Talking Crap!

Holidays well and truly over, the first week back at work was jam packed with travelling back and forth, meetings and a really bad cold!

The focus of the week's work was a meeting at Tropieng Tmar cluster core school followed by a Student Council Activity day all relating to a sanitation project dreamed up by Deidre (a Peace Corps Volunteer) and I. The idea was born a good few months ago when a troupe of good-hearted, kind-spirited sophomore students from Minnesota, USA, showed up at a local school having provided the cash to build a beautiful toilet building. It was a fantastic gesture and well needed. Their visit also challenged me as it was clear they had no idea of the cultural norm in rural Cambodia and the equal need for education about god sanitation and hygiene practices. Despite Health and Hygiene being one of the 6 Dimensions of the Child Friendly Schools (CFS) Policy the norm as I have observed it in schools is that the toilet buildings are kept locked and the students and teachers defecate and urinate behind the school or in the fields. There seems to be little to no understanding of the potential to spread disease so the traditional habits of old remain even if there is a sanitary toilet to use. I was frustrated at his and my frustration led to a long string of events which culminated in the workshops this week.

Firstly, I spoke about the problem with Mark, my Australian friend who at the time was working with an NGO in Sisaphon. He led me to the monthly meeting in Phnom Penh 'Watsan' (Water Sanitation) which was an NGO forum led by the Department of Rural; Development. Here I presented my problem that schools in rural Cambodia have toilet buildings but lack the eduction to use them. I was showered with various NGO's business cards, initially very excited by the response I got and the opportunity to write a proposal to the Ministry in order to receive funding for a project. Then disappointment set me back a bit - none of the NGOs were actually interested and my problem couldn't match the proposal guidelines. However, after sounding off to fellow volunteers, I found that Deirdre was full of ideas and enthusiasm to do a low-cost sanitation project ourselves.

And voila... after meeting, brainstorming, planning and pondering, we achieved the following... On Thursday we met with school directors, teachers and community members from the 4 schools in Tropieng Tmar cluster. After discussing aims and objectives, the Health Director for the district also turned up and gave a short basic lecture about good hygiene practices, the school groups listed the problems they faced in using the toilet buildings at their schools, the groups were mixed to discuss possible solutions and then wrote action plans directed by Mr Sophan from the DOE. We taught a funny Khmer song about correct toilet use and finally taught a bunch or games and activities relating to the topic.

On Saturday the fun continued with 2 adults from each school leading the Student Council activity day, the whole point being for the adults to educate the students in order to pass on some knowledge and ownership of responsibility. It was hit or miss as we had no translator on the day but we seemed to pull it off! Everyone who was involved participated really positively, the atmosphere was light and fun (Deirdre and I were very good at humiliating ourselves by singing the toilet song with actions, which helped!) and the students were fantastic.

We set up a rotation system for each group to learn and play the games with the adults teaching and supervising. The morning was punctuated with singing the goofy song and the Health Director spoke about hygiene and demonstrated correct hand washing with soap which all the students got to practice. At the end of the morning we held a poster competition and tried to emphasise the importance of each student council spreading what they had experienced with others at their schools.

As we drove away at the end of the morning I tried to describe to Deirdre how I was feeling: a relaxed sense of relief, happiness, achievement, realised it was the feeling of success I was experiencing!! It's been a while! Who knows the long term effect of our efforts, perhaps none! Perhaps all that will be remembered of the day will be 2 barang girls making fools of themselves singing in Khmer. Hey ho! It was fun trying! It was great to have contact with the children, albeit in terribly broken, barely understandable Khmer. Despite some planned follow up visits, for all we know the toilet buildings at these schools may remain locked, just providing a wall to squat behind or piss against. For all we know the soap bars we gave out as gifts tot eh schools, together with toilet brushes and cleaning detergent will collect dust in someone's office or be sold on! Who knows! But for now I'm going to wallow in what a fantastic day it was and in that rare and fleeting feeling calld...er...oh yes, SUCCESS!!

Added note...

And so the feeling of success continued as Vuthang and I conducted some follow up visits to the schools who participated in the project some weeks afterwards to see how the Student Councils were doing at spreading the good news of hygienic practices!

We met schools at their early morning flag raising ceremony and had the Student Councils tell the rest of the school what they had learnt at the Student Council Workshops. We then repeated some of the activities for the whole school to see and taught the song words. Vuthang was a star at encouraging and leading the students and the students themselves were really receptive. One school had already taught the song words to their fellow students And with actions!