Babs’ travels -The Peking to Paris Rally and other driving adventures.

It is very difficult not to bring western ideas of fairness into a developing country. Especially one with a recent thirty year history of civil war, genocide and occupation.  A good example of this is the Khmer Rouge war crime trials. The big show trial is of Comrade Duch the former commander of the notorious S21 prison and torture palace in Phnom Penh. It is an awful place, as you would expect, but the more so because it was a school before 1975 and has the instantly recognisable architecture of all schools in Cambodia. Unspeakable things happened here. Almost noone left alive and the bodies were taken from here to the killing fields on the outskirts of the city. It is unknown how many died an agonising, slow death here. Duch has found Jesus and now, apparently, admits his crimes and shows remorse. His trial has split Cambodian opinion. The way that the majority of people cope with their terrible history is to draw a line in front of it and move on. Everyone in this coun...

My two short weeks in Cambodia ended too soon.  There is so much to be done and not enough hours in the day.  I didn't manage to do any teaching this time as I was immersed in medical matters.  The children get the most horrendous skin problems as well as all the usual childhood ailments.  I have dealt with literally hundreds of infected skin cuts;  ear infections, scabies, eczema, gut problems, many toes that have been stubbed  with nails damaged and falling off, babies whose legs have been caught in bicycle wheels, boils, a girl whose ear was pierced with a bit of wood and was infected, a girls who'd been whipped by her father etc,etc. Every day I would see and treat about 50 children.  The adults from the village started coming too but I had to harden my heart and say no, I could not help them.  It is difficult but we are in the business of helping children.  Indeed, we make it a rule that children have to be enrolled in school before w...

A few days ago a woman on a bicycle was in an accident with a school bus right outside our house here. The children were all hysterical and Ponheary brought them all over to get them away from the scene and to calm them down. An 'ambulance' came and took the woman to the hospital but, although she was alive, we could see that she had very serious head injuries. Ponheary found out that she died shortly after reaching the hospital. Apparently she worked at a hotel around the corner from here. Her husband died only two months ago and so now her children are orphans. We all felt very sad about this. We will all be riding our bicycles a bit more carefully now.

Unbelievably, for those who know George, he gets up at 5 to make the trip to the countryside to teach a computer class at 6.00am.  How keen are these kids to learn?  The Foundation has put solar power into Tchey School and the computers were donated by the 'one laptop per child' programme.  George is trying to upgrade the software on them and a pretty frustrating task it is proving to be.  Still, he is persevering; determined to crack them.  He is also attempting to repair a few that are broken.  He can do this if it is a software issue but not if it is hardware as they are completely sealed units.  He is also going to the girl's dormitory in the evening, with Brooke, a volunteer from Georgetown University, to teach computer class there. Yesterday we all trouped off to Koh Ker where the landmine school is.  The main purpose of our visit was to visit the Secondary School in Ssrayong where there was a special party being held for us.  Because...