Reflection moment

During the day I teach at KKO but after my priceless shower moment, Isabel, Owen and I usually go to the center for a nice dinner and drink. If we can, we go to the center by scooter which is the best transportation I must say! :D

Driving around in the traffic with a hot evening breeze is the perfect moment to feel that you’re alive and fulfilled! By living in an unknown city at the other side of the world, you can experience how life is in other places. The contrast with my home in Belgium makes me rethink things and questions. I wanted to write down some of them to remind myself in the future and to make other people think about these things.

Why do we care so much about materialistic things?

At home, materialism is always there. Nice clothes, nice house, nice furniture, nice shoes, nice school material, nice everything. If you compare with what you see here, it makes you realize in what a materialistic world we live in. Here, the children don’t even have toys to play with. They don’t even have separate coloring pencils. They just have 1 set of colors which they share with the whole class without making a fuzz.

Some kids at my school don’t even have 2 outfits. Every day they wear the same old and dirty outfit. I have seen sad things among the poorest children. Some boys have their pants ripped in the middle so you see everything (they don't have underwear). They realize it, and they try to cover it but they don’t have money to buy a new one or to let it repair. The clothes I brought with me were nice. Now that they wash it here, the color is changing and they look awful, but I don’t care anymore because each time I want to say out loud ‘Damn, my nice clothes!’, I just realize that’s it’s just not worth it.

Do we realize how lucky we are that we have the opportunity to travel around the world if we want to?

This questions pops into my mind every single time I teach my sewing and elementary class (see my blog about teaching at KKO, in these classes we talk about other countries, cultures and habits). In their books, they have exercises to talk about the countries they already went to (it’s a western book). Each time the teacher says: “Well, this question is not for you guys because you never went abroad. Let’s ask these questions to Roos and see what she can tell us".

I tell them stories about trips, adventures and stories of all kind to inspire them, which works. But after class I feel bad, very bad. These kids know that they won’t be able to travel and see the world because of their background but still they keep smiling, listening very carefully and asking questions. At home, we always want more or think ‘oh he traveled more, I’m jealous about that’. Now I realize that actually we must be REALLY happy that we are able to go to Germany, France, the Netherlands or other countries nearby your own country. Or even the possibility of going somewhere outside your own village or city is something they can only dream of. During the weekends, they have to stay home to look after their younger siblings or work at the rice fields. They never go out for a party or something like that because it’s too expensive. 

Experiencing the way of life in Cambodia makes me think about life. It makes you a healthier person in a way because you realize how lucky you are and must be when you wake up in a normal bed, you can choose between different outfits and you always have food to eat....