Reconnecting

My heart melted this week when I visited Chey Oudom Primary School and was greeted with a gaggle of kids shouting “Hello Anna!” and waving as I drove through the gates on my moto. I continued to melt when one little girl ran up to me near the director’s office calling me “Om Anna”. (Om is a word used to call a respected Aunty or Uncle in Khmer.) The little girl is Mr Sophan’s grand daughter, about 5 years old, and has barely uttered a word in my general direction since I’ve known her, which is about 18 months now. I have spent some time in the past at Mr Sophan’s home and with the family but she had always seemed to shyly ignore my existence. On top of that I had been feeling that I had been neglecting my district and the people in it in favour of the distractions of Sisaphon and other bigger towns of late so it was a lovely personal moment to be appreciated in this way.

I have experienced quite a few similar moments in Phnom Srok this week which has been really rewarding and encouraged me to hang around in the district a little more than I have been recently. My little Khmer niece’s father (Mr Sophan’s son) extended the compliment by telling me how his daughter had visited him studying in Phnom Penh recently and pointed at every barang calling them Om Anna’s boss, Om Anna’s brother, etc! Ahhh!!!! It was nice of him to tell me as he too has barely uttered a word to me in my 18 months here but this week invited me to join him and friends for ice-cream where we chatted for a good hour.

Mr Sophan’s home has become my second home once again, reconnecting with him and his family has been really great. It is what makes Phnom Srok for me. I have been looking at what surrounds me in Phnom Srok again with new eyes, after all in 8 months time I will be saying goodbye and it will become history and memories to me, captured in photographs but a million trillion miles away from what I will return to in England.
The dogs are also a pull on the heart strings. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been away, my puppy (now a full grown mummy dog herself), always runs up to greet me when she hears my moto on the driveway. Ahhh!! It’s nice to feel loved, even if it is by a flea infested, scabby mutt! The family keep warning me it costs $70 to have the injection after a dog bite every time they see me petting her, and I imagine rabies is a really horrible way to die but I can’t help it!!

And then as a special treat, I finally clapped eyes on the infamous Sarus Cranes. They are an endangered species with only 1200 in South East Asia, around 200 of which use the Tropieng Tmar Reservoir in Phnom Srok District as a dry season retreat. I was driving into the district when I spotted a flock of their noticeable red heads so stopped my moto to snap some pictures which aren’t too clear but you get the gist. I’m hoping they’re still hanging around when Dad and Colette visit in April.