The excitement builds more and more with every minute we have to wait. Facebook statuses are filled with “one more sleep!” and “Cambodia tomorrow!” I am sure many of us will not sleep tonight.
I feel like I’m 5 years old again and it’s the night before Christmas. The Christmas Eve tradition of invading your parent’s closets and drawers in the search of hidden presents seems familiar, as we (though with John’s strong advice against this) cannot help but ask the girls from the first trip excessively about their journey. To make me feel less guilty I will blame it on human nature- we always want to know what we do not already know. Though my mind has consistently informed itself that it will not be filled with excess food and Santa’s gifts (it will be receiving a much more startling present this time round to say the least) I still cannot contain this excitement, and at times nervousness, that is swarming through my body.
As I sit here now, it almost seems unreal that we are really leaving tomorrow. The build up to this immersion has been extensive and at times I was never sure we’d ever get there. The most intense part of the preparation so far has easily been the shopping- I was quite disturbed to realise that there was barely one item in my current wardrobe that was appropriate for the trip. I’d hate to see the faces of Cambodians if they had come with me to Manly beach on Tuesday! After a long, tiring day of shopping, I realised I had probably spent enough money to supply 2 Cambodian schools and pay for their each child’s education for a good year. But in my defence, it’s a lose, lose situation- you spend it and feel guilty, or you don’t spend it and offend the entire country… My solution- Target seriously needs to go back to selling $2 t-shirts! We really are way too spoilt here in Australia.
So again I sit here, I look at my reformed wardrobe, my laptop, my phone, my share of the Amazon in school books and I feel extremely hypocritical. I say I want to help people who have nothing, I say I want to make a difference, and I know I WILL make a difference, but yet I am not willing to completely give up what I have. I know that over these 12 days I am not completely giving up the life that makes me so different and so much “better off” than Cambodia’s to international standards, and that I will soon return to my bath and comfy bed. But what is “better off”? Do I have to give up the life that I have here in order to improve the lives of people over there? No, I don’t think you do. Someone once told me that you should never feel guilty for what you have, it is not your fault you have so much and it is not their fault they have so little; but as long as you use the gifts you have been given to benefit others, there is no more that God can ask of you. That advice is going to be something that I keep very close to me as I travel to Cambodia tomorrow. I know I am not super woman, and I will not change the world in these 12 days, probably not even in my lifetime- but that is not what we are trying to do. We are there to experience the lives of these people, to in turn appreciate our own lives, to bring them happiness, joy and fun for these short few days, but most importantly, I strongly believe that this trip will cause us to strive to do even more. After experiencing this extremely different, and sometimes ridiculously difficult way of life, I know that I for one will no longer be content to sleep soundly in my bed every night with the knowledge that people I know and admire could at that moment be struggling or even dying. This shall be the first of many trips for most of us, we will not change the world tomorrow or the day after, but we will eventually- we will all change it together.
- Clodagh.
