Off the very well beaten track in Siem Reap
by Richard Russell

We find ourselves amongst a dozen Cambodian people all standing in the hot mid-morning sun, looking at each other, wondering who the other is. It's August and the rains are a little late but that doesn't stop it being overcast yet strangely hot. Even through this thick blanket of cloud I can feel my neck burning. The lack of rain hasn't stopped the dirt road we're on from developing huge pot holes - one of which now holds our Toyota air-conditioned van firmly in its clasp.

There are five of us here - all fully signed up and ready to spend two weeks building houses for some of Cambodia's poorest people. We're working with the Soapbox charity from the UK and Tabitha in Cambodia. The road we're on now will take us to our second family. We're excited and keen to start work but this is Cambodia - and it's a totally different pace of life.

The thing about Cambodia's poor is that they mostly don’t live in places like Siem Reap, the town where we're staying. Siem Reap is a boomtown. Its two main roads are newly tarmaced (paved?) - even the main road from Phnom Penh can't claim that - and there's more hotels here than you can shake a bunch of very small bananas at (which are, by the way, very tasty). The hotels are here to service the growing army of tourists who come here to take in the still undiscovered but magnificent Angkor Wat temples. If you keep to the main streets in Siem Reap and to the temple complex you might be fooled into thinking that Cambodia is not that needy after all. But when you realise that the hotels are owned by big foreign companies and that at the first sign of an economic down turn (we're here post 2^nd Gulf war and post SARS) they lay off Cambodians as quick as they can, you realise that for the majority working in a posh hotel is just a dream.

The reality for the majority of Cambodian's - is the one that we're looking at right now -rural Cambodia. Most people live here and even around Siem Reap most tourists never come here. There's no reason to, because there's nothing here - just vast fields of rice, surrounded by tall palms and when you look very closely, small wooden houses build six feet off the ground.

At last, with one last shove, the van lurches forward out of the hole. We exchange smiles and bow to the people around us and jump back into the air-conditioned van. The difference in temperature hits you like a brick wall and for the rest of the journey we feel like tourists again.

We veer off the main road on to another much smaller road, then after a couple of minutes we make another turn onto an even smaller track then again onto nothing more than a dirt path. The jungle seems to want to take the van into its arms and squeeze it until we all pop out but the driver keeps on going. It's something that hasn't ceased to amaze me. Our Cambodian friends, and even people that don't know us that well, like the driver, will do anything for us, and I mean anything. Our driver tries to get us as close to the building site as possible, and he does. Were it not for a small stream in his way he would have happily taken us to the door with no thought or consequence for his van.

Now the clouds have cleared and the sun hits any bare skin like a knife. The five of us, Ani, the Tabitha representative in the area, and the contractor walk the last few hundred yards. We're greeted at the site by our family who raise their clasped hands and bow their heads low. In Cambodia the higher the hands and the lower the bow the more respect is given - and it's usually in proportion to your age. So for us as twenty something's to be greeted by people older than us in this way is really humbling.

We're surprised at how much of the house is built when we get there. The concrete posts are in and a wooden frame sits on top and then the tin roof. It's our first job to lay the floor and put the walls up. The first couple of meters of floor are the hardest because we have to balance ourselves on the floorboards. Nobody really minds working over each other and in almost no time we manage to get enough bamboo strips down to comfortably sit on. In fact, we're getting on so well that Ani has to remind us to wet our heads. This is one of Tabitha's hard and fast rules. You must wet your head at least once an hour. It's what Cambodians do when they're working in the sunshine and 'When in Rome…' - the thing is this, it really works! A couple of cups of cold water over the head and you feel as right as reign.

The thing about being completely off the very well beaten tourist track is that we're a constant source of interest for just about everybody in the local area, especially the children. Most people don't speak English but its amazing what a couple of juggling balls and a tube of bubbles can do for cross-cultural communication. One of our team takes some time to play with the kids and at first they have no idea what to make of her. Then, as if by magic something clicks and there are twenty children all jumping in the air trying to catch bubbles. It's lovely to watch and that's what it's all about for us. Not that we flew half way across the world just to turn up and build a house. But that we worked along side people and played with their children and communicated through our actions that someone across the other side of the planet cares enough about them to put the holiday to Med. on hold and actually do something. It sounds really 'worthy' but its not.

I hammer a sheet of corrugated tin into place and sweat drips off every part of my body. I can see out of the corner of my eye children still trying to chase bubbles. I'm aware that I am personally connected to the fact that probably for the first time in their life, some of these children will go to sleep tonight in a safe and dry bedroom. I know that there's nothing I'm doing that's so great - after all its every child's right to go to sleep without rain dripping into their bed. But I do know that 'what you do for the least of these…you do for me' - and that makes it my duty and privilege.