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| Pa Sao advise to the rural children. |
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My Tuk Tuk.
In Cambodia, the term tuk-tuk is used to refer to a motorcycle with a cabin attached to the rear. Cambodian cities have a much lower volume of automobile traffic than Thai cities, and tuk-tuks are still the most common form of urban transport.
My Dream!
- Tuk Tuk for Peace!
- Tuk Tuk For Peace' is a creation by Sim Sao, a Tuk Tuk Driver in Siem Reap, Cambodia. My Dream is to provide hassle free and safe transportation in and around Siem Reap and the Angkor area at an affordable prefixed price. Part of the proceeds will go directly towards supplies for free education schools run by monks in the countryside. I would be honored to show you my country!
2 comments:
By Sharon Johnson
for the Mail Tribune
Last week at this time, I was in Siem Reap, Cambodia, riding down a muddy, deeply rutted dirt road in a Tuk Tuk, best described as a motorbike-drawn carriage. It was driven by Mr. Sim Sao. He was wearing a wide grin and a frayed T-shirt with "Tuk Tuk for Peace" on the back.
Sao had driven us around the countryside for two days of touristy temple visiting, and we were on the way to his village to meet his family. A caring friend had introduced me to "Pa Sao" before our trip — via Facebook no less — and I knew a visit to his village would involve seeing the school he had built several years earlier.
I also knew illiteracy was very real in Cambodia in at least 70 percent of the population. For people like Sao, every day is a struggle to survive.
"In a good year, a year with a lot of rain," a family can earn $2 million riel, which is about $500. Eighty percent of Cambodians live in highly impoverished rural areas like the one we were about to visit, and very few children attend school on a regular basis, or at all.
Recent research by author Joel Brinkley indicates, "Until the early 20th century, the country had not a single middle school, high school or college."
Most Cambodians older than 35 have little or no schooling. Sao's village school is a very big deal.
As we bumped down the rutted road, Sao tooted his horn and waved his arms encouraging the village children living in huts or tarp-covered structures along the way to follow us. We were bringing gifts that he had helped us choose. Bouncing about in the Tuk Tuk seat next to us was $41 worth of writing tablets and ballpoint pens, plus three large boxes of packaged noodles.
Sao and his family of eight (he has a wife and two small children but shares his home with other family members) live in a one-room house. No plumbing. No electricity. Their home is a walled platform raised two feet off the ground with a low, sloping, palm-frond roof. The dirt-floored, open-sided school is adjacent. Sao's prized possession, a not-very-fat pig, grunts in the pen behind the school.
Two hundred children age 3 years and older attend the school for two hours in the early evening of each day, rotating shifts to accommodate the schedule of the four "teachers," who are actually still adolescents themselves. Sao raises money to help his teachers pay their own tuition to "keep on learning," and they reciprocate by teaching at his school.
With the help of Project Enlighten (www.projectenlighten.org/leadership.html), Sao raised money to buy a hand-operated gas tiller that he allows anyone in his village to use for rice planting, but only if they send their children to school. This man is not formally educated but he is oh-so-very smart.
It sounds like a great project. I have heard stories of people in the Rogue Valley visiting Sao and hope to visit him next year too. Thanks for the write up.
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