7 March 2025
Raksmy Sopheak
Raksmy was among a quartet of strong women who stuck together for their English courses starting 12 years ago. She was a math major, like me, and even when she moved on from RUPP to split her time between IFL and work, she continued to study with me--on the sly.
We've kept in touch and now Raskmy, my former student, is a colleague. In this photo, Raksmy co-teaches a critical thinking training course and her former teacher proudly looks on. Teachers love to hear about the successes of their students. And, indeed, this teacher loves to hear when her former students have become teachers themselves.
Returning to the village causes mixed emotions for Raksmy Sopheak--the peacefulness of Cambodia's countryside and the disappointment witnessing the havoc wreaked by migration of parents, school dropouts, and drugs and alcohol abuse. She recognizes that she escaped this fate through the small kindnesses of people she met along her life path, in the village and beyond, as well as her own determination to create a better life for herself and her family.
Ms. Sopheak's success at the premier institute for language study, Institute for Foreign Language (IFL), lead to a career at the country's premier private school for learning the English language, Australian Centre for Education (ACE). Nowadays she is a senior teacher who, in fact, advises first-language English speakers who have a lot to learn from her!
Through her work and sacrifice, Ms. Sopheak has brought one sibling, then the other, then another, and finally her parents to Phnom Penh where they too have more opportunities, including educational and financial ones.
As the oldest daughter, the burden placed on her shoulders is much greater than the men in her family. She experiences what so many Cambodians do--the somatization of stress which adds to one's challenges. She weathers this without complaint, as do so many Cambodian women who balance many responsibilities.
These days Ms. Sopheak presses on, now encouraging her youngest sister who also pursues a degree at IFL and the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC). Raksmy recognizes the power of learning the English language and how it opens doors to opportunities otherwise closed. She herself seeks to continue her studies abroad, a desire she balances with the realities of supporting family members who too have their own dreams.
Ms. Sopheak exemplifies the power of Cambodian women who are charged with many responsibilities and who, through their own perseverance, help others pursue their goals while moving forward to realize her own.
A special tribute for
Since coming to the Kingdom, I have witnessed the lives of Cambodian women - the women who faithfully walk to the wat every ស៊ុល day, the ones who serve soup from dawn to dusk, the ones who ride bicycles to the university where they've earned a scholarship, the ones whose baby they hold with one arm and tend the rice with the other, and the ones who drive their motorbikes to offices to do jobs they've fought to earn. For so many, their lives are hard, harder than most.
This is why this year I have chosen to write about a few of these women who I have been honored to know in my time here. Colleagues and friends. Students who I have been fortunate enough to keep tabs on. These are just a few stories of inspiring people. I hope you too will write your own. And maybe be an inspiration for someone else.
"Stories of Women in Cambodia" is a special project hosted within the Sharing and Listening, Cambodia 1975-1979 website, a website I created some time ago to host my students' interviews with their elders about their lives during the Khmer Rouge time.