Meet Lisa

I am Lisa. I come out to the hills and fields almost every day after school finishes. It’s beautiful out here. I’ve travelled to other places in Cambodia, to Kampong Speu and Kampong Cham, but I will always love Ratanakiri most. This is my homeland, and nowhere else is as fresh or has mountains like this.

I like to farm. I feel like I am part of the traditions of the Tampaun people and I am also happy to help my family, because if I bring back vegetables they don’t need to pay for them. I’m proud to be Tampaun and actually I feel like we are accepted well by other Cambodians. I enjoy school because lots of different people are there, including rich and poor. I like to study the Khmer language and social studies.

I do worry about the future sometimes. My mother and my step father work on our farm, we have a little bit of land, but my mother has had problems with her legs for the last two years. She’s in pain every time she walks and her legs are getting worse. If she can’t farm any more, then maybe I will have to leave school to start to earn money. But my mother says I shouldn’t think like this. She always wants me to study hard and doesn’t like it if I play on a phone. She wants me to be as well educated as my uncle Vicheka, he’s a teacher at my school. I am always in the top three in my class, but not because of him!

My father died in a traffic accident when I was three years old. There are a lot of traffic accidents in Ratanakiri. So my plan if possible is to study in Stung Treng. And then I would like to become a nurse and also a pharmacist. I want to help people who have had accidents or emergencies. People don’t get help fast enough here, so I think I could make the world better. I would also like to make it cheap for poor people like my mother to get medicine so they can get better and not worry so much. What’s important is helping people, saving lives.