love the life you live Peace Corps Cambodia ☮: SALT Soccer Camp… These Girls Rock My World!!!!!

Well when I first got to Cambodia I wrote this organization called pass back who donated 100 balls and other soccer supply’s it was supper sweet! For a few months I had a small camp going on Sundays however my counter part left and it started rainy season and never picked back up. With the realization without me there was no camp was really sad because it is not sustainable this lead me to the quest to make sure that I found a place the camp could be sustainable. This is how I came to find out about SALT they are a branch of fifa world cup the guy sam who is in charge of the camp is soooo great and has been living in Cambodia for the past 8 years and has started it from the group up and with this he has created the number one nationals girls team in Cambodia. He works on saving girls from migration work in Thailand, which for the most part means these girls were very close to being trafficked for sex. The main camp is in Battambang the girls range from 11-19 ish and participate in the SALT program and then are placed with various other organizations around Battambang to sleep though some of the girls are legal guardian of the SALT staff. While I would have loved to set something up long term in my village that is most likely not going to happen so instead I opted for a one day soccer empowerment basic skills training for girls I worked with another volunteer Alison who works at an orphanage 10 k away from my house. The camp ended up being more then just girls bc as the camp was going on more people where being drawn in. the best part about this camp it was entirely run by the 17 year old girls national team! I don’t think you can truly understand why this is sooo amazing to me but I will try to explain in a culture that tells girls that there uterus will fall out from playing sports and acting to much like a man will never allow u to get married it really is nothing short of a miracle to see girls rise above it. Having these girls run everything just took down a lot of the walls and nervousness the younger girls were feeling and I really got to see some of them transform. There was one girl from my village I think she is 11 or 12 now she had to drop out of school along time ago and goes around on her bike picking things up at the market and delivering it to sellers so she always came off so serous in part to survive I’m sure but I could just see how much she needed a release. The camp was good it helped show a vested interest girls have in sports when not having to fight for the filed or chance to play most of them wanted another day of camp. Second part of this camp I took my self up 4 hours up north to Battambang where the actual camp is run. The first day the older girls that I first met in my village where not there because it was thought school was starting that day lol im happy to know that its not just me that never can figure out when school starts ends and is on break bc turns out they were off by a week =) anyways this gave me a chance to really get to know the younger girls who were around 11 speaking Khmer helped me a lot to get to know them. Anyway I was able to help a little hear and there but for the most part they have trainer and are pretty well prepared for soccer so be4 lunch they took a break to play games that were not related to soccer. I was able to help this session bc the volunteer who tends to work it was sick anyways we played red rover, Indian chief, and concentration though have to say I had the most fun watching them play concentration bc they all tried really hard not to forget numbers and who was already out at first they thought it was easy until slowly people forgot who was out etc and repeated numbers. After that I kept with there schedule and went to the orphanage and ate lunch with them the house mother I think got a kick out of me sitting on the floor with them speaking khmer she kept asking me if I knew how to eat rice which was the other funny thing how the stored rice for that many girls. I worked in a shelter before so I get having this big size but in America even with lots of people u have to maintain appearance of just like everyone else so the shelter feels more home like. Well the rice is stored in this huge tin thing that u also wash clothes in and they just rip into the rice then they get a bowel of soup to share in a group of about 5. The cool thing about being around them for the day is that they are not scared of me and they also did not put me on some American pedestal bc they were to busy just being kids ex they race for the front seat of the van and not once did anyone ask me if I wanted it when getting rice no one asked me if I wanted it first which I have become so used to it was nice to be on the same level for a day no celebrity status. After lunch they had the choice between dances and drawing class I sat in on the dance class. Seeing soccer players though and though try to take up dancing was really funny anyways watching them in dance class is when it hit me for what ever reason maybe bc they were falling all over them selves and really could tell there child hood and not yet disappeared or been robbed like so many kids but if they were not here with me right now they could be in a brothel in Thailand and that freaked me out. You could tell that at 11 they still don’t get what they escaped or what maybe there parents did on purpose to them instead they had this view of life that anything is possible if you try. Despite everything these are some of the psychological girls I have ever met not really no of them once mentioned my white skin or about wanting to go on a diet and stop eating rice bc there value system had been changed by something as simple as the game of soccer that was there motivation. None of them where stick thin they are just like a top athlete American soccer player I have high hopes that these girls can make the 2016 Olympic soccer team and be the first Cambodian soccer team to be part of the Olympics. The other awesome thing about this camp is it was really well rounded after dance class we went to the top bank in Cambodia where they got to ask question about how to work for a bank and how to open an account stuff about atm cards etc and you can tell they have been in environment to ask question bc none of them felt shy they just kept shooting out ideas. The bank was the first time all day I had to be reminded I was an outsider the guy working for the bank was acting way more concerted with me then he had to like wanting to know if he should speak in eng for me and im like dude this is not for me its for the players. Listening to them ask questions about how they can get money to study in other countries etc was inspiring it gave me hope that they know they have more worth then getting married that they are so much more then a wedding dress. The last part of the day I choose to go to a cooking class that was held at a high-end café the girls made home made banana bread sooo good. That night the country director of Peace Corps Cambodia was in town doing site visit so I sort of invited my self to dinner with the bb volunteers and got to scope around bb which is a really pretty place to see if you ever have the chance to see Cambodia. The next day I went back to the camp except they had another class on relationships which I wanted to see how it was run I tend to like to observe what is taught to kids in Cambodia. I think this is one aspect of the camp I might have not liked okay well in the teacher offense she was a nice lady who meant well its just she missed cultural issues and over emphasis gender behavior. She was trying to get across self confidence and conflict resolution with not just male female relationships but female on female which lead her to this statement that one often hears growing up “girls are better at communication they need to express where boys will just fight with each other and be over it” why this is not good to teach in Cambodia or anywhere it normalizes violence behavior of men to girls. It seems in many area girls are taught that boys cant control anger so they hit so how can a girl know its not okay for a boy to hit her if this is male normal behavior they don’t. she also talked a lot about peer pressure and to not let it bring you down all well and good but she never asked them things that they are up against not to mention she left out about adults who pressure them bc its not just classmate I know my host mom tells my host sister to take weight loss meds and that everyone in my village young and old alike tells me I should use bleach on my skin to get rid of my freckles. I just think her lesson had a very western approach and lacked a chance for them to express what they are going though or culturally what they have faced bc that would teach her something to. Another blunder while its might raise self esteem on a superficial level was we got in pairs (yeah I participated) and had to say what we liked about our selves physically and then something about our partner I was interested in that my partner said she liked her skin I’m sort of used to Khmer girls telling me they hate how black they are but she was happy with it so that was nice. But the down side we are still teaching a value of beauty as it exist is a male dominated system like I said this lady meant well its just sometimes we don’t realize what we are teaching between the lines esp with girls empowerment and gender topics in general. After I did a short health session on hand washing and then got a free ride back to my site from Peace Corps. Until next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!!!

PS THE SOCCER TEAMS NAME IS MIGHTY GIRLS CHECK THEM OUT!