The Power of a Shoe

Day by day. Street by street. Brick by brick. This is Cambodia’s lifestyle. It’s fluid, plans change, streets close, all you know is what is right in front of you. Cambodia is slowly teaching me to live in the moment. You never know what is going to happen next. You could be prepared to teach preschool and the be building a house. You could be building a house and then be taking a kid to the hospital who may have broken his back. You could be at the hospital waiting for the doctor to read the x-rays when you learn he is taking a lunch break. You could be waiting for the doctor to come back from his lunch break when you learn he is not coming back to the hospital at all. Even the roads we take to the orphanage change. Amidst all this fluidness consistencies are a gift. Everyday the kids run up to us the second the tuk tuk enters the orphanage. Everyday when we leave the kids chase yelling “See you tomorrow”. The consistencies may seem small or insignificant. But they aren’t; they are a blessing that I will cherish forever.

Preschool, least to say it was interesting. We were supposed to be observing Khmer School in the morning, teach in the afternoon, and smush lunch, a nap, and baths in-between. Instead we walked into the class and immediately we were in the front teaching. We were unprepared. I started the class with an alphabet lesson. I completed it, but gradually the lessons from other team members got worse due to their difficulty. This resulted in our lesson plans that were supposed to take up the afternoon being completed in an hour. We had the “wing" the rest of our morning. I did a body parts lesson that the kids ate up. They were engaged and having fun; seeing that made me think that we could be successful with teaching this class. We went back to the orphanage for lunch to prepare more lesson plans. Sitting in a big circle we thought of childhood songs, and based lesson plans off of those. The afternoon exponentially improved compared to that morning for our group as a whole. The kids were interested, and almost more importantly were the teachers. The teachers were absorbing every word we said. They wanted to learn. They wanted to be better teachers. Even after we leave our lessons will stay with teachers who will continue share. 

Imagine a cement truck. Imagine the big white barrels that churns the cement together. Now imagine that 3 little people are inside the barrel and shovels and hoes mixing the cement. Now imagine these peoples names are Hana, Lydia, and Sarah. Now take away the truck. This is what it is like making cement in Cambodia. No machines. Only sand, cement mix, water, shovels, aching backs and blistered fingers remain. You might think making cement is the hard part. But then you have to build a wall. By the time I was done with one wall the locals could have been done. With everything. Our wall may be neat, but there’s are neater and made in 1/2 the time. This was my morning. 

Throughout this trip i have had many missions. This afternoon my mission was to find a shoe. Srey Mao was sitting on my lap we were enjoying the cool breeze the tuk tuk bring as it winds through the streets on our way to the dentist. Her feet were dangling out, we hit a bump, and her shoe went flying off. We watched it fall onto the street. When it had vanished from sight the tuk tuk turned quiet and tears were quietly streaming down her face and leaving tear stains on my shirt. The dentist put everyone in a worse mood. There were teeth being pulled out and cavities being filled all without pain medication, only after were they numbed. Even after all this my mind was still set on retrieving a shoe. I looked at every building we passed looking for “Sopah Family Dental” which was the first English sign we had passed after Srey Mao lost her shoe. Yelling “Chop BuChin” we stopped and our tuk tuk driver bewilderedly looked back at us. Overcoming the language barrier of communicating with BuChin about a lost shoe was another challenge. When he understood us and we slowly puttered along the side of the street. We spotted the shoe and BuChin the fearless tuk tuk driver crossed the crazy street and grabbed the shoe. The rest of the tuk tuk was more cheerful. The throbbing teeth seemed to dull and smiles appeared on all the kids faces. And all of this was because of a shoe.

This was living in the moment. I could have been worried about being late to the orphanage, trying to write this blog on the tuk tuk, or what the rest of my group was doing while I was gone. Instead I was completely focused on taking care of the kids. It didn’t matter if it was cleaning bloody spit off of a kid’s face or searching through the streets for a shoe. I was completely absorbed in what I was doing. To busy to check my watch or have a care about anything except for what was right in front of me.