Thursday Events

Today our field trips included a school that is located near the dump. The dump is the city's trash site. All of the trash picked up around the city is brought to this 1000 acre site. There are families that live in and around the dump. There is a system to this village. Since the pickings are insufficient for all, families have either a morning and afternoon shift plus they rotate days.

The children help during the families' scavenger times. They attend school the other part of the day, learning hygiene, reading, sewing skills, hair cuts and pedicures. These tiny innocents sang us a song and were very excited, as any child would be when there are visitors.

While we would not consider letting our child attend a school with dirt floors in a room the same size or smaller than our walk-in closets, the school is actually the opportunity of a lifetime. Education is such an intangible that some parents do not see the value and will not send their children to school or vocational school. They are only concerned about the immediate need to survive. The school operates with some funds from GBGM Women's Division.

The school is the last building before actually driving onto the dump. Mountains of separated trash are everywhere and the people meet the dump trucks. They have gotten very efficient in separating plastic, cans, clothing, food items or anything they perceive as having in value. A young boy told the school director when asked, that it takes 100 cans to earn two US pennies. Keep in mind that Cambodia's currency is 4000 riels to one US dollar, and the Cambodians have no coins.

The smell is bad, it is upsetting seeing children with their rubber boots, if they are lucky, and a sack larger than they sifting through refuse, and other kids darting between the big trucks as they empty their loads. I'm not sure which is the harder to deal with, the dump or the killing fields.

We left the dump and school to tour the Royal Palace, however the government was in session and we had to go to the Museum next door. The history of Cambodia is so rich. Unfortunately, it was a short tour as we went to lunch and then the orphanage.

Although we should know better, certain words still provoke certain images. Orphanage is one of those words, most would think perhaps of Little Orphan Annie with the row of beds in a large room. Did we get a Cambodian reality check. It was a shanty town, two stories with girls on one side and boys on the other. The irony is that no matter how bad it may look to us as Americans, it is better than where the kids were before. Again the classrooms are very small with at least a dozen or more kids in each room. The orphans had prepared gifts for us. Drawings!! There were birds and trees and all the idealism and hope of these kids. Very special frames will be purchased. Here again, UMW support through Women's division has provided scholarships for the children to learn.

We took an organ-jarring two hour ride to a village to meet the "weaving women". The homes are built on stilts. Underneath is the cooking area, loom, the animals may be penned underneath and a sleeping area. The women are assisted with "purchasing" the loom to create silk cloth -- it is highly desired and priced at $100 (US) for about 2 meters, which should make 2 skirts. The women sit at their looms with the kids in the yard or perhaps the baby sleeping under a mosquito net on the table nearby.

As the women become proficient and their cloth is sold, they pay for the loom so that another woman may be "loaned" a loom until such time that she can pay it off. There is no time limit for this to be accomplished.

The common denominator in all this are the beautiful children. More than likely if they are under 3 or 4, they are naked and later the boys may have on shorts or pants and the girls skirts.