One Of My Proudest Moments as a YEP Leader

Painting the staff room

Mural I

Mural II

We do not speak the Khmer language and all our communications with the local are through translators. Based on my understanding, our painting job required us to clean, paint and then draw the murals for 1 staff room and 2 classrooms. The room size is quite standard except that the ceiling is very high, about the height of 2 HDB flats. We started cleaning the staff room which is packed full of stuff. It took a lot of time and effort just to move the things to create space for painting. The PSI in the room probably shot through the sky when we were cleaning the room. I am very grateful that the students persevered the hardship. It took us almost one whole day just to get the staff room ready for painting.
Unlike other YEP that I have been to, our Cambodian host made sure that there were sufficient tools to keep us purposefully occupied. No ‘eye power’ here. It took us just one morning to complete painting the room white. After lunch, we started drawing the mural. In the late afternoon, the school principal dropped by and told us that it is a staff room and there is no need for a mural. My jaw dropped …
 I could see the pain and frustration on the students’ face when they came to know about it. I was very glad that they did not kick up a big fuss. They just pressed on. We re-painted the staff room white and proceed to work on a classroom which is much more straightforward in terms of the furniture layout. The local children helped by moving the furniture outside the classroom. We were also getting better at our job; our painting skill improves and we know where the things are.
However, we had yet another unpleasant surprise the next morning. After seeing our yet-to-be complete mural, the principal told us that she had wanted something different. She showed us another classroom with a mural done by another group. That mural illustrates the concepts of regular shapes of square and rectangle. This time round, we had already done quite a fair bit of the mural. I just could not bear the idea of erasing it. This is bad for the team morale. To appease her, we offered to modify our concept by adding regular shapes to our mural. She relented after we showed her our modified draft.
Towards that late afternoon, the principal came by again. As she looked at the mural, she kept smiling and talking excitedly to some local children who happened to be there, I could see that she was very pleased with the mural. The next day, she asked, through the interpreter, that if we could draw a similar mural for her staff room! I have no qualm about it but I needed my team to agree as well. I could not do it alone. Guess what? They also agreed heartily. This got to be one of my proudest moments as a YEP leader.