Embracing A Greater Goal
Somewhere Over the Pacific Ocean. Back in October, when I received this distress message from Ngim Sobun, the director of the Grady Grossman School, I faced a dilemma.
“The natural resource in Aural area is unable to protect because of the
uneducated people whose have never received the education before. They cut down the trees to sell for exchanging rice and some for money. They don’t think about the future consequence for the children. Before they just cut down the best timber for the houses and for the furniture and this year they cut all kind of the trees even though they are saplings for the charcoal and wood sticks for cooking everyday. Each day they are destroying thousand trees and hunting the wild animals without any authority stops them in this action.”
I knew our forest community was in trouble but what could I do from half the world away? I had my own problems to deal with. I had received an offer from a prominent publisher to publish Bones That Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia. But the deal offered a pittance to me and nothing to our school. What’s a mother to do? The aspiring writer just sighed “what a pity,” wishing to pursue my own dreams, but the mom in me could not accept defeat. If we want the world to change, we have to change ourselves, right? It seemed my moment of truth had come. I turned down the publisher to embrace a greater goal, devote my book to my 485 kids who don’t live with me and allow it to fund both education and conservation projects at our school.
On the very same day of the school director’s message I received a call from my friend, Faith Carvalhaes, and as I was explaining my troubles, she mentioned the work of her husband Andre, a biologist from Brazil, with expertise in sustainable land-use systems. An idea was hatched.
So that’s how I come to find myself in a Taiwanese airplane, sitting beside Andre, on our last connection to Phnom Penh, having been awake and in the airport system for more than 30 hours. Our brains still in transit over the Pacific ocean, we are trying to digest the details of 4 fifty-page manuals for building and operating a hand-made, organic-matter charcoal press. I only downloaded the manuals from the Legacy Foundation 6 hours before leaving the USA.
It’s been a high speed ripple effect of connections emanating from that decision to devote my creative work to my education mission. In November, my friends Jim Mitchell and Jill Hunter had visited the school on an off-the-beaten path side trip from their South East Asian vacation and came back with a report of so many students and so little space to educate them now that the school has become popular with local villagers. Jim told me the time he spent with the children and teachers at the Grady Grossman School was one of the most touching moments of his life. I know what he means, I’ve been coming back for 6 years.
Jim was so moved by the experience, he invited me to give a presentation to his daughter’s fourth grade class at the Wilson Elementry School. The teacher, Libby Wood, linked us to the idea of the organic matter charcoal presses that her father-in-law is working with in Kenya.
We have been studying the manuals the whole way and Andre is very excited about the possibilities. He reads the manuals to get psyched up and then turns back to the other reading material I handed him in the Denver airport, a human rights report by Global Witness entitled Institutionalized Corruption and Illegal Logging in the Aural Wildlife Sanctuary. Our school is in the Aural Wildlife Sanctuary.
Andre’s vision for the Abundant Forest Enterprise is to help local forest communities establish a sustainable land-use system with techniques that reduce the impact over the forest and increase their quality of life, allowing land users to produce food, fuel and regenerate the forest, while reducing the pressures on the mature forest. Income alternatives and environmental education develop the co-existence of economic growth and conservation. Chrauk Tiek village, where the Grady Grossman School is the only permanent building, will be the epicenter of his pilot project. Perhaps it will start with a forest science class regarding decomposition and charcoal briquette making.
The greater goal is unfolding before my eyes. The series of events that led to this moment prove that change comes through people and the process of networking and relationship building. That’s why we must continue toward American Assistance for Cambodia’s goal to leap frog the digital divide by installing an internet computer hub. With more people connected to the villagers at Chrauk Tiek, we can provide a witness to the forest, e-learning opportunities to the children, and economic hope to their families
Looking out the airplane window, we are descending over the Mekong Delta, aiming for the steamy runway of Pochentong International Airport. Soon we will disembark into the emotional cauldron that is Cambodia. We have a meeting with Community Forestry International, Flora and Fauna International, and Lutheran World Federation in 3 hours.
Please support our work by ordering Bones That Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia, and pass out the 10 postcards that come with your hardcover copy.
Be the change.
Spread the word.
