege to know most of the answers but what I knew at that point was that I wanted to be the person who could love them unconditionally, even if it’s only for six weeks. I wanted to just hold them. And I wanted to leave not just as a teacher but as a friend, who they knew, really cared for them.

What I took back from the trip is this: I was humbled. I went in thinking I was going to teach them something but little did they know, they taught me lessons that would last a lifetime. They taught me that love knows no bounds. That huge language barrier I was so afraid of turned out to be so minute. I learned to love through my actions, through acts of service, and through learning the important words of affirmations in Khmer. That was all I needed.

They also taught me to live a life of gratefulness and contentment in order to see and appreciate what’s in front of me and to not greed for more. They taught me the importance of working towards contentment in order to live a life of gratitude instead of merely experiencing bursts of gratefulness when the thought of others having it worse than you come up. I developed a fundamentally different way of thinking and moving through life, one in which I stopped taking for granted all the tiny moments, both good and bad, that were already part of it. And these kids were the ones who taught me that happiness is not something you search for out there, but a journey to find it right here.

Our class photo together

TLDR: Here's a video recapping my whole trip.