Day 4: this place is a land of stark contrasts... In the city, Siem Reap, you see neon lights, people driving Lexus 4x4, money being spent like water in the restaurants in Pub Street ( one of the main eating areas), but step a few km away from the hubbub that is Siem Reap city, there is poverty... Real poverty! On the journey to one of the villages we have been going to with BFT, you pass the traffic jam of tourists in Tuk Tuks going to see the temples at Angkor Wat....money! We drive past the tourists, down red dust tracks, and see conditions these Tuk Tuk tourists will never see..the pain of the contrast would be easier to bear if you knew the money the tourists pay to visit the temples was going to the Cambodians in some way but it isn't ... It goes to the Vietnam government. To try and write about the politics of this country would either land me in jail or see me standing as an MP... We know So little about what happens here... Ignorance truly is bliss because reality is shocking!
I better step off my political soap box...
So how have we spent our days so far? We have been gently introduced to what BFT is trying to do to improve the health, welfare and education of these village people. To date, we have observed.... We go to the villages where the children are waiting for our arrival... There is a large green mat in a shaded area under the trees on which the children stand and greet us with smiles that would break the hardest of hearts...we sit down and a bag of toys is placed on the mat... The children scramble to get a toy.. A piece of Lego... We play with them, sing songs with them, cuddle them... Laugh with them.. Listen to their pigeon English and try to say a few words in Khmer. Most of them have skin issues, and rarely do they stop scratching... But thanks to the dedicated hard work of BFT staff & volunteers, their nutritional health, their basic hygiene standards are improving.. One of the nurses I am with comments how much change she has seen in the children's health in the past year. So there is hope... What is the biggest impression these visits have made on me? education = hope.  Without it, these children will never have a chance of life in the remotest sense of how we in the West know life and take it so much for granted.
After a few hours, we leave and head back to town... The children's eyes stay with you all the way home... Bright, chocolate brown eyes that cannot belie their plight..
 We walk back to our guesthouse (about a mile from the BFT centre)... The litter on the banks of the river that cuts through the town is obscene... Plastic after plastic after plastic bottle or wrapping covers the banks and blocks the flow of the river in places.. Sewer pipes open into the river..

We have to take time to absorb what we have seen in the villages before we can head back to the neon noise of the city... The contrast becomes starker each day.

I'm tasked with writing an HIV awareness education session by one of the BFT staff... It's a huge problem here ... For those of you reading this who did the DTN course with me, I hear the voice of our lecturer from Africa and his excellent HIV sessions.

Nothing happens with any degree of speed here... But that's to be expected... The brain needs time to absorb what the eyes see...

Cambodia can be linked to many words beginning with C: contrast, charismatic ( the people are lovely), corrupt (I won't go back on my political soap box again), children, courage....

Am I glad we came? I cannot begin to say how much.