Photo comp: Chen Srey Sor, Cambodia
Chen Srey Sor
Award Level:
Gold
Favourite memory of the Award:
The most memorable moment for me is the first day of our journey. It rains since we start to take off our ride and most of us start to lose hope to continue because the rain going to get harder and our baggage also going to get heavier, especially when we have to ride about 22 kilometers we all know it's hard and it's going to be quite a journey ahead of us. and at the time our team had an idea to design and use the wooden stick with the bicycle seat to stabilize the weight of our baggage and the strength of our teammates. We all start smiling after we gain some hope again then some other members tried to crack some jokes to bring up a better environment. We continue to ride our bikes even when we are frigid after that each of our team members started to have cold symptoms and the wind started to get a little strong as well while we tried to ride our bike inverse the wind. I felt very worried and I pray and hope that we going to get through this. My leg starts to get soft after a long ride, and the wind gets stronger and blows me off the bike into the mud. Consider this normal after a long ride under the rain all the way here I barely had any strength left. Even with all of that, we were still having fun we help carried other bags and we look after each other. Furthermore, We always encourage each other which brings us all a warm feeling like we are family. What livelihood and the work of the locals that lived there.
Age:
19
Biggest challenge from doing the Award:
The biggest challenge that our team faced is during the first night after we tented a tent on a mango farm next to the foot of the mountain. There are a lot and a lot of insects that come because of the rains which are kinda scary. also, water began to flood the sleeping tent we immediately moved our baggage in the middle of the night to another safer place. it was very scary for all of us because we never faced anything like this before. And we have to ride our bikes a few times until we completely moved all of our baggage since the farm is a bit further away from local houses. but we still manage to face all the obstacles. On the second day, My team member's bike got a flat tire so we had to escort them over 6 kilometers because it was evening and it gets a little dark already so we couldn't fix it before dark. As for the third day, for the purpose to continue we had to cross the small bridge but to cross our team need to carry the bike to cross the bridge. After that, we still need to carry the bike onto the mountain because of the mountain steps are made out of soil. until we got to the top it was very hard but my team continue and continue how hard the obstacles ahead of us we solved them together to the end it was quite an experience for myself and my team. I learned a lot from these experiences by participating in this event.
Country:
Cambodia
Have you continued any of your Award activities? If so, what:
I will continue this award activity in the gold phase because the program allows me to learn to understand myself, learn to do new things, teach me to be independent on my own, especially to be able to solve not only the problems that am facing. this program also makes me feel happy and meet more new people.
Tell us the story behind your photo:
The story behind my picture is about the silver award activities on the 2nd day of the journey at some lot District. As I remembered this picture of the first day when there was heavy rain until the morning, as a result, Some roads were unable to continue. The mountain road is sticky soil without any bubbles with maybe obstacles there is also uphill downhill which makes us even harder to continue. we have used a lot of strength to ride the bike while lifting heavy baggage. After that, We start to lose our strength. On the other hand, the road is difficult to cross because the road is all muddy after rain. Our team had to spend over half an hour removing the mud from our bikes to continue the road. Meanwhile, some of our members fell and other members tried their best to help and carry the bike out of the mud. More than that most of our members fell ill especially myself because I had a physical illness which makes me easily exhausted the longer I ride under the rain the harder it was for me to breathe, but we still tried our best to continue. We helped each other throughout the ride and we laughed together even though we tried it is full of warmth from the team members.
Award Role:
Participant