Today I had a very humbling experience.
In Siem Reap I met up with a lovely local man in his early thirties named Rady who had just started a free school for disadvantaged children.
We got in contact through Couchsurfing and he came and picked me up from my hostel. We drove about five kilometres on the back of his scooter along a highway that was flanked with lush rice paddies.
We got to the school grounds and over 200 children ages 4-16 were scattered around the grounds either playing or in the humble classrooms waiting for the start of class. There were not enough chairs for all the kids, so some had to sit on the dirt floor for lessons.
Rady had made the school possible through his own determination and hard work.
He owns some land and plans to gradually expand build more classrooms(there are currently about four), so that children who are missing out in the public school system can come, be educated and learn English.
He told me that at the public schools, some families are unable to afford the costs of stationary and uniforms. He also said the wages of teachers at public schools were so meagre that the quality of the teaching was often lacking. If a Cambodian parent wants their child to get a top education, they have to seek out expensive international schools.
A class full of 11 year olds were happy to see me. I tried to explain to them, with lots of gesticulating and Rady translating, where New Zealand was, what the kiwi is and that I worked as a journalist. They asked me some questions and we snapped some pics.
A volunteer teacher from the UK who had taken a term off to teach English in Cambodia told me that some of the children's parents could barely afford clothing. Rady also said many of the children had lost their parents.
Looking at these children, smiling and hopeful and relatively worry free, I thought that whatever misfortunes have befallen me in my life, I have nothing that could compare to the situation of these kids. Even the worst off in NZ can still go to school. I felt grateful for all the opportunities and benefits that being born in New Zealand had afforded me.
Western society, with its trappings of opulence, can often make us forget that most of the world have it a lot tougher than us.
Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia. The United Nations Development Program's 2009 Human Development Index ranks Cambodia 137 out of 182 countries in terms of quality of life.
In a country such as this a little money can go a long way. It takes less than a week on New Zealand's minimum wage to earn enough money send a teenager in Cambodia to University for a year. However, when the average Khmer earns only a few dollars a day, that's a hell of a lot.
Rady showed me a pond where he had 2000 fish that would be sold to market when they reach the right size in order to help fund the school. After two months, the school was are already struggling with running costs and Rady said he would sell his laptop and lobby his contacts to help his raise funds.
The government had so far refused him assistance apparently believing Rady was trying to profit from the school.
Rady could relate to the poverty that many of the children at his school faced. As a boy he had to climb and pick coconuts from the tall trees to make enough money to go to school. His highschool was 10 kilometres away so he had to save for many months to afford the 25 dollars to buy a bicycle to get him there and home. He earned English at an academy and studied tourism for four years then IT for a year.
He told me he wanted to give the children hope for a better future but that he may struggle to do so if he doesn't recieve more money. What a brilliant guy!
Recently, I felt very hard done by, having lost a significant amount of money during my travels. I can clear my head of that now.
Rady is doing his all to assist those in need. He has no financial incentive, he just wants to help.
I think everyone can learn a lot from a guy like him.
