Our youngest member of the team asked to try one, so we bought a bag full.
The smell in the bus was never the same after that.
Here Victor goes, and with a smile on his face. Several of our team members followed suit. Gives whole new meaning to the Scripture,
"And a little child shall lead them..."
I do not regret even in the teeny tiniest least that I was not one of the team members to try a fried cricket. Besides, fried foods are fattening, and a woman my age has to watch her figure, right? :D
This young boy went to every window in the bus showing this dead lizard. Then he would point to his little brother's mouth. I don't know if he was trying to say that he was going to have to feed him that if we didn't give him money, or if he was offering it in exchange for money. His eyes looked straight into my heart, piercing it in a way I've never experienced before. Still makes my stomach ache to picture the scene, and not just because of fried crickets and dead lizards.
This "fruity" hat amazed me. I can't even balance a book on my head!
This was the view of the homes as we crossed the Mekong River.
After we divided into the two trucks that would transport our team, this is a taste of the road conditions the whole way to the village. My friend Jackie wrote that the "potholes were so big the pigs could bathe in them."
This is the villagers as they waited for us. They had chairs set aside under shade trees to help protect us from the heat. I'm sure they sacrificed and squished more than usual under that one tree to accomodate us.
Marganne & Jackie were not shy. They took off their shoes and sat right next to their sisters in Prey Veng.
The villagers stayed engaged as the CREDIT staff taught them about such things as credits and debits, luxury items vs. necessary items, etc, applauding them throughout the presentation. This is the description of CREDIT from World Relief's website:
"An essential mandate of World Relief is to relieve poverty. To achieve this goal, while ensuring sustainable economic development, WR Cambodia supports CREDIT, a licensed micro-finance institution established by World Relief. By providing small loans to clients across the country, as well as financial education and training, WR Cambodia is able to support cottage industries and alleviate poverty while ensuring dignity to those we serve."
As you can see, a good majority of the villagers listening to the presentation are women and children. This is partly because many of their husbands are working, but also because many of them are single mothers providing solely for their families. This particular day is a Cambodian holiday, so even some men are present, and of course, the kids are out of school.
As the presentation is going on, many of the children and men became interested in Matt, and we almost had to peel him away from the crowd at the end.
These young men teaching on the CREDIT staff were so well-trained at keeping the attention of the crowd, and they used good visuals to help illustrate the new concepts.
LUNCH! (fish soup, rice, fried fish, chicken, yum!)
where I would never have guessed what I was about to see & feel...
We wanted to visit this museum so that we could better understand the Cambodian culture, as well as be able to relate to the brokenness the World Relief staff bears on a daily basis. To learn that a body of buildings which used to educate high school kids was later used as a security prison to hold over 17,000 men, women & children in a 4-year period blew me away. The tour guide showed us how the prisoners were enclosed with electrical barbed wire fences, and the old classrooms were used as torture chambers. We saw the various torturing methods used, and I became so sick to my stomach, I thought I would vomit. The cabinet of broken skulls about did me in, as well as walls of pictures of those who were held captive (lots of children) and later killed.
***Most photos taken by Jackie Mosley & Marganne Pearce. Thank YOU!
