Siphen

This is Siphen ("Sy-pen") and her husband, Mach ("March") who run the farm/homestay I visited this week-end.

During the time there I had some good chats with them, especially Siphen who told me some of her story. Like me, she was a child of the 70s, born just a few years before the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge regime (1975-79). During that time, her hometown of Angk Tasorm was razed to the ground and she remembers her family being forced to work the land in the surrounding area.

Siphen was one of four siblings: two older brothers and an older sister. Her brothers had studied in Phnom Penh before the regime so as educated men, were seen as a threat to the Khmer Rouge return-to-Year-Zero vision. Tragically one was killed and the other escaped to Thailand and eventually made it to the US where he's lived ever since.

Her older sister stayed with the family and afterwards got married. I had a brief chat with her too as she lives with her husband and one of her grown-up daughters and grand-children on the farm. I asked to see her wedding photo but she said they were too poor back then to have one and by the sound of it, too poor to even have a ceremony.

Siphen herself was seven when the regime ended and back then her longing was simply to go to school and get an education. Her father, however, was frightened that if she was seen to be learning, she might get killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers still at large. So she didn't go til some years later and even then, went with just one book and walked the 4km there and back either barefoot or in the same pair of shoes the whole time.

So it's amazing to hear her say that she's been teaching in a public school for 22 years, that her daughter is studying in Belgium having won a very-hard-to-come-by scholarship, that she started the community education project next to the farm a few years ago and is having to limit the amount of young people who come now, such is their enthusiasm to learn.

A very inspiring woman. And amazing students. And a great family. Will definitely go back and no doubt learn something new and be inspired all over again.