Road Trip

A few weeks ago Soroth (my translator and assistant extraordinaire!) was in a particularly whimsical mood and wondered if I would ever meet his family who live in Oddar Meanchey province, to the north of Phnom Srok. He happened to wonder this out loud within my earshot so I suggested that we take a Road Trip with our motos one weekend and visit them. He loved the idea and a weekend was booked – this one!

The trip started off very successfully with a 3 hour moto ride through Phnom Srok district countryside and into Oddar Meanchey province. Soroth decided to take me on the scenic route which meant a bit of cross country, driving over very bumpy roads, motoring down dried up mud churned tracks which required 1st gear and a keen eye for the best bit of track to attempt, navigating around and through herds of cattle which don’t always respond to the moto’s horn and taking shoes and socks off to wade through small rivers while he slid both motos (one at a time) through the water. It was great fun!

We arrived at Oddar Meanchey happy but very tired and it was lovely to meet his family members and eat with them. His mother asked me a list of all the Khmer food I could eat which luckily for her is pretty much anything apart from Baby Ducks and any part of a cow/pig’s digestive system! Sadly, I was not destined to eat much of her wonderful cooking at all. On Saturday morning I woke up with stomach cramps and the worst diarrhoea since I ate dodgy KFC in Wandsworth 2 years ago and soiled my bed. I mean, one can and should expect an increased amount of loose bowel movement in this part of the world but this was something else. Without giving too much detail (although if you want colour and consistency reports, I’ll be happy to email!) it was a horrible experience to have, not least because I was a guest in a relative stranger’s house and using an Asian loo and no toilet paper! My temperature was quite high for about 12 hours and thoughts flashed through my brain such as...

‘What was the quickest way to get to Phnom Penh?’

‘Would VSO send an air ambulance for me?’

‘Would I die here?’

‘Who would tell my mum?’

With frequent trips to the toilet throughout the day and following night, I quickly lost all pride and dignity (if I had any to start with!) and felt totally awful for my hosts as I couldn’t eat a single thing put before me. After each of my liquid deposits in the far from soundproof bathroom, I would return to the foetal position in a pool of sweat in my bed and compose ‘Goodbye letters’ in my head till I drifted off to sleep again.

And oh, how they tried to get me to eat! As fast as my entire body was rejecting food, Soroth and his mother were busy trying to persuade me to eat something! I stopped counting how many times I apologised to them as they had gone to so much trouble for me, but I was overwhelmingly pleased to be on the moto driving home again, buttocks clenched, on Sunday afternoon. Soroth graciously chose a more direct route back to Phnom Srok to avoid too many bumpy bits of road. There were still herds of cattle to negotiate the dirt roads with and the small river we had waded through days earlier had at least doubled in size which meant we had to drive our motos onto a bamboo boat and pay a toll in order to cross. I would’ve taken photos if I’d thought about it. It was amazing to see how much the river had swollen and how quickly the locals cash in on it, but to be honest snapping photos was the last thing on my mind and except in crossing the river we didn’t stop the whole way home!

Doin' it for the Kids!

You may recall the local English classes that I had developed a habit of ambushing in the evenings near my house in Phnom Srok. The extremely kind Director of Phnom Srok High School would faithfully teach about 3 English classes ‘out of hours’ in a make-shift classroom underneath his home. I absolutely loved joining the class on occasion and really enjoyed speaking with the children both in the class and when I happened to bump into them around the village. So, I was really sad to find out that Mr Savat, the director, had become very ill and unable to teach the classes and I must admit it crossed my mind what the kids would do every evening and whether the English class would continue.

Well, this thought had also crossed some of the students’ minds and it wasn’t long before two of the boys approached me near my home in Phnom Srok to explain their plight and ask whether I could teach them English. They needed to learn ‘English for Cambodia, Book 3’. To cut a long story short I agreed to teach them each evening between 6 and 7pm if and when I was in the district. Ergo, in my spare time, I have become an English teacher...

...and I love it! I have so missed being in front of an audience, erm... I mean class! Despite the fact that they are yet to fully understand my jokes without a lot of sign language, I really enjoy spending time with a lovely bunch of kids who want to learn. It’s great! It’s also helping my Khmer out immensely!

It has amused me how I find myself comparing this class with those I have taught in Hammersmith in London and amazing how the same characters appear despite the stark differences, culturally, socially, economically, and so on... There are a few cocky-but-cute boys who are quite bright and quickly becoming my favourites (not that a good teacher has favourites of course... pah!), there is a smart-alec girl who continually and rather annoyingly calls out all the answers before any one else has had the chance to process the question (I admit the main reason she annoys me is the fact that she reminds me of myself!) and then there are a few painfully quiet children who wouldn’t say boo to a goose and who subserviently plough away at the tasks with such a beautiful dedication and meticulous attention to neatness that they don’t quite seem real (ok, I didn’t come across so many of them in Hammersmith now I come to think about it).

They range from Year 3 to Year 9 and 9 years old to 17 years old so they’re quite a mixed bag! What has become very apparent is the fact that they are so used to one (and only one) method of being taught. They are all pretty bright but are used to reading aloud, learning by rote and basically being told the answers. Their idea of learning is memorising textbooks from which, I have discovered, they copy answers that the previous owner scribbled in the gaps at some point. I couldn’t believe it when I asked what they had learnt yesterday at the start of my second lesson; the kids all opened their books and started reading the text to me! Unbelievable! But not unusual; I have observed children in primary and high schools being taught purely from textbooks (minus the sense of humour), taught to memorize and copy, and I firmly believe the whole nation are basically being encouraged, if not taught, not to think for themselves!

Despite being involved in the District Education Office and schools in the district for the past 7 months or so, I have learnt so much more from actually teaching a mixed bag of local kids just a couple of times! I feel quite some sense of responsibility too as the kids have made it quite clear they want to learn Book 3. I, on the other hand, would much rather teach them to sing ‘Head, shoulders, knees, and toes’ (which I have done by the way – with actions!) and play fun learning games. I’m hoping we can meet half way! I remember being presented with small gifts and pictures by my students in London and Phnom Srok is no different. The kids present me with at least one bottle of water per lesson, I have got beautiful kids' drawings stuck to what passes as a blackboard and one parent rather generously gave me a bag of cooked silk worms as a 'thank you' for teaching her child. Yummy!! As word gets round, the class has rapidly grown each day from 7 students to 17 so the problem will come when I have to start turning kids away!

P.S. Any ideas of songs or games to help teach the wonderful English language would be very welcome indeed!

Bangkok

Where Phnom Penh is dirty, Bangkok is clean. Where Phnom Penh is manic and hectic, Bangkok is busy but organised. Where Phnom Penh follows no rules, Bangkok has rules and follows them. Where Phnom Penh has few open green spaces, Bangkok has parks! Where Phnom Penh is full of people smiling but ready to rip you off given half a chance, Bangkok is full of people smiling but ready to direct you where you want to go or offer their opinion on what sights you should bother seeing or not, given half the chance. I don’t wish to sound negative in regards to Phnom Penh – in truth, I love it! but Bangkok was a very different city and was reflected where Phnom Penh is cheap, Bangkok is expensive.

And Bangkok had pink taxis!


I like Bangkok a lot, and the rumours were true, it took us about the same time to get there as the journey from Sisaphon to Phnom Penh, which is good to know whenever the need to escape to a big city arises.

Corine and I managed to disguise ourselves as hippy travellers for a few days, walked around a lot (we were on a tight tight budget and walking is cheap), saw some sights, found a park, went to the cinema (what a treat!!!), visited a flower market and ate from street stalls. We also spent time discussing the ups and downs of working for a development NGO in Cambodia over a few beers.

Back to the Grindstone

After being away from my district for about a month in total I had mixed feelings about heading back there. I experienced that old Sunday afternoon feeling after a really good weekend or holiday where the thought of setting your alarm clock for 6 o’clock in the morning and actually having to get up and work for your living fills you with dread and creates a rather bad mood which repels people on sight. Well, that was somewhere close to how I was feeling although at the same time, kind of looking forward to being back ‘home’!

When I arrived in Phnom Srok, there was good and bad...

The good included being back in my own bed. Over the past month I had managed to sleep in 7 different beds with 5 different room mates so being back in my own bed, despite the heat and uncomfortable Anna-shaped dent in the sponge mattress, I had the best night’s sleep I’d had for a while. It was also good to be back as Phnom Srok was full of smiles for me. People seemed to have missed me and it was great to walk down the road and have familiar faces smiling back at me! Also, there have been some home-improvements made in my absence which are very welcome. The kitchen sink has a new tap attached so that the water comes out in a stream rather than a trickle, my bedroom ceiling fan has been fixed and the dead bat corpse, which had been trapped between the window panes and starting to rot and subsequently smell, has been removed! Oh joy!

The bad included having to set my alarm for some earlier-than-natural time in the morning and having to go buy ice so that I could create one small cold space to keep water chilled. It is so hot! The baby downstairs, now about 6 months old, doesn’t recognise me after my long absence from his short life and one of the dogs was run over and killed. I half expected the dog to have died of starvation as it was literally skin and bones and just didn’t get fed despite my many comments to point this out to the family. It’s clearly survival of the fittest, a dog-eat-dog world! The poor thing was probably too weak to move out of the way of the traffic or had decided to put itself out of its own misery and commit suicide. The photo of said dog was taken months ago and does not show she at her worst... RIP!

My week back at work was full on to say the least. It was a highly productive week but not without its frustrations. I took a small group of my colleagues to visit some Child-Friendly schools in another district in the province so that they can plan their own Study-Tour there with teacher and school directors at the end of the month. We also had numerous meetings and some school visits in order to follow up the ETL training given at the beginning of April. All good stuff and it is my Khmer colleagues who are leading me rather than the other way round which is great (but quite tiring!). Despite Soroth being an excellent and very hard-working translator, there can still be difficulties in communication and this week I have found it particularly hard. Perhaps because I’ve been out of practice for a while, or perhaps because it has been an unusually busy week packed with one thing after another, I don’t know. I have been very gently reminded by Soroth that it is not appropriate or polite for me to show my frustration at all, not even one little bit! which is a lot easer said than done. Hmmm, many lessons learnt this week!

Next week is the King’s Birthday here in Cambodia and being a very generous King, he has given the whole country 3 days off work. So yet again, I find myself being forced to go on holiday! This time Corine and I are travelling by bus to Bangkok for a long weekend city-break. We’ve heard that it takes the same amount of time to get to from Sisaphon as it does to get to Phnom Penh so we’re going to check it out and pretend to be hippy travellers for a while.