PEPY Office Manager, Sela Chham, tells his story about traveling to Siem Reap to pick up 100 donated XO laptops for our computer program.
I had to go to Phnom Penh early one day to pick up the XO computers because I don’t know very well about Phnom Penh. When I arrived, I checked in to the guest house by the river and had a late lunch. I had a map to show me where I could find the DHC Shipping Office where I would pick up the XOs the next day. I asked the moto driver if they knew the place and none of them knew where it was. I told them the road number and moto driver did not know where it was either. He took me around Phnom Penh to find the place. Finally we found it right just two blocks behind my guest house where I stayed.
The next day I when to DHC to pick up the XO computers and set up the truck to bring them to Siem Reap. On the truck, the driver had a crew to help carry the XOs and had to come to Siem Reap with us on the truck. The crew was really nice and he told me about his story that he did not get higher education. He had to drop out of school at grade 5 and moved to work in Phnom Penh as a day laborer. When I told him that we were carrying the computers to Siem Reap for kids to study he was surprised about it. He really wants to learn, he said.
From Phnom Penh the truck was covered with the tarp and it was windy so the truck could not go faster. Then the driver looked up in the sky and the it was very sunny, so he stopped the car and I did not know why. He took off the tarp and told me that the truck will go fast and we would get to Siem Reap earlier and he told me he needed to get back to Phnom Penh on the same day. The few hours was fine and when we got to Siem Reap at about 4 pm it was still sunny. Unfortunately there were a lot of drops of water from the sky when it was sunny and then three of us had to stop the truck and opened the tarp to cover the XOs. It was so quick that we could not prepare in advance and I had to stand under the tarp and hold the xo boxes. We were scared that the computers might get soaked in the rain and luckily we made it. When I got home my wife asked me why my shirt got so dirty as I traveled in the truck. I told her I was under the tarp!