A Rainy Saturday Afternoon at Steven House

It is now the rainy season in Phnom Penh and kids are running in the streets enjoying the cool weather. What do kids at the Riverkids Project do on such Saturdays?

I arrived at the area near the slums where the Steven House is located. The sky was gloomy and Joanne's face reflected this.



At the opening of the usually crowded alley which leads to the Steven House, there was no one to be seen. Braving the rain with our seemingly puny umbrellas, we head over to the Steven House.

The Saturday art lesson was just ending as we stepped in.
On the whiteboard was the art work for the day.


Jolene's pretty butterfly!

Jolene had pasted the children's work on the wooden wall so the kids can see their own artwork decorating the walls. She used paper glue to paste them on and it amazed me to see that it actually worked!



Due to the downpour outside, Jolene could not leave the schoolroom so she decided to teach the kids some nursery rhymes, complete with jiggles.



Finally, the rain abated a little and Jolene went back on her motorcycle. The kids ran out of school and into the slums, rejoicing in the rain. School's over for the day.

SIA visits!

Actually, it's not the whole SIA (Singapore Airlines). It's the SIA 5Cs group. They volunteer in non-government organisations to put in their effort towards making the world a better place.

Evon was over at the Alexandra House, the Steven's House and the Churten House in the slums. One thing that I have learnt about the slum children during this trip is that, the kids love taking pictures and are very happy to oblige as long as the photographer shows them their images on the digital camera.

I managed to weasel this picture out from Evon's online album to post here because I thought it was so beautiful.


(Credits to Evon Ng)

In the picture with the kids is Evon herself. She was a great hit with the kids and her hands were in great demand: every kid wanted to hold her hand. They are all very mischievous monkeys, but at the same time, they are so adorable. Standing at the extreme right hand side of the picture is Chin Chea, the social worker who works with the families living near the Churten House. Like Sophon, he speaks Khmer, Vietnamese and English and is already a favourite with the children even though he has only worked for Riverkids for a month.

SIA is coming in mid July to organise a funfair to educate children in Riverkids and their families about child trafficking, the ways to avoid it and the risks it poses to the family unit.
(We are very big about keeping families together.)
Fun and games for the families to play together are expected. It promises to be a great event!

Riverkids currently has 104 children in the register. It warms my heart greatly to hear that the parents living around the Churten House has asked Chin Chea about a place in the new school even though it has not been renovated! News of us is certainly spreading fast in the slums and it's a good sign because it shows that we are effective.

We are still in Cambodia and will be flying back to Singapore tomorrow. Will post up pictures (photo essays from me!) when I'm back home because internet connection is limited here.

In Phnom Penh again!

We are in Cambodia again, this time during the rainy season. I was quite thrilled to be in a tuk-tuk when the June rains descended with fury upon us. The wind and the rain pattering on the canvas roof was music to my ears after days and days of sweltering heat. I love cheap thrills. =) Our kids splash and run around in the rain after their classes; my sandals became dirty beyond rescue (it will remain stained with dirt forever) and my clothes never really dried properly. Still, the rain was a welcome diversion to the heat.

When we arrived in Phnom Penh via our usual budget flight, Sotheavy (Sophon's daughter) drove us to Diana's place (where we are staying for the duration of our stay in Phnom Penh) from the airport. While she was driving, we were having a conversation about school. Theavy is in her final semester at university and I am going to be starting university in August. We drove past her school and she pointed it out to me. I was quite surprised to see that it wasn't in a place where rent is cheaper.

It was near the city centre, and it was small compared to the 3 public universities in Singapore.

So I asked Theavy: why doesn't the university locate itself in a place where land is cheaper and therefore students can have other facilities in addition to their classrooms and hall?

Her reply made me want to kill myself for being so insensitive.

She said universities locate themselves near the city centre because that's where all the people who can afford university live. There is no point if a university is in the fringes of the city because there is no one there who can afford an education in a university. In Phnom Penh, the distance to travel to and fro school is very important to a student. As she was explaining things to me, she was still driving and I saw that she was right; I saw 2 or 3 more universities along the way. I reckon they went with the same rule of thumb that distance to travel mattered to a student.

This is such a big contrast to Singapore, where students gladly travel for their tertiary education. And Singaporean public universities have so many other facilities for students to explore their other interests.

I guess in a place where money is in high (very very high) demand, education is often far away from the minds of most children in Cambodia when their younger siblings are starving. Some gather scraps of food to sell as fertilizer and others sell themselves as sex workers. This is all in order to help their younger siblings to survive even though they might want to have a better job. The older sister of Dale's adopted children is one such person.

Riverkids Project has started the Get Ready programme for our older kids, just so that they are able to learn skills to support themselves instead of being stranded with no skills at all. Our kids are looking better and happier now that they are learning skills that will benefit them in the future.

More in the next few days!