Sunday 28 September 2008

SMILE

An exhibition of photographs by ten Cambodian children, all former residents of the Steung Mean Chey rubbish dump, will open on Saturday 25 October 2008 at Gasolina, Street 57, Phnom Penh @7pm.



The exhibition is the culmination of ‘SMILE’, a 12-week photographic project. Having received training and instruction in photography, the ten young photographers have spent their free time out and about in Phnom Penh, at a wide range of locations across the city, visually recording their impressions of daily life in their home town.



Please come along to Gasolina to support the children and view their work. All profits from any sales will go towards a youth vocational training centre and directly to the photographers themselves.



Check out their work on: http://www.smile-cambodia.blogspot.com/

Just One More Hour...


One of my personal favourite legs of the ‘Madeline does Cambodia’ tour of 2008 has to be the 3 or 4 days spent in Kampot. What an utterly delightful place to laze away a few days – or weeks as some fellow travellers had. Some travellers have been lazing away in Kampot for so long they’ve ended up opening bars and guesthouses and calling themselves ex-pats! A really pretty town with plenty of colonial architecture remaining and a beautiful riverfront with stunning sunset views of Bokor Mountain and National Park.


Now, anyone who knows Madeline well wil know that she is far from lazy and her worst idea of a holiday would be sitting on her arse, sipping a drink and reading a book. Oh no – Madeline is one of the most adventure seeking, enthusiastic, active people in my address book so it was no shock (ahem!) to hear her jump at the chance to pay for a 2-day jungle trek up the infamous Bokor Mountain.


Bokor is famous for its abandoned French colonial town’s remains at the top, comprising a casino, church, hotel and various other deserted buildings, made all the more eery by the heavy mist which swamps them making them endlessly vanish and reappear. I believe the site at the top has recently been sold to developers so the road up the mountain is closed to tourist groups. The only way up is no walk. Did I mention that Madeline was the active traveller type? And did I mention that walking happens to be her favourite activity of all time? I remember one particular New Year’s eve when she thoroughly enjoyed walking the long way home from a boat party in Chelsea – hmmmmm, remember? Anyhoo, luckily (for us both!) there were 3 more active traveller types who were interested in the trek. Luckily (for Madeline) one was a squaddie and another a paramedic. Luckily (for me) there were 3 more people to listen to Madeline’s moans (which started approximately 19 minutes into the 2-day trek!)
It was hard work. We were led by a ranger wearing flipflops and carrying a rusty looking gun which had seen better days and even he broke a sweat. I tried not to dwell on why we might need a ranger with a gun but it became a more positive way to occupy my mind as my thoughts turned to thinking up ways to lose Madeline in the jungle. Perhaps it was to protect us from illegal loggers (much of Cambodian’s forested areas are being lost in this way as timber is a lucrative way to make money), or perhaps wild animals (you may scoff at this but the Lonely Planet reports of a 3-legged tiger aptly named Tripod prowling the jungle), or perhaps it was for putting people out of their own misery (people who had blindly over-estimated their own stamina and fitness levels when signing up to a 2 day trek UP a mountain).


Despite sweating out of pores I never knew I had I did really enjoy the trek. We only stopped for lunch and to appease Madeline: “Are we nearly there yet?” “Can we get a truck?” “Where’s the road?” “I’m going to look up my definition of FLAT!” and as luck would have it, as we reached the road God sent us all a huge blessing in the form of a large shiny black truck waiting to carry Madeline the last kilometres away to the top. In fact, after another 30 minutes of fast-paced trekking the rest of us welcomed a lift up the final part of the hill as well.


At the top, when the mist parted, the view of Kampot and Kep below us was fantastic. I wouldn’t say it was completely worth the hours of walking and climbing but it came close. What did make it all worth while was the abandoned hill station which made us (read me) feel like me’d just walked onto the film set of a spooky movie! We stood not more than 100 metres away from the old casino building and could see it crystal clearly before it vanished completely in a big cloud of heavy mist.

Madeline’s moaning took longer to begin on our descent (“I don’t mind going down hill”) despite trudging through rain for a while in the morning. To begin with we walked down part of the closed road and through countryside (“Now this is my idea of a trek”) which was little more than a gentle slope. However, we were soon climbing over boulders, and down steep slippery declines.


For the last3 ½ hours our guide informed us we only had one hour more to walk before we would reach the tranquillity and coolness of a waterfall and lake we could swim in and soak off the last two days worth of sweat. This false information riled Madeline quite severely (“I just want the truth”) and the last 3 ½ hours were not fun at all. Our toes hurt from being pushed forward in our trainers for so long due to going down hill and after professing her delight and ability at walking downhill, even Mads was wishing for an incline, just to break up the walk and ease the pressure on the tips of her toes. A few of us, me included, suffered a few leeches on the way down as we had to wade through some water and the squaddie took a tumble which resulted in a sprained ankle (although I think it was all an act to get someone else to carry his bag) but other than that no harm was done. We reached the bottom finally and all enjoyed soaking in the dirty but cool river water at the base, and then we returned to the guesthouse, very tired and very relieved that we had survived the ordeal without meeting any illegal, machete wielding loggers or Tripod. We rewarded ourselves with a few beers!

Bat Shit Stinks

Battambang was the next port of call on Mads and mine grand tour of Cambodia. I have been to Battambang many times in the past year as it is one of the closest places you can get a decent burger and there are a few more VSO friends living there. I have never done the tourist circuit of Battambang though so it was great to finally get the opportunity to explore it with Mads. We spent Thursday evening at Phare Ponleu Selpak watching a fantastic circus show performed by ex-street children. The circus school gives the kids somewhere to live, teaching them and developing their social skills as well as the most amazing circus skills. There’s also an art school and music school on the same site. (Check out http://www.phareps.org/)

Friday was spent exploring what the Battambang countryside had to offer from the back of two very friendly motodops. The bamboo was definitely a highlight of our Battambang tour. Local Khmers have made good use of the railway tracks left from the French colonial era by constructing simple carts made from bamboo powered by motors which travel along until they meet another travelling in the opposite direction. When this happens, the cart with the lightest load or the winner of a game of paper-scissors-stone, takes their cart off the rails to let the other pass. We fancied ourselves as quiet a heavy load, what with two motorbikes and two barangs and reckoned paper-scissors-stone would be a synch! It was terrific fun to speed along the dilapidated tracks through the rice fields and the carts pick up quiet a speed. We didn’t meet any oncoming traffic but did watch a cart ahead of us unload their tractor and take apart their bamboo cart.

Next stop on the tour was to view the sleeping fruit bats eerily hanging upside down from trees in the grounds of a pagoda. Here we were introduced to an amazing plant which disperses its seeds by exploding after becoming wet. We enjoyed literally minutes of fun with these until rain threatened forcing us to abandon the fruit bats and seed dispersal fun and hop back on our motodops. We sped to shelter, trying but failing to outrun the storm clouds. After a brief pit stop our drivers thought it safe to brave the weather but they misjudged and we arrived at our next stop absolutely soaking wet!

We climbed the steps of Wat Banan (an Angkorian temple atop a steep hill!), fighting off well-meaning Khmer women brandishing fans to keep the out-of-shape barangs from losing consciousness on the ascent. We appreciated the temple at the top for a while safe in the knowledge that even more impressive temples awaited us in Siam Reap. At the top the view was amazing and really did serve reward for the climb up. We rewarded our descent with beers and a brief history lesson from our motodop drivers at the bottom.

We were not to be out-of-shape barangs for long; in fact we were just warming up really. Cambodia is a vastly flat country so we must’ve climbed up half the hills/mountains it contains in just one day! Next we climbed up Wat Phnom Sampeau. To view the morbid Killing Caves made famous by the Khmer Rouge in the 70s guided by an incredible 12 year old. Now I’m certainly not one to encourage child labour particularly if it might mean that child is not attending school, but this lad will go far. He had a very lucrative business set up whereby he used the money he earned from guiding people up the hill to put himself through private school. Well, that’s what he told us. He also asked us to pay him half way down the mountain and I think that was so he could pocket some of the cash himself and not have to hand over all of it to whoever was controlling his wages at the base of the hill!

The last and smelliest hill climb was at dusk. It was very carefully timed so that we ended up at the last hill at 5pm as at this time thousands of bats wake up and leave their cave dwelling at the top of the hill. This was truly a sight to see. Not only was the view of the surrounding countryside spectacular once again, the sight of so many bats flying out into the distance was breathtaking. Actually, it was literally breathtaking. We had to hold our breath for as long as possible for fear of passing out inhaling the stench that flew out of the caves with them. Words cannot describe how bad the smell was. The stream of bats exiting the caves all together resembled smoke wisping out into the distance and the photos don’t do them justice nor do they in any way convey the abhorrent stench we put up with for as long as we could. Yuk!
There should be a video coming soon but it takes FOREVER to load!

A boat, balloons and 7 boxes of beer



To mark my 30th year of existence on this planet, I spent the day with my Khmer colleagues and friends by Tropieng Tmar reservoir. Not one to miss an opportunity for a party I had informed my colleagues of my upcoming birthday (along with jokes of more wrinkles and lines) but never expected what was to come.

As luck would have it, I was fortunate enough to have welcomed Madeline into the country a few days prior to the ‘big day’ so I had someone to watch me open the presents and cards the postman had delivered.

We drove to the lake on my moto; well, I drove. Mads held the inflated balloons and screamed into my left ear every time she thought she was going to be dragged off the bike by said balloons. We only lost one on the way (balloon that is) despite Mads’ daring “look, no hands!” stunts. What amazed me at this point, bearing in mind that the day had only just begun, was that Madeline’s fears of being on the road as a passenger in the UK where safety standards are inevitably a lot higher than here in Cambodia, did not transfer across the continents with her. In fact she was remarkably calm about hopping on the back of a moto (even sans helmet!), riding in a crammed taxi where the taxi used his horn instead of his brakes, and various other normally hair-raising-seat-gripping-teeth-gritting-swearing transport moments. I was proud of her!

I was truly overwhelmed at the trouble my colleagues had gone to. They strung up more balloons into a tree, provided a delicious Khmer curry and bread picnic, presented me with gifts and lit candles on a birthday cake. Birthdays are not traditionally celebrated in Khmer culture and everyone becomes a year older at Khmer New Year in April despite when your actual date of birth. In fact, many Khmers don’t even know their own birth date! It really was a special occasion. A homemade birthday cake from Ruth survived the whole journey through the post and was shared out and gobbled up and Soroth joined the party, making the trip from Oddar Meanchey and it was lovely to see him. As food had been provided for us, we decided to get the beer in so we bought one box (24 cans) and a crate of soft drinks to start with. The lady at the stall had to moto off to get us a box and it was not her first trip by far!

It was fantastic to share the whole experience with Mads (friends circa 1990!) and she fitted in straight away and enjoyed every second of it (of course it was also handy to have her around to take photos of ME!).

After the present giving ceremony, 2 more boxes of beer, a thank you speech, a Khmer-style rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, an Anna-style rendition of ‘Super-Trouper’ (I WAS FORCED!) and a random-style rendition or 3 of some traditional Khmer songs, we piled onto a small boat.
Normally, the thought of a half-cut group of people, busy ordering 2 more boxes of beer, boarding a floating vessel driven by two whippersnappers young enough to be my offspring (well, I am 30 now!) would fill me with a quiet sense that my time on earth might be up. Not to mention Madeline – did I mention how she is not normally the best of passengers? However, with her strangely foreign liberation of fear, plus the amount of cans of Angkor we had consumed, we really didn’t care that the boat had no life jackets.

The boat chugged into the middle of the reservoir where a static raft awaited us and as the boat chugged off to collect another box of beer I received some lovely birthday phone calls from the UK. It was so surreal and wonderful to be sitting on a raft in the middle of my district in Cambodia, sat next to one of my best and oldest friends, chatting away to my nieces thousands of miles away. I really couldn’t have asked for a better of more memorable 30th birthday. And just as I thought things couldn’t get anymore surreal or wonderful the boat returned with more beer AND a parcel from some lovely VSO friends!

More speeches were made on the raft, including one from Mads, as darker clouds crept into the sky threatening rain. Through the Angkor haze I recognised the fact that if a storm hit us we may have to swim back. However, Soroth ‘fell in’ and immediately dispelled any fears of drowning as the water came up only to his waist. Oh well, if the worst happened we could always wade back home.


After a rapid rainy journey home, a slightly drunken experience with a moto, the party continued at Mr Sophan’s house where Madeline continued to be a hit and where more beers and presents and general tomfoolery appeared. We eventually tumbled into our beds, Mads a very happy bean (I could swear she sang American Pie at some point) and me a very happy 30 year old (but not a dog owner, much to my dismay – “Hello Puppy”)!


Cheers to everyone for messages, cards and pressies – it was a very special day! x

Saturday 6 September 2008

A Drop in the Ocean?

What a week.  

Last week I found myself back in Poipet and staying with Elise as participants from both our districts were attending a 4 day workshop on Disability Training there.  Jon and Richard, 2 other volunteers, were also there with more participants from Battambang province and the Trainers from Phomn Penh.   Despite suffering a bad cold (yes, in this country!) at the beginning of the week, it was great to have a change of scenery and although Poipet isn't the most desirable of locations, I have decided that it certainly has more to offer than Sisophon, the provincial town.  It was also great to see some other volunteers and spend time catching up.

The training itself seemed to be a hit with the participants and they also enjoyed the change of scenery and excitement of staying in a guesthouse away from home.   

The training came from the Ministry of Education, has been revised several times and is really good stuff.  However, it was hard not to think that it would be a very small drop in a very large ocean.  It is really difficult for teachers, directors and DOE staff to think about how to include children with physical and mental disabilities when the basic understanding of how children learn in the first place is lacking.  I almost laughed (it was either that or cry), when it was suggested during one session that teachers write IEPs (Individual Education Plan) for children with special needs so as to identify what their needs were and how they could be met by the teacher. I mean, the teachers I have observed in my district (God bless them) barely write a lesson plan, let alone an IEP.  They are more concerned with where their next meal is coming from than doing any paperwork!  I know from my own experience of teaching in the UK that successful IEPs can be tough to write and often even tougher to follow through.

I really don't have the answer (but will gratefully accept suggestions please...) but felt quite downbeat this week and really struggled with this particular training.  Perhaps it's because I know at the back of my head it should be my job to help support the implementation of this training back in my district and I just can't see where to start!  

I think it was also really hard for the trainers to raise the issues of disability where such a strong cultural attitude is felt about disabled people.  There is next to no mental health care in this country, a country still dealing with the aftereffects of war and trauma.  Amongst many there are notions that disability is punishment for some wrong doing in a previous life or due to making the spirits angry.  Both the physically and mentally disabled are often treated like second-rate citizens, children are abandoned as they are difficult and expensive to care for.  And sadly these attitudes are not going to change overnight but perhaps one drop is where change begins...


 

1 down, 1 to go...

It's been a year since I arrived in Cambodia and time has seriously flown.

These are some of the things I love about this country so far:
  • Phnom Srok district (especially in the wet season)
  • 3 hour lunch breaks
  • being vaguely aware of sunrise while lying in bed and listening to cocks crowing and dogs barking
  • water buffalo
  • watching sunset from my roof (albeit from behind a mobile phone pylon!)
  • wearing flip flops everyday
  • being able to escape any situation with a smile
  • driving a moto
  • palm trees
  • the stars
  • the sunshine
  • absolute torrential downpours and then the cool air afterwards
  • iced coffee with condensed milk
  • respect and politeness
  • the Cambodian smile - in any situation
  • the feeling of living on a campsite
  • the feeling of living on a farm
  • the sound of rain
  • beautiful flat countryside
  • bright green rice fields
  • the fact that family and health is always priority number one

There's not a lot I badly miss about the UK other than people but on off days these are some of things I yearn for:
  • feeling cosy and warm
  • being able to read things; signs, newspapers, packaging
  • knee high boots and thick socks
  • cardigans and jumpers
  • hugging a mug of tea on the sofa
  • having a fridge
  • Sainsbury's
  • sharing a bottle of wine with a friend
  • crossing the Thames at Putney bridge each morning on the way to work
  • talking English at a normal speed
  • walking
  • not having to explain my jokes! (well, not so often!)
And I've learnt a few things too, including:
  • always have a speech prepared if attending a meeting
  • never burp whilst wearing a helmet with the visor down, especially after eating a Khmer breakfast
  • I need my sleep
  • I was not really built for the tropical climate
  • I seem to perform best under a certain amount of pressure
  • I can hold a conversation in Khmer and just about be understood
  • patience (well, I'm getting better)
  • education really is a luxury and comes after health and livelihoods
  • children are the same the world over, only some are more fortunate than others
  • if in doubt, smile
  • 'yes' doesn't always mean 'yes'. It can also mean 'no', 'definitely not', 'I'm not sure', 'I don't have a clue what you're talking about', amongst a whole list of other things
  • road rules are a good thing
  • beauty is in the eye of the beholder (and the media)