We’re all packed and ready to go, and the excitement of the DO Cambodia team is palpable, as the seven of us – my wife Gaby, Chiara Hyzler, Paula Fleri-Soler, Matthew Gatt, Anika Gatt Seretny, Katherine Brown and I - gather at Malta International Airport a couple of hours before our flight to Phnom Penh We know we’ve exceeded our baggage allowance so we’ve sensibly prioritised our many, many boxes so that if we do have to leave something behind, it won’t be anything too important!
Each and every one of us has a horrible feeling that we’ve left something behind, from official documents to enter Cambodia to teaching materials and malaria tablets so we keep running check-lists as we secure-wrap everything that needs to go into the hold of the aircraft. In the meantime, I’ve escaped for a quick mocha to kick off the series of blogs we’ll be posting on timesofmalta.com so as to keep readers informed of our experiences as we go along.
The main cause of our excitement of course is that we are returning to Phnom Penh to carry on where we left off last August and we have so many questions that simply cannot be answered until we get there: will the children remember us? And how many of the children we worked with last year will even be there? For it is a sobering reality that some of the children, for varying reasons, would have dropped out of the support system - either they would have moved away with their families; or their parents would want them to work more. This once more highlights the importance of the sponsorship scheme, which gives some of the children the chance to go to school and aim for a better future.
And of course we can’t wait to see the fruits of the Drama Outreach Project Sponsorship Programme which means that 70 children are today receiving an education thanks to the support of Maltese sponsors, or ‘godparents’ as they are lovingly referred to by the children.
I think it might be a good idea to remind readers of this blog where we will be working our magic and why we are so thrilled to be returning to Phnom Penh.
We will spend our mornings working at Le Restaurant Des Enfants (LRDE), which is a kind of soup kitchen for street children. Every day, between 250 and 300 children make their own way through the LRDE gates, unaccompanied.
They either sign in or leave their fingerprint on the large register before settling down for a meal, a haircut or a check-up from local medical students. Most of these children live in basic slum dwellings or are homeless and sleep on discarded deckchairs under a bridge. Many of them work the streets of Phnom Penh begging for change or scavenging for anything that can be either sold or eaten.
Last year we started off with 15 students participating in our classes at LRDE. Within two weeks that number had swelled to 70. Tuk-tuks kept dropping more children off. Panic much? Erm, yes! But this is Cambodia, so, bring it on!
Our afternoons were spent at Sacrifice Families & Orphanage Development Association (SFODA) which houses 53 children. The goal of SFODA is to enable vulnerable children to grow into healthy, educated and productive adults in the Cambodia of tomorrow – a goal we share. Unfortunately, the property SFODA was using last year has recently been sold and effectively, they have been evicted. We know that they have moved into another rented property close by, but this is a temporary solution.
We don’t have too many details on what is going on and what lies in store for the children and I certainly wouldn’t like to speculate, but I will update this blog with news from SFODA, so watch this space. If only we could get 60,000 people to donate just €0.74 we’d be able to buy these children and their carers a real home.
Right! We’re checked in and about to be herded through customs, so this first blog entry ends here. I just hope I haven’t forgotten anything.
Gaby?? Has anyone seen my wife??