What is more important?

It was like in the TV show Lonely Planet – The Road Less Travelled, on the day I went from Phnom Penh to Kampong Cham. The taxi was such an old “bomb”, I would never have imagined myself sitting in it. There was hardly any space in the front for me to stretch my legs. Two long horizon cracks across the windscreen and two spider web cracks on the driver and passenger side were constantly attracting my attention. I wondered if the heavy rain would shatter it and what would happen to me if the glass goes flying everywhere! The journey was long and bumpy and I dozed off and on during the 3 hours journey. As we drove passed the village, I saw naked children playing in the rain. They looked happy and I wondered if they knew what the outside world is.

Kampong Cham is a very poor village. I am very inspired by the NGOs who are there to help the poor and needy. The Marist runs a school consisting of two bamboo walls and flooring the size of a quarter basketball court. The white board is A4 size. Public school is free but to learn English, they have to pay US25 cents and not many parents can afford to send them. Even if education is free, it is not the priority; the children are required to help out in the padi field so that there are bread and butter on the table for the day.

We are aware that education is the way out of poverty and the key to success. Without an education you have nothing in this world but when survival surpasses it, what can one do except to let the opportunity goes. Even if all the NGOs in the world are willing to teach for free, who is going to harvest the crop? Who is going to put the next meal on the table?

I could only agreed with what Scott Peck had said… “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."