Our day started at 7am, with the same delicious buffet breakfast as yesterday. We then moved into our briefing, where Sonya gave us a run-down of what the day would entail. She told us how to interact with the children, protocols for building and the journey to the site at Ta Skor village. When we crossed the river, we drove past the slums and were shocked by the stark contrast between the developed, modern skyscrapers on the other side of the river and the houses that were practically falling apart here. While we drove, we saw other RAW projects, namely iBlock – the first houses built by the RAW teams. When we arrived at Phase 2 (the new building site we would be building on), we met Pete and Li (the foremen), the Khmer builders and the family we would be building the house for. The family would be helping us to build their house and a community toilet block. We were then divided into five groups, each led by a Khmer builder, many of whom are the fathers of families living in previously built RAW houses. The groups were; the roof, the walls, the floor, the house posts and door and the toilet block. At first, it was tough to communicate with our build leaders, as many of them spoke no English but were still trying to show us what to do. It got easier as we moved through the day and as we traded a few English words with our builders, they taught us Khmer in turn. We soon got the hang of our tools and building projects. For lunch, we walked over to Phase 1 (RAW’s complete section of 20 houses) and ate a delicious buffet of Cambodian food prepared by the mothers in the houses. It was all amazing and tasted better knowing that it came from a place of love from the families we were working with. We were then met with the kids of the village who were always smiling and laughing and couldn’t wait to play with us. After another afternoon stint of building, we returned to our hotel to wash off all the dirt and sweat from the day!

By Jess and Sophie