1-3 Sep 2020
Ride with Mordecai, Manoj, Aditiya, Curtis, Mordecai’s national partner and 2 Khmer youth
Manoj, Aditiya and myself left Phnom Penh early in the morning on September 1, 2020 to avoid traDic and we met up with Mordecai, Curtis and his two young khmer students at the Tela station in Kampong Thma. Once we met up, we then headed out to Santuk, Kampong Thom to stop and meet up with Mordecai’s long time national partner and have a small medical clinic for the folks in that village and eat some frogs. We then headed out to Kbal Domrai to visit with the pastor there and spend the night.
In Kbal Domrai there was a fairly large building used by the small group worshipping there. It was used for meetings, housing guests and other gatherings and we used it to spend the night before we launched into the jungle the following day. This campus was sponsored by a Christian denomination in a neighboring country. The pastor talked about how much he dreaded when his sponsors would come to visit as they had high expectations for rapid growth in the congregation and rapid reproduction of new groups but those things were not happening. The group had actually shrunk to a handful of believers in that village and the pastor felt the shame of the disappointment of the sponsors. The benefactors expressed concern that they were not getting much for their money and this pastor just wanted to shut the whole thing down so that he would no longer have to be accountable to his sponsors. The pastor wanted to revert back to just have meetings at his house, like he did when he first started in this village, as this would allow his sponsors have their building back. We prayed with him that God would bless the faithful followers of Christ in this village and that God would accomplish all that he would in Kbal Domrai.
The next morning the roads were very muddy from rain earlier in the week, but we pressed on and stopped at the police checkpoint to visit with the soldiers and restock some of their medications. Soon after we left this checkpoint the gear shifter on Aditiya’s bike broke oD so a group of three went back and got the lever welded back in place. Soon after we started rolling again but kept having breakdowns and crashes that really slowed our progress down. For two young men that came with Curtis, this was their first time to ride a moto ever, much less navigating the water traps and mud holes. This duo was motodoping each other along the jungle trails and they crashed their Daelim multiple times throughout the day. Many of these spills involved the tailpipe going under the water as well. This made it diDicult to get the engine running again on this small chicken chaser. Since they hadn’t ridden a moto very much, it was very diDicult for these guys to kick the bike back to life again. After the moto had been rescued from the clutches of the mud hole, they would do their best to get the engine running, however most of the time Curtis or one of the other more experienced riders would oDer to kick it back to life. The bike would stall often due to the diDicult terrain and water in the system. Every time the engine stop it would take the eDorts of several people to navigate the obstacle and get rolling again.
We continued our circuit to make the normal rounds of visiting with people in Klien Poa, Oyee Oh, and Japon villages. As we made these stops, the people at each location were so very appreciative for us to make the eDort to reach them with the jungle being flooded and the overall diDiculty of travel. We would limp into each village and ask if anyone could help us get our bikes back in working order. We also had to tow incapacitated motos as sometimes we could not get them started along the trail. A few of our diDiculties: Daelim footpeg and kickstand broke oD (welded back), Daelim drowns and we tow it to next village, Daelim spark plug cable repair, Adi drowns XR, extended tow/crash to get XR going again, multiple puddle crashes.
Each stop we made Mordecai would be seeing sick patients to treat and the rest of us would be doing what we could to get the moto’s back to running again. This made for extremely slow progress on our village visits and was extremely exhausting. On and oD the bikes, kicking the bikes to start them, towing, pulling out of the mud, collecting broken parts, draining water out of the engine and tailpipe, spark plug issues, etc…. We finally did get some lunch at about 5 pm and were very appreciative for the ramen noodles as the day had been one full of just trying to make it to the next checkpoint and everyone was exhausted physically and emotionally.
We still had a couple of more hours to make it to the village where we were planning to spend the night. We rolled into there about 8 pm in the dark and it had been raining on and oD throughout the day. All riders were wet with rain and sweat from towing, moto mud/water rescues and kicking bikes to keep them running to the next stop. The family in this village weren’t fully aware that our group would be there that night, but they did their best to accommodate with food and dry spots to sleep. When the food was finally ready, the two young men who were riding in the jungle for the first time, were so hungry that they each ate several full bowls of rice. There was not much chicken or vegetables for that meal but they got their fill of rice and seemed very happy and content to go to bed right after supper as we all were drained physically.
The rain steadily increased with intensity throughout the night. A very hard and unrelenting rain. Several people had to move to find a dry spot in the middle of the night. The rain was so hard that I didn’t even hear the young men that had engorged themselves with all the rice get up and puke all that they had scarfed down a couple of hours previously. They had been up and down several times during the night to vomit and then tried to get cleaned up and go back to sleep. The next morning the rain had stopped but this adventure had taken a toll on these newbies. They were exhausted from fighting to keep their moto going throughout the previous day, not much to eat, when they did eat it all came back up and now not much sleep from being sick, wet and uncomfortable. They did manage to keep a little rice down that morning in hopes they would have enough energy to make the trip out of the flooded jungle.
The father of this family was a very interesting man. He enjoyed being out away from everyone and he had learned that he could make a living from what he could harvest from the jungle. He told me that he was Vietcong and could speak Vietnamese and his wife was Khmer so they settled in that village on the border of Kampong Thom and Kratie. He had graduated from a University in Vietnam and we had a chance to talk for a bit. I talked about God and who he was and my new friend listened politely. Curtis had a solar micro-SD card player that had several Bible stories and other resources which the father gladly received. He is someone that would be great to follow-up with on future trips as he seemed open to talk about spiritual things
The ride out of the jungle was uneventful. We made it back to Kbal Domrai and got something to eat. Manoj and Adi had to take oD to make a meeting time and Mordecai was rushing away to catch a bus to Siem Reap. I left Kbal Domrai after these guys and as I was on my way to Kampong Thma I notice Mordecai is broken down on the side of the road. His bike had given out, so I hooked him up and gave one final tow to get his Daelim to the bus station 15 km down the road so that he could pack it on the bus to get it home to Siem Reap.
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