"Damage, Flood" by Tory- A Marvelous Poem from The Anjalj House Writing Project Siem Reap, Cambodia

Master Link to All Project Related Posts

Sue Guiney's Introductory Post  -Project Director - contains important links 

My Overview of the Project

My Q and A with Dana Hui Lim author of Mother and the Tiger- A Memoir of the Killing Fields. - essential background information

Tory, , like all the work shop participants, is just starting to learn English. Unlike European languages, the structure and grammer of the Khmer language does not share Latin roots with English, making it very hard to master. The two languages do not even share a common alphabet and Khmer is written from left to right.

My thanks to Tory (a pen name) for allowing me to publish this very beautiful poem.

"Damage, Flood"

 by Tory

 

The weather is coming

The floods are running to nature

The plants and rice fall down

People do not have much food to eat

or much water to drink

Many people move to different places

They are working for their food.

 

Sometimes they are happy with their jobs

Sometimes sad

because they miss their hometown and family.

 

In three months the flood

leaves their world

The people can come back home

Now they have freedom

They are happy with their life.

 

 

 

Tory, age 17 ( author supplied data)

 

   When I was young, I had a school trip at Anjali House. I went there by bus, there were a lot of people with me. They were all students and teachers. There were two people with me there from my family. The place that I went was Kompong Som. From here to there it was a lot of hours to arrive there. We started at 7 o’clock in the morning, and reached at 7 o’clock in the evening. When I was on the bus I felt carsick but I slept because I had fever.

   There they had many houses and in the night I saw a lot of lights in one house. When I arrived there I felt very tired and wanted to go to bed but before I went to bed I had dinner with friends. After dinner I went to take a shower with my friends and then went to sleep.

   When I woke up I had a breakfast and got in the bus because we had to go swimming in the sea. This was a very long story, but my feeling is that I wanted to tell you  that I was very happy and that there were a lot of interesting things there. I felt I want to go there again and again.

Mel u