Swimming with the Aziza Kids

Last week, we decided to take the younger kids from Aziza swimming (we had taken the older kids in December), hoping it would be a nice break from the school itself and a temporary escape from everything that has happened in the last month. On our visits to Aziza in the days ahead of the adventure, we were regaled by a dozen kids asking if they were among the lucky that actually got to go and when we would actually be going. It was clear that they were very excited by the prospect of an hour or so of swimming.

We showed up at Dey Krahorm mid-afternoon on Sunday. A mass of about twenty kids ranging in age from three to twelve waited under the stairway that leads up into the apartment building. As we approached, we were greeted with big smiles and a loud "Hello Steoo [Khmer pronounciation of Steve meaning "gangster"], Hello Shanti!" Each kid had a small bag complete with swimming attire (i.e. another pair of shorts and a t-shirt that they didn't mind getting wet) and a krama or small towel.

Because there were at least thirty kids to take, we arranged to take two groups of about fifteen. To make sure no one was excluded we tried to ensure that there was a list created by one of the teachers indicating who would go each week. The "list" that we acquired, however, was made with red colored pencils and in the scrawling English handwriting of one of the younger students (she and her sister were at the top of the list which included mostly girls and twenty-one as opposed to fifteen kids). Since they were ready, however, we decided to take the unfairly decided group of kids, assuring those that weren't going that they would definitely come the following week.

The twenty-plus kids, Drew, Amanda (an occasional volunteer), and Ruby (Amanda's dog), piled in to two tuk-tuks. We cringed at how tightly packed in the kids were, yet Shanti, Sofia, and I began the short bike ride to Romdeng. Romdeng is a restaurant operated by Friends International, an organization that helps street children with school and practical job training skills in a variety of fields. Within the last few months the restaurant moved to a beautiful colonial villa complete with a small pool.

We arrived at Romdeng at the same time as the tuk-tuks. Though we had arranged the visit with Romdeng in advance, there was near immediate chaos. The kids streamed in towards the pool. A tour group of middle-aged westerners dining on lunch in the formerly tranquil garden looked on with a mix of horror and amazement. A French couple with three small children in the pool had the look of people about to be run over. We rounded up the kids so we could explain who we were. A few of the staff led us and the kids to the tables they had set up for us.

Within a few minutes, chaos returned. The kids had changed into their swimming gear - some wore jeans and longsleeve shirts both because of modesty and a desire to retain lighter skin while others had Cambodian-style pajama shorts (brightly-colored shorts with a random assortment of patterns) - and jumped into the pool, or at least to the steps at the shallow end of the pool and the landing at the deep end. Few of the kids knew how to swim. We - Shanti, Drew, Graham, Sofia and I - jumped in to the pool, which was as shallow as three feet and as deep as almost six feet. Our task for the afternoon quickly became clear; we spent the next hour and a half shuttling kids from one side of the pool to the other, dunking them under water, trying to teach them how to swim, and watching them crawl along the edge of the pool and splash each other. Drew and Graham, each nearly six and a half feet tall, took on the responsibility of shuttling up to four kids each at a time.

One of the younger girls, with floaties, noisily kicked her way across the small pool, cautiously avoiding the outstretched arms of kids who wanted to give her floaties a try for themselves. The youngest girl, only about three and normally very shy, gleefully splashed around at the deep end landing. She took a liking to Shanti and, after a bit of tutelage, she quickly became one of the better swimmers in the group. One of the boys who is incredibly gentle but had shown some troubling signs since the eviction, came back out of his shell to be the happiest that we had ever seen him.

After over an hour of swimming, splashing, shouting, and shuttling, the kids were starting to get cold. It was late afternoon and the pool was no longer in the hot sun. The kids wrapped themselves in their towels and kramas and slipped into the pump room to change out of their swimming clothes. One of the boys acted as the guard, ensuring no one tried to get into the room while another kid was changing. A separate group of children went to the bathroom to change, leaving their flip flops on the welcome mat outside the door. Another few kids took the fresh coconuts we had gotten them to drink and smashed them open on the tiles by the pool. I couldn't help but smile thinking that few of Romdeng's other patrons put the fresh coconuts to as full a use as they did.

The following weekend, we returned with the other half of the kids. Though a more subdued group, they were very interested to learn how to swim and, of course, they thoroughly enjoyed being shttuled from one end of the pool to the other.

After both trips to Romdeng, an exhausted group of kids and volunteers shuffled out of Romdeng and piled back into the two tuk-tuks. In the year that we've been volunteering at Aziza, these were among the best afternoons we had with the kids. More importantly though, it seemed to be a good and much-needed escape for the kids, many of whose lives have been thrown upside-down in the past month and who rarely have the opportunity to step outside of the cycle between school, home, and Aziza and into an oasis like Romdeng.