As we continued our volunteer teaching in Phnom Sampov, we were constantly looking to uncover little niches of local color in this quaint Cambodian village.

Sometimes we’d take the long way to school in the morning, some kind of detour that would afford us the opportunity to soak in the always-fascinating sights. One thing that never ceased to amaze us was how the natives used transportation — particularly motorbikes (“motos”), which they were able to load up with superhuman configurations of passengers and cargo.

Modes of Transportation, Cambodia Style

Life in the Village

Even though the village was rather small, there were at least a dozen signs promoting Ganzberg beer. It’s very, very popular in Cambodia — or at least its advertising would have you believe so. Anywhere in the country, you hardly can travel more than a block without seeing the brand name blazoned on a red sign.

On the back road that we sometimes detoured on, there was an enticing temple — or perhaps monastery, with long rows of life-size monk figures on either side of the driveway. And there were banana trees in several places. By the way, it was on a little dirt road that ran off this back road that we finally found what we considered an acceptable place to dump our garbage — a small pit which the locals had made into a mini-dump. Some of them, however, just burned their trash, but we didn’t want to contribute to air pollution.

Welcoming more WorkAway Volunteers

Soon we were joined at school by two more volunteers, who were traveling and teaching together: Diego, from Argentina, and Aurelia, from Italy. They were a bit disgruntled from the first, and not without cause. As there was no more vacancy in the little building of one-room apartments in which we were staying, the school put them up at a motel. And though we never saw this motel, it sounded like a place at which we would be most eager to not stay.

They reported that this motel sometimes rented rooms by the hour — which, we later learned, isn’t necessarily as seedy as it sounds. Cambodians tend to work long, hard hours, and sometimes they just might want a place to crash for a couple of hours without going all the way home. Nonetheless, their other descriptions of the property made it sound less than satisfactory. Their room, they said, was directly exposed to sunlight during the hottest part of the day, and became quite an oven — absent any air conditioning or adequate ventilation. They’d sometimes go for a walk or put in extra hours at school just to beat the heat.

Meanwhile, our own little room was nothing to write home about, but quite adequate, and certainly not as relentlessly hot as what they were describing. Especially, since our first purchase on our first day was a fan. We did have a problem with hearing loud music on some nights — and sometimes very early mornings (as in 5:00 a.m.) And the electric tea kettle we’d been using not only to make tea but oatmeal gave up the ghost — and by ghost we mean smoke, coming from the outlet it was plugged into.

When we turned it off and unplugged it, one of the prongs of the plug decided to stay behind in the outlet, so that outlet was not longer usable. When we told the school about it, they let us borrow another kettle that was being used at the school (meaning that teachers at school would no longer be able to heat water), which we plugged into another outlet — which was more inconvenient, as it had no counter under it, so we had to rig up a platform for it with a chair and an overturned bucket. But it worked.

Diego and Aurelia often joined us for meals (which the school paid for) at the little restaurant around the corner, and the staff there must have been relieved to see Diego because he was the one carnivore in the group. and thus the one person they knew how to cook for. (Vegetarianism is not much of a thing in Cambodia.)

Diego mentioned that he was having problems with his passport, which was about to expire, and which he would be unable to renew. He didn’t know what he was going to do about it, besides live in limbo, and we don’t know what he ever did about it, but he didn’t seem terribly worried.

He’d brought along a drone on his travels, which he took to school and demonstrated for the kids — who were quite appreciative.

Despite the problems we encountered on this volunteer position, we loved teaching the kids — and for that matter, we enjoyed teaching the teachers (who were as young as 19). The students were bright and enthusiastic, and generally quite well behaved. One girl who was in a third-grade class that Dennis taught drew a picture of the two of us, with a felt marker When they go to the trouble of doing things like that, you know you’ve made an impression.

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