This was a big weekend for Writing Through.
The weeklong Full-Length workshops always culminate in a ‘Big Event’ where the students stand up and read the work they had written over the course of the workshop. Usually, their presentations lead to a party with food and music and dancing. This past Friday, just as I was about to join the audience of the Big Event held after the workshop for the Sala Bai housekeeping students, I got a text message from Sisophon which read simply, ‘It’s showtime!” The event celebrating the work of some of the students at the Sisophon centre of Enfants du Mekong was also about to start — 2 celebrations of 2 workshops in 2 different locations for 2 different NGO’s led by 2 different Facilitators. Last year at this time, I was not only the only person leading the workshops, but no one else had even been trained and the organization didn’t even exist. So, Friday night’s Big Events were an enormous step forward. And I want to thank my two Facilitators, both of whom led their workshops on their own for the first time: Jeanne at Sala Bai in Siem Reap, and Katy at Enfants du Mekong in Sisophon. What a great job you both did!
Then Sunday came with the fulfillment of a promise. Last year, I told the students of Anjali House whom I had been working with from the start of my workshops years ago, that I would find a special way to celebrate our 5th birthday with us all together. That celebration became a trip for 20 people to Preah Vihear. Preah Vihear is a four hour ride from Siem Reap, northeast up to the Thai border. The temple complex, which is now a World Heritage site, has the most spectacular setting of all the temples built during the Angkor age. It is up on top of a mountain which looks down over a plain which includes Thailand and Cambodia. The site has been disputed, sometimes violently, between the two countries, and back in 2008 the Thais began to shell the area in the hope of taking it over. In the end, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the temples belonged to Cambodia, and although that ruling was accepted, there are still soldiers stationed there, with their families, and an occasional battlement. But everything there is peaceful now.
The air conditioned bus dropped us at the base of the mountain where we piled into 3 4-wheel drive pick-up trucks which drove us up the very steep and winding road to the top. First, we ate the lunch of rice, fried chicken and water which we had brought with us, then we walked down a steep set of stone steps to the base of the temples. There, we met an older Khmer man who happily agreed to an impromptu interview from one of the Anjali House alumni (now working and in University) about what life was and is like there and the skirmishes between the 2 countries. Then we started the long hike up to a series of temples, one after another, each with some of the most spectacular friezes and sculptures I’ve ever seen. The view from the top of the last temple was truly spectacular. Here are some photos, but they can’t adequately show how great a time we had and what a fantastic celebration of five year’s of work this was.
An impropmtu interview
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