After a few weeks of volunteering at Krou Yeung School, we were able to take a trip to see where the school got its start more than 20 years earlier — in Ratankiri, a northern province, where Krou Yeung was established in a small wooden house in the year 2000. Subsequently, it has expanded to two other branches as well; and during this week we were able to visit all three campuses.

We started out, of course from the new campus in Phnom Penh, where we’d been volunteering. Recently, we’d been involved in establishing a book club for the students; there were not a great many books in the library at this point, but the students were quite enthusiastic about having more reading material available and we were helping to get it organized.

We also spent some time working one-on-one with a new student who was autistic. One of the admirable things about this school is its willingness to accept students with special challenges. This one turned out to require fulltime assistance, and ultimately the school and the parents decided that he would be better served at a facility that has personnel trained to manage children with autism. But we all gave it our best shot for a couple of weeks.

Ten Hour Commute to Ban Lung from Phnom Penh

The drive to Ratanakiri was 10 hours; we made it with the school director and founder, Sopheap, and the Phnom Penh branch’s director of many operations, Kompheak — both of whom actually live in Ratanakiri, but spend a great deal of time away from home.

Naturally, we had several pit stops along the way, including one for lunch at an open-air diner in a little marketplace somewhere in the middle of not-quite-nowhere. There were omelets with vegetables and rice. The place also offered crickets (for food, not for fish bait) as well as, um, tarantulas. We decided to take a rain check this time.

One thing we did try, and loved, was a type of seasoned rice roasted inside a bamboo stalk. You peel back the stalk and eat the rice inside, and it makes a yummy little snack. Our hosts even bought a few for the road.

Our itinerary took us through miles of rural and village territory, giving us a grand tour of the “real Cambodia”.

Shortly after nightfall, we passed through Strung Treng province, and made a quick stopover at the second branch of Krou Yeung school, to use the bathroom and take a very brief tour of the campus.

And then we arrived at our destination in Ratanakiri. We didn’t go to the school there that night, but got settled into our living quarters for the next few days — a modest teacher’s apartment, one of several behind the house where Mr. Sopheap lived with his family. And we had a hearty dinner, including a copious supply of excellent garlic toast.

The next day, we’d be able to see what had developed from the school’s humble beginnings two decades earlier.

12/26 -30/2022