We travelled on one of the ‘interstate highway’. The 2-hour drive is definitely far from comfort. First, there are at least 10-14 people going in one truck. What that means is that there are some that are cramped into the inside of the truck. And there are some who has to sit in the back of the truck. On the back of the truck, there are two benches bolted down but they are on the opposite end of the pendulum of comfort as the Lazyboy couches. Another factor is that the road is extremely dusty. A large portion of the way there were spending in cloud of dirt or cloud of carbon monoxide from cars which are too old to be on the road or would never past Aircare. So basically, whoever is sitting on the outside in the back of the truck will inhale a combination of dust and carbon monoxide from other cars on the highway. Basically, I was one of the fortunate few in the back who come to realize the importance of nose hairs. What makes it even worst was the drive from the highway to the village. The road was neither paved nor well-maintained. Thus, the truck kicked up quite a dirt storm while driving through. It is quite an experience driving in the dirt storm for 20 minutes. Side note, I was wearing a white shirt there and by the end of the day, it was reddish brown due to the dirt storm. I ended up having raspy voice to the dirt accumulated in my throat. I pray that I’ll be a lot more prepared the next time I go into this village. The last and the worst part of it all is ill nature of the road. Yes, we did spend a large portion of the time driving on the ‘interstate highway’ but the highways here are not as what we come to expect in the Western world. They are filled with potholes and irregular bumps due to poor maintenance of the highway and large number of overloaded trucks on the highway. Not only that you have to avoid the potholes and bumps but also oncoming vehicles trying to past a slower vehicles. Therefore, it was a constant drive but a series of continuous acceleration and deceleration. Sitting in the back, with no seatbelt, and no cushion required that you are to hang on to the sidebars and experienced a continuous torrent of jerking motions. After having been 
through all these, I really come to appreciate the sacrifice and the determination of one individual.
through all these, I really come to appreciate the sacrifice and the determination of one individual.His name is Trong Thanh Tran (aka 3T, ba tê, or special bread spread in Vietnamese). There are a lot to be said about this certain individual. If there is one person whom I come to respect and admire, it is him. I must admit, he has a few flaws but his heart for serving God is undeniably there. He is a member of a local church but his responsibilities, at his requests not by recommendation of others, are to Taiches, which is the village I visited on Saturday. He is one of main teachers of Taiches school and its church secretary/elder/treasurer/advisor. He spends every Saturday and Sunday in Taiches to help out with the school and church. So you can probably do the math. He spends 8 hours a week on purely travelling to and from Taiches. On Saturday, he spends four hours travelling with others to Taiches to teach. Granted that he doesn’t drive but he still have to endure the roughness of the trip. On Sunday, he takes a motorbike to drive different preacher to the village so that they can preach. On top of that, he also leads service on Sunday so he has to prepare before hand as to how the order of service for that day. If you are wondering why he is doing all the work and not giving any responsibility to the locals. Well, the church is still in the process of finding those who are capable as most are illiterate. The ones who are capable are not believers. The amazing thing is that he has been doing this for a long while before I arrived.
Another good thing which I admire the most about him is that he is definitely a man with integrity, financially at least. As the treasurer of a church, he has many opportunities to ‘help’ himself. However, he asked my mentor’s wife to help him with the church finance. He even go the distance of asking my mentor’s wife to keep all the money while he only keep the booking. The reason he does this is to prevent himself from temptations due to his family financial conditions. Even when hanging out with people, he often does not feel really comfortable to have people pay for him. He rather stayed home and not go out if he can’t afford to go out. Unlike the majority of people who feel completely normal when it comes to ‘rich’ foreigners treating them, he actually feel uncomfortable about it. Not because he is afraid of people seeing him as a smooch but because he is afraid that he is unable of reciprocate the friendly gestures, although he knows that they do not expect a return of any kind. I can’t say anymore about how I am impressed with his determination to serve and his financial integrity.
Anyhow, back to Taiches, it is basically a big house/building. From a far, it looks just like any other house. On the left is a picture of the school from afar. As you notice, the water has receded quite a bit before I arrived. It was much worse during the rainy season. The water will cover everything and the only way the teaching staff can enter the school is by boat. Just to tell a little bit of history of the school/church. This school/church was build not too long ago. It was a joint project, oversee by Pastor Khang, of the believers and the local villagers. The whole building cost around 4,000 USD. It has wooden pillars, metal sheets as roof, palm-tree like walls, and wood planks as floor. It is not exactly the luxurious castle but it is more than sufficient as a school/church. The church is surrounded by farms and houses of the Vietnamese Khmai. This village is the most ghetto village I have ever been to. There are no electricity and they still are heavily dependent on rain for drinking water. When in the dry season, they used the water from the river for consumption which creates a plethora of health issues.
The whole entire place is one big room divided by screens. Therefore, the noise from one classroom can easily be heard in another classroom. Regardless, it is pretty nice because sometime, one class would try to out-scream another class, especially when they are trying to spell out a word or a sentence. It is pretty funny I thought. There are four classes in this school which are primarily focused in teach Vietnamese to the Vietnamese Khmai here. For most kids, this is the only form of education that is accessible for them. Few kids do have the luxury of going to a public Khmai school but again, the number is an extremely small number. The focus of the school is to give the children who are unable to go to a public school a form of education. Although it is once a week class, most kids love the class and are learning quite a bit. There are two classes of grade 1 and two classes of grade 2. Unfortunately, there is no plan of implementing higher classes as the financial resources are limited and the school/church is not officially recognized as part of the New Hope schooling system. It is currently funded from the personal financial aid from believers outside the country, mostly from Australia and Canada.
My first time to Taiches resulted in many shocks. The first being the trip itself. It was long, extremely uncomfortable, and dirty. I can’t believe there is a village this far out. The second being there are so many Vietnamese people in this village. There have to be at least 20 Vietnamese families here. This place is extremely far away from the borders of Cambodia and Vietnam. It’s not like there is a river from Vietnam which they can just travel to here. I wonder how they got here in the first place, about 100+ people coming together and form a small
community. The third being the fact that they are extremely poor. As you can see the picture, those are floating houses. While most live in houses on land, there are a few families who live on boathouses such as these. The reason being that they can’t afford to rent the property and the property tax. If you zoom into the picture, you’ll see that the roof and the walls are made out of dry palm tree leaves. This is extremely bad as the weather tends to destroy the leaves easily leaving the house exposed. Can you imagined experiencing a leaky roof in the cold and rainy season. Third, there are tremendous health issues here. Most of the health issues here are attributed to the source of drinking water. Although they have reservoir / water tanks holding rain water to drink, they are not very clean. However, the rain water is a lot more desirable to drink than the water from the river in the dry season. If there are health issues not resulted from drinking water, then they are due to the poor living conditions of the people here. They can’t afford a lot of food and mostly survive on rice, dried fishes, and whatever vegetable they can get from the land.
So the next day, I get to visit Taiches again. This time, the trip was only my mentoring couple, myself, and Trong. My mentor was schedule to preach at Taiches that day (The churches here operate on a cycle sermon. Everyone who can preach is put into the cycle, myself included. Every week, each church has different preacher although the church may have a pastor/primary caretaker who is capable of giving sermon. Not the best system I find but it works for them and they do not want to change it). So again, at 7:00 am, we started our second trip in two days to Taiches. It is more a lot more tiresome today. A cup of ice coffee, an hour of nap, and a few power naps in between, Trong and myself found ourselves at Taiches village. The service started with the gathering of both young and old villagers. The number of children greatly outnumbered the adults. As a result, the service was often interrupted by the noise of children bickering, swearing, and crying. By around 1, we started heading back and have lunch on the way. I am actually very surprised at my mentor’s endurance. He drove both ways without getting tire. I am very impressed. By 3, I am found myself at home and starting to head to Saigon 2 to pick up Lam (the dude whose picture is above) and Hoai, the dude who does not have the opportunity to go to school and whom I mentioned a blog ago, to go to Mekong church. We were 10 minutes late due to the traffic at the Saigon bridge but it was okay because they were still in the praising part of the service. After the service, a whole bunch of us, Lam, Hoai, myself, and all the Mekong youth group, played badminton, kicked around the Asian hacky-sack like made out of feather, and I pulled out my DS which captured all their attention. All the youth were madly in love with Cooking Mama 2. They can’t seem to get bored of it and even ‘line up’ to play it. It was a fun day. I got to know a few more kids from the Mekong church. It was quite a productive day even though I was extremely lazy.
Another good thing which I admire the most about him is that he is definitely a man with integrity, financially at least. As the treasurer of a church, he has many opportunities to ‘help’ himself. However, he asked my mentor’s wife to help him with the church finance. He even go the distance of asking my mentor’s wife to keep all the money while he only keep the booking. The reason he does this is to prevent himself from temptations due to his family financial conditions. Even when hanging out with people, he often does not feel really comfortable to have people pay for him. He rather stayed home and not go out if he can’t afford to go out. Unlike the majority of people who feel completely normal when it comes to ‘rich’ foreigners treating them, he actually feel uncomfortable about it. Not because he is afraid of people seeing him as a smooch but because he is afraid that he is unable of reciprocate the friendly gestures, although he knows that they do not expect a return of any kind. I can’t say anymore about how I am impressed with his determination to serve and his financial integrity.
Anyhow, back to Taiches, it is basically a big house/building. From a far, it looks just like any other house. On the left is a picture of the school from afar. As you notice, the water has receded quite a bit before I arrived. It was much worse during the rainy season. The water will cover everything and the only way the teaching staff can enter the school is by boat. Just to tell a little bit of history of the school/church. This school/church was build not too long ago. It was a joint project, oversee by Pastor Khang, of the believers and the local villagers. The whole building cost around 4,000 USD. It has wooden pillars, metal sheets as roof, palm-tree like walls, and wood planks as floor. It is not exactly the luxurious castle but it is more than sufficient as a school/church. The church is surrounded by farms and houses of the Vietnamese Khmai. This village is the most ghetto village I have ever been to. There are no electricity and they still are heavily dependent on rain for drinking water. When in the dry season, they used the water from the river for consumption which creates a plethora of health issues.
The whole entire place is one big room divided by screens. Therefore, the noise from one classroom can easily be heard in another classroom. Regardless, it is pretty nice because sometime, one class would try to out-scream another class, especially when they are trying to spell out a word or a sentence. It is pretty funny I thought. There are four classes in this school which are primarily focused in teach Vietnamese to the Vietnamese Khmai here. For most kids, this is the only form of education that is accessible for them. Few kids do have the luxury of going to a public Khmai school but again, the number is an extremely small number. The focus of the school is to give the children who are unable to go to a public school a form of education. Although it is once a week class, most kids love the class and are learning quite a bit. There are two classes of grade 1 and two classes of grade 2. Unfortunately, there is no plan of implementing higher classes as the financial resources are limited and the school/church is not officially recognized as part of the New Hope schooling system. It is currently funded from the personal financial aid from believers outside the country, mostly from Australia and Canada.My first time to Taiches resulted in many shocks. The first being the trip itself. It was long, extremely uncomfortable, and dirty. I can’t believe there is a village this far out. The second being there are so many Vietnamese people in this village. There have to be at least 20 Vietnamese families here. This place is extremely far away from the borders of Cambodia and Vietnam. It’s not like there is a river from Vietnam which they can just travel to here. I wonder how they got here in the first place, about 100+ people coming together and form a small
community. The third being the fact that they are extremely poor. As you can see the picture, those are floating houses. While most live in houses on land, there are a few families who live on boathouses such as these. The reason being that they can’t afford to rent the property and the property tax. If you zoom into the picture, you’ll see that the roof and the walls are made out of dry palm tree leaves. This is extremely bad as the weather tends to destroy the leaves easily leaving the house exposed. Can you imagined experiencing a leaky roof in the cold and rainy season. Third, there are tremendous health issues here. Most of the health issues here are attributed to the source of drinking water. Although they have reservoir / water tanks holding rain water to drink, they are not very clean. However, the rain water is a lot more desirable to drink than the water from the river in the dry season. If there are health issues not resulted from drinking water, then they are due to the poor living conditions of the people here. They can’t afford a lot of food and mostly survive on rice, dried fishes, and whatever vegetable they can get from the land.So the next day, I get to visit Taiches again. This time, the trip was only my mentoring couple, myself, and Trong. My mentor was schedule to preach at Taiches that day (The churches here operate on a cycle sermon. Everyone who can preach is put into the cycle, myself included. Every week, each church has different preacher although the church may have a pastor/primary caretaker who is capable of giving sermon. Not the best system I find but it works for them and they do not want to change it). So again, at 7:00 am, we started our second trip in two days to Taiches. It is more a lot more tiresome today. A cup of ice coffee, an hour of nap, and a few power naps in between, Trong and myself found ourselves at Taiches village. The service started with the gathering of both young and old villagers. The number of children greatly outnumbered the adults. As a result, the service was often interrupted by the noise of children bickering, swearing, and crying. By around 1, we started heading back and have lunch on the way. I am actually very surprised at my mentor’s endurance. He drove both ways without getting tire. I am very impressed. By 3, I am found myself at home and starting to head to Saigon 2 to pick up Lam (the dude whose picture is above) and Hoai, the dude who does not have the opportunity to go to school and whom I mentioned a blog ago, to go to Mekong church. We were 10 minutes late due to the traffic at the Saigon bridge but it was okay because they were still in the praising part of the service. After the service, a whole bunch of us, Lam, Hoai, myself, and all the Mekong youth group, played badminton, kicked around the Asian hacky-sack like made out of feather, and I pulled out my DS which captured all their attention. All the youth were madly in love with Cooking Mama 2. They can’t seem to get bored of it and even ‘line up’ to play it. It was a fun day. I got to know a few more kids from the Mekong church. It was quite a productive day even though I was extremely lazy.
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