Beach trip!

Check out the photographs for the beach trip!

Whew. To the beach and back - four hours there and back in a big bus with sixty kids, a dozen-plus parents and most of the staff.

All the kids came to the house at 5 am. The weekly boarders were up already, bouncing around with barely held-back excitement. They had big pork pastries for breakfast while everything was piled onto a van to follow after the bus.

We stopped for a bathroom and drinks break midway, and then it started to rain. And rain. And rain some more. The kids were amazingly well-behaved for such a long bus ride, probably because they had never been so far by bus, and never to the beach.

At the beach, everything was unpacked for lunch. Noodles, rice and stew with pickles (so so so yummy) and fruit. Most of the kids had some pocket money for the trip or their parents treated them, and so by the end of the trip, they had all nibbled on squid-onna-stick or bright orange prawns or bought shells turned into blaring horns.

But the water - ah. Take a crowd of children who’ve grown up in a river or the city and bring them for the very first time to the beach. They ignored the rain for the amazement of tip-toeing into the surf then running fullspeed into waves, throwing themselves over the waves, under, digging feet into the sand and - amusing for me - realizing seawater doesn’t taste like river water at all. The faces they made!

I got pretty wet following them, but Sophon waded all the way out with them, and parents came to watch them. Lyna and her dog, Ti-ti walked along the beach, with Ti-ti chasing waves and being chased by children. It was cold and wet and rainy and fantastic fun. The kids didn’t go very far out or do very much, but they have that intense concentration and playfulness of kids everywhere. It was wonderful watching them.

Eventually, they straggled back to be dried off and change, then to share some warm tea from a giant bucket, chase each other around under the shelters and chatter. The rain stopped just before we left and the parents took their kids out to the beach to get photographed. We had twenty parents registered, and about sixteen turned up, which was good. Many of the kids’ families are what we politely call ‘dysfunctional’, and parental neglect is a big factor for child trafficking. We’re hopeful that getting the parents involved in their kids’ education and play will make a difference.

Then back onto the bus. I took the van this time round and fell asleep again. We got to Phnom Penh first, so hot water was put on to boil, dinner prepared and when the kids came off the bus, they were straight into warm showers, dinner, brushing their teeth and bed. Most went home with their parents - squished into the van like sardines! but some lived too far to travel at night so they stayed over.

We had three little kids in tears because they were frantic their parents wouldn’t pick them or didn’t know where they were. These are newly-joined kids, so RiverKids is still not familiar for them. We made arrangements for them to go back to their houses rather than stay the night, and with a lot of hugs and ‘there-there’-ing from the housemothers, they were bundled off. It takes a lot to make a kid distant from their parents - we only have about five kids who have weak parental relationships, and that’s from heavily abusive and long-term estrangement. I know I write this a lot, but I think it’s not recognized enough by institutions like NGOs. Children need their families, even if that family is abusive. They suffer dreadfully when removed, and you have to look for a compromise wherever possible. It’s easy to blame the family, especially when the parents have sold their children, but it’s not a simple matter of removing the parents. If only it were so simple!

And then we had about twenty kids tucked in under their blankets. Boys downstairs, girls upstairs. Still talking about the beach! They would like to go back the next school holiday. I think we will.