a
Build it, and they will come …
How a chance meeting inspired
a Redcliffe couple to set up
a school in a Cambodian village.
blackboard
jungle
m
Story Trent Dalton
Photography Paul Wager
▲
r Sok was born 29 years
ago in the village of Kok
Thnot, outside the city
of Siem Reap, northwestern Cambodia,
at the gateway to the
Angkor Wat temple complex dedicated about
860 years ago to the gods who so carefully
chart the destinies of Cambodian children.
The boy – given name So, surname Sok – was
supposed to be a subsistence village farmer, like
his mum and dad. But he had inside him a thirst
for learning that would not be quenched on the
village rice fields. He told his parents he wanted
to go to school to learn English. The boy
listened as his parents described the late-’70s
reign of death of their former leader, Pol Pot;
the killing of up to 2.5 million Cambodians;
the systematic executions of doctors, lawyers
and educators; the destruction of schools and
universities; the burning of schoolbooks.
There are no affordable schools to go to, the
boy heard. Classes at the few English schools
BQW12NOV11CAM_16-23.indd 16
04/11/2011 04:21:25
educators
BQW12NOV11CAM_16-23.indd 17
04/11/2011 04:22:31
educators
o
We didn’t
know
where to
start. But
we just …
did it.
Making history …
Elizabeth Shobbrook
at Angkor Wat with
So Sok and Rachel
Merchant; (opening
pages) a village girl
who wants to attend
First Steps school.
The temple police soon realised how much
the boy was earning from his enterprise. They
cornered him one day – not with prods, but with
a proposal. The policemen would each pay
the boy one US dollar per month to teach their
children English. And the boy, now almost a man,
spent each dollar he earned from the police on
putting himself through English school.
So Sok had been working for almost five
years as an English teacher in Siem Reap when
he met Elizabeth Shobbrook in 2009. She said
she was a teacher at a primary school in a place
called Redcliffe, just north of Brisbane in
Queensland, Australia. She was doing research in
Cambodia for a master’s degree in International
Community Development. Sok told Elizabeth
about his life; about his village. It was in
crystal-clear English that he shared with her
his lifelong dream: “One day I would like to
build a school in my own village,” he said.
Sok could not have known then what the
gods had planned, nor how it was linked to
the baking of 1000 homemade cupcakes.
▲
available in Siem Reap were far beyond the reach
of a Kok Thnot farming family earning less than
50¢ a day. “Then I will teach myself English,”
the boy vowed.
And he hustled not for money, but for words.
The temple of Angkor Wat became home. Suncreamed tourists from the West became his
teachers. He invested in a fan; a fan that he
would wave against sweaty Brits and Americans.
“Thank you,” they said. Thank. You.
“How much?” they said. How. Much.
The boy studied their mouths, watched
priceless words fall from their lips. Hot. Sun.
Weather. Money. United. States. Of. America.
Sometimes police guards chased the boy out
of the temple, threatening to zap him with an
electric prod. But he always crept back in. He
invested any earnings in an umbrella. He shaded
tourists as they trudged along the 350m uncovered
walkway between the temple’s main entrance and
the great central quincunx of towers. A tourist
can say a lot over 350m. And soon the boy
learned enough words to say something back.
n the verandah of a rambling twostorey wooden home shaded by
a monstrous poinciana on Prince
Edward Parade, Redcliffe, Elizabeth
Shobbrook, 28, considers what clothes she will
need for a five-week trip to Siem Reap, 230km
north-west of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.
It’s early September. She’ll need shorts,
shirts and strong shoes to wade through the
floodwaters of the wet season. She leaves
tomorrow and she hasn’t packed. She’s been
busy creating an English learning textbook,
specifically for the village kids of Kok Thnot.
Most Cambodian kids use English texts
published in the US. The American phonics
books use words and images that are nearly
impossible for Cambodian village kids to
comprehend: “R for Rollercoaster”. “S for
Sundae”. “M for Merry-Go-Round”.
Elizabeth flips through the textbooks she’s
about to pack in her suitcase. “C for Cow”.
“R for Rice”. “S for Sack”. Cambodian kids
who are working from the age of four are more
than familiar with these things.
At his laptop, Elizabeth’s husband, Doug
Shobbrook, also 28, clicks on a photograph
of the students and teachers of the Harvest
Cambodia First Steps English learning school
in the village of Kok Thnot. It’s a well
composed image, ecstatic students smiling,
bordered by flowering pink plants and two
concrete sheds housing six classrooms. To
the side of the students stands Sok, beaming.
The image stops Elizabeth in her tracks. It
looks like she might well cry. Doug has already
wept this morning, while discussing his journey
from a property valuer on a focused climb up
the corporate ladder to a man whose mind is
consumed with thoughts on how he can best
enable a village Cambodian kid to learn to say
“home” and “mother” and “dream” in English.
“It’s unbelievable,” Elizabeth says. “We didn’t
know a thing. We didn’t know where to start. But
we just … ” She shakes her head. “ … did it.”
Elizabeth and Doug had been travelling back
and forth from Cambodia since 2008. They
travelled together through Sok’s home village.
Education is not a primary concern to the
mums and dads of Kok Thnot. They work
14 hours a day to earn $2. Health, shelter and
keeping their families fed are chief among their
worries. Most village families surrounding Siem
Reap can’t afford the transport costs to get their
kids to the few government-run schools in the
city, let alone pay impossible tuition fees and
opportunistic costs such as charging a kid to sit
an exam that will get him into the next grade.
If a Kok Thnot mother makes the costly 40minute journey into the city at all, it’s to take
a child with dengue fever or malaria or school
18 |
BQW12NOV11CAM_16-23.indd 18
04/11/2011 06:39:31
educators
High spirits …
Students high-five
their teacher as they
exit the classroom;
the school in its
construction phase.
had just the place for a school in Kok Thnot.
In the wake of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody rule,
the Cambodian government urged its people
to repopulate. Every baby born in Sok’s village
was granted 4000 sqm of village land. For
a quarter of a century, Sok pondered what he
would do with his seemingly useless block of
land covered in dense forest growth.
“Then it was all, ‘Who do we know’?” Doug
says. “I’m from country New South Wales. The
builder was the kid on the property next door
growing up. He and his wife were thinking of
coming to Asia at the end of the year and they
decided to come to Cambodia for a month.
“It was all very bush mechanics. We get
there and the site is just bush. We hired all the
local villagers and they came with their hoes and
helped level this land. We didn’t have any
building tools, so we were using pipes with
water in them to get these big platforms level.
We didn’t have enough for steel reinforcing, so
what they use is bamboo strips and you’d tie it
all together by wire.”
From January, it took two months for the
Shobbrooks to build So Sok’s dream. Two long,
concrete sheds with tin roofs. An amenities
block. A volleyball court. A soccer field.
A library. The school was given a name
thought up by the students of Grace Lutheran
Primary. It was called First Steps.
Days from the opening, Elizabeth and Doug
met with village elders. “We said, ‘Look, we’re
almost done, so if you want to start spreading
the word we’ll just take their names and let
them know when the school is ready’.”
In the city that afternoon, Elizabeth, on
Sok’s advice, purchased an enrolment book on
the off chance that a few children might arrive
to enrol before opening day. The following
morning Elizabeth and Doug arrived at the
school to find 315 children lined up. “I don’t
know how word got around so fast,” Elizabeth
says. “There were lines of kids, all holding their
birth certificates.”
They had budgeted for an enrolment of
250. Some kids had ridden bicycles for two
hours to get there. Some had walked two hours
barefoot. After teaching a small number of
students since March this year, on Tuesday,
June 28, the school officially welcomed an
enrolment of 800 children. At that moment
Doug Shobbrook had a glimpse of his destiny.
It had nothing to do with the corporate ladder.
e
arly October and the city of Siem
Reap is flooding. Flash floods
throughout the country have killed
150 people. Worst in a decade. Some
270,000 hectares of rice fields destroyed.
There are fears the floodwaters will pool for
months in surviving fields, softening crops,
rendering a whole season of rice worthless.
The dirt road into Kok Thnot village has
turned into a muddied mess accessible only by
▲
sores to line up, sometimes all day, outside the
Angkor Hospital for Children.
One in eight Cambodian children dies before
turning five, mostly of vaccine-preventable
diseases. Pneumonia is the second-biggest
killer of Cambodian kids (behind neonatal
complications). Diarrhoea is the third-biggest
killer. “Prior to the Khmer Rouge [Pol Pot’s
ruling party from 1975 to 1979] there were 1600
doctors working in Cambodia,” says Doug.
“After his rule there were four. The Khmer
Rouge wiped out the parents’ generation.
There’s no-one there with skills. The teachers.
The doctors. The nurses. There’s a massive gap
missing. Where do you go from there? It did me
in. These people were so humble and generous
and they’d come from zero.”
In May last year, Elizabeth and Doug began
seriously discussing Sok’s dream. The only way
a child in Kok Thnot would ever escape the
14-hour-a-day working life in the village rice
fields, said Sok, was to learn English. Basic
English means a better job: tuk tuk (motorised
rickshaw) driver; hotel worker; or, the holy grail,
tour guide. Advanced English means a shot at
university. A shot at law. A shot at medicine.
“Why not?” Doug said. “Why can’t we just
build a school?”
Elizabeth nodded her head. Why not?
Elizabeth has spent the past six years
teaching at Grace Lutheran Primary School,
Clontarf, 25km north of Brisbane. “We talked
about how much it would cost and we talked
to my school about it,” Elizabeth says. “And at
the time my school was rebuilding itself, going
through a stage of renovation. They thought,
well, if we’re rebuilding our school, wouldn’t it
be great if, at the same time, we built a school in
Cambodia? So we kicked off the fundraising.”
Elizabeth turns to her husband. Doug
laughs. “ … Selling cupcakes!” he says. About
a thousand cupcakes, in fact. “We were trying to
show the students that it’s the small things that
make a difference,” Elizabeth says.
The Shobbrooks registered a charity name:
Harvest Cambodia. They settled on a slogan:
“Growth through education”. Elizabeth
invited Sok to visit her school in Clontarf. “He
wanted to see what a school was like here,” she
says. “He met the children and talked about
life in Cambodia.” Students fired him question
after question: “Mr Sok, how do kids sharpen
their pencils in Cambodian villages?”
“With a knife.”
“Cooool!”
Buoyed by the encounter, the students of
Grace Lutheran Primary raised $8000 through
avid cupcake sales, school free-dress days and
begging spare change from their parents. Eight
grand goes a very long way in Cambodia. Sok
| 21
BQW12NOV11CAM_16-23.indd 21
04/11/2011 04:24:31
He just knows who he is. I’m the opposite.
I guess that’s why we work so well together.”
Rachel left a career as a graphic designer in
Sydney to operate the First Steps school on a wage
of $150 a month. Last year, she brought Sok to
meet her family in Sydney. Sok was dazzled by
the city, but dismayed by the lack of community
in the suburbs. Arriving home one afternoon,
Rachel found Sok sitting head down, confused.
He’d spent the whole day not talking to a single
person. He hadn’t done that all his life. “Nobody
talks to each other,” he said, in despair.
“By the time we left for Cambodia, Sok had
got to know every person in the neighbourhood,”
Rachel says. “Most of them we’d never met.”
The teacher in Classroom B is a 21-year-old
villager named Den Suot. “Who is in your
family?” Den asks a young girl. She
concentrates on her answer, nodding her head
with every word. “Mother … father … three
… brother … two … sister,” she says.
Den nods approval and the girl’s face lights
up. Den points to a boy: “Do you have two
sisters?” The boy thinks for a moment: “No …
I … don’t.”
The class bell sounds, a stick banging against
a sheet of metal.
“I was born in a farmer’s family,” Den says
after class. “My mum die when I was 13. My
father left for new girlfriend. So just only me,
my sister and also two brothers. I have no
money. Nothing. But I learn. Always working.
Every riel [Cambodian currency] I ever make
go to learning English.
“I always wanted to be astronaut. I always
look at the stars. Yes, it’s very hard future.
I don’t think it’s going to happen. That just
dream. So I just change my dream. English
teacher! I feel so proud of myself. I teach
English to people who want to learn English.”
Rachel nods towards a hut that has been
fashioned into an art room. “I’d like to see this
school one day on a par with Western schools,”
she says.
“These kids had never known what it’s like
to put on an apron and mess around with paint.
The kids in this village work hard. Every day
they have to be in the field. They have to walk
the cows. They don’t really have time to be kids.
This is
more
than just a
school. It’s
an area for
them to be
kids again.
Spreading the
word … Elizabeth
Shobbrook takes time
out with a student;
(above left) So Sok
teaches class.
This is more than just a school. It’s an area for
them to be kids again.”
In the courtyard, children cling to Elizabeth
Shobbrook’s legs, hang from her shoulders like
she is play equipment. There’s a brief look of
sadness on her face. She goes home in three days.
But she’ll be back soon. Back more often than not.
“We’ve made the decision that it’s time for
me to leave Grace Lutheran,” she says. “It
wasn’t so real until I checked my email and saw
the letter that went home to parents to let them
know I was leaving.” She raises her eyebrows,
shakes her head at the whole unlikely journey.
“It’s scary. You know, financially.”
Doug has left the property industry. He runs
a wedding reception photo booth business that
allows him to pursue photography while giving
him time to run the administrative, financial
and promotional side of First Steps. Any spare
cash is funnelled into getting Elizabeth to the
school. He’s become obsessed by First Steps.
“We worked out that we can kind of manage
on just Doug’s wage and I’ll do some relief work
to add to that,” Elizabeth says. She laughs, her
eyes scanning the school. She’s already begun
plans to build a health clinic in the village. The
school will be fitted with lights to hold night
classes. There will be vocational training; classes
on organic farming; classes on hygiene. They
have built a teacher-training program. “Teach
the teachers and then you’re helping a whole
generation of kids,” she says. “The whole idea
is that we get to the point that they don’t need us
B
Photography: doug shobbrook
motorbike. But not a single child will be absent
at the First Steps rollcall this morning. On the
back of a hired motorbike, Elizabeth Shobbrook
and her driver pass the 12th century temple of
Bayon, at the centre of the sprawling wonders
of Angkor Thom, where tourists flock to see
the mystical stone faces and the walkway
where Angelina Jolie dispatched goons with an
Uzi submachine gun in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
Elizabeth turns into Kok Thnot village
waving at three thin, shirtless men who sit
smoking and cross-legged under a hut. She
passes mothers nursing babies. There’s a sleepy
pig resting in mud, chained to a home on
crooked stilts. All the rickety thin timber
homes on the right-hand side of the village’s
muddy track have been flooded. Young boys
drag cows from inundated back yards.
The motorbike takes a hard left into the First
Steps school entry path and everything changes.
It’s a sanctuary. Flowerbeds shaded by a canopy
of tall trees. The sound of children laughing.
In the school library, children flick through
Dr Seuss books; books by Mem Fox and Roald
Dahl. A village boy marvels at Possum Magic.
In Classroom A, 30 children sit at wooden
desks, with pencils and pads. Sok points to
a whiteboard, teaching “F” sounds to his
enthusiastic charges. “Fish, frog, fork, foot,”
they repeat. Throughout the week, the 800
students will be rotated through two-hour
sessions. The students literally sit on the edge
of their seats. They raise their hands so high
in response to questions that it looks like they
could well do damage to their collarbones.
They don’t look like students. They look like
giddy attendees at a Justin Bieber concert.
“They come whether it’s flooded, raining,
boiling hot, whatever,” Elizabeth whispers.
“They come if they’re sick.”
Sometimes teachers will see a boy scratching
his scalp. On inspection, the teacher might find
a school sore. The boy’s in pain but he doesn’t
want to miss school, so he asks the teacher to
cut off his hair and clean the wound. Once
done the boy hops along merrily to class.
On the school’s soccer field, Elizabeth spots a
boy with bloated cheeks. “I think he has mumps,”
she says. Most students have scars on their legs
from school sores. Some have recently beaten
typhoid and malaria to be here. Others have
stomach upsets from drinking unclean water.
One of the school’s managers, a 27-year-old
Australian named Rachel Merchant, stands to
the side of Classroom B as students learn the
English terms associated with “family”. Rachel
is Sok’s fiancée. They met at an English school
in 2009. She fell in love with his spark; his
infectious optimism. “He’s such a natural
with the kids,” she says. “He’s so competent.
22 |
BQW12NOV11CAM_16-23.indd 22
04/11/2011 05:05:37
educators
any more. Then maybe one day, someone like
Den can run it and we as a team can move on
to some other village.”
The teacher training program involves
bringing Queensland teachers over to help
instruct the emerging village teachers. The visiting
teachers always ask Elizabeth the same question.
What do I do if a child misbehaves? It’s not an
issue. The kids at First Steps simply do not
misbehave. They take nothing for granted.
“You know, we weren’t expecting any of
this,” Elizabeth says. “I expected to come over
here and volunteer in a school for two weeks
and feel like I’ve done my bit. We don’t really
know how it happened. So Sok just said it
was his dream one day to have a school in his
village and we just felt, ‘Well, why not’?”
In Classroom A, 30 students shout in unison:
“Bye teacher, see you tomorrooooooooow!”
Sok smiles wide, raises his open right palm.
As each student exits the classroom, he or she
gives Sok a soaring high-five.
There was only one boy in the history
of Kok Thnot village who ever made it to
university. He was a friend of Sok’s who had
relatives in the US who funded his learning.
B C D S 0 4 2 2 _ 1 3 5 x 2 3 0 _ Q W. p d f
Pa ge
1
3 1 / 1 0 / 1 1 ,
8 : 4 0
“One boy,” he says. “The rest, in the whole
village, nobody make it past Grade 3.” He
flashes a brilliant smile at his students. “I always
say to them, ‘You know me. You know my
parents. I was born in here. My parents poor.
Now I change. You can work on the farm if you
want. But you can also work somewhere else if
you want to’.”
A village girl, maybe eight years old, stops
outside the classroom entry. She holds her
textbooks in two hands at her waist. She smiles.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hello,” I reply. “How are you today?”
“Very well, thank you,” she says. “And you?”
“Very well, thank you.”
There’s an awkward pause. I’m momentarily
lost for a suitable conversational stepping
stone, but the girl graciously helps me out.
“I like reading books,” she says.
“And what do you want to be when you
grow up?”
“Doctor,” she says.
She smiles, runs toward the volleyball court.
“Have a good day,” she says over her shoulder.
Why not? n
Weblink: www.harvestcambodia.com
AM
We have
your new
pool fence
Check out the range of easy D.I.Y.
pool fencing instore or at bunnings.com.au
Featured Pool Fence, $274 Per Linear Mtr
BQW12NOV11CAM_16-23.indd 23
04/11/2011 05:06:03