Travel to Teach: Cambodia Volunteer Story

Travelling with Lisa.

Maria Janssens, 19, from The Netherlands

"Hello!" "Hello!" "Hello!" "Hello!"

From every hut you pass you hear many voices yelling the only English word they know to you: "Hello" "Hello" "Hello". Some may say: "Where you go?" or "What's your name?" but look dazed and confused when you give them an answer as they probably don't even know what their own question meant. All the kids, and there are millions of them, playing on the streets or working say hello.

The woman from whom I buy a bottle of water needs to touch my white skin as if it's the most amazing thing she reeling off a long story of which I don't understand a word. Their kids stare at me and give me a shy, but genuine, smile back when I smile at them.

All the rich school boys who have learned some English want to have a conversation with you to practise their English, everyone else just stares at you and says hello.

All of this while you bike through the endless rain on a dirt road, past cows, rice fields, salt fields, the river, mountains, wooden huts and lots and lots of green, everything is green, all but the sky, and the tiny brown houses.

You stop for a second to take a picture, to have a sip of water or just to admire the scenery and when you look around the whole village has gathered around you, just to look at you. And when you smile all those faces change to form one gigantic smile.

Then there're my students: two groups of six Cambodian primary school teachers, most of them about 25 years older then me. They've been through some horrible times but nobody ever mentions the Khmer Rouge or anything else from their past.

The fact that they only make 20 dollars a month working a fulltime job as teacher only shows when they run away after your class because they have to work some other job. They want to have fun, and they want to learn English, and even if it's someone years younger than them they're grateful, for everything they get (even though they're not shy to let you know they'd actually want more).

You see the poverty around you. When you look at the small wooden huts families live in, the clothes people are wearing or the children with discoloured hair because of malnutrition. No one is starving because there is always enough rice, but no one has a very healthy diet either.

You go on a boat tour, you can see that the boat driver knows the motor of his small wooden boat may give up any time and we'd be stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but on the other hand he might make some money… And of course the motor stops working when you're far away from the town, but you're very lucky and while you're floating around another boat passes that's willing to drag you back a short distance, (as long as you pay 5 dollars of course)… And for the last few kilometres back to the guesthouse you'll need a motodub (a motorbike with driver that functions as a taxi, but can only be recognized as such because they'll start talking to you and ask you if you want to go anywhere when they pass you by) And we're with the four of us and there are two bikes with drivers, but one of the bikes is not in a very good state and can only carry two people, so you need to go on the other bike with four. And this is how you're driving on a half flooded dirt road, and you're having the time of your life. And you know they all really need the money so who can blame them. And you can feel it, the poverty. And you might feel guilty for having so much money and having paid for your plane ticket what people here make in four years. But no one there complains, and most people don't look unhappy at all and everybody is happy to see you and they all say hello. So it's all right.

But when it all gets too much for you, you can just hang out on the roof terrace of the travel-to-teach dorm. Relax in the most comfortable chairs you'll ever find and enjoy the brilliant view of the river and the hills and be with other volunteers who're all going through exactly the same things. And do nothing for a while and adjust to the slow, quiet Kampot life.

Email Maria Janssens

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