All the good one man can do.

To be honest with you we are on our way home, and I'm getting starting to think about returning to my normal life. This includes the great stuff, like my wife and kids, the good stuff being in class lecturing, and all the rest, most of which fall off the scale when we get past unbearably meaningless. 

As an educator, I believe that I am doing good.  As a father, I believe that I am doing good...in the long run, I kind think my influence is not too far aways from what most people do.  I think I want this to change, partly because I know I can do more but also because of Tree.  

Tree is giving a new definition to the idea of improving you own community.  I really appreciate the tour that Tree put together for us.  I imagine it wasn’t easy, balancing the needs of the adults, some of who are the orphans, as well as plan somethings that will be of interest to the kids after the initial excitement of being somewhere new wore off.  

Tree is widely connected across the country and seems to know all of the touristy places.  He also knows how to read his clients after the tour starts.  He commonly moved things around and adjusted time when unexpected things came up. 

Early in the development stage of this tour we talked about visiting with locals and seeing the true Cambodia.  Maybe seeing how locals harvest rice (wrong season, but I didn’t know) would be interesting.  Maybe we could see some local kids in their school or some work of an NGO to improve their communities.  I wanted this to be a tour of Cambodia not a tourist view of Anglicized Cambodia.  

I go what I wanted, mostly because Tree is very invested in his people and country and wants them all to do well.  I’ve known for years that Tree was worked with NGO and charities but just how much was not clear to me until this tour.  

Our first day on the tour was the tough one, (visits to Toul Sleng Prison (S21) Genocide Museum and Choeung Ek Genocide Memorial).  Our second day would be a much easier, emotionally...physically...that would be another question. 

Full day two would start with a cycling tour of villages on the west side of the Mekong River. 







At some point I will go into talking about cycling, what I want to highlight in this was one of our stops on this ride around the country.  We stopped at Lvea Aem Baptist Church School.  This school is one of the groups Tree has worked with and has raised money for through his tour guiding and community advocacy.

The school was a local school that gave local kids a place to get an education.  State schools are around but are limited in how many kids can attend, private schools are also around but require money, that many families don't have. Because this is a mission school kids don't have to pay and there seems to be room for the local community.  Besides the great work this school was providing the community, I was drawn to the kids.  They were all super sweet and super cute. 


My favorite moment was when the kids wanted to show us their class rooms and grabbed the hands of our kids and led them in.  Liam seem to have something the little ones like, and this seem to be an international thing.  


The kids took us around and showed us their class rooms, and some of the pictures on the wall. It was so fun giving the kids high fives and knuckles. They all wanted attentions that we gave freely. 


They then demonstrated their knowledge of the two parts of the Khmer Alphabet and the English Alphabet as well. 

  


I could have stayed there all day, but alas we had to move on to our next stop, which also was a local small business that Tree also works with. 

Our next stop was a small family run silk and fabric company.  This company has a small gift shop, where they sold their wares. Not only did we get to see some of the process of weaving silk, we were taught how to cook Khmer food from start to finish.  We made our own lunch.  



 

 

   



That evening after we had finished cycling and had been given an hour or so to rest and clean up at the hotel, our evening event was to help support a group who run cyclos or "rikshaws" called ALL RIDE CYCLO FOR CONSERVATION.  This group specializes in giving tourists the opportunity to ride around the city on a cyclo at the same time, the art of cyclo driving is preserved in the face of faster, easier modes of transit like tuk-tuks and taxis.  Cylcos are cheaper to run so it does not take as much up front money to get one and start making money and lastly it is more environmentally friendly.  

We got a three hour or so tour of the city, stopping as numerous point of interest and city sites.  The kids of course had to turn it into a race, learning the Khmer words for, "faster", "Win", "Race" and "Get them." From my perspective at the back of the pack...I'm one of the heavier and more difficult passengers our group had, the kids drivers were really enjoying their excitement and encouragement. 

 

  

 

My Poor Cylco Driver...We fell back pretty quickly...I'm sure he was peddling is little legs off just to stay in one place...Just like the Red Queen
  


The next day we left Phnom Penh and headed for Battambang
It shouldn't be a surprise, but on our way we stopped at three more locations that Tree supports. 


The first was a small sliver shop, that makes their own silver goods. They also train youngsters after school how to do silver work so they can one day be a silver crafts person. 





Next up was a local pottery maker, specializing in tradition methods of making clay pots of various sizes by hand.  Selling some to the local community and selling the rest to a distributor that takes them to market. The women of this small production show us start to finish and allowed some of us to actually work the pots into their final from. 

 

 




Our final stop on this tour of groups Tree works with and supports probably the coolest. Tree took us to an organization called, Sustainable Cambodia.  We were given a presentation about the work of these people.  There are two sides to this community, education and community action.  The education program offers everything from preschool education to university prep and scholarships. On the community action side, the organization created a system of water storage systems that allow families to collect and store water throughout the year.  They also make water filtering systems that are sustainable, affordable and easy to maintain.  In the production of the water cisterns the families are involved. 




The education and the clean water sources that this project provides has major and long lasting effects on the local community.  

I could keep going because we visited several more community action and small production facilities on our tour.  My point is that Tree is heroic in his support and advocacy for the people of his country who are making a difference.  He supports them by exposing possible donors and community partners know about the work they are doing.  He also is involved in helping them raise money directly.  

I am very grateful for the efforts Tree put into our tour, especially the NGO, non-profits and small scale businesses. The exposure I received on this tour to the amazing work my country people are do somewhat shifted my focus.  

This trip had two main purposes for me. My primary goal was to introduce my kids to Cambodia, and as part of that I wanted to be there when they went to the Killing Field Monument and the S-21 Genocide Museum.  I wanted to be there if they had any questions, and to support them if they needed it. 

I also wanted to discover more about my homeland than I had before.  I hope that each time I go, I will learn and integrate more of what my homeland and her culture is. I thought a lot about this before coming, and it worried me because I also knew that my experiences, the most memorable ones...the ones that have stuck with me have been focused on the trauma and the grief.  In a lot of ways that is the way I saw Cambodia, and that was getting in my way.  

Now that I've been a second time and that I've learned so much more about the ways people are making their lives and communities better, my internal monolog has started to develop a new theme...one of hope. I see that many of my people are working to make things better. My mind set is focused on the future of hope and prosperity, not the last fifty years of trauma. 

Like I said in an earlier posting, Cambodia needs to be recognized for what they are become, and what they have been for thousands of year, not the past 50 years.  

I am truly honored to call Tree brother and will forever admire Tree's dedication to our country, our people and the future.  


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