Living In a Village with Ten Elephants: Mondulkiri, Cambodia

 Our family has always had the motto, Work Hard Play Hard , so when the annual Pchum Ben holiday came up this year we looked for something exciting. That’s when a friend offered the use of his traditional Khmer home for the holiday. His home is in a remote area of Cambodia, that until the last few years hasn’t had paved road access.  Tricia and I neither one had been to this part of the country, so experiencing a new place and new culture sounded exciting.

We knew Mondulkiri was supposed to have beautiful forests and be a more mountainous area (which means cooler temperatures) than the rest of Cambodia, but when our friend said 10 elephants lived in the village where his home was, we decided this definitely had to be the next Hester adventure.

Our adventure started with a 7-hour drive on a mostly paved, but very bumpy road from Phnom Penh. We decided to take an SUV, so I drove and we took our chances. We have gotten confident enough in our knowledge of the Khmer language to venture out on our own! As we got close to Sen Monorom, the capital of Mondulkiri we began to realize we were definitely in a part of the country that was very different from everything we had seen in other parts of Cambodia.

  

A homemade hydroelectric power plant

The terrain was hilly and green. The landscape changed from tropical forest to pine forest and then back again. The temperature was several degrees cooler as well. The last hour and a half was road that was only a few years old and in great condition. I got to enjoy the scenery and the drive!

When we arrived in the provincial capital of Sen Monorom it was a small Cambodian town. We were happy to be in a place where life moved at a slower pace. The village where we were staying was 7 kilometers outside of the capital city. Putang village is a traditional Bunong village. The Bunong are a tribal people who historically have been the primary inhabitants of this part of Cambodia. While the new road has brought an influx of Khmer businesspeople to the province many of the villages are still primarily Bunong. They have their own spoken language and culture. Our host, Vanny, was Bunong, but was also fluent in both Khmer and English.

We enjoyed a great holiday on a hilltop home overlooking the countryside. We would wake up each cool morning to the sound of ringing cowbells as the herds of cattle and water buffalo grazed just outside our window. Other than the occasional rooster, that was the only sound we heard. It was amazingly peaceful and restful.

On our first morning I looked out my window to see an elephant and his “mahout” (trainer) on their way to the forest and fields to work. The Bunong still use elephants to forage for food and wood in the forest, or to work the rice fields hidden away in the valleys.

Unfortunately there are no more wild elephants in the area due to deforestation and hunting for ivory. Elephants can live up to 45 years in captivity and up to 70 years in the wild, so the elephants in the village had been tamed years ago before the deforestation and drastic reduction of the number of elephants in the area. This was a sad side to the trip realizing that the Asian elephant population is disappearing along with the Bunong way of life.

Many tourists ride the elephants on day-long treks which are very laborious for the elephants. We decided this was not something we wanted to be a part of. Instead we bought a few snoots of bananas from a villager and let the boys feed one of the elephants. His mahout then insisted that the boys take a little ride for a few minutes, which they were happy to get to do.

Tricia and I at the top of a small waterfall

Tricia and the boys looking at a hillside banana plot

Part of our time in the village consisted of trekking through the hills and forest where we found a beautiful waterfall and enjoyed idyllic views of rice fields and banana plantations on the hillsides. We had quite an adventure when our ninja, Reece, attacked and killed a bamboo shoot. Little did he know there was a wasp nest inside the bamboo shoot and that the shoot containing the wasp nest would fall over our trail, blocking our way home. Maybe I’ll share more on our 2 waterfall stories in another post!

The rest of our village stay consisted of learning more about the village culture. We were able to buy a handmade basket that villagers wear on their back and use to carry food and wood they forage in the forest. We learned how to make traditional jar wine (rice wine in a large ceramic pot), how to make a local form of tobacco and enjoyed the fresh fruits available from the local trees. 

Kyler enjoying swinging in the vines

It was also great to be able to live in a Khmer village home and experience day to day village life. We did have running water in the bathroom thanks to a rainwater storage system! It was all a welcome retreat from Phnom Penh and a great opportunity to experience a new part of Cambodia. I’ll share more on our two waterfall adventures in another post. I’m thinking of calling it Ninjas, wasps, waterfalls and scantily clad men!

What I've Been Reading Lately

Over the last year I have read a number of books that have had a significant impact on my life. It’s been a while since I’ve recommended or reviewed any books, so here are a few that have been on my reading list.

The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within by Erwin McManus

While many people have questioned my sanity for choices I’ve made in life, I still often feel I play it too safe. Christ calls us to a life of radical obedience that often requires substantial risk, but provides significant eternal rewards and a fulfilling life. The Barbarian Way is a short read that will challenge you to unleash a radical life of faith. DANGER: If nominal Christrianity is the norm in your community, it will definitely offend and may even cause you to consider unreasonable courses of action.

Give and Take:Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam M. Grant 

The best book on being a giving person I have ever read, hands down. It provides great wisdom on being a good steward of your time, skills, emotions and resources as you aspire to be a giver. It also delves into the subject of why those who consistently take “seem” to always get ahead.  Give and Take is well thought out and well researched. This book, while not written as a Christian book, contains more depth on the subject of the gift of giving than any teaching in the Church I have ever heard.  It has definitely been a milestone book in my personal development.
 

 
 

Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue by Edwin H. Friedman

When we enter a family, a church or an organization we bring all of our past and experiences, as well of those of our family, into the new community. Generation to Generation is a deeply insightful book that will help you develop yourself personally while breaking certain negative generational patterns. If you are a leader, pastor, counselor or just a friend of someone who is seeking help, this book is invaluable in helping you walk through the process. Not just treating symptoms, or identifying problems, but helping someone become healthy as an individual. It is also for helping families and churches develop a healthy culture of self-differentiation and encouraging each member to be responsible for his or her own self.

A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin H. Friedman

As an extension of Generation to Generation, this book looks at the anxiety of todays society and its effects on our families, churches and organizations. This clarion call for personal strength encourages leaders to live a countercultural and self-differentiated life that can bring about true change in whatever sphere of influence you may have.

CAUTION: These books by Friedman are written at a textbook academic level, not for inspirational light reading.
 

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen

I’ve always struggled with the demands of being successful. What my heart has really always longed for was to be significant. How Will You Measure Your Life? provided a heartfelt way of measuring life by what truly matters to me as a person. Cast off societal and cultural demands and live life according to what is important to you.

The Way of The Wild Heart : A Map for The Masculine Journey by John Eldredge

Micah and I are reading through this book together. I recommend this book for dads and moms of teenage boys (It’s a great book just for dad too!) The book gives a perspective on the different stages of a developing man through the stories of the Eldredge family and their journeys into manhood. If you are like me it has been a sobering and challenging task to be responsible for fathering a young man. The Way of the Wild at Heart has truly helped me map out the process of helping a young boy move towards godly manhood through the right balance of hard work and adventure.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters by Timothy Keller

The title says it all and doesn’t need much explanation.  This was my introduction to Tim Keller as an author and I was pleasantly surprised. Keller provides depth and biblical insight that is often missing in many Christian books. He addresses sensitive topics without all the guilt, hype or sensationlism.

What is “Normal”? Whether you are a millionaire or a missionary.

Having an adventure with friends on the Frio River

Our family recently returned “home” to Texas from Cambodia for a six week visit. Living in Cambodia, we live in very different circumstances than we were accustomed to in Texas. So, when we decided to travel back to Texas I caught myself thinking I wanted our family to experience “normal” life during that time. I started thinking of all of the things I wanted my three boys to be able to do while we were there.

When we arrived I quickly started giving them opportunities to experience things that were “normal” summer time activities to me growing up:

·      Mowing the lawn

·      Shooting a bow and arrow, a 22 rifle, a shotgun and a deer rifle

·      Learning to drive a car (only the 14 year old)

·      Waterskiing

·      Cutting up a tree with a chainsaw

·      Attending family reunions

·      Camping, fishing and tubing down a river

·      Working to earn some extra cash

·      Attending Church where the service is conducted in our native language

Reece hugging his Great Grandmother at a family reunion

We had a great time during our six week visit, but I began to think about the fact my three boys would never consider these things as “normal”. My boys are what they call “Third Culture Kids”. They are no longer living in their “home” culture or the culture of their parents, but at the same time they will never completely be a part of the Cambodian culture because they are not ethnic Cambodians. They will live in this strange place in between two cultures, hence the name “Third Culture”.  This means it will be difficult for them to ever do “normal” activities in either culture.

Micah shooting his compound bow

With my boys living in this interesting cultural place I began to worry they wouldn’t be a part of “normal” activities anywhere. Then I realized I was worrying too much about “normal” activities and not enough about the values I wanted to instill in my three sons. I realized I loved the activities they did this summer because they communicate values to my boys.  When I started looking at what I wanted my boys to experience in terms of values, not activities, then it became easier to think about what activities they could do to build these values. It’s the values I want to be a “normal” thing in their lives not activities.

Kyler helping dad barbecue

What are the “normal” activities my children and yours are involved in? What are the values those activities are communicating and instilling in our children? Maybe what is considered a “normal” activity for kids isn’t instilling what should be “normal” values.

After thinking about our summer I came up with a set of values I think should be “normal” for my boys. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.

·      Belonging to and being part of a family

·      Learning to take care of daily responsibilities

·      Learning to work hard and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment

·      Taking time to have fun

·      Learning to be adventurous

·      Loving and serving God no matter what day it is or where they are at

Now that I have the values part straight the activities seem to be coming a lot easier. I also don’t feel as guilty because my kids aren’t experiencing what other kids from their home country are experiencing.  And, I don’t feel guilty for telling them NO when I think an activity communicates a value that isn’t a positive one.

Micah waterskiing 

Learning to Teach or Teaching to Learn?

Did you know bananas come from an herb and not a tree? How about that a banana “herb” only produces bananas one time? That’s right, what most people think of as a banana tree is not a tree at all. It has no wood-like material in it. The banana herb will grow to maturity, produce bananas and then will put off a new shoot at the base of the old plant. The old plant will no longer produce fruit.  What is it good for then?

Now, you may be wondering how and why I learned something like this. It wasn’t from reading a book, sitting in a classroom, or going to Google. I learned it from the staff while we were teaching people how to make money by raising chickens! We were teaching chicken-raising skills to villagers living in poverty with few resources to work their way out of their desperate situation.

Banana Plants and Chicken Raising? You see, once a banana plant has produced its bananas, most people would think the banana plant is useless. On the contrary, the plant itself is then a huge resource for food. You can actually slice an entire 8 foot tall banana plant up into tiny pieces and make it into chicken or pig food! Just add a little rice bran and a little ground rice (all of which are in abundance, cheap, and often free in a warm, tropical climate) and you have chicken feed to start your own chicken ranch at minimal cost!

I’m not telling all of this so we can all go out and start our own chicken farms. What I am saying is many of the most empowering lessons I’ve learned in life were by experiencing them in real life and preparing to teach those lessons to others in real-life circumstances.

Just like teaching chicken-raising skills helps people start on the road out of poverty, teaching them real relationship with God will start them on the road to life transformation. Stepping out to teach others often requires us to learn, and vice versa. I want to challenge you today.  Who and what are you teaching/learning?

You don't have to go to Cambodia to change lives,
there are people all around you

^“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded…” Matthew 28:19-20

The Rest of the Story:

To give you a quick story of how teaching/learning something simple can make  a significant impact in someone's life. The staff at Samaritan's Purse recently took me to a village right on the Cambodia/Thai border. It was a village where we taught/I learned how to make chicken feed. The village was about 10 km away from the nearest middle school. In recent history no children had attended middle school from this village. It was too far and the families were too poor to afford transportation. The children have to work to help provide an income for the family instead of going to school. Quick fact: In Cambodia 28% of the household income comes from children. Many of the children would cross the border illegally each day into Thailand to work.

The staff went into the village and talked with leaders and parents and told them Samaritan's Purse would provide bicycles for the kids and provide chicken raising training and resources for the families, IF the parents would agree to enroll and send their children to middle school. After receiving the bicycles and learning how to raise chickens for income, seven families were ready to enroll their children in middle school. There was only one problem.

This area is remote and there aren't many homes on the 10 km dirt road from the village to the school. I actually asked the staff where in the world they were taking me when they took me down the bumpy dirt road out into the woods the first time. (The recent landline clearance signs were not reassuring either). Anyway, the parents of the girls were worried that their daughters would not be safe travelling on the road and weren't sure about sending them to school by themselves. 

Fortunately, the local military commander in charge of border security, asked his men if they would patrol the road each day and ensure safe passage for the kids to school. The entire village was excited because for the first time they now had seven young boys and girls who would be attending middle school. It was a milestone event for the village. 

P.S. I've been back again and the kids are all still in school! AND, those chickens taste pretty good barbecued in local spices. A guy has to eat lunch somewhere, so the least I could do was help the local economy. 

Building Much More Than A Building

During my days as a mathematics teacher I would spend hours preparing lessons each week to make sure what I presented was engaging for students. Because they had access to so much technology and entertainment at home, a lesson had to be interesting to keep their attention. I never had to worry about the conditions in the classroom though. We always had comfortable desks, great lighting, air conditioning, etc.

Teachers in Cambodia deal with a very different scenario. When the Samaritan’s Purse staff first told me about the conditions at some of the rural primary schools here, I was shocked. But when I visited them in person I was not only deeply disturbed, but I became highly motivated to do something about it.  I tell the story of one of these schools and the schools principal in my blog Search For Significance

In another primary school nearly 200 kids have to take turns going to class in 3 shifts.  Two grades have class at the same time in the same room. Their wooden school was in such bad condition the teachers moved the school into a one room metal rice barn with only three walls.  For those of you from West Texas who have been in a metal barn on a hot July day, you can imagine how hot and unbearable every day of school is for these kids. Cambodia is like a Texas July almost year-round. The teachers and students are facing some almost insurmountable hurdles to learning.

Well, in the next four months all of that will change.  During my first year here I found out about grant and funding opportunities to see new schools built. I was able to write for funding and Samaritan’s Purse Cambodia was awarded the funds to construct two schools in Banteay Meanchey province. While all the paperwork, process and planning has taken over a year, construction has now begun!

Construction has begun on 2 new schools

While writing this blog I found out two more schools we’ve wanted to construct now have commitments! That means it is likely that in 2014 four new primary schools will be built! For all of you who I’ve shared about these schools with, thank you for praying for us. Samaritan’s Purse now has an initiative to build 20 primary schools in Cambodia!

Plays Well With Others: A 3000% Return

 Every report card period my boys come home with a set of marks showing how they are doing in school. When they were in their primary grades there was always a section giving us an idea of how they were doing socially. “Plays Well With Others” was always at the top of the list of items on the report card. For every child this is one of the most important life skills they need to learn!

Having been involved in Christian ministry for over 25 years, I have often heard this same principle taught in the Church. Playing or working well with others may not be an exact scriptural quotation, but we have all likely heard “We want to be a Kingdom Church” or “We want to work with the whole Body of Christ to see our community transformed”. Hearing these things I’ve always looked for examples to show me what that looks like. I don’t mean churches or organizations having special events together once or twice a year, but really unselfishly giving of themselves to each other and to the community. Working together in order to see real community-building relationships.

This past month I’ve seen some of the greatest examples of churches and organizations working well together to see their community transformed.

Today I was in a village that is likely the greatest story of working together I’ve ever personally encountered. Two years ago I made my first visit to this village in Kampong Chhnang. Pastor Say was a pastor who had moved with a group of people into the forest to start a new village for those who were poor and had no land or possessions. Samaritan’s Purse worked there with the Seeds of Hope project to assist people trying to build a new life for themselves with pig raising, chicken raising, vegetable gardening and water wells.

On my visit today I was with a partner organization with Samaritan's Purse working with villagers to build BioSand water filters to provide everyone with clean drinking water. I was shocked as we worked with the villagers and they began telling what has happened over the last two years. We were introduced to five pastors, all who had planted churches in the village. Unfortunately, my first reaction was “Oh, no why would a village need five churches, why not just one or two?” I guess I was expecting the pastors to start competing for attention or start trying to one-up each other with stories. Many times my experiences where there are multiple churches in an area is that they compete and sometimes fight with one another instead of work together.

But today was different, they were all working together with us. They were laughing together, probably “at” us as they watched these white men work with Cambodian tools. They appeared to truly be friends. What I realized as I watched them talk and work is that they were working together with an entire village, not just to plant  churches, but to help people start a new life, both spiritually and physically. They were helping the village work together to develop a community. If the village didn’t work together there would be no future, especially for their children.  It made me begin to think, “Is this what Christian ministry should look like?”

The result of working together was phenomenal! As we talked I casually asked how many people in the village were now Christian. One of the pastors said, “Oh, about 60 percent of the village I guess.” The others looked at each other, said a few words to each other, and then everyone agreed that was about right. Now, I don’t know about you, but how many pastors in your community could say they have worked with 4 other pastors to see 60 percent of their community come to Christ in the last 2 to 3 years. To put it in a different perspective though, stop and think about this. Cambodia has very few Christians. Less than 2% of the population of the country are Christians. These five churches have worked together to see that miraculously changed in their community.

That is a 3,000% increase over the rest of their country.  I guess what Henry Ford said is right:

"Coming together is a beginning: keeping together is progress; working together is success."

And oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the household income of the villagers has increased, people’s health has improved and families are stronger than they’ve ever been before!