First Day at Work

Friday 2nd November

My first day at work started with meeting Sokwin (my assistant/translator for a month) for breakfast at 7am. There are a few breakfast restaurants in the village and we ordered and ate noodles soup with pork meat and an iced coffee with milk. It is really important to ask for pork meat, as if just pork is asked for, you could find any part of the pig in your bowl! I do want to do things the Khmer way whenever possible but eating pig’s intestines for breakfast is where I draw the line! The coffee is gorgeous though! Milk isn’t easy to come by here and canned condensed milk is used because it’s so much easer to keep. My Deputy Director met us – I think it’s where he eats breakfast most mornings – and explained that he knew I had arrived yesterday but didn’t come and welcome me because he can’t speak English!

Started work at 7.30am and in the District Education Office I was shown to my desk and given the opportunity to meet the staff working in the office. We also had a meeting with a committee in charge of implementing the Child Friendly Schools initiative which I will have a lot to do with during my time here.

I really need to get used to the whole language and translation thing. If I ask a question, Sokwin then asks it and sometimes has to ask me another question to check his own understanding of what I mean, then he asks the question in Khmer, then the answer is given in Khmer, Sokwin has to understand what is being said and then work out how to say it back to me in English. He works so hard – what a tough job! I must admit though – sometimes this process takes so long that I am stifling yawns by the time the answer gets back to me in a form I understand. Sometimes, I have even forgotten what my original question was, or lost interest! It’s tough but I’m sure I will get used to it and hope that my own Khmer will improve so that I can follow conversations a little more as well. Sadly, Sokwin can’t take the job as my translator after the end of November so I have to interview for a new one next week. It’s such a shame as he is really experienced in the project I’ll be working on and is a really nice guy. Oh well, hopefully I’ll find another just as good and we’ll learn together.

Lunch time is from 11am till 2pm (the hottest part of the day) which is just enough time to get to the market, cook some food, have a kip and a shower and get back to work. Of course, I didn’t do all those things but that’s the theory! The afternoon at work is then from 2pm till 5pm, then there’s about an hour before it goes dark and bedtime is about 8 or 9 o’clock! We have made a plan for the remainder of the month so as well as interviewing a new translator/assistant, I will be visiting lots of schools and trying to get some idea of how schools in Cambodia work.