February 27, 2011 Real life Cambodia

This is Yaly, who generously offered to bring me and Christian to his house for food and then around to some sites. Yali is very poor as are most people we talked to in Cambodia. He is also very generous and kind.

This is the first floor of Yaly's home. There's a wood platform to sit on, one plastic chair, a hammock that doubles as a crib for the baby and a kitchen area in the back. The walled area behind Xn is the toilet.
The boy in the photo is a cousin or a neighbor kid. He loved being in front of the camera and gave me some of the best smiles in all of Cambodia.

There's also an upstairs, which is also just a wooden platform area. I didn't go up there, but Yaly told us they don't have beds. Yaly's holding his younger son. 

They make clever use of their space. Or, shall I say, they maximize function because they have to. This is Yaly's older son and his niece having their lunch on the stairs.

After our meal, all 3 of us climbed onto Yaly's motorbike (Xn got the middle) and he took us to a fish product factory. It smelled horrible. Be glad this is only a photo. They make fish paste and various other things I didn't want to see.

We visited some temple ruins and the still functioning temple right next door. The basement of the functioning temple was flooded so there were just the tops of the Buddha statues. It was creepy. The main floor was filled with Buddha's with bad paint jobs. There was one by the door that had a bees next on it, which freaked me out.

At the end of the day Yaly brought us to his Mosque. The kids were in Sunday school on break when we arrived so they all scared screaming hello and ran over to us. It was very sweet. The kids went back to class eventually, but this little girl stayed close to us. She was trying to tie the scarf on her head but couldn't do it so I helped her. The scarf is a Nazi flag, though no one there probably knew what it meant nor believed in anything it stands for. She totally stole my heart. Yaly then told me that her story is quite sad. Her Dad died of HIV and her mom died also (likely of HIV, too) and she was living with her grandmother who is very poor. I desperately wanted to fix everything in her life and give her something safe, stable, comfortable.

And that was our day with Yaly.