From December 3-10, I visited CUSP students in Phnom Penh, Kampong Thom, Banlung and Siempang together with Dr. Yaren, the head of CUSP in Cambodia, and Tan Pean, CUSP staff. Banlung and Siempang are very remote. In Phnom Penh we started with a traditional Cusp pizza party with 35 grads and current students. Standing is Pean, Cusp staff.
I met with Pean and Soulong. Soulong is thriving as a Chinese and English interpreter. (Note I met two people in remote rural Cambodia who knew and loved Trader Joes! Go figure!)
CUSP teaches English on Zoom from Phnom Penh on weekends to our high school dorm students in Kampong Thom. Here is one of our English teachers, Baon, with Dr. Yaren.
Here is Dr. Yaren with Baon and Sophorn, our two English teachers to the dorm students. Pean in the background, teaches English to the Kavet.
Pean also manages a dorm of 15 college aged girls in Phnom Penh, 7 of whom are Cusp students
In Kampong Thom we met with our high school dorm students
Pa Soeurng, Cusp manager in Kampong Thom, is seen here having newer more advanced wifi installed in the girl’s dorm.
Time for the yearly planting of the student’s garden.
Mango trees by the girl’s dorm planted as little sticks maybe 12-14 years ago.
6 hours north of Phnom Penh in Preah Vihear we connected with Samern. When he graduated from high school, he tested in the top 5% on the national exam. He could have picked a good college, but instead he chose to teach the poor in a village in the rural area along the Thai border.
Next stop, Banlung, 6 hours by car, where we enjoyed a meal at Anne’s dorm with present college Kavet students and graduates. Pean, a Cusp graduate, spoke at this dinner on how education was the doorway to her success. Some of these students are sponsored by CUSP. Anne can have 30-40 Kavet students who go to weekend university and stay at her house on the weekends. Her house is an amazing collection of sleeping porches and big tropical plants which provide shade.
Anne’s dorm came as a result of her literacy work among the remote Kavet villages which she started in 1997. Only a handful of Kavet could read or write at that time. But then the Kavet students started graduating from her literacy program in the villages and wanted to go on to high school and college. The government offers weekend high school and college courses in Banlung. The Kavet students who come to her house on weekends have been working in the fields of their remote villages during the week.
Here is Anne with Daj. Daj made a complete recovery from life threatening jungle disease. Anne partners with Michelle and Alli from Siempang in the literacy work among the Kavet.
On to Siempang which is located in NE Cambodia on the Laotian border. To get there requires traveling an additional 1 1/2 – 2 hours on a dirt road after having left Phnom Penh 8 hours earlier. It is remote. We arrived in Siempang to discover that there was a wedding happening in town with over 900 guests. Weddings are usually outdoors in the streets.
All guesthouses were full. In tune with the season, there was no room at the inn,
But I was graciously offered a room in the storeroom at the house of two YWAM missionaries. Michelle from Switzerland and Alli from Canada. They do community development work among the Kavet
Here’s my bed. They said that I needed a sheet and a blanket otherwise I might get cold. Cold would have felt great!! 90 degrees! Slept great even with a soccer team of roosters going full bore from 3am on.
The house also came with a path to the new neighborhood bakery around the corner.
Jackfruit along the path.
Inside the bakery.
And their cart for selling the baked goods along the town’s dirt road.
The storefront of the bakery and Alli with her fresh bread. Check out the road dust on her bicycle. She is 71 She is so happy that the town has at last its own bakery. The bread used to come from StungTreng a day old.
The Kavet live in villages across the Sesan river from Siempang. They have to commute upwards of two hours each way (which includes a ferry ride) to go to high school in Siempang. Previously there were no dorms for students. Now, the school has donated two classrooms that have been outfitted with bunkbeds.
The dorms can house up to 70 students. When we arrived, we met some of the 40 Kavet students who now live in the dorms.
We thought the catalyst for the start of the dorms was a very persistent little Kavet girl named Khiou. (see below). She kept telling YWAM that there were a lot more Kavet students from distant rural villages who wanted to go to high school but couldn’t because there were no dorms. YWAM did a survey to find out that indeed she was right.
But then we were told that it was not really Khiou but her older brother who was behind the idea to get the Kavet students into dorms. (see below)
However, Anne discovered that it wasn’t Khiou or her older brother. Anne had been in their mom’s village. The village is about 30 kilometers from the ferry landing on jungle paths. Anne joked to the mother, “What are you going to give me now that we’ve built dorms for your kids?” The mother replied. “You didn’t build the dorm. God did. You don’t know how many years that I’ve prayed that God would make it possible for my kids to go to school.” It seems fitting at Christmas that a poor village mom, who was married at 14 and had 10 kids, would be at the center of this story.
Just this week our first English class was held in the school. Here is Sophia, fluent in Khmer, teaching English.
Over 70 students now are getting a real opportunity for an education. They are so happy that they don’t have to make the daily 2 hour commute each way
Forced into marriage at 14 and mother of 10. This is our hero. From powerlessness to powerful. Gotta make a trip to meet this important person.
As a result, we, the travelers, are left with only joy. We get to read Dr. Seuss to these many eager Kavet students in Siempang. How fun is that?!
