Having settled into our new digs in the village of Phnom Sampov, we started teaching at the school, which was about a 10 minute walk from our one-room apartment.

Generally, we would teach for a couple of hours in the morning, then go home on our lunch break, then back for a couple of hours in the afternoon. A split schedule is something that we find to be inconvenient but that was the arrangement.

Once a week or so, we would have an evening class — one of which was a group of teenagers who were not regular students at the school (which was only elementary grades) but were coming in just to learn English.

Teaching the Teachers

Additionally, we were asked to spend half an hour just before lunch (when the students already had been dismissed) teaching English to the teachers. At first, we had a lot of fun with them, working on things like tongue twisters, and even teaching them to sing “Flying Purple People Eater”, which they loved.

But then the principal told us that he wanted us to work strictly on correct pronunciation. So the sessions went from fun to tedious rather quickly — through no choosing of our own.

Village Life in Phnom Sampov, Cambodia

Lunch and dinner, as we’ve mentioned before, would be served to us in the little open-air restaurant about a block from our home, and the meals were paid for by the school. (We could have eaten breakfast there as well, but Cambodian breakfast tends to be pretty much like lunch and dinner — lots of noodles or rice, for example — and we really prefer our oatmeal with nuts and fruit.)

The food was not bad, though the staff clearly did not have much experience catering to vegetarians. The bulk of their business seemed to come from their carry-out service, dished up from several containers of meats simmering out front. (It always amazed us to see, throughout Asia, merchants selling meat, whether cooked or raw, in the stifling heat — apparently with no concern about the fowl turning foul. ) They tried out various combinations of vegetables and sauces, usually with favorable results. But sometimes their concept of vegetables was a bit stretched — sometimes the “vegetables” were, in fact, fruit.

There were several different routes we could take walking to and from school, so we had plenty of opportunities to take in the neighborhood(s) of this colorful little village. The people here were quite poor, but cheerful and friendly. And sometimes they did things that made us marvel — such as doing (what we would consider) acrobatics while riding a motorbike. And such interesting things for sale. One of these days, we’ll have to try those eggs (they look like duck eggs) roasted on a spit, still in the shell.

The one unfortunate thing about the community was that people there had a fondness for speakers, and frequently amplified their music such that it could be heard for miles away. (The fondness for speakers, from what we have seen, is common throughout Asia, but especially in Cambodia.) To make matters worse, we were living at the foot of a mountain; and sound tended to bounce off the rock, and right back at us.

This was especially a problem on our first Saturday night, when a party was going on practically next door to us, and the music was exceptionally loud. Not wanting to be party poopers (especially since this was, apparently, a wedding party), we just put up with it for as long as we could — though there absolutely would have been no way that we could have slept that night had it continued.

Finally, at about 10:30, Dennis went down to ask them what time the party would end. They said 11:00. And fortunately, they were true to their word.

This mountain, by the way, was home to bats and monkeys and historic sites. But we’ll get to that in other posts.

It was an “authentic” community of the sort they we were hoping to experience when we started this tour.

Students: The Reason we Volunteer

Of course, the students at the school also made the gig worthwhile. The school, like the community itself, was poor, with barebones facilities. But the kids were wonderful and appreciative, and we very much enjoyed working with them.

1/24-27/2023