I can’t believe that we will stay only three more nights here in Cambodia! It’s going to be really sad to leave this place, it feels like home to me now… I know that I will miss this place, the kids, local people and the other volunteers. But there are new adventures waiting for us in Thailand! I’m excited!
On Thursday, we will travel to North Thailand through Bangkok, to a village called Lamphun. We are going to work there at the orphanage for the next six weeks. We'll have to travel almost 24 hours to get there, so it will be interesting... There has been an earthquake in Myanmar and also in some places of Thailand. And I heard that there also has been a big storm in Thailand. But the place we will go is ok, I think...
Last week here in Takeo has gone by fast. We have made weekend-trip to the Rabbit Island, visited to a village school and of course we have given dancing lessons to the kids. The day after tomorrow, we are going to make this little show, to perform others what have we done. We are going to use Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean because the kids really seem to love his music. We had to bend a little bit with the kids and teach them dance moves we made up, though originally we decided that we won’t do that. But we have also encouraged them to use their own ideas and to teach moves to each other. The kids have surprised us many times with their ability to learn and concentrate during the lesson. Sometimes it has been difficult to get them focused, but clearly they can concentrate when they really want to.
One day, me, Paula, Sean and Lewis (they are some really nice guys from the orphanage) did a bike ride outside Takeo and we ended up to this little village. They clearly haven’t seen many westerns before. People just stopped and stared at us almost with mouth opened while we were cycling across the villages’ only street. I bet, the place was a typical rural village in Cambodia; small and poor, children running around and playing, pigs, cows and chickens walking on the street… The houses were just small shacks. I went to one of these shacks and asked if they had any cold water to sell and something confusing happened: one of the women pushed a little baby boy in to my arms and I think she was trying to sell him for me! She just gave the baby to me and showed with her hands “Money! Money!” And then there was a man who was pointing these children next to him like he was selling them and he also said some money amount, if I understood right the Khmer numbers. The situation was very weird. They literally surrounded us and were pretty aggressive too. And of course, I didn’t understand the language they used! After we got out of the crowd I was shocked when I realized that they really were selling that baby to me! And that’s not unusual in Cambodia at all. There's lots of human trafficking, especially child trafficking, in Cambodia. But I think, they don’t probably do it because they are bad people or that they are just thinking about money. Maybe that woman thought that she would give a better future to the child, imagining that the white woman is rich. People here think about money a lot. It’s all about the money! To them, if you are white, it means you are rich. And obviously, compared to them, we are rich, though I don’t think of myself as a rich person at all.
Well, that is one more new experience in this country. Now I think I’m going to read my book and get a good night sleep so I have enough energy for the last two days here in this lovely orphanage!
Oona
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