Spitler School, Ang Chang, Cambodia

Today is our last day here and we spent the morning in a small village named Ang Chang 4 miles outside of the city. The school was founded in 2005 through the donations of an American couple who visited here for a few days and met a tour guide who had a passion for trying to improve the educational opportunities for the poorest children of Cambodia. The village we visited is extremely poor. The child mortality rate is very high, 1 in 7 children under the age of 10 die from malaria, dengue fever, dysentery and even regular childhood diseases for which there is simply no medical care available to them. The families have many children because child mortality is so high, but that also means a lot of mouths to feed and grinding poverty for most of the families. There is no medical or dental care, sanitation is poor, drinking water is scarce and the families struggle for mere survival. The school started in 2005 in two rooms in a wooden structure with a thatched roof, and now, seven years later there are 500 children enrolled in the school from grades kindergarten through six, and the “campus” has several concrete block buildings, a new toilet facility (the first facility of its kind with running water and flushing toilets), a small library, seven teachers (all local Cambodians) and a bevy of volunteers. The challenge in these poor Cambodian villages is to keep children in school beyond the 6^th grade. By then the families need the children to work to support the family, and, the cost of the “free public education” that Cambodia provides is prohibitive for the poorest families who cannot afford the uniforms, bicycles the kids need to get to school, shoes and school supplies. This Spitler School raises money to be sure that their graduating sixth graders each receive a bicycle, enough uniforms for their 7^th grade year and the school supplies they need so that they can continue their education. The Spitler Schools try very hard to encourage the village families to keep the kids in school beyond the 6^th grade so as to improve their chances of being able to get better jobs and improve their standard of living. The school provides a hot breakfast to the students each day and through donations they have managed to arrange dental care for the children and check-ups by visiting doctors.

When we arrived we were met by a bevy of the teachers and Jim Litt, an American volunteer (retired school principal) who gave us a tour and then put us to work. We split into two teams and painted one of the classroom buildings (outside) and the concrete fence in front of the school. I was on the fence team and Sam was on the school team. Sam’s group had their paint rollers attached to very long bamboo poles so that they could reach far up to the top of the building. At one point I saw Sam standing on a table with his paintroller on bamboo pole so he could reach the top of the school walls. We worked steadily for three hours and managed to finish the one building and the entire fence in front of the school. It was quite a transformation! We all came away fully paint splattered (I had it in my hair, fingernails, clothes…you name it!) The place looked really good when we were done, however, so it was well worth it. We had some help from the schoolchildren who pitched in when they had a break and before they left for their lunch.

I don’t have pics to post of the activity today because my camera battery chose that moment to run out of juice, but I have included some pictures of the Cambodian children we have been seeing in the villages here all week, all of whom are living under the same conditions as the children we worked for today. This is truly a place where abject developing world poverty is a reality for thousands and what is very difficult is that so many of the older Cambodian people, those who lived through the Khmer Rouge years and the civil war afterwards, are emotionally scarred from those experiences which doesn’t help them help the children.

We then came back to Siem Riep for lunch and are now back at the hotel for a free afternoon before our farewell dinner tonight. Tomorrow morning we leave very early from Siem Riep. We fly first to Phnom Penh, then on to Singapore. There we catch our flight to San Francisco, which goes via Hong Kong where we’ll have a layover before continuing to SF. Then in SF we will take the red-eye to Newark and finally the shuttle flight to Buffalo, hopefully arriving in Buffalo around noon on Friday. Here’s hoping we have the same luck going back that we had coming over with no delays or cancellations! Sam and I are looking forward to a dinner of pasta on Friday evening, and I can hardly wait for a good cup of PG tips tea!! It’s been an amazing trip and I’m sure we will be reflecting on lessons learned for months to come. Sam will certainly have a lot to report in the fall re “What I did on my summer vacation!”

See you all soon!! Wish us traveling mercies!