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 of the success that the PLF has had at KK the first children are now ready to go to secondary school. They are the first children ever to have done so from that village and you have to remember that none of their parents went to school. Srayong is 16 kms from KK along a dirt road through the forest where there are still many landmines and so the journey is too long and dangerous for the children to go everyday. The foundation is setting up a girl's and boy's dormitory there with a resident housemother to look after them. This is a costly process and a bit of a leap of faith but one that Ponheary and Lori are passionate about. It is a desperate area up there; remote, lawless, there is no clean water,except at the primary school thanks to the PLF, and the poverty is abject. Malaria and dengue are rife and childhood mortality is very high. It is a shockingly awful place. The only way to improve things is to get the children educated.
We fetched the parents of the children who are ready to graduate to the secondary school for Ponheary to explain what we were doing and to try to persuade them to allow their children to attend the school. One father refused to come and has said no already. Ponheary spoke to them for a long time telling them how the PLF will support the children and look after them. We all believe that in order to value something that you have to pay for it and one thing that has been decided is that the parent's will be asked to pay 2500 riel (40pence) a month in order for their children to go there. When they graduate, the children will be given this money back and the PLF will match it. A little bribery can works wonders and there has to be commitment. This sounds like such a trifling amount but, believe me, to these people it is not. If they cannot afford that much they will be asked to contribute rice instead. They all agreed that they would let the children come in October at the start of the new school year. So starts the involvement of the PLF at Ssrayong secondary School.
Oh dear, Ssrayong School. It serves the town itself and 9 other villages. There are currently 62 children there. The number of children of the right age to go is more like 15-1600. The Government has sent 7 teachers there as they need specialists at this level. They all live in one room, a former classroom, on site.It is pitiful. The three classrooms are in a dire mess. Filthy, empty of all resources and deeply, deeply depressing. We need to work hard to re-educate the staff in how we need things to be done. We also need to work very hard to get the numbers up. The lack of education in the area is frightening. Ssrayong is a desperate place, menacing and poverty stricken. We need to at least make the school a decent place for the children.
At the party, just some balloons with the compulsory boom boom music, two Monks and the kids, and us, having to listen to endless droning on by some official for what seemed like hours in the stifling heat and humidity. The kid's were given prizes of pens and exercise books. Of course, it was all in Khmer and so we couldn't understand a word anyway. George said that prizegiving was always boring at school when you understood what was being said and you were getting a prize. Here, it was torture. There were also the local Khmer Rouge thugs in attendance. You could feel the bad vibes emanating from them, intimidating, smirking and looking us all up and down. When the National Anthem was being sung at the end one of them was peeing behind the official handing out the books to the kids. What a terrible place it is; it just underlines how much we need to help the children there get a better life.
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 of the success that the PLF has had at KK the first children are now ready to go to secondary school. They are the first children ever to have done so from that village and you have to remember that none of their parents went to school. Srayong is 16 kms from KK along a dirt road through the forest where there are still many landmines and so the journey is too long and dangerous for the children to go everyday. The foundation is setting up a girl's and boy's dormitory there with a resident housemother to look after them. This is a costly process and a bit of a leap of faith but one that Ponheary and Lori are passionate about. It is a desperate area up there; remote, lawless, there is no clean water,except at the primary school thanks to the PLF, and the poverty is abject. Malaria and dengue are rife and childhood mortality is very high. It is a shockingly awful place. The only way to improve things is to get the children educated.
We fetched the parents of the children who are ready to graduate to the secondary school for Ponheary to explain what we were doing and to try to persuade them to allow their children to attend the school. One father refused to come and has said no already. Ponheary spoke to them for a long time telling them how the PLF will support the children and look after them. We all believe that in order to value something that you have to pay for it and one thing that has been decided is that the parent's will be asked to pay 2500 riel (40pence) a month in order for their children to go there. When they graduate, the children will be given this money back and the PLF will match it. A little bribery can works wonders and there has to be commitment. This sounds like such a trifling amount but, believe me, to these people it is not. If they cannot afford that much they will be asked to contribute rice instead. They all agreed that they would let the children come in October at the start of the new school year. So starts the involvement of the PLF at Ssrayong secondary School.
Oh dear, Ssrayong School. It serves the town itself and 9 other villages. There are currently 62 children there. The number of children of the right age to go is more like 15-1600. The Government has sent 7 teachers there as they need specialists at this level. They all live in one room, a former classroom, on site.It is pitiful. The three classrooms are in a dire mess. Filthy, empty of all resources and deeply, deeply depressing. We need to work hard to re-educate the staff in how we need things to be done. We also need to work very hard to get the numbers up. The lack of education in the area is frightening. Ssrayong is a desperate place, menacing and poverty stricken. We need to at least make the school a decent place for the children.
At the party, just some balloons with the compulsory boom boom music, two Monks and the kids, and us, having to listen to endless droning on by some official for what seemed like hours in the stifling heat and humidity. The kid's were given prizes of pens and exercise books. Of course, it was all in Khmer and so we couldn't understand a word anyway. George said that prizegiving was always boring at school when you understood what was being said and you were getting a prize. Here, it was torture. There were also the local Khmer Rouge thugs in attendance. You could feel the bad vibes emanating from them, intimidating, smirking and looking us all up and down. When the National Anthem was being sung at the end one of them was peeing behind the official handing out the books to the kids. What a terrible place it is; it just underlines how much we need to help the children there get a better life.
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