Church-Built Village School Helps Integrate Vietnamese Community

Posted: 24th September 2007

DAEUM KOR, (UCAN) -- Guests from neighboring villages and beyond came on Sept. 9 to Daeum Kor, a quiet village where all but a few families are ethnic Vietnamese.

Cambodians of Vietnamese decent as well as ethnic-majority Khmer were there to celebrate the opening of Daeum Kor's first school, built on a Catholic initiative and largely with Church funds. The village in Prey Veng province is about 70 kilometers southeast of Phnom Penh.

Chun Khemara, head teacher of the three-room facility, told the guests that the new school "will play an important role in strengthening friendship and fraternal relations between the Khmer and Vietnamese communities."

"For this reason, we call it the school of friendship, Veronica School," the Khmer Buddhist teacher told UCA News. Buddhism and Christianity share "common roots of love and compassion," she added. Tradition identifies Veronica as the name of the woman who wiped Jesus' face as he carried the cross.

Similarly, Father Omer Giraldo, head of the Veronica School committee, told UCA News that the story of Veronica reflects the Buddhist attitude of compassion and solidarity with those who suffer.

All but seven of Daeum Kor's 51 families are Vietnamese. The other seven are Khmer. Father Giraldo said children of both communities as well as children of a neighboring village of 23 Vietnamese families would attend the new school.

The priest, a member of Yarumal Mission Society, which is based in Colombia, his native country, added that having the school in the village will encourage local people to send their children to study. The nearest public school had been three kilometers away, across a heavily trafficked main road.

"But the new school's greatest advantage is that it will allow Vietnamese children to deepen their knowledge of the Khmer language," said the missioner, who came to Cambodia a decade ago. "They can then attend Khmer public schools with more success and thus integrate more easily into Cambodian society."

According to Father Giraldo, who leads the Catholic community in nearby Neak Loeung village, Vietnamese children drop out of public school due to their poor command of Khmer, and almost all face discrimination and get discouraged.

Veronica School, he explained, offers kindergarten lessons in the morning and Khmer language lessons in the afternoon, "and we have agreed with the principal of the nearest government school that children can study there after one or two years of preparation in Khmer language here."

Since the school also offers Vietnamese language lessons, he added, the Vietnamese children "will also learn to master their own native language."

Khorn Samoun, a Vietnamese boy born in Daeum Kor 10 years ago, told UCA News at the ceremony: "I'm very happy to be here. I want to study my own Vietnamese language but also Khmer, so I can go to a Khmer public school later."

Samoun's family has lived in Cambodia for several generations. But in the early 1970's, during the Vietnam War, thousands of Vietnamese fled the country to avoid being targeted as Vietnamese communists by American, South Vietnamese or other anti-communist forces.

Many of the Vietnamese families returned to Cambodia after Vietnam invaded in 1978 and drove out the radical Khmer Rouge government that had come to power in 1975. Apart from these recent developments, Khmer and Vietnamese peoples have a long history of cultural and political conflicts.

At Veronica School's inaugural ceremony, Father Giraldo presided, joined by some Singaporean Catholics who funded 80 percent of the US$10,500 cost of construction. Buddhist monks chanted hymns and sprinkled flowers on the school building. Others who also attended the ceremony were local and provincial officials, teachers of other government schools in the area and the small Catholic communities of Neak Loeung and Daeum Kor.

Ki Morn, a 56-year-old Daeum Kor villager, told UCA News she is glad the village now has a school. "We do not have enough money to send our children to public schools that are far away from our village," the Vietnamese woman said.

According to Father Giraldo, though Veronica School is a public school built on government land, Catholic Church leaders in Cambodia and other donors have agreed to fund teachers' salaries for the time being.

Article Source: UCAN