Students appreciate home after summer Cambodia trip
courtesy photo
Courtney Perry, left, and Nichole Rang, right, pause for a photograph in front of a temple in Cambodia.
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Camaleigh Old Coyote poses with Cambodian children.
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Camaleigh Old Coyote stands in front of a temple in Cambodia.
courtesy photo
Camaleigh Old Coyote
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Nichole Rang
Nichole Rang and Courtney Perry
Megan Strickland
Nichole Rang, Courtney Perry and Louis Bunce
Megan Strickland
Courtney Perry
Megan Strickland
Louis Bunce
Megan Strickland
Camaleigh Old Coyote
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ARLEE — Four Lake County teenagers have newfound appreciation for the little things, after spending a month abroad in Cambodia this summer.
“Even though I liked Cambodia, I’ve never been more in love with the U.S. in my entire life,” Arlee senior Louis Bunce said. “Here you don’t really appreciate being able to eat ice at a restaurant or how easy it is to get things. I have quite an appreciation for showers and clean water now. “
Camaleigh Old Coyote, a St. Ignatius junior, said she doesn’t take a number of things for granted anymore.
“The trip was life-changing,” Old Coyote said. “Just with the appreciation of everything, like your parents. When you’re away you miss them and the little things. You miss home, waking up and seeing the mountains … and it’s clean here. You know there’s litter every now and then, but really it’s beautiful. When you go to a developing third world country there’s garbage everywhere to the point that the smell can be very overwhelming.”
Bunce, Old Coyote, and Arlee seniors Nichole Rang and Courtney Perry were part of the American Youth Leadership Program administered by the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana and sponsored by the U.S. State Department. For three weeks 20 students abandoned their electronic devices, limited communication with their family back home to a phone call per week, and cast their attention on absorbing the culture and history of the developing nation.
During the trip students saw parts of the country that go without clean water and well-developed transport systems.
“Some bicycles had five people on them,” Bunce said.
The effects of the Khmer Rogue’s reign and subsequent genocide in the late 1970s are still evident in the country, Bunce said.
“The Khmer Rouge killed all the intellectuals, so people like doctors, reporters, teachers — anyone with an education — was killed. There are people who remember that, who lost their parents,” Bunce said.
It’s been decades since the genocide, but Cambodians don’t have as many rights and freedoms as Americans.
“It was the first time they had had an election in a long time,” Old Coyote said. “It was this really big thing. There was a ton of political ads ... It’s very different than in the U.S. When people ask you who you vote for, if you say the wrong thing you can get in trouble for it. You can get fired. Your friends won’t talk to you. You really have to watch yourself.”
The people of Cambodia thrive in spite of the conditions.
“You find the nicest people you will ever meet at places like the street vendors,” Bunce said.
The food dispensed by the vendors is not something the students miss.
“We had 90 meals of rice,” Perry said. “We were so tired of rice.”
The students said the trip has made them consider traveling more and pursuing humanitarian causes.
“I’ve become more aware about what’s happening in the environment,” Perry said. “I’ve been thinking the Peace Corps may be something I would like to do.”
Old Coyote wants to become an ambassador and said meeting the U.S. ambassador while in Cambodia cemented her goal of going into foreign service.
Rang wants to be a surgeon.
Bunce is undecided about what he wants to do after graduation.
“I definitely know I want to travel,” he said. “I still want to see the world.”
