What a pity!

There are many reasons not to go to school.

• You are sick in the stomach due to chronic infection caused by dirty water.
• You simply cannot get there; the person who usually dinks you on their bike has not ridden by to pick you up.
• The family income of $35 per month has run out.
• You have your period and there is one toilet for girls and one for boys in a school of 700 students.
• You are too hungry.
• You do not have any pens or paper, so there is no point.
• You are the only person available to look after the young children and babies of the extended family.
• You are bruised from the bashing and sexual abuse that you are subject to.
• You have to stay home to help with the rice harvest or you and your family will not eat.

What a pity you are the teacher!

Don't comfort yourself by thinking that I made up any of those reasons above. Every one of the reasons is based on a real incident, and, sorry folks, none of this in uncommon. Of course there are other stories, better stories. I have told some of them and I will tell more of them. But you can't just pick the things that you want to know.

Granted, the comforts of my hotel are obscene and the obscenity is compounded by the fact that I am in one of the world's poorest countries. My rationale is that I just can't function for three weeks without a comfortable bed and the secure knowledge that I will not fall down the stairs. Today in the late afternoon, a whole heap of us absolutely hit the wall of exhaustion. We were reeling with tiredness, and pretty useless to anyone. The pity is that many Cambodians will experience exhaustion; few Cambodians will ever know a soft pillow.