The Cambodia Rural School Project
The Gene and Nora
Hahn School
Chea Chheang is the director of the Gene and Nora Hahn School.
| On himself: | I am fifty years old. I have seven children. Two of them are in primary school. The other five are either in high school or secondary school. I have been a teacher since 1984. I became director in 1986.
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| On the new building: | There was no school building here before. This is the first school building in the area. The people here are poorly educated. Now that we have a new school, I’m very happy. More people would come here to study it if they could, but they live too far away.
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| Khmer Rouge and education: |
This village was controlled by the Khmer Rouge until 1995. They said they were here to protect the village against the Vietnamese. One time, in 1989, the Khmer Rouge came to the area where I was teaching. They didn’t want me to teach my students They said that I was teaching magic from the Vietnamese, because at the time all the school books were printed by Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge caught me as a school director. When they caught me, they wanted to kill me. They demanded that I stop teaching the students. I was held in the jungle for twenty-one days. My wife and son went looking for me. A mine blew up their oxcart while they were searching. They were able to get me out, but had to pay a big ransom. The Khmer Rouge said that if they caught me teaching again, they would kill him. So I had to escape. I left for the district capital of Steung Trang, because I wanted to keep on educating. I became the school director there. The schools in this area re-opened in 1991, after Pol-Pot made an agreement with the Cambodian government to accept the public school system. I returned to my village in 1994, after the UNTAC elections (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia). |
