We left Phnom Penh this morning and headed for our first service project. It's been an amazing past few days! Some of us held taranchulas, some of us ate taranchulas, we took cooking lessons, walked around the city, took a sunset boat tour, went to a temple, and ate a ridiculous amount of good food.
I asked students to share moments of the trip with you. Tonight three students reflected on things that made a large impact on them.
-LJP
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Community Market
Today our group went to the market, this is a selling hotspot for all of the Cambodian community. In this market was everything ranging from cooked and raw food to tons of clothes to just simple knick-knacks. When we all first walked into the tents that held this little village of shops the first thing that was noticed was the smell. It was putrid! I didn't know how to feel, the smell was rotten but savory because of all the cooked food and full of humid BO. When I started to look around I saw orderly chaos. Boys and girls, men and women, friends and family running around amongst the mismatched shops from one station to the next trying to find that one special item on their grocery list or the shirt that fits just right. We, on the other hand we sticks in the mud; all orderly, wearing our hats and backpacks while we shifted our eyes back and forth in confusion trying to understand this crazy puzzle of people. Eventually we got to moving around and I really began to notice what was happening around me. Shopkeepers where hanging fully plucked birds and decapitated fish were flopping around inside pans in front of the poultry stations. The food was fresh, extremely fresh, so fresh that they killed them in front of you! In fact they had chickens, living chickens, laying bound on the floor in a heap each one fighting for half a centimeter of space yet none of them could get any room. They where no longer seen as animals but products, people would walk past and even on them because they simply didn't notice them any more in the pile of all the other items laying around.
When we finally finished I walked away with this huge feeling of shock, the first major culture shock that I've experienced here in Cambodia. I didn't realize how different a group of people could be, but I saw similarity. I saw people just like us, with friends and family who cared. They ran and played and shopped but were happy. Somehow in this imperfect world they found something important, community.
-HB
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The Killing Fields
(Warning - graphic details)
Visiting the killing fields was an experience that I never had before. People should be conscious about what happened in Cambodia that time. The fact that many people were killed and tortured in such ways... It just makes me so disappointed in humanity. Babies were killed in such a painful way, soldiers used to grab them and punch their heads into trees until they were dead. They didn't even had a reason to kill them, they just did. They were innocent and they might have had a great future waiting for them.
Unfortunately, humans kill humans and that's how it is... I want people to be conscious about this tragedy, I want people to be thankful for everything they have and I also want people to pray for those innocent souls that were killed those years in Cambodia.
-JPH
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Cambodia is the idea of how the other half lives. I've always thought of myself as coming from the lower side the spectrum, but now I see flaw in my ideas. We've only been here a couple days and I've already fell in love with the country. It reminds me a lot of living in the Caribbean. These people are so beautiful and welcoming. Their kindness and free spirited aura humbles me. Interacting with locals and experiencing culture and history gives purpose to our service, and makes me appreciate the little things I overlook.
-DC
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