My last day at ODA I finally had a chance too go out to the rural villages to see Leng's Village Schools Project. Leng will build 4 schools for these villages in the next year. Right now the students learn in the "basement" of home of fellow villagers. I had a few minutes to teach a children's class as well as the adults below...
And back at the orphanage we read a storybook about a sloth and I demonstrated how the sloth moves!!!
This was a great project for the kids to learn and review simple vocabulary and begin to read from a book. Up until now they have been reading from the board and now it s time for them to learn to read from books as ODA just got its first large donation of books (6 boxes) to start a library.
This is Peav. He wants to be an actor or a singer when he grows up. (Sound familiar?!?) He originally came to ODA ( http://www.orphansdisabledcambodia.org/ ) in 2007 when his family could no longer care for him. He stayed for a year and half at the orphanage and was very happy and well cared for. Then one day his mother came back and "re-claimed" him. That last a few months and then he was abandoned by his family again at a pagoda (temple) about 30 kilometers away from ODA. One day in October of this year (about a week before I arrived at ODA) Peav was still living at the pagoda when he spotted one of his older orphanage "brothers" on a motorbike. Desperate to return to ODA, Peav stole a bicycle and tried to follow the teen on the motorbike. After a few kilometers, Peav lost track of him. But he did not give up, riding over 25 kilometers through remote villages and miraculously found his way back to ODA. The children surrounded him and offered him new clothes - his were tattered.
The week I arrived he had only been at ODA a few days and was still thin with a distended belly from malnourishment. He had not been in school for a few years so I tutored him and within a few days he was counting from 1 to 10 and within a few weeks he could write the whole alphabet and his name. Peav. He doesn't know his last name or how old he is... we even had to decide how to spell his name. Peav, about age 9.
The afternoon that I had to depart, Peav sobbed. That night Leng (the founder of ODA) sent me a text message to tell me Peav was still crying. I told him to tell Peav I will be his friend forever and I will write to him. I miss him terribly... I hope he gets my letters.
Farewell to all my friends at ODA! Thanks for teaching me so much about love and life...
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