The Cambodia Rural School Project
The Freshfields School
Som Chrean is thirty-four years old. He has five children, with two at his school. He graduated teacher school at Kampot when he was fifteen, in 1986, and began teaching. In 1988 he was appointed deputy director, the position he’s now currently holding. Because the school is very large, he does not teach himself, but leaves that up to the other sixteen teachers.
| On the new building: | “Before, I used to teach under a tree. Now, I don’t need to. That makes me very happy. It also makes the villagers happy. We all know that we would never be able to build such a school ourselves in our lifetimes, no matter how much we saved. Not even if our fathers and grandfathers also saved.”
“When the school was first built, and the tiles on the roof were new, we could see the roof from far away, red and shiny. It was beautiful.”
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| On students walking to school: | “The children that live the farthest away still only have to walk about 20-30 minutes to get here. It’s about two or three kilometers away.” |
