Anna in Cambodia

Goodbye Phnom Srok!

2009-11-05T06:57:00.002Z

My last month

2009-10-28T01:15:00.015Z

My last week in Cambodia

2009-10-28T01:15:00.014Z

Counting Down...

2009-10-08T09:22:00.006+01:00

So, there is about 4 weeks left until I finish my placement and leave Cambodia, 6 weeks until I arrive on British soil once more. I CAN'T WAIT!

It's a funny time as I really begin the count down. On the one hand I am really excited... and on the other I'm quite low. I've been busy winding things down, updating my CV, browsing jobs in the UK, buying gifts and souvenirs and generally getting ready to say goodbye, finish up and leave this significant part of my life behind. It's exciting to think of the next adventure waiting for me back at home, new opportunities and the next chapter of life.

But... it is also really emotionally draining; waiting, counting down, mentally and emotionally cutting ties, preparing to leave, downsizing my possessions again. It's also a time of reflecting over the past 2 years, recognizing achievements, seeing all the missed opportunities, passing things over.

Getting on a bit

2009-09-19T03:39:00.004+01:00

My birthday swung round AGAIN this month - the third birthday I have suffered in Cambodia! Ha ha! The last two birthdays have really been ones to remember, both mainly involving boats and beer! So this year, as I turned 31, I decided to do something a little more refined and booked myself into a wonderful spa in Siam Reap.

The day started in Phnom Srok where I met Daney and Vuthang for a typically Khmer breakfast of noodles and pork - yummy! I then bundled into a taxi, along with 5 other passengers (not including the driver!) and set off to Siam Reap. I managed to get a dip in the hotel swimming pool before meeting Elise for a poolside lunch and birthday cocktail - I definitely won't be able to recreate that in London! Then I took myself off to Visaya Spa - it was bliss - and probably something I may never get the chance to do again on my birthday. Accustomed to finding a bargain, my birthday was no exception and I managed to find a spa which allowed me to use the Herbal Steam Room, swimming pool and jacuzzi for free as well as my back and shoulder massage! The massage was the best I've had in Cambodia and I had all the facilities pretty much to myself! As I sat sweating in the Steam Room, it did occur to me how ludicrous it was to do such a thing in this tropical climate and I wondered what on earth the spa attendants thought of a barang paying to use a room which filled up with hot steam! - pretty stupid I'm guessing! I mean, you can experience the same effect sat on the side of the road in the heat of the day here! I guess the difference is the feeling of being CLEAN! I did feel like I'd experienced a deep cleanse - what a birthday present!

The day continued along the same vein of special treats; meeting friends poolside, opening gifts and eating a gorgeous dinner in the evening. My post even got delivered to Siam Reap (albeit a day late!) so I could open Percy Pigs to my heart's content wile sat in the beautiful garden of the hotel and some of us managed a midnight skinny dip to finish off the day!

Thanks to everyone for messages, cards and pressies! I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to seeing you all again in a few months!

Home Sweet Home

2009-08-28T06:48:00.004+01:00

It was an absolute pleasure to return home to Phnom Srok after another long stint out of the district and I had certainly been missed! My landlord was almost jumping for joy when I pulled up on my moto (either he was trying to distract his baby son from crying or he was relieved I was back to pay my electricity bill!). Actually I've made some progress with the baby son, who I've known since birth, as he now waves when he sees me instead of turning his face to find his mother in absolute horror! My puppy (now pregnant with her second litter) ran to me when she heard my moto, as always happy to see me and get a tickle behind the ears!

It was really lovely to moto around the village, waving to people and calling in on a few families I've got to know, and despite the office being closed every afternoon I've been pretty busy! I called in on Daney's family to say hello and have a little chat. Daney has landed herself with a new job working for RACHA, a local NGO, which is excellent news. I'm sad she won't be working as much with the DOE as it could really do with her skills, but I am thrilled for her. She'll be able to transfer her facilitation skills to train village people in creating community banks and the like. It's sounds fantastic! I was glad to reconnect with this family on this particular day as I heard sad news from the family later on the same week.

Later in the week I popped in on Mr Sophan's family. He was away but his wife welcomed me in and there was soon a little group of women and small children sitting around trying to make sense of my Khmer and hear about and see the photos of my recent travels to Kampot and Kep. It was there that I saw a baby with a black smudge of soot on her forehead. I knew this baby had been ill a while ago so I asked whether the child was still ill, expecting the soot on the forehead to be part of some traditional method of medicine. The baby was well but there had been a death nearby so the soot was to protect the baby from bad spirits. I was relieved the baby was well as I had met her along with her anxious parents at the village health centre a month back. I inquired about which neighbour had died and learn that Daney's cousin had returned from Thailand very ill, too late to see a doctor or be taken to hospital so she's died that morning, bleeding from her mouth and 24 years old.

I made my way round to the funeral the next morning to pay my respects and see Daney and her family. Tough times. The family had experienced a double tragedy as the night before another cousin had learnt of the death and set off from Sisaphon to get to Phnom Srok for the funeral, only to suffer an accident on the road and later die in hospital. He was also in his twenties. Half the family therefore travelled to Sisaphon to attend his funeral. Sadly, this type of news is not uncommon here and death is always quite close.

A Future Not Our Own

2009-08-18T11:37:00.002+01:00

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection...
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomlete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results...
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador

Do you have to let it Linga?

2009-07-25T05:02:00.002+01:00

With Cory only having a few weeks left in the country we decided to see Siam Reap together for one last time. We've both seen the main circuit of the most impressive and famous Angkorian temples a good few times so this time decided to explore a little further afield. We took a tuk tuk, Vuthang's brother Vutha, and travelled north of Siam Reap to Banteay Srei and Kbal Spean. It was great to drive away from the tourist masses visiting the old favourites and tuk tuk through gorgeous Cambodian countryside, passing a few minor temples hidden in the trees as well as rice farmers getting on with their work. Amazing to think all this 'normal' life was going on around and amongst these magnificently ancient ruins.

Banteay Srei (translates to mean citadel of women or citadel of beauty) was made of reddish sandstone and the timing of our visit in the morning meant that the lighting had it at its most beautiful. The stone looks almost pink and its a relatively small site compared to most of the temples making it really easy to get around. It really was beautiful. It has been great visiting the temples but I think I've appreciated it more because I've had the advantage of being able to visit over 2 years and not had to pack it all into 2 weeks or less like most tourists.

Kbal Spean (translates to Bridge Head) was another treat off the beaten track. It's an Angkorian era site also north of Siam Reap which consists of 1000 linga and yuni carvings in the stone riverbed, amongst other Hindu motifs. It was a good 45 minute trek up a hill, through dense jungle but was well worth the climb. Amazingly atmospheric.

The Breakfast Club

2009-07-22T12:03:00.004+01:00

Life has become exceedingly quiet in Phnom Srok due to rice planting and transplanting season kicking off, schools slowing down in preparation for the long holidays and Grade 9 and Grade 12 exams which take the attention of my DOE colleagues. Not one to sit around doing nothing for too long, I have managed to muster up some things to do in this quiet period.

A little while a go all the education volunteers got together in Phnom Penh with some Khmer colleagues from the 6 provinces VSO works in to conduct the Annual Partnership Review meeting. Each province got the chance to present how they had worked with the VSO volunteer to meet the objectives of the programme. It was a long, hot day but a really interesting and fruitful one too. It was inspiring to see how much VSO had had an input into improving education in the country, working in collaboration with many other organisations and supporting Districts and Provinces in development. Elise and I shared our bus journey with Mr Sophan and Mr KemSovan who had undoubtedly been busy with a few whiskey bottles the night before! It was great for them to share their progress with representatives from all over the country and also really useful for them to see what else had been going on that they could learn from.

While in Phnom Penh I met with Charlene, a VSO volunteer in Kampot, to work on another edition of the Neak Smak Jet (translates to mean 'volunteer') magazine. We took over as editors of the infamous mag about a year ago and have managed to see 3 great editions go to print! I have loved having this secondary project to focus some energy on in Phnom Penh over the year. It's given me a great excuse to get out of Banteay Meanchey, led to some excellent late night conversations with Charlene and satisfied my creative cravings no end! We have turned around the mag (or so people have told us!), ditching some old parts, creating some new ones and generally given the volunteer community a spot of entertainment every few months to adorn their coffee table - or at least provide something to stick under the wobbly table leg! Charlene is definitely more of a language technician than me, spotting inconsistencies, grammar and spelling errors, while I have thoroughly enjoyed editing the photos, changing layouts and fonts and making sure our newspaper was the most eye-catching and amusing it could be. We've relied on other volunteers providing articles and photos about anything they want to write about really, from corruption to cheese triangles and we've been overwhelmed by people's response to put pen to paper! The most popular regular feature became a 'Dear Anna..." page whereby volunteers could anonymously write in their problems for the editors to answer! You wouldn't believe volunteers could have so many problems!

At the APR meeting in Phnom Penh we were treated to watch a 20 minute DVD that VSO Cambodia has put together of the progress made in the 6 target provinces its been working in over the last 4 years. The DVD gave a fantastic overview of work that has been done and developments in community involvement in schools, improved leadership and management skills of school directors, and so on. With schools in Phnom Srok closing and with not much going on I decided to invite my work colleagues to one of the Breakfast restaurants in the village to watch the DVD over Koi Teol (noodle soup) and coffee. It was a hit! My colleagues from the DOE all turned up to the restaurant where the landlord had reserved tables near the TV (on which some American wrestling programme is normally watched, powered by a generator) and we all tucked into breakfast together. We repeated the treat with school directors on the following day and it seemed to be successful. It was great to see school directors getting out their notebooks to record the things they were watching about schools miles away in different provinces.

Talking Crap Again

2009-07-22T11:56:00.002+01:00

Following the feelings of success experienced by Deirdre and myself last month, we decided to repeat the Sanitation Project at another Cluster of Primary schools in Phnom Srok District. This cluster was Srah Chik, one I'm a lot more familiar with in general due to the close proximity of the schools to my office and the fact that the model school (Chey Oudom) is a part of this cluster. It was Srah Chik Primary School, in fact, which was the school to give birth to the idea of the Sanitation Project in the first place (see Talking Crap entry). We chose a different cluster to start the project off with as initially not every school in Srah Chik cluster had toilet buildings so it was great to finally spread the project to this cluster.

We followed our agenda from last time, holding a meeting with community members and school staff on one day which was followed by a Student Council Workshop the next (with a few modifications). As before, the participants were really engaged and enthusiastic, although there seemed to be an even more positive vibe about this group of people. As hoped, Vuthang (my assistant/translator) led the whole thing in Khmer and did so fantastically well. I have really seen this man grow in confidence and ability in the last year. His English isn't wonderful all the time but the way he communicates in his own mother tongue is really clear, expressive and fab! In Khmer culture he is relatively low down the pecking order as a young single man but he held his own during this project, facilitating discussions of problems and solutions between school directors and well respected elders from the community. It meant I was fairly redundant but that, I guess, is the whole point. It feels great to be doing less and less in terms of leading meetings at this point in my placement. Vuthang, together with my colleagues are more than able to lead the way!

The Student Council Workshop was a lot of fun and this time the teachers were much more proactive in leading the children in learning about good hygiene practices. Again, who knows what the eventual outcome of this project will be. If nothing else, we managed to get 4 schools together, sharing meetings, knowledge and learning and we showed how the Student Councils can be used in a collaborative way and as leaders for the rest of the students in their schools. The teachers were great and really took the lead this time.

The activities included learning words to a goofy song about how to use the toilet properly, ordering a set of pictures, acting out how to use the toilet (caused great hilarity!), matching questions and answers and exploring the Germ handshake. Most of the activities were from a supplementary book from the Ministry of Education themselves so thankfully all the hard work was done for us! We tried to make the project as simple and cost effective as possible, in order to motivate but at the same time being realistic for schools to afford themselves. These are the gift packs we provided; a sanitation starter kit! costing less than $2 in total as well as a pack containing the activities we used on the day and some drawing materials for the poster competition! All pretty basic but its stuff that schools are really lacking in.

I've added more to the previous Talking Crap entry too...

I'm not sure what happened to June!

2009-07-04T07:50:00.003+01:00

I just blinked and before I knew it May had become July! What happened to June! This has happened a few times but I've usually managed to squeeze a blog entry or two into each month. Part of my problem is the fact that the modern technology I have had at my fingertips is collapsing around me!

Laptop (had a virus I was ignoring and has finally bitten the bullet and turned itself off. In effect it is now ignoring me and any attempts I go to to turn it back on again. I'll be taking it to be fixed in Phnom Penh next week and praying that some of the photographs of my last 2 years in Cambodia still remain on it)

VSO computer at my office (just died! and as the current education project is coming to an end there is little or no hope of it ever being resurrected in my life time here)

iPod (a very sore subject! My cleaning lady managed to wash it in soapy water as she didn't realise it was inhabiting the inside pocket of a bag I had specifically asked her NOT TO WASH! So all music loaded by my dear UK friends as a gift before I left has been lost. On the plus side, I think it can be reset and filled with music again - fingers crossed!)

Phone (OK, so it is approximately 7 years old, has had a new battery and cover but my faithful Nokia really is on its last legs. It dies at random times, even though the battery is not empty, and the sideways button has given up the ghost making it really difficult to correct texts messages or choose anything from the menu that isn't accessible using the up and down button! frustrating!)

All memory sticks are riddled with viruses!

Having nothing to watch DVDs on and no music to listen to has increased my book reading this week in particular and has also led to some very early nights!

But I don't want your pity! Oh no! I rather think that everything I own around me knows its nearly time to stop working in Cambodia and to return home to England. 4 months to go...

Talking Crap!

2009-05-28T05:00:00.005+01:00

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!

Ratanakiri

2009-05-28T04:59:00.004+01:00

Thanks to the King's birthday lasting 3 days and as additional public holiday in respect of Royal Ploughing Day (which marks the start of the rice planting season), no sooner had I returned to work than I had the delights of another week off! It is such a hard life here! Not being one to miss an opportunity to travel, I persuaded Cory to join me on a road trip to visit Ratanakiri, the 'Wild East' of Cambodia.

First stop was Siam Reap to say hello and goodbye to Lina and Fed. It was surreal to say the least, to meet up with them, great to catch up with each other and really rather special to reminisce on when I'd left London nearly 2 years ago. They had put me up on their sofa in Streatham for my last weeks in the country and had shared much of my excitement and worries int eh final preparation to leave the country, including my motobike training. In fact, it was on their computer in their flat with their cat on my lap (or trying to bite my toes, depending on what mood she was in!) that I had typed the the first entries of this very blog. It feels like a lifetime ago.

From Siam Reap we made the long journey south to Kampong Cham where I spent a month in language training at the very beginning of my placement. We then headed north-east to Kratie (pronounced Kra-cheh) where we stayed a few nights with some other volunteers. Kratie is a sleepy, pretty town with a lovely riverfront and many colonial buildings remaining from when the French inhabited the country having been spared a lot of bomb damage during the war years which destroyed a lot of other provincial towns. It was one of the first towns to be ‘liberated’ by the Khmer Rouge (actually it was the North Vietnamese, but the Khmer Rouge later took the credit) in the summer of 1970.

We spent a day sweating on bicycles to visit a gorgeous island in the middle of the Mekong as well as taking a boat trip to catch glimpses of the allusive and rare Irrawaddy dolphins. Apparently there are only between 60 and 70 animals left in these parts. An already endangered species, they are now termed a species in distress in Cambodia. They are intelligent creatures and apparently aware of their dwindling numbers and therefore have stopped breeding. We pondered whether to visit them at all as some reports suggest the tourist trade has become a factor in their demise but we were assured that if we went with a responsible boat who cut its engine rather than trying to get closer and closer to the shy creatures then we could do little harm. It was so very peaceful after the boat had cut its engine and we drifted for perhaps an hour as the dolphins swam around us, cautiously breaking the surface of the waters every now and then.

Onwards to Ratanakiri and we were made aware of the difference between this area and the parts of Cambodia we are more used to. The main road became a bumpy dirt road for a good few hours and we were surrounded by forest. Lazy, I know but here's what the Lonely Planet had to say... "Tourism is set to take off, but that is if the lowland politicians and generals don’t plunder the place first. Ratanakiri is the frontline in the battle for land, and the slash-and-burn minorities are losing out thanks to their tradition of collective ownership. The forest is disappearing at an alarming and accelerating rate, replaced by rubber plantations and cashew-nut farms. It is to be hoped someone wakes up and smells the coffee – there’s plenty of that as well – before it’s too late." So, a really beautiful place which will either take off and become another reason for Cambodian's to feel pride in their country... or it's natural beauty will be raped and sold off as with many other places in the country!

We were lucky to be able to stay in another volunteer's house in Banlung (provincial town of Ratanakiri) and we enjoyed the simple wooden Khmer style house and its gorgeous balcony for four days with a touch of envy it must be said. The resident volunteer gets to enjoy it all the time and watch the sunset over the hills and forests from the balcony every night. It was a tad different to Sisaphon and Phnom Srok! All in all, a very relaxing place where we ate a lot of avocados (Banlung market was inundated with them! - the first time I have seen them in Cambodia!) and hired a motobike to explore the countryside. We explored beautiful waterfalls, met some elephants and traditional ethnic villagers and visited the volcanic crater lake Boeng Yeak Lom a few times. The lake is magically beautiful, perfectly round with gorgeous clear water. We attempted a jog round the perimeter and managed about half way before walking became a more comfortable option, then enjoyed a swim in the cool waters.

Finally reaching the end of the holiday season and stopping off for a Phnom Penh party on the way home, we had managed to tour through the whole country in one week! I found myself looking forward to getting stuck back into Phnom Srok life again.

Room Rates

2009-05-28T04:58:00.008+01:00

Our adventures together in Laos and Cambodia gave us many many new experiences and we really managed to cram in a lot over the three weeks. For example, our travels included the following...

Number of days on holiday - 24

Number of hotels/guesthouses - 7

Number of beds slept in - 11

Different modes of transport - 8

Number of people to share one moto - 3

Number of people to share one boat built for 100 - 3

Number of languages spoken or attempted - 4

Number of currencies in Dad's wallet - 5

Number of mosquito bites - 354 (between the three of us)

Biggest Irritations:

Sharing dinner with swarms of flies and other insects

The ill-fitting door to our room at the poshest of hotels!

Some of the intrusive wildlife at the Boat Landing guesthouse

Not being able to speak the language in Laos

A certain guesthouse proprietor who was all smiles but turned out to be the full of rubbish!

Dad's stinky feet

Biggest Reliefs:

the end of the one-day trek

finding chocolate cake and Abba music half way down the Mekong

air conditioning

Tiger Balm on those blinking mozzie bites

getting off the motodops at the end of the day's tour in Battambang

every time we arrived at the Green Garden Home Guesthouse in Siam Reap, a home from home

The swimming pool at the Green Garden Home Guesthouse

We also took great joy in developing our own personal Room Rating system which became necessary when we realised how little you can trust the guidebooks at times. We did learn that even with the most current, up-to-date guidebooks, an empty restaurant and a gut feeling is to be taken as a sure sign of a less than successful place to spend time, let alone eat, despite what the guidebooks might say to the contrary.

So, all the guesthouses and hotels we stayed in were rated, after we had left them, according to the following criteria: Service, Facilities, Comfort and Location, with an easy 1-5 scoring system: 5 = exceptional with that little something extra, 4 = really very good, nothing to complain about, 3 = fits the bill but no frills, 2 = poor standards with definitely nothing to write home about, 1 = terrible!

Guesthouse/Hotel	No. of nights	Service	Facilities	Comfort	Location	Other Comments
Green Garden Home, Siam Reap, Cambodia	6	4	5 (swimming pool!!)	5	4	Home from home. The friendliest staff and a warm welcome everytime we arrived (3 separate times)
My house, Phnom Srok District, Cambodia	2	2 (DIY)	1	1	4	Perfect for exploring daily village life and mixing with the locals as long as no travel after dark! Uncomfortable nights as no electricity to power fans and noisy dogs
Rachael’s House, Sisaphon, Cambodia	3	2 (DIY)	3	3	4	The only place we stayed with a huge events room!
Royal Hotel, Battambang, Cambodia	1	3	3.5	4	4	Lovely rooftop restaurant view of the city
Lani Guesthouse, Vientiene, Laos	2	2	2.5	3	4	Mimumum in service and facilities. Nice and quiet but void of life at times apart from friendly font desk man.
Boat Landing, Luang Namtha, Laos	4	4	4	4.5	5	A wonderful eco-friendly example of responsible tourism in a developing country. Gorgeous garden setting, lots of wildlife and the best food of our trip. Would highly recommend this one!
Arimid Guesthouse, Huay Xey, Laos	1	1	2	2	3	Disappointing! Thankfully only a pitstop at the border. Initially very friendly proprieter turned out to be not all as he seemed
Villa Salika, Pak Beng, Laos	1	1.5	1	2	4	Perfect location but that's about it!
Bel Air Resort, Luang Prabang, Laos	4	4.5	4.5	4	3.5	An exceptional hotel with complimentary laptop and Wifi in every room. Slightly awkward location and shame about the front door but otherwise perfect!

Granted, guesthouses and hotel are to suit your needs and each one did just that. Some we stayed in only one night, just because we had to and they did the job. The ones we stayed in for longer we were more than satisfied with! I wonder if this information will be helpful to anyone else!?

My brother wrote to me recently and mused that during my 2 years away from family and friends and everything that I recognise as home in England, that I might be the one developing my relationships and getting to know family members and friends more deeply. I think its true. Friends who have written letters or emails seem to open up more than they might in a face to face interaction. There's something less threatening or more comfortable for some in penning thoughts on a page rather than speaking to someone directly. But I have also been very fortunate in sharing holidays with many friends and family who have managed to fly out to see me here. This has provided lengthy periods of time with people I may not have had the chance to holiday with in the same way had I been at home. There is also t'he sense of neutrality that South-East Asia offers those from the west, making it a place of reflection and perhaps easier to have more intense conversations. I haven't made it back to the UK in the whole 2 years I have been here and at times that has been really hard, so I am even more grateful to those who have spent the time, effort and money coming to see me: Ruth, Mads, Mum, Kate, Dad and Colette, Lina and Fed - thank you all so much! Dad, Colette and I enjoyed some conversation topics we haven't really touched upon in my whole 30 years of existance. I learnt important, challenging and enlightening things about them both and about myself and I am still reflecting on the very special time we spent together.

Highlights (other than spending 24/7 with yours truely of course):

The day on motodops exploring the delights of Battambang

All the Angkorian temples

The range of excellent food

Luang Prabang in Laos

Experiencing ethnic village life at Ban Sida, Luang Namtha, Laos (but not the trek there)

An old fart an' his moll!

2009-04-30T15:45:00.001+01:00

(Dad's words, not mine!)

I can't remember the exact context of the conversation we were having but Dad came out with this reference to himself and Colette, I nearly wet myself laughing and thought it was the perfect title of this blog entry.

The adventures in Laos have been amazing to say the least. The country has many similarities to Cambodia but also many differences. I loved being out of Cambodia for a while, spending time with Dad and Colette on holiday and comparing Laos with the country that has become my home. We started out in Vientiane, Laos' second largest city where we enjoyed a walking tour, did some sight-seeing and ate very well!

Next stop was the North-West of the country and a province called Luang Namtha which is where the country shares its border with China. The scenery here was beautiful with mountainous landscapes very different to what I'm used to in Cambodia. We stayed in an eco-lodge in a lovely garden setting overlooking the River Namtha and enthusiastically read about the many treks, kayaking and cycling tours available to visit local ethnic tribes of the area and get out about in the countryside. After exhaustively researching each trip we settled on a one day trek to the Ban Sida village in the mountains, sensibly deciding that we were staying long enough to enjoy a second one-day trip if we fancied! I think we really enjoyed the trek, although there were times when I was worrying for my own coronary health, let alone my father's, and one or two moments through the steep uphill jungle climb when I found myself wondering what the point of this self-torturous exercise was. This was heightened by the fact that when our guide announced our arrival at the top of the mountain, the amazing view of the surrounding area that I had thought would make the trek and my sweat drenched aching body worth it was hidden behind all the blinking trees! On the other hand, I was put to complete shame when we passed local women in flipflops on their way home with baskets of bamboo shoots in a basket tied to their heads and backs.

It was worth it however when we reached the Sida village, although I swear there was a quicker way there from the road! We were just in time to join a family's ceremony at a house there and were promptly invited in. About 250 people inhabit this small ethnic village containing one school, living together, keeping chickens and pigs and foraging for anything else they need in the nearby forest. This particular house had had its roof blown off in a recent storm and being the only home to suffer was cause to believe that the house spirit was unhappy. We learnt that the family were sacrificing one of their dogs to appease the house spirit and we were invited to join the after party. As in Cambodia, a great deal of hard liquor is consumed by the guests at these sort of functions so we were offered an eggcup or 3 of the local brew, a fermented rice wine.

I was glad we had missed the actual killing of the family pet, although a small pool of blood was evident in the main room of the house where it had taken place with a fresh trail leading to the fireplace. The head and legs would be cut and offered to the spirits while the rest of the body would be eaten by the guests at the advice of the village shaman. We were invited to stay to eat but politely declined and moved on to explore the rest of the village. Dad and Colette were persuaded to do some cool down exercises back at our room to help prevent our muscles from aching too much the next day which they thoroughly appreciated.

Our journey continued with a bus ride to Huay Xai, Laos' border crossing to Thailand where we made a quick pit stop and continued with an amazing 2 day boat trip down the mighty River Mekong. The scenery was very special with the river meandering through large mountains and past small villages. We stopped in one where another party was taking place, this time to celebrate the birth of a new baby. We were coerced into more alcohol drinking, blessing the child by tying string round its wrists and leaving some money and we stayed one night half way down the river at Pak Beng. It was a very relaxed 2 days, staring at beautiful scenery which my camera doesn't do justice and as well as stopping at a village we also visited the caves of Pak Ou which are beautiful caves of limestone crammed full of Buddha images. We arrived at Luang Prabang finally and stepped into a very welcoming and comfortable hotel, Bel Air Resort. As the final destination of our tour of northern Laos it has been perfect. From here we have toured the city, a beautifully preserved World Heritage Site full of interesting Wats and architecture from the French colonial period. Here we have chilled out before our journey back to Cambodia, visited the city's highlights and eaten well (again!).

Off the Beaten Track

2009-04-27T04:23:00.004+01:00

So Dad and Colette arrived at Siam Reap airport where I greeted them and used my excellent (ahem!) Khmer skills to get them and their luggage safely to our wonderfully air-conditioned guesthouse - bliss! After a general catch up on life I didn't want to get them too used to the comfort there though so the very next day I whipped them off to Phnom Srok.

We spent 2 hot, noisy nights in Phnom Srok joining in some of the Khmer New Year festivities, meeting some of my colleagues and visiting the now infamous Tropieng Tmar reservoir. We weren't the only ones - about half the population of Cambodia had decided to enjoy the normally peaceful serene surroundings of one of Phnom Srok's highlights! Phnom Srok definitely had a different atmosphere about it and for me personally it was quite strange to see so many unknown people enjoying their holiday time at a place so familiar to me. I spotted teachers and school directors I know selling to the Khmer tourists and there were loads of young people and families out for the day.

The plan for our time in Cambodia was loose so we leisurely enjoyed spending some time in both Sisaphon and Battambang doing the "off the beaten track" touristy thing. Almost everything we did over the next 3 or 4 days was not in the guide book and we loved it! We met up with Cory, Claire and Marcus and mooched around the markets, visited the coffee man, climbed a local hill and visited the pagodas, ate at Sisaphon's finest establishments and got a taste of ancient Angkorian temples north of the town. The Lonely Planet remarks that Sisaphon isn't really worth more than a toilet stop as you pass through and granted, it isn't the most attractive of Cambodian towns. However, if you know where to go it holds some real gems! We packed so much into our time there and Cory helped with the authentic Khmer experience, making sure that everyone got doused in water and talcum powder, a traditional Khmer game at New Year!

Battambang was another packed 24 hour adventure of bruised bottoms and aching arms! The four of us caught up with my mate Tony and his cronies (Buffalo, Poe and Dollar) for a motodop tour of the countryside, bamboo train ride, more temples, caves, mountains and wildlife. I undertook this trip back in September with Mads and it was just as impressive the second time round. Despite the sore backsides the finale of seeing millions of bats pour out from the mouth of a mountain cave and stream like a giant snake out into the countryside on their nighttime insect eating mission was again absolutely breathtaking (not to mention smelly!).

It's been fantastic to see Dad and Colette visiting what has become my natural habitat. The heat, and some of the conversation, has been intense but being the seasoned travellers that they are, they have coped well. Dad's even using water to wash with on this holiday, which is something we're all benefiting from! It's been great to show them a slice or two of what life is like here, introduce them to some of my friends and catch up with their news before we start trekking in Laos..

Community Open Day

2009-04-07T07:11:00.004+01:00

Following a visit from Rachael, conversations about the model school Chey Oudom which has been developing in Phnom Srok and enthusiasm to work together, Rachael and I have collaborated on begetting the idea of a Community Open Day at the school in order to raise the profile of the school amongst the community and increase the community involvement. It was also to celebrate the fact that Chey Oudom has become a much more Child-Friendly school in recent months.

Rachael and her VA did all the hard work in facilitating the initial meetings where the ideas for a Community Open Day were born. The Phnom Srok DOE and the school Director and key Community members then took the ideas and ran with them, culminating in a very successful day. It was really good to hand over to Rachael , who in turn handed over to the school and community themselves and it was a real team effort helped by the relationship I've already sustained with the school and community and also by Rachael's facilitation and visionary skills and experience with working with communities in the past.

The DOE and particularly the school worked incredibly hard at preparing the school before hand which included building and planting gardens, selling the wood from an old classroom building in order to buy the materials needed to create new toilets for the students and teachers, designing new learning spaces, and displaying examples of different lifeskills special to Phnom Srok.

More on the way, including photos!

Collaborating

2009-04-04T06:47:00.004+01:00

A lot of the work I have done so far as a VSO volunteer has been alone, or with my VA and Khmer colleagues at the DOE in Phnom Srok. This has been due to circumstance and convenience rather than choice on the whole. There are increasing numbers of barangs around in Sisaphon: English teachers, American Peace Corps volunteers, not to mention the increasing numbers of VSO volunteers around. It's been great to have different conversations with them all about their experiences in Cambodia and the work they are doing. Many people are here for many different reasons and some definitely seem to prefer to work alone. I have met some NGO workers who don't want other barangs messing up 'their' work, interfering or judging what they are doing and I've found this attitude rather saddening. There are so many NGOs in the country there sometimes almost seems to be competition between these NGOs which sounds ludicrous but suggests some are here for their own glory seeking reasons!? So it has been really rewarding and refreshing when some of the other barangs I've met have expressed an interest in collaborating on development projects.

Jan, a VSO colleague who works in the Provincial Teacher Training College in Sisaphon, brought herself, her VA and 4 teacher trainers to Phnom Srok the other week in order to visit Newly Qualified Teachers working in a district. It was a very good experience for all! It was great for the NQTs to have a bit of interest expressed in their direction, also great for them to have the opportunity to be together as a group, talk to their old trainers and share their successes and problems. The trainers themselves benefited from seeing the living and working conditions of the NQTs sent out to the districts and my DOE are now going to plan in 3 meetings a year for NQTs to join together in order to support them!

I have enjoyed spending some time in other people's placements recently too, one being a private school in Mongkul Borei District which is supported by the Rotary Club in the USA. Poor children are supported financially so that they can come to school, have a very good basic education, learn English and get a lunch-time meal. I has been really wonderful visiting my friend Cory's English class there which is SO different to any classroom I have seen in the country, talking to the children (whose English is excellent), observing Cory's goofy teaching and arguing over the USA vs British pronunciation of the words he is teaching! It has also made me really miss having my own classroom of children to teach. I am definitely not an ESL teacher but am longing to get stuck back into teaching when I get back to England.

Another project I have started in Phnom Srok was spawned from donations from the USA used to build toilet buildings. Months ago I observed toilets being built in many schools in Phnom Srok, only to be kept locked all the time and unused. There is a definite lack of eduction on sanitation and hygiene although it is part of the National Curriculum and health and good sanitation practices are part of the Child-Friendly Schools Policy I have been working on with schools in the district. So after visiting a meeting on Water Sanitation in Phnom Penh, discussing project ideas with other NGOs and collaborating with a nearby Peace Corps volunteer, a project is underway! Deidre is the Peace Corps volunteer and is teaching English at a High School in the neighbouring district of Preah neth Preah. Having a difficult time with teaching her classes due to the amount of time the school is closed, she jumped at the chance of working in Phnom Srok and having a fun day of activities relating to good hand washing, safe latrine use and the rest! We have met to talk shit (literally) a few times and a project is underway... watch this space!

And finally, the topic of my next post is about my collaboration with a fantastic YfD (Youth for Development) volunteer Rachael who joined the Banteay Meanchey team about 6 months ago to focus her efforts on community involvement in schools...

Oddar Meanchey, Take Two

2009-04-04T06:46:00.002+01:00

The last time I visited this part of the world I experienced a near-death experience - no word of a lie. When I re-tell the story to friends or random strangers on the bus, I take care not to exaggerate the story of desperation, pain and loss of dignity I lived through - not that I am known for exaggerating the facts at all, see the Road Trip blog entry posted around this time last year - but the fact that I was composing my final dying messages to my nearest and dearest in my head while I lay nursing myself and my explosive rear-end can sometimes seem far-fetched.

Due to this far from positive experience of visiting my previous VA's home and family in Samroang, Oddar Meanchey Province, it has been at the forefront of my mind to repeat the trip when I was feeling back to full fitness again. Feeling back to my peak and with a few free days to travel, my Khmer colleagues and I decided to take the trip together to visit Soroth. He was only my VA for about 3 or 4 months (before he found a much better job - sob!) but he made quite an impact on Mr Sophan, Srei Saart and Daney, not to mention others, so much so that they were all more than willing to take the trip to see him.

With a calm happy tummy we dug into Soroth's mother's great cooking when we arrived and I presented the family with gifts of kramas from Phnom Srok District. I also gave Soroth a large World Map poster after a particular conversation of whether the United States of America was in Europe had stuck in my brain. Also to serve as a reminder of where I will be when I return to England in 8 months time. He also got a long over due but very complimentary, and rightly so, letter of recommendation from me which he read translated to Mr Sophan with a lot of excitement.

We had quite a party that evening with a Khmer-style Gordon Ramsey look-a-like and some other VSO volunteers who live nearby. It is an interesting province, one of the very last to stop fighting as recently as 8 or 9 years ago I believe. It is still heavily mined in some areas, has increasing NGO support in health and community and education development and is expanding as the population increases. It shares a border with Thailand which we visited the day after our arrival which was very exciting for my Khmer friends and colleagues who got to cross the border and shop in the market on the Thai side. I wasn't let through as I'd forgotten my passport so swung in a hammock and watched bus loads of Thais come through to gamble their money away at the ever increasing number of casinos on Cambodian soil. We had a great picnic wrapped in banana leaves and returned to Soroth's house before the goodbyes.

I am so pleased to have stayed in contact with Soroth. He is the gentlest and most caring and considerate Khmer man I have met in this country. He has a fantastic understanding of his own culture and is sensitive to foreign cultures as well, a perfect host and someone who could really make a positive difference to his country. I am also pleased that my guts behaved this time and I could enjoy the hospitality of his family!

Still problems with viruses - photos on the way!

Virus

2009-03-09T08:32:00.002Z

Ok, huge apologies for the distinct lack of blog updates of late. My laptop and consequently all three of my memory sticks are riddled with viruses which has prevented me from uploading the most recent log entries and photos. Bare with me, there are at least 4 on the way!

Team Building!

2009-03-01T05:04:00.002Z

It is amazing how much people get done if they do not worry about who gets the credit.
- Swahili proverb

We are most effective as a team when we compliment each other without embarrassment and disagree without fear.
- Unknown

A team is more than a collection of people. It is a process of give and take.
- Barbara Glacel & Emile Robert Jr.

A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skill of the others.
- Norman S Hidle

All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help from other people.
- Alexis Carrel

There are few, if any, jobs in which ability alone is sufficient. Needed also are loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm and team play.
- William B. Given, Jr.

‘nuff said!

A Pinch of Salt

2009-03-01T05:03:00.001Z

Another effort I made in my period of reconnecting to the district was to fulfil my long standing promise to cook spaghetti bolognase for all the staff at the District Office of Education. I think I had confirmed the promise at my last attempt of cooking “English” (ahem!) food for a small group of Khmer friends. I had boasted that I was much better at cooking Italian and promptly contracted myself to cooking for all my colleagues. Well, this was the week to do it! In preparation, when I’d been in Phnom Penh I had brought a huge can of tinned tomatoes for the sauce, planned to be in Sisaphon the day before so that I had a better choice of vegetables to choose from and could buy the spaghetti. But what an adventure I had in search of the pasta!

To my dismay there was no spaghetti anywhere in town so I had to rustle together whatever my fellow volunteer friends had in their food cupboards which comprised of a couple of packets of spaghetti, one of linguine as well as a half opened packet. It would have to do, I thought, and I even went so far as to taxi some in from Poipet to ensure I had enough! Oh, the panic!
Lo and behold though, on my way out of town I stopped at a well-visited Chinese shop which had such an abundance of spaghetti I almost bought it all in my excitement! My efforts to collect spaghetti were a complete waste of time, had involved almost the whole barang community in the north west of Cambodia, not to mention the VAs (volunteer assistants) and numerous taxi drivers and bystanders! Oh well, it amused some people and at least I could return everyone’s pasta to them as I had received it!

Daney helped prepare the dinner, which was really relatively easy (as I had hoped), although she did most of the hard work which was chopping/mashing the beef into very very small pieces to resemble mince beef. I was really rather proud of myself at mass producing such a tasty meal and realised that I had never cooked for this many people before. Learning from my previous experience of cooking for Khmers, I added a shed load of salt, rather than the usual ‘pinch’ or less that I would normally cook with on such occasions as the Khmers are rather partial to a shed load! And it tasted rather good if I do smugly say so myself!

While Daney and I were slaving over a hot stove, my colleagues were preparing the eating area, or so I thought! I arrived at the office with hot pans of pasta and sauce to find only about 3 colleagues standing around and no table and chairs to be seen! Trying not to show my disappointment (I had been harping on about it for days if not weeks previously!), I asked where everyone was and everything else happened in a bit of a rushed blur! Tables were carried out, chairs set out, bowls, spoons and forks (I banned chopsticks!) appeared along with an increasing number of people, I was handed a phone and told to personally invite or remind the people who were missing then ushered next door with Vuthang (my VA) to invite the district governor to join the meal in person. When I came back I was asked whether I had asked some other VIP who was apparently floating about and when I blankly said no, I was ushered back to apologise and invite him! I’m still very much getting the hang of the protocols here!

So before I could say “Prego!” all the (male) colleagues I work with at the District Office were sat round the table and eating MY spaghetti bolognase! Imagine that! The district governor and Chief of Police for the district were guests of honour at the head of the table so a smoozed with them as best I could for a while. Sadly the women at these events (apart from me evidently) have a different place to the men. After serving the men their dinner and making sure everyone has a drink and a spoon, they sit separately, talk amongst themselves and are ready to jump the second one of the male guests needs something. On other occasions I have tried to counter this by inviting the women to the table. Sometimes they refuse so I join them instead; sometimes they sit at the table for a short time before returning to the more comfortable sidelines. They stay where it is expected for them to stay. I, on the other hand, am treated like a Khmer man which I have grown more used to but still don’t always feel comfortable with. I guess they don’t really know what to do with me; I look like a woman but I have very light skin, drink beer and I am very tall in comparison with the Khmer men. They show me respect by placing me at the top of a table of men.

Other unidentified persons turned up and sampled what was on offer and at one point I turned to Vuthang and voiced my concern that I may’ve not made enough, to which his response was “Don’t worry Anna, there is enough beer!” This made me laugh and put my mind at rest but I was also really concerned that my colleagues actually liked the food. I was suitably encouraged when some guests asked for seconds but not at all surprised when I overheard most guests commenting on the fact that the barangs don’t use enough salt, sugar or MSG in their food! Mrs Kanyar was even sent home to collect some soy sauce and chilli sauce which was almost fought over on her return. I chose not to take this personally, even when my wonderfully delicious spaghetti bolognase was drowned in the stuff!
Without any prompting from me the topic of conversation turned to Chey Oudom Primary School which has become the model school for the district in following the Ministry’s Child Friendly Policy and which is planning a very exciting Community Open Day on 1st April (thanks to my mate Rachael – fellow VSO volunteer in Banteay Meanchey). The Chief of Police was especially excited about it and spoke at length, to whoever was listening, of all the changes he has seen happening at Chey Oudom recently. He was so enthusiastic about it he even managed to persuade the District Governor to donate 5 bags of cement towards developing gardens for each classroom at the school – happy days!!

The event really made me realise again how important these gestures are and how much they are appreciated and enjoyed. They really open up opportunities for discussion and general communication that scheduled meetings would never tap into.

Reconnecting

2009-03-01T04:59:00.002Z

My heart melted this week when I visited Chey Oudom Primary School and was greeted with a gaggle of kids shouting “Hello Anna!” and waving as I drove through the gates on my moto. I continued to melt when one little girl ran up to me near the director’s office calling me “Om Anna”. (Om is a word used to call a respected Aunty or Uncle in Khmer.) The little girl is Mr Sophan’s grand daughter, about 5 years old, and has barely uttered a word in my general direction since I’ve known her, which is about 18 months now. I have spent some time in the past at Mr Sophan’s home and with the family but she had always seemed to shyly ignore my existence. On top of that I had been feeling that I had been neglecting my district and the people in it in favour of the distractions of Sisaphon and other bigger towns of late so it was a lovely personal moment to be appreciated in this way.

I have experienced quite a few similar moments in Phnom Srok this week which has been really rewarding and encouraged me to hang around in the district a little more than I have been recently. My little Khmer niece’s father (Mr Sophan’s son) extended the compliment by telling me how his daughter had visited him studying in Phnom Penh recently and pointed at every barang calling them Om Anna’s boss, Om Anna’s brother, etc! Ahhh!!!! It was nice of him to tell me as he too has barely uttered a word to me in my 18 months here but this week invited me to join him and friends for ice-cream where we chatted for a good hour.

Mr Sophan’s home has become my second home once again, reconnecting with him and his family has been really great. It is what makes Phnom Srok for me. I have been looking at what surrounds me in Phnom Srok again with new eyes, after all in 8 months time I will be saying goodbye and it will become history and memories to me, captured in photographs but a million trillion miles away from what I will return to in England.
The dogs are also a pull on the heart strings. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been away, my puppy (now a full grown mummy dog herself), always runs up to greet me when she hears my moto on the driveway. Ahhh!! It’s nice to feel loved, even if it is by a flea infested, scabby mutt! The family keep warning me it costs $70 to have the injection after a dog bite every time they see me petting her, and I imagine rabies is a really horrible way to die but I can’t help it!!

And then as a special treat, I finally clapped eyes on the infamous Sarus Cranes. They are an endangered species with only 1200 in South East Asia, around 200 of which use the Tropieng Tmar Reservoir in Phnom Srok District as a dry season retreat. I was driving into the district when I spotted a flock of their noticeable red heads so stopped my moto to snap some pictures which aren’t too clear but you get the gist. I’m hoping they’re still hanging around when Dad and Colette visit in April.

Sweet enough

2009-02-21T10:02:00.004Z

After a funny few weeks of nothing much happening in my district due to rice harvesting and training from the Ministry of Education anywhere but Phnom Srok, I had started to spend less and less time there. Whenever I arrived home it seemed that I hadn’t been missed and most of my colleagues were not around anyway. Meetings and training we had planned for January and February were cancelled and postponed again and again which was becoming increasingly frustrating.

One afternoon I arrived at the office to find it empty but for Daney. Seeing my disappointment she suggested we head to Tropieng Tmar reservoir together to da-laing (hang out!) and so that’s exactly what we did. There have been countless similar occasions when there has been no work to do and/or no-one around to do it with and to begin with I would experience serious guilt pangs when I’d nip off home early or head to the reservoir instead of doing nothing at the office. Now, I feel free of that guilt and have discovered that usually such occasions do my mental health the world of good and often lead to very productive afternoons or at the very least, more knowledge and understanding of culture, relationships and what life is like for Khmer people. I have come to realise that this knowledge is crucial to the success of my relationships here and also adds richness to my life as I continue to enjoy new experiences here.
We had a fantastic chat at the lake in a mixture of simple English and Simple Khmer, and we both discussed our futures. Daney has applied for a job with a Cambodian NGO for which she timidly asked for a reference as she thought I might be mad with her! Far from feeling cross, I am over the moon that she feels confident enough and has the capacity to do so. She was a very quiet and shy general dog’s body at the office when I arrived in Phnom Srok back in November 2007 but now is a confident, capable and very motivated young lady who has become a district trainer for many training courses and has delivered workshops to teachers and school directors! I had hinted that Mr Sophan should consider grooming her for a management role in the DOE, particularly as he will retire in a couple of years, and this resulted in her being promoted to an Assistant position (rather than admin!). I will obviously be sad for Phnom Srok if she leaves as she has been involved in all the recent developments so far and could really continue to take the district forward, however I am so proud of her for taking an opportunity with another NGO!
She also talked about marriage (she is 25 and most Khmer women are married by this age), assured me that her family would allow her to marry for love rather than a business deal as most marriages seem to be, but that she wasn’t interested yet as she wanted to study and work first. We also talked about how we would stay in touch when I return to England in 8 months time which reminded me how quickly the time left is going to go (it’s already March for goodness sake!!). It also brought it home that this month was probably the most crucial as April and May are full of public holidays, soon after which the schools close for the 3 month holiday, then open again in October when I will be saying my goodbyes!
We took a different route home, down a back road I’d never used before behind Tropieng Tmar village. It was absolutely beautiful and more so because it was my favourite time of day when the light is really low, warm and soft. We passed the backs of wooden houses, saw the various animal enclosures, and passed numerous cows and water buffalo wandering home, gorgeous yellow hay stacks which looked like they were inviting me to jump into them and children collecting plastic bottles of palm juice. We collected a big bucket of palm sugar from one house for Daney’s mother and then with a friend we picked up on the way, started hunting for palm juice to drink! We found some and drank from the dirty plastic bottles dodging bits of wood and drowned fly corpses to taste the wonderfully sweet juice straight from the palm trees – delicious! I’m not sure who it rightfully belonged to, but it felt like it didn’t really matter much. If left to ferment the juice turns alcoholic which provides quite a different experience altogether and one I have sampled on occasions (in moderation of course!) but much preferred the sweet fresh version.

Kate does Kampuchea

2009-02-06T07:44:00.001Z

It was a great honour to have My Mate Kate come and visit me this month. The last time I saw Kate was also the last time I saw Gok Wan in Brighton! Oh long ago it seems! I met her at the airport in Siem Reap and after being somewhat distracted by a mischievous taxi driver throwing a cockroach at unsuspecting members of the public; we enjoyed our reunion with red wine and LOTS of talking back at our hotel. We spent a wonderful few days by the pool, chatting, swimming, chatting some more, catching up on the events in both our lives over the last 16 months, eating great food, sipping wine and yep, chatting even more. It was fantastic to have her around and we enjoyed many of the delights Siam Reap had to offer including dips in the pool, nice meals out, a very happy pizza and an interesting experience with flesh eating fish!
The highlight for me, other than catching up with Kate and what’s happened in Eastenders over the last 18 months, was the boat trip to Battambang. We were told the journey was between 5 and 8 hours, so hoping for nearer the 5 hour mark we bought our tickets with great excitement at experiencing a day on the Tonle Sap. I had heard that the trip was worth doing from other volunteers and tourists’ recommendations and thought what better way for Kate to experience rural Cambodia than a lazy water cruise, a route straight past the floating villages and a meander past fishermen and traditional Khmer houses. In total the journey took closer to 10 hours! But apart from the last hour and a half (when mild dehydration and severe bum ache had kicked in!) it was well worth it! And we saw all of the above and much more! The inhabitants of the floating villages are just ingenious at living simply but resourcefully and we were awestruck by the intricate fishing devices we saw in action. As we wondered how many Khmers can actually swim and whether there are many accidental drowning, we were equally amazed at the number of swollen dog corpses which floated past us!

We shared the boat with a lot other tourist with the same idea as us. Some sat on the roof for the whole 10 hours, burning to a crisp while others, namely us, manoeuvred away from the engine fumes to secure great viewing seats to watch the world go by. The boat would’ve got no where near passing any kind of health and safety standard but Kate was game and I’ve got used to living a bit on the edge!

So, next stop was Battambang where we sampled the delights of another swimming pool and did a moto tour around the countryside with my good friends Tony and Poe. It was a fantastic day out starting off with a trip on the bamboo train, bumping into some other VSO volunteers on a day trip but finishing with a speedy ride home in order to put Kate to bed nursing a dodgy tummy and consequently missing the incredible flights of the bats at dusk from their cave home in the mountain! Next morning, and one disappointing breakfast later, we were on our way again, travelling north to Phnom Srok where Kate enjoyed the privacy of a roof top terrace (ha – sounds grander than it is!) to sunbathe on to her heart’s content while others went to work! And thankfully (well, sort of), we hadn’t missed out on Cambodian bats!

While I had been holidaying with Kate and left my home empty, 2 small bats had decided to move into my bathroom. They were the right side of the mosquito netting on the windows which meant that they didn’t look like they’d be much bother. However, somehow one of the bats got himself on the wrong side of the netting and dragged himself across the tiled floor towards our comfy DVD viewing area. It was a huge shock to be so close to this creature, as my cries and screams made obvious at the time! And as I sought shelter in another room, scaring Kate out of her wits in the process, the bat just up and disappeared. We hunted for it, timidly, but couldn’t find it anywhere until it magically turned up again on the bathroom mat. Kate was feeling braver than me so she took charge in trapping the bat under a complicated system of baskets (you can’t be too careful!) and setting it free again outside! Phew! Freedom for the bat and a quiet night for me!

When it was time to bid Kate farewell it actually felt just as surreal as when we had first met at the airport. It made me very reflective on what life will be like back in the UK when I return in November. Kate talked of her job and the current financial climate back at home and reminded me of how demanding, busy and often stressful life was like in London. It is exciting to think of coming home and now that we’re into a new year it feels like the count down has well and truly started, but sometimes I wonder whether the culture shock of returning will be greater than when I first arrived in Cambodia.

It was weird to say goodbye after getting used to having a good friend around. It’s amazing how I have got used to talking slower to friends and colleagues for whom English is a second language but how quickly I was able to slip back into easy conversation styles with Kate. It was also really refreshing to have her around as she knows me so well and I don’t have to explain myself all the time – a breath of fresh air! I will never forget her face as I packed her into the front seat of a pick-up truck on the main road to Siem Reap. I had explained in Khmer, to whom I thought was the driver, where Kate needed to be dropped off and that my friend didn’t speak any Khmer. I was assured that they knew where they were going and felt confident Kate would be in safe hands. Kate on the other hand didn’t look so confident and the las thing I saw was her mouthing the words “I’m scared” as the pick-up took off with a jolt!

Our goodbye turned out to only be a warm up though as we were able to meet in Siem Reap again before Kate’s return home. It was fantastic to touch base another time before her departure and we even managed to repeat the flesh eating fish experience together! My feet have never felt happier!

Building Bridges

2009-01-04T07:46:00.005Z

A few months ago we visited an annual school development meeting in a particularly poor area of the district. It was in the days when I had no translator so communication was limited and my understanding of what was actually spoken about in the meeting was next to zero. I did however manage to pick up the fact that there was a problem with children from a small village accessing their school because there was no bridge crossing the river which was growing every year due to erosion of the banks in the wet season. I asked to take a look at the problem and we drove out to the river. Children were crossing the river on a boat every day to come to school but it soon transpired that they had to pay for the privilege, a fare that poorer families couldn’t afford, resulting in long absences and even dropout.

In the past the area, which is prone to flooding in the rainy season, had concrete bridges built prior to the Khmer Rouge regime. During the civil war years the bridges had been destroyed and never rebuilt meaning that a whole community became reliant on the boat transport to stop from becoming completely cut off. We discussed alternatives such as the boat being free for school children but were met with obstacles at every suggestion. I immediately started thinking of all the NGOs who might be able to help fund the construction of a bridge to allow the children to come to school. This has almost become a habit now; when money is needed, who can we ask? And this time I stopped myself and decided to hand the problem over to my colleagues. There must be something we can do without going begging to a foreign organisation!! I mean, lets encourage some self-sufficiency here! Some sustainable problem solving! I politely pointed out that perhaps this was a problem for the district governor and that it was our responsibility to inform him of the fact that many children were not able to access their basic right to school because of an expensive boat toll over a small stretch of river missing a bridge! My DOE colleague promised to request a meeting with the governor and there we left the matter.

Over the past few months I have inquired about the problem until finally this month I was told a bridge had been built by the community! Whoppeee!!! Basically, a meeting took place between my colleagues and the governor, the governor sent a letter to the community and the community put money together to build a bridge a little way up the river from the school. It cost them around $200 for the bamboo and demands a toll from motos and tractors but not from school children! Great!! We were there at the wrong time of day to see it being used by school children and I hope to be able to go back another time in the near future. Let’s hope it lasts!

It was interesting to learn a bit more about the area when it was under the control of the Khmer Rouge and also to see the remains of the ancient road which runs through the district linking the temple at Banteay Chhmarr with Angkor Wat. I was also told that there are international funds available from some donor to restore the road and to improve the banks of the river to prevent it flooding in the rainy season which will have plus and minus effects. I have learnt that I usually find out this sort of information from the random informal and spontaneous visits we make which encourages me to do so more. My diary of carefully planned weeks and months are becoming more and more rough and ready for last minute changes which suits the pace and culture of this country so much more.

Tea and Biscuits

2009-01-03T11:32:00.001Z

For some schools in Phnom Srok the messages of the ETL (Effective Teaching and Learning) training, Resources workshops and Child Friendly School Policy are still a long way off. Some schools have missed the bus, so to speak, for a plethora of different reasons. Some missed the training, some core cluster schools are better than others at passing on knowledge, understanding and resources to their satellite schools and some have simply been overlooked. It is impossible to reach all the teachers and school directors in one hit so it came as no surprise to visit a nearby school and find it in exactly the same state as it was a year ago. Progress can be incredibly slow! We visited this school the other week and despite our strained smiles at the teachers who were clearly petrified of our presence, it was easy to see the disappointment on my colleagues faces. My counterpart called a meeting with all the staff from the school immediately after visiting each bare classroom. I was concerned he was going to read the riot act so beforehand I managed to have a brief conversation with him about the fact that the school director was the only one who had attended any of the recent training and that is was a big job for him to spread the ‘good news’ alone, particularly without the support of his core school director. My words did not fall on deaf ears and at the meeting my colleague did not reprimand the staff of the school, but rather encouraged them. Phew! He also suggested that they visit Chey Oudom Primary school (the developing model school) for inspiration and motivation!

After the meeting we were invited to stay at the school for a drink and a snack. Now in the UK this would typically mean a cup of tea and a few digestive biscuits. Not here! We watched some teachers build a small fire directly outside the director’s office and proceed to heat up some pre-cooked rat and snake. Yes... RAT and SNAKE! It took a while to get going and by the time it was ready a huge crowd of school children had gathered to watch me watching the whole process of heating the snacks up! The rat tasted remarkably good although I could only manage a small amount of thigh meat as the fact that it was a real whole RAT, staring at me from dead black eyes was some what off putting! The snake was salty and a bit fish-like, lots of bones and quite chewy. I managed more snake than rat and washed it all down with a small amount of beer! What a treat – and at only 10am! I wonder how this would go down in England?!

Another interesting thing about the school was the fact that it had ramps for wheelchairs as well as the usual steps up to the classrooms. I asked whether they had any disabled children enrolled in the school. Most schools do but the disabled children are typically absent so I was a pleased to learn that the 2 disabled boys in Grade 6 were both at school that day but mortally embarrassed when they were called out of class to parade in front of me! I actually wanted the ground to swallow me so I was relieved when the 2 boys in question seemed completely non-plussed by the whole performance. I chatted to them for a while in my basic Khmer and asked them name, age, the usual. When I asked what they wanted to be when they were older there was a completely blank expression on both faces. It occurred to me that neither of them (both were in Grade 6 but 16 years old) had ever probably thought about their future and perhaps neither had ever been asked that question before. After a minute’s thought, the heart breaking response was to reach a higher grade!
I am continually impressed by the hospitality shown to me at the schools I visit. It is amusing to say the least, to be sat in the directors’ office when he pulls a grilled snake from his briefcase for everyone to snack on. It is also an honour that these people are so willing to share what they have. A plastic tub of some strange moonshine was pulled out from somewhere and we joined some of the staff for lunch. It is a big deal to have a barang visit their school and I only hope I am giving of myself as much as I am receiving these rich experiences from them.

Happy Merry Christma and Chol Chnam Tmei!

2008-12-24T07:33:00.003Z

Christmas felt even more irrelevant this year than last year! Unlike the UK there is no build up to the festive season here in Cambodia: no buying presents, no sending cards, no Christmas parties, no “jingle bells” in all the shops you walk into since September, no school play and no de-icing the car windscreen before work! It is hot, dusty and work as usual! It’s been really refreshing to be in a different culture and climate for over a year now and observing the festival times and celebrations in Cambodia has been wonderful and has also made me appreciate my own culture more in terms of what is important, what actually means something and what is just inherited from traditions from the past.

Christmas Eve was spent motoring down to Onno in Bavel district with Corine as the sun was setting and falling asleep in front of Lord of the Rings with a gin and tonic! Perfect! Christmas morning four of us then motored on to Phnom Preuk, 2 ½ hours through beautiful Cambodian countryside, over very dusty and pot holed roads to arrive at John and Chris’ festive home! It had a very familiar family Christmassy feel to it and our hosts made sure we ate very well! A relaxed Christmas of mixed western culture and interesting sharing of traditions. Us Brits explained to the Dutch what a Christmas cracker was (although their origin remains a mystery to us all – that’s the crackers not the Dutch!) and the token American provided egg-nog for us all! I developed a very British head cold in true ‘end-of-term’ style which sent me to bed after a couple of games of Werewolf and after a family breakfast on Boxing Day we took to the dust ridden streets once more and the 4 hour journey back to Sisaphon!

Of course I missed the Maton touch on the whole thing but Ruth assured me that even though all the siblings were together with mum this year (minus me of course), everyone in Harrow would be having an utterly boring time without me! She reminded me how anti-climatic Christmas always was and that she would send photos to prove it! When I spoke to a good friend about my sisters’ promises I was told that, ‘Love’ is definitely letting someone you care about who is half way round the bloody planet volunteering in a tropical, corrupted 3rd world nation for 2 years know that they didn’t miss an unforgettable family Christmas together! I think my sister must love me a lot! But that wasn’t the end of Christmas! I enjoyed opening several parcels from the UK and another huge Christmassy dinner (this time with a streak of Australian festive tradition) in Poipet with Elise and some new friends!

And as if that wasn’t enough, the new year was seen in from Pam’s garden in Sisaphon with many friends from the province and beyond. A hat themed party (I wonder whose idea that was...!), fireworks, champagne, dancing, karaoke, sparklers, random improvised representational modern dance routines and vegetable curry! I had stupidly volunteered to be responsible for the music on the which meant we got a good portion of Abba hits but because of my distinctly lacking ability to forward plan and make up some playlists also meant that I was juggling 4 ipods all night! It was great fun and felt really good to have a proper dance in between setting the next song up. I’ve made no resolutions for the new year although 2009 will require some decisions to be made about the next chapter of life post-VSO! Still 10 months to think about that yet and lots to do in the mean time!

Happy New Year x

Mahob Anglais

2008-12-19T10:22:00.002Z

That means English Food.

I have been endlessly spoilt by my Khmer friends, colleagues and at times perfect strangers, feeding me delicious Khmer food during the last 14 months. Actually, not all of it has been that delicious and I have sometimes found myself making excuses for not gobbling down bowls full of cow intestines, or knawing on chicken’s feet, or swallowing fish egg sacks, or eating fermented fish paste (Khmer cheese!) not to mention the MSG induced semi-comas I have occasionally found myself in! So I thought it was about time I got my own back, erm, I mean returned the favour to a few choice friends in Phnom Srok with a taste of good traditional English homecooking!

Set Menu:

Appetizer: Bread with a choice of meat pate or Marmite topping
Starter: Tomato Soup
Main Course: Shepherd’s Pie with boiled vegetables
Pudding: Trifle

Drinks: Orange Squash, Red Wine

The preparations were fun! I spent a small fortune in a western supermarket in Siam Reap on some necessities such as baked beans, gravy and orange squash! And I finally got to be head chef in my own kitchen! I got to dictate how the vegetables were chopped (there’s more than one way to chop an onion you know!). The menu sounded a lot grander (and English!) than it turned out and I was limited by the fresh food choices available to me in Phnom Srok! On the day there was no bread to be found in the district so the Crisp Breads from Siam Reap (rather more French than English) had to do, the pate was Dutch and the beef was sold out so the shepherd’s pie was made with pork which my beautiful friend Daney was happy to mince! I also found myself without a potato masher, or in fact potatoes, so again the shopping trip to Siam Reap proved to be useful as I had had the foresight to pick up some Smash equivalent while I was there!

The actual meal was a fantastic experience! It was really interesting to see how my Khmer friends reacted to a different culinary experience, using different cutlery, eating in a different order, having a whole meal served on your own plate rather than sharing from dishes in the centre of the table, and so on. The crispbreads went down a treat, the Dutch pate was a hit and naturally some loved the Marmite while some hated it! The soup course was very funny! I wolfed my soup down from the bowl while everyone else politely sipped one spoonful and then left the rest aside. “Oh no!” I thought... “They hate the soup!” I dished out mashed potato and the minced pork and veg mixture (Shepherd’s Pie, my eye!) and observed as they began to eat the soup with the main meal! It was amazing and very amusing to see such familiar food being eaten in such a Khmer style! The boiled vegetables (cauliflower) were looked at very suspiciously, politely tasted and then blatantly ignored and as I followed suit I realised that vegetables here are served in or with other foods and always with a sauce of some sort! I had to agree, they tasted awful! The pork mixture was a hit which I was really pleased about although some of my guests insisted on pouring (yes, literally pouring) salt over it which I chose not to take any offence at! And then came the trifle! Wow! Although everyone was full of mashed potato, the trifle didn’t last long at all!

The meal was enjoyed with a few bottles of red wine (French!) and basking in the apparent success of my first dinner party in Phnom Srok I explained how I am much better at cooking Italian food to which confession I was promptly asked to prove it! So, not one to turn down a challenge I have offered to cook an Italian dinner for all the staff at the District Office of Education next month! Oops! Watch this space!

Encouragement vs Boredom

2008-12-19T10:21:00.003Z

It’s been a strange few weeks in Phnom Srok lately. The weather has suddenly turned a few noticeable degrees cooler and I’m taking two blankets to bed most nights and usually left longing for some socks and a cardi most mornings. It is harvesting time also which means most of my colleagues at the DOE are somewhat distracted by the fact that their fields of rice need cutting. In fact the whole district is busy with harvesting. Those that don’t own fields are busy working in their neighbours fields and it’s the main reason for the half empty classrooms I’ve visited recently as so many children need to work as well or look after their younger siblings while their parents work.

I tried my hand in one of Mr Sophan’s fields and managed to cut my little finger on a scythe and make a complete hash of my flooded patch of field. It looks so easy and there must be some system to it but it just wasn’t my day! I got sunburnt and bored! Tough work! I was much more successful at bagging the dried rice after threshing. I actually enjoyed this: partly because I had turned up to an empty office so was glad of having something remotely useful to do; partly because the late afternoon is such a beautiful time to be outside in the Cambodian countryside and party because it was highly amusing to observe passing Khmers almost falling off their bikes in shock at the sight of a female barang doing manual labour!

Encouragement has been found in the cluster core schools I have visited this month – thank God! I have been so pleased, motivated, overwhelmed and even proud of the developments I’ve witnessed in all the schools I’ve been to since the ETL training and Resources workshops of the last few months. Instead of walking into sad, bare classrooms I walk into classrooms with children’s work on display, learning posters hanging from string, clean water available for students to wash their hands, lessons being carried out without textbook dependency, children enjoying games as a learning activity. What has almost moved me to tears has been the school and cluster directors falling over themselves to show me around their school, motivated teachers who look proud rather than scared to death of the thought of us peering into their classrooms, and very happy children!

Sound perfect? Ha ha – well it’s not, it’s all still a long way off the inclusive child-friendly objectives the World Bank are dreaming of but it’s such an enormous and positive step in the right direction! To my relief the cluster schools who were given materials last month have actually used them and, more to the point, have shared them with and encouraged their satellite schools to do the same! Amazing! The newly acquired office laminator has never been so busy!

So, fuelled with very positive feelings about the progress Phnom Srok schools are making and desperate to spend some VSO money, we have made lots of exciting plans for the next few months and the infamous emotional rollercoaster is on the upward climb. Life is fantastic once more and I realise that even in the most boring of times there is never a dull moment.

Off She Went With a Trumpety Trump

2008-11-22T07:00:00.001Z

Trump Trump Trump!

I left mum on Koh Chang, island of elephants, on Friday and she headed on to Singapore as I returned to Phnom Penh. But not before we had enjoyed what Koh Chang had to offer and we finished the holiday off in style with elephant riding, snorkelling and swimming in waterfalls.

I don’t think I have ever spent 2 whole weeks alone with my mother, having grown up with 3 other siblings, and certainly not shared a bedroom with her for quite some time! Our roles were also reversed for most of the holiday. She still woke up before me but I found myself nagging her to hurry up when getting ready to go out, something she must remember doing during my teenage years. I was also constantly thinking about whether she was comfortable or not, had everything she needed, knew where the nearest toilet was and was having a good time, all of which made me feel more like a parent than a child! She held the purse strings though and I was definitely the child when the opportunity to shop presented itself: “Mum, can I have one of those?”

The two weeks were a real treat for us both, it great to have my mum all to myself and the holiday was rounded off nicely in Koh Chang which was more of a holiday for me than tour guiding round Phnom Srok and Phnom Penh. Mum felt that she was getting 3 holidays in 1: a city break; a country retreat and a beach holiday and was also looking forward to a few days in Singapore on the way home.

We exhausted ourselves with sharing new experiences together. Riding an elephant was one. The elephants ambled through jungle, countryside and a rubber plantation, until they reached a fresh water pool where e all donned our swim suits and joined our elephants for a swim! Mum was even persuaded to climb onto an elephant in the water which was hilarious! She was left on the (very tame) elephant for quite some time with no one directing the animal while I snapped photographs and dodged the occasional fresh elephant turd floating past me. We were amazed at how well trained the animals were, their size and also the fact that despite their size they moved so gently and silently.

From creatures great, to creatures small, the following day was spent snorkelling in the sea surrounding some of the neighbouring Thai islands. It was a beautiful day and we saw countless numbers of different species of fish and coral under the waves. The water was crystal clear and it was just like peering down into another universe, there was so much going on! At times we were swimming face to face with fish all around us, close enough to touch, if quick enough! And other times we just floated still on the surface of the water watching the hive of activity below and around us. I was relieved we didn’t see anything the same size as the elephants below the waves. It was amazing to observe so much sea-traffic! Despite my camera claiming to be waterproof I decided not to put it to the test on this occasion so only the memories remain of the incredible sea life we saw. Again, mum had a blast, her snorkelling lesson paid off and I think it was even worth the painfully sunburnt backs of legs she endured for the 2 days afterwards.

Fishing with Mother

2008-11-19T10:49:00.004Z

Like most of my visitors, mum absolutely loved Phnom Srok! We arrived extremely tired in the late afternoon and fell straight into bed after I had rejected invitations of joining a colleague’s party nearby. We ate a very traditional Khmer dinner when we woke up, prepared by my landlady’s family which was delicious, and as mum went back to bed I joined the party as my conscience reminded me that however tired you might be it is very rude in Khmer culture to turn down an invitation and switch your phone off! Oops!

We had a relaxing day on Thursday motoing around the district and I took mum to see Phnom Srok’s main attractions; Tropieng Tmar reservoir and the traditional silk weaving houses. We took the long way to the lake so mum could enjoy the scenery of bright green rice fields and wooden houses and get a grand view of the reservoir. We enjoyed lunch and some time out in the little bamboo shacks near the restaurants and visited silk weavers on the way back home where we were easily persuaded to buy some! Mum was continually bombarded with new experiences and she commented on how exhausting but stimulating and exciting it was to constantly see, hear, do, smell and taste everything which was different to anything from home. Sitting on the floor to eat was challenging as the day was topped off by a dinner invitation from Daney and her family where we were treated to even more delicious Khmer home cooking and mum got to meet some more of my friends and colleagues. She even made some Scotch pancakes to share some traditional English baking!
I had been waiting for Friday for months! Mr Chamroeurn (the accountant from my DOE and owner of the breakfast restaurant I frequent), had been promising for what feels like an age, to teach me how to fish with a large net. I have seen men and boys at various times throwing this huge circular net weighted with metal rings which looked like a bicycle chain, into water to catch fish. The net is held in such a way and thrown in such a way that it opens to its biggest circle before dropping into the water (if you do it right!) and with any luck when it’s pulled back out it is full of small fish. Watching the whole performance beggars the question whether all the effort is worth such a small looking catch? I learnt however, that these small fish can be immediately fried whole to provide a tasty snack or they are used to make a Khmer favourite; prohok. In English, prohok gets called Khmer cheese but this is not because it contains any dairy products! Oh no! It is called cheese because it smells like cheese. It is really fermented fish. This is one dish my Western taste buds have still not been able to adjust to; in fact it makes me want to heave so I avoid prohok at all costs. It was fun catching the fish though!
Mr Chamroeurn is quiet a quiet and very well mannered man at my work place. I have been reminding him of his promise to teach me to fish for months and he always told me that November was the best time. So what better time in November than during mum’s visit! He has a gentle face and was an exceptionally patient and understanding teacher of his two clueless barang fishing students. There were many people out fishing, some because it provides a free meal and some just for fun. The Boat Race and Water Festival marks the end of the rainy season and the beginning of fishing season in Cambodia and as water poured out of weir from the reservoir many men and children used nets to catch hundreds of small fish.

It was a complicated preparation of the net, folding, holding, gripping and separating and using both hands to do different things. Mr Chamroeurn spoke to us in Khmer, we spoke back in English, there were lots of smiles, more than lots of failed or pathetic attempts, but eventually lots of caught fish! The lovely thing was that Daney joined us for a lesson as well as some of the kids from the village who had come along with their parents. We entertained them no end and they encouraged us with giving us their opinions on our efforts, sometimes “Very good” and sometimes “Not good!”.
In the evening we joined Mr Sophan and his wife for fresh fruit ice cream, an evening snack enjoyed in the village and Mr Sophan introduced mum to some other guests at the table as ‘mdai kaun Khnom’ which roughly translates as the ‘mother of my child’. Mum found this highly amusing and Mr Sophan explained that I am his adopted English daughter. He called mum Bong Srei (older sister) so we all immediately became members of the same family, and he repeatedly commented on my mother’s good health particularly at her ripe old age of 61! It felt like we had been eating all day as when we returned to the house we were presented with pork from the pig we had watched being killed that morning. I don’t think I would’ve had the stomach to watch 6 months ago but I’m hardening to country living and thought I should see what happens (especially after being woken up at Corine’s house in Sisaphon in the early hours by the squealing of dying swine at the abattoir next door!). It was vivid and gruesome by the way and yes, I did take some photographs but have refrained from posting them on the blog due to the graphic images – not for the squeamish!

Parental Guidance

2008-11-19T10:28:00.004Z

It was great to meet mum at Phnom Penh airport and share her very first experiences of Cambodia in a white knuckle tuk tuk ride to our guesthouse. Just over a year ago I arrived at the very same airport at around the same time of day and experienced all the same ‘firsts’ as she. We chatted for the most of the hour long journey through the city’s rush hour traffic, coughing through the fumes and other various smells of the city, gasping and squeezing our eyes shut when it looked like a collision was likely or the gap the tuk tuk driver had chosen to drive through looked too small. We both reflected on how much I was now accustomed to things in the bustling city and we planned a rough itinerary over a traditional Khmer dinner and I managed to catch up with the family through photos and videoed messages.

I tour guided mum round the colourfully claustrophobic Russian Market (Psar Toul Tom Poung) which she loved and where we bought silk and goodies, the spacious art-deco Central Market (Psar Tmei) where she bought some inexpensive Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses! And we also managed to fit in some of my favourite little cafes where we dined on very un-Khmer muesli breakfasts and slabs of cake! Yum!

We had a Cooking lesson with Cooking Cambodian (www.cookingcambodian.com ) which was a superb experience. We were picked up from our guesthouse and taken to the Kandal market to buy the food. I’ve been round countless food markets in Cambodia but this experience was unique and wonderful. I saw so many different foods that I haven’t seen before and the amount of food and business going on was wonderful to see. It was also great for mum to witness such a big busy market and see so much fresh food for sale – she loved it! We saw live fish writhing around in a huge metal tray waiting to be bought, decapitated fish heads trying to breath while their large bodies lay motionless beside them, four pig heads adorning a man’s blood covered moto before being dropped off at a stall, pink eggs?, live chickens tied by the feet roosting next to their dead, plucked counterparts and bananas in their thousands! It really was a complete attack on the senses.
The lesson was fantastic and the two of us had a trained chef between us as our teacher. We made Cambodian spring rolls and a peanut sauce as our starter, followed by Fish Amok and then Banana Tapioca pudding. The pounding we had to give the sauce ingredients in the pestle and mortar was like an upper-body aerobics session and we also made cups from banana leaves with cocktail sticks holding the sides together for the fish and sauce to be steamed in. The food was really delicious, the teacher an expert and the recipes relatively simple!

The tour guiding continued to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, an obvious tourist site but one I hadn’t visited yet. We didn’t really see much of the palace but the pictures of the Boat Races were interesting. The Silver Pagoda houses priceless bejewelled statues of Buddha amongst other various treasure and is called the Silver Pagoda due to the 5329 silver tiles that cover the floor.

We were also fortunate enough to be in Phnom Penh at the same time as the Water Festival (Bonn Om Tuk), an annual festival marking the Tonle Sap’s change in direction at the end of the rainy season. VSO had their own boat crew again this year of which I was a member so mum joined some other VSO parents in watching the boat of barangs make complete fools of themselves! Again, it was great fun to participate in such a colourful and important festival in the Khmer culture and I’m sure we did better than last year. Hundreds of brightly painted dragon boats race in pairs down the river to the finishing line outside the Royal Palace. In last year’s race the VSO boat managed not only to lose the race it was in but was also overtaken by two races behind, in effect coming 7th in a race of 2! This year I’m sure we were overtaken by fewer boats; the final result is still to be announced!

Phnom Penh was a hive of activity with thousands of people celebrating the four day holiday which followed the celebrations of Independence Day on November 9th. It meant that mum had come at the busiest time but also when the city was at its most colourful and vibrant. Flags were on every street light, food sellers on every street corner, huge balloons strung up and the riverfront packed with revellers. It was an amazing atmosphere to be a part of for a few days. And after those few days we were ready to escape the city for a very different part of Cambodia – Phnom Srok District. Our 7am bus drove mum and I through rice fields, villages and towns giving a very different view of Khmer life. Next stop, Phnom Srok.

Production, part deux

2008-11-06T08:14:00.004Z

So, the day of the additional one-day workshop came upon me quicker than I expected and it was suddenly time to present the directors and key staff of the 10 other core schools with a workshop which would fill them with excitement, understanding, motivation and the skills needed to turn a pile of stationary materials into wonderful teaching and learning resources.

Daney and Vuthang pretty much ran the show and we spent most of the morning engaged in activities which were hoped to better the participants’ understanding about how children learn and why teaching and learning resources can help the learning process. The afternoon was spent reading the Learning Outcomes of the 4 subjects studied at primary level: Khmer language, mathematics, science and social science. This, again, was the risky bit. There was a lot to read and some of my colleagues wanted to get on with the making part straight away. In fact, I had quite a disagreement with one of my colleagues over this but I really stuck firmly to my guns , trying to explain that participants needed to think about what their children had to learn before they decided how to help them learn it.

It really helped that we held the training at Chey Oudom primary school as they really provided an excellent model . The school is very much in the early stages of development but already has much more child-friendly leaning environments to boast. The participants were quite impressed with the amount on display in the wooden classrooms and also with the amount of learning games and teaching resources the teachers had made. It was great to see the Chey Oudom teachers explaining it all to them (instead of me or Vuthang or Daney). I really showed me that they have a greater sense of pride in their work as well as understanding. Whether the resources and games are all being used in the lessons is another story but this is on my to-do-list to support in the coming months. What is important is that the classrooms are more meaningful centres of learning, the teachers are enjoying creating resources and developing their classrooms and the students are enjoying the results!

I definitely found the participants harder work this time, perhaps because they were from a mixture of schools and didn’t know each other so well, so it helped a lot that Pam and Sokphal were there to offer some moral support and take photographs. And they too were really impressed with how Daney and Vuthang worked together like a little team.

Field Trip

2008-11-01T10:10:00.001Z

Another public holiday befell my busy work life in Phnom Srok last week. I had planned to work it as a normal day but over a few cans with Mr Sophan we decided that it would be a perfect day to visit the rice fields with a picnic. How exciting! I was so looking forward to see the field I helped sow a few months back and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to invite some of my VSO team mates to join me and enjoy a day out in the rice fields.

So, Elise and Pam arrived Tuesday evening and we shared a lovely dinner with Mr Sophan and his wife who told us exactly what he thought of our Khmer-speaking abilities, much to our embarrassment! Well, at least he’s honest! And poor Pam was forced into a promise of speaking Khmer all day at the fields. We joined Daney and Srei Saart at the market the next day to help to buy all the food we needed and then sat relaxing at their house, helped to prepare some food and waited for Soroth to arrive. After roasting peanuts for the sauce for a while, amusing ourselves with the various animals in the vicinity (mainly pigs) and watching fishing rods being fashioned from bamboo we finally took off for the fields on motos with the picnic in tow and it took about an hour to get us and the food and drink to a dry spot near Mr Sophan’s fields.

It was such a beautiful day, sunny but a bit cooler than usual. Our trip took us down a dirt road, a lot of which had been washed away or flooded by the rains which made the journey a lot more interesting and led us to predict which types of worm we might get as a result of wading through the water. We weren’t the only people out that day either, as we passed and chatted to other farmers tending their fields, children swimming and men and women fishing and walking cattle out to the fields. What a busy place.

Our picnic reminded me so much of camping. We had a small gas stove and cooked beef in loads of butter, piled high with veg and then eaten with a deliciously spicy sauce. We attempted fishing with the rods without much luck and watched the locals throwing their huge nets into the water. It was a holiday for us but for many it was life and what ever they caught would be their dinner that day.

The fields were really wonderful: such an absolutely luscious bright green colour and it was so hard to imagine that the same place had looked so dry and barren a few months before. I remembered motoring over the hard, dry soil which was not an easy thing to do nor very comfortable. This time we had to get to the fields by boat because the fields were under water and high with rice. With a few beers inside us our boat rocked along and with so many barangs in the boat we were quite close to the level of the water. It was such a beautiful ride and when everyone stopped talking all you could hear was the very gentle swishing noise of the boat against the rice plants – it was really beautiful. We bailed out water as fast as it entered the boat but eventually the inevitable happened and the boat filled quicker than we could bail. It was very funny and we all managed to step outside the boat before it reached the bottom except for Pam who remained standing! What’s that phrase about never leaving a sinking ship? While we all laughed and guffawed, the professionals amongst us got the boat back to the surface by pushing it backwards and forwards to each other in the water and then rocking it side to side until it was on the surface again. Then with a little more bailing we were all back in! The water was only about knee deep so Elise and I enjoyed walking alongside the boat and even swimming behind it. Imagine that – swimming in a rice field! It was amazing!

We reached the field that I had helped sow a few months back and admired how tall the rice had grown. “Kupoh dauch Anna” (tall, like Anna!) was on everyone’s lips and I started to wonder whether I’d missed my calling in life. I made Mr Sophan promise that I could help harvest the rice, which starts next month and we pushed the boat onwards, back to the picnic site. The funniest thing on the way back was the discovery of fishing nets which had been strung up around a field. My fellow boaters nabbed all the fish on the way past which was highly amusing but somewhat unfair on the people who had gone to the trouble to put the nets out in the first place, I thought! Apparently it’s first come first served!

At last – production

2008-10-24T06:16:00.002+01:00

When introducing myself to a group of teachers or directors, I tell them I am a VSO volunteer and explain that VSO is not a money giving organisation. Instead, VSO give skilled professionals like me (ahem!) to share skills, build capacity, blah blah blah. It is at this point I often observe fallen faces, waning smiles and small frowns of confusion adorning the brows of my audience. I think I can read their minds: “Eh? You’re here instead of a load of cash? We’d rather have the dosh thanks!” and I can’t say I blame them. Although I really believe in VSO’s ethos of sustainability, I do at times struggle with understanding the VSO motto; “Sharing Skills, Changing Lives”. I think “Sharing Lives, Changing Skills” (N.B. my skills) is rather more apt. It’s great that VSO send people as people are a really valuable and fantastic resource but with the best will in the world, some of these schools simply need cash!

On a slightly more positive note, I managed to apply for a small amount of money from the VSO coffers to buy materials for some schools in Phnom Srok District. The idea was that teachers would use the materials to create their own teaching and learning resources in order to make learning more active. It was March when I applied for this grant, which seems like decades ago now, and it’s taken this long to make a shopping list, buy the materials in Sisaphon, transport said materials to Phnom Srok, plan a workshop with my Khmer colleagues and finally deliver the first workshop and hand out the materials.

There are enough materials for the core schools from each of the 11 clusters of schools in the district (each cluster is formed geographically and made up of a core school and up to 3 other satellite schools) but not enough money in the piggy bank to fund a workshop in each. So, with Daney from the DOE, we will give a 2 day workshop at with the staff of one school, Chey Oudom, and an additional 1 day workshop inviting key staff from the other 10 core schools and using Chey Oudom as the model.

I have been bleating on about how children learn for quite some time now, using a simple diagram of the VAK model (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) to help explain. We spent much of the morning on day 1 playing games and doing activities relating to our sense and how learning was more effective if you got to see, hear, speak about and practice it. The afternoon was a bit heavier. The teachers read the Learning Outcomes from the National Curriculum for the grade they taught. I don’t think many had ever clapped eyes on such a document as teaching and learning is governed by textbooks. The textbooks are in line with the curriculum but I wanted to encourage the teachers to think outside the very restrictive box these textbooks have created. They highlighted learning outcomes for which they thought they could make a poster, learning game or teaching aid which might help the children see, hear, speak about or do. Thankfully there were lots of examples and ideas of what could be made as some volunteers before me have conducted similar training. The teachers also got ideas from numerous photographs taken at other schools.

And then came crunch time: Day 2 of the training and the materials were spread out on the table (and really didn’t look much when spread out!). I thought one of 3 things could happen now: (a) the teachers would have no inspiration to make anything and we’d all sit in awkward silence staring at a pile of paper and card; (b) the examples given would be copied exactly as they were with no fresh thinking or initiative to apply the examples to their own ideas; (c) that all the paper would get folded into a billion origami animals and flower garlands and used to decorate rather than educate. Oh me of little faith! I managed to restrain the controlling-“I’m in charge”-teacher part of me and sat back and let it all happen.

Everyone was very busy making the whole day. Teachers of the same grades worked together cutting, sticking, drawing, writing and gossiping the whole day long! Even the director and deputy made themselves useful by making wooden frames for the maps to be transported between classrooms for geography lessons. All the materials were used and at the end the teachers proudly shared what they had made, what learning objective it matched and how they would use it with the students in their classrooms. I swear I saw the pre-school teacher stashing coloured paper away to make origami swans with another time but on the whole a very productive workshop – phew! The question is whether the teachers will use their newly made resources in lessons, but that is a headache for another day!

Farewell Mads...x

2008-10-10T03:43:00.004+01:00

The perfect end to our holiday together was a helicopter ride over Angkor Wat and the Tonle Sap. Madeline treated us both as a special birthday experience and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Just the fact that we went up in a helicopter was experience enough, but we also enjoyed a gorgeous day to do it, really beautifully clear skies and a wonderful aerial view of Cambodia. I sat up front (of course) with Captain Mick and we got to wear earphones and everything! Captain Mick communicated with the Siam Reap control tower and then we were off! And all he had to control this machine was a joystick and handbrake! amongst thousands of dials and buttons. My only previous experience of helicopters is watching Airwolf as a kid (remember that one?) and films such as James Bond whereby the baddie usually has a helicopter waiting for a quick getaway which the goodie usually forces to crash into a mountain/building/other helicopter. They seem to be such delicate little things and rather prone to blowing up in a big ball of flames at the slightest malfunction. Well, this certainly didn’t feel at all fragile and after hovering about a metre off the ground for a while we whizzed off into the air. We got a great view of the Cambodian countryside, saw Angkor Wat and many of the other nearby temples before zooming off towards the Tonle Sap where we spied the floating villages from the sky – amazing! A fantastic birthday present!

Not enough time...

These are some of the blog entries from the ‘Madeline does Cambodia’ tour of 2008 that would’ve made it to the blogspot had there been enough time to write them...

“That could’ve been my head!”
How I almost lost my hand in a slight altercation with a ceiling fan.

Hypochondria?
Headache, funny poo, sunburn, bruises, you name it, Mads turns it into some of the worst disease known to man.

Subtitles Rule
How the most frightening film became the funniest thing on TV thanks to some very badly written English subtitles. “Go to your room”!

Roles Reverse
Madeline is begged to come back to Phnom Srok by the locals and I become the worst passenger (on an elephant).

Night of the Bugs
Madeline is attacked by insects during a night in Phnom Srok which really tests her fear of 'lotsoflittlethingsclosetogether'.

Click!

2008-10-08T07:43:00.004+01:00

Name of the game: Click

Number of players: 2 +

Best place to play: This game can be played anywhere but the best locations are those with large populations of tourists at a popularly photographed landmark or tourist attraction (e.g. Angkor Wat)

Aim of the game: To win! Game players score points by appearing in the background or foreground of other people's holiday photographs. The winner is the player with the most points at the end of the game.

Rules:

1. The game players should decide on the starting and finishing time of the game before the day of the game starts.

2. Game players say the word 'Click' aloud when a target opportunity is identified. At least one other game player must witness the 'Click' call.

3. As soon as 'Click' is called, the target belongs to the player who called it. The player should then proceed to attempt infiltration into the target's photograph in any way they can. If attempts are thwarted in some way (e.g. the target is aware of the player in their shot and waits for them to move) the target becomes open to other players to 'Click'.

4. Both the player and the witness should truthfully confirm whether the 'Click' was successful or not for the point to be awarded.

5. A player may score an extra point if a target is approached and asked by the player whether they would like help in taking their photograph (this is particularly appropriate in the case of large group photographs in front of major landmarks). Other players may treat such instances as regular play and could call 'Click' and appear in the background for their own point.

6. The game players should decide on a suitable forfeit for the loser of the game. As the game involves innocent unsuspecting members of the public, so the forfeit for the loser should be a public punishment also (such as singing all known verses of "If you're happy and you know it" at the top of your voice in a heavily touristed area.

And most importantly...

7. If at any time the players are on the verge of a major fall out, argument, disagreement, physical fight or the like, the whole game is immediately cancelled and there is no winner or loser.

The temples were beautiful, probably more so than when I first visited in April as the wet season makes the surroundings much more lush and green. We devised the 'Click' game over a beer the evening before our temple visit and even though the stakes were high we abandoned it just after lunchtime using the get out clause stated in Rule 7.

But let it be known, had we carried on, I would definitely have won.

SMILE

2008-09-28T10:47:00.003+01:00

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...

2008-09-28T10:17:00.005+01:00

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

2008-09-28T10:17:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-28T10:13:00.001+01:00

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

A Drop in the Ocean?

2008-09-06T14:20:00.004+01:00

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...

2008-09-06T13:50:00.003+01:00

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)

His story

2008-08-16T07:21:00.004+01:00

After nearly a year in Cambodia and after reading numerous books and visiting Toul Sleng Prison and the Killing Fields at Choueng Ek, I am still struggling to understand what the people of this country have had to endure in their recent history.

In a bid to try and understand the psyche of the people here a little better, or just plain morbid curiosity, whenever I get an appropriate opportunity I ask the people I meet about their experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime. It often happens to be school directors who show me the bullet holes in their school buildings or tell me of how the school grounds were once a battle field or hospital or a prison or how landmines once littered the playground. I have also been told the stories from a teacher who remembers being 10 years old and helping to dig the earth from what has now become the beautiful Tropieng Tmar reservoir. He remembers seeing people killed on the very spot we stood at the time. He said that many people became ill from working such long hours under the sun and not having enough to eat or drink but the Khmer Rouge refused to believe they were unwell. Another director told me how he watched the Khmer Rouge cut the liver from someone’s back while they were still alive, to cook and eat. The tales are all told as if they happened yesterday with smiling faces this nation is famous for.

I have been aware that Mr Sophan has a story to tell and although always promising to tell it he has not until now. One quiet afternoon in the office this week I reminded him of his promise and got the short version of his story at last. He has promised more and admitted to filling 4 books with writing about is life at that time.

Mr Sophan grew up in Phnom Srok district and went to High School in Sisaphon as no high schools existed in Phnom Srok back then. He didn’t complete his Grade 9 exams as he signed up, at 16 years old, to Lon Nol’s government army. He went to fight in Preah Veng province, fighting in many battles and killing many men. However, the Khmer Rouge army was strong at that time and he was captured and imprisoned in the countryside. He was one of 800 in the prison and one of only 60 to survive it. He worked hard, did what he was told and kept quiet and was only close to being killed when he started teaching the alphabet in the prison and the Khmer Rouge accused him of being well educated. After negotiating with the cook for some food, he escaped the prison.

He lived in the forest in a resistance force with about 30 others for a while, fighting against the Khmer Rouge. After the liberation of the country he headed back to Phnom Srok. His father was dead. The Vietnamese ‘liberators’ helped set up commune and village leaders which Mr Sophan put himself forward for but was turned down due to his strong involvement with the army.

It is only a small sliver of his story and I’m itching to know more, my head buzzing with questions to fill the gaps, find out what he witnessed, what he did, how he felt at the time. After telling me this, through a translator, he asked me what I thought of him; his character and attitude. I was almost speechless and told him that I had never met a man like him before.

Quack

2008-08-08T08:48:00.001+01:00

Being squashed into the back or front of a taxi has become quite common place now. I used to buy ‘two’ seats (which equals ‘one seat’ where I come from!) but since fares have increased (fuel prices have increased by about a third since I’ve been here) I’ve become decidedly less fussy about who I share my personal space with when travelling long distances. 8 is the number of adults I have shared a taxi with on my last few trips out of town. On route to Battambang Pam, Suzy, Corine and I bundled into the backseat, taking it in turns to sit forward and back to compensate for our Western-sized hips! At the beginning of the journey it was not too bad. We all felt quite comfy, snug even. However, after the first half hour I realised I couldn’t feel my left leg from the knee down and had no way of changing the fact.

Travelling back to Sisaphon a few days later I shared the front passenger seat of the taxi with Corine while the driver shared his seat and the gear stick with his wife! The Wife was thrilled most of the journey to be sharing such close proximity with a ‘barang’ and proceeded to stroke my arm, pull my arm hairs and stare at my nose a little too intently and a little too closely for my liking as well! I was helpless! Trapped! Caught between an overconfident Khmer lady and a petite (thankfully!) Corine and trying very hard not to squish the latter into the side of the door or stick my elbow into the former. If we had’ve had an accident, I think we would’ve been too wedged in to do ourselves much damage. We’re in Cambodia, who needs an airbag, or a seatbelt for that matter!? We engaged in some conversation with our fellow passengers and without realising how, the conversation soon turned to a fun game of ‘Guess the Animal’ whereby Corine and I made very realistic animal noise impressions for our new Khmer friends to identify (in Khmer of course!). Perhaps because we felt like animals packed in on their last trip to the market, I honestly can’t remember how it came up. It was a really funny game until we noticed that frogs in the Western world make a completely different noise to frogs in Cambodia. Everyone in the car was completely flummoxed by our frog impressions, which wasn’t helped by the fact that we couldn’t remember what the Khmer word for ‘frog’ was! This problem caused much merriment to Corine and I but caused the Khmer passengers to completely lose interest in us. They became completely engaged in a conversation and despite my very loud duck noises we spent the rest of the journey being completely ignored. It must’ve been quite some conversation to outdo my ‘quack’ and the occasional dig in the ribs from my wandering elbow!

Part of the Family

2008-07-24T06:46:00.002+01:00

In the report, written by the big cheese from VSO Programme Office in Phnom Penh, to review my placement after 4 months, he commented that ‘Anna is like one of the family’ when referring to my relationship with the landlady’s family. I accommodate the top floor of a guesthouse, well, a landing space and in theory 4 bedrooms, a balcony and a roof. The floor below is still used as a guesthouse and is very rarely inhabited by random visitors to Phnom Srok. It’s empty rooms are swept daily by two young girls while 3 days a week my floor is cleaned by one of the landlady’s daughters. We didn’t see eye to eye in the early days but we now enjoy a more distant relationship whereby when I go to work, she cleans. It works perfectly and I find it much more comfortable than her coming in any day and any time she likes!

When I read the report I remember wondering how on earth the big cheese had come to this conclusion. Which ‘part of the family’ did he think I was? I am still treated a bit like a queen by some members who shoo the kids out the way when I come to sit down or get the dirty rag out to ‘clean’ the dirty table top for me to sit at. Some family members literally chase the kids away if they dare some near me which is a bit of a shame. I sometimes wonder are they trying to protect me from their noise and mischief or them from me? Would that make me some very important Great Aunt?

I am smiled at lots, generally given the time of day and helped out with my bags when using one of the sons’ taxis to get to Sisaphon at the weekend. This is a very convenient arrangement for me however there is not a discount in sight. I once arranged the taxi at the beginning of the week and checked with Bong not to forget to pick me up to which I was given the reply ‘I don’t forget money!’ Hmmm, which part of the family is that then? The rich parent?

I often have dinner cooked by the landlady in the evening. It’s pot luck what is served up and it ranges from plain hard boiled duck eggs and fried fish to gorgeous green curry, all with rice of course. The landlady, bless her heart, has stopped charging me for the dinners, despite my initial protestations. It was about a dollar a dinner (50p) which was a bargain, saved me a trip to the market and a challenging independent cooking marathon which usually resulted in me throwing out more than I ate. I make sure that I buy her some fruit or something as a gesture of thanks. Now, what family member might that make me? The poor, younger sibling who can’t/won’t cook?

And I always eat alone out the front of the shop below my humble abode. Just once have I been invited into the house to eat with the family. What’s that all about? What family member does that make me? The dog?

I don’t think I will ever become like a family member. I am treated very well (particularly if it involves me giving them money for something!) but most of the time I am generally ignored. In this respect, perhaps I am just like a family member. In some ways I feel just like the 8 month old baby: totally clueless as to what is going on around me, depending on tone of voice or very slow speech to understand what is being said to me but always willing to smile back at a friendly face!

Eye to eye!

2008-07-24T06:45:00.001+01:00

It’s been pretty quiet and slow going for the last few weeks. Teachers have collected the text books from the children, the syllabus has finished so there’s not a lot to do in schools, many teachers and directors are being trained to work at the polling stations for the upcoming national elections (27th July). On top of all that I am still without a translator and the schools will officially close at the end of July anyway for 2 months school holiday.

For this reason, as well as general lethargy brought upon by a cocktail of inactivity and heat, my body has become bored. So bored in fact that it has started misbehaving! My right eye decided to become unattractively swollen, red and painful over the course of a few days and I honestly think it was simply due to boredom. My body has been so bored it has started thinking of ways to make life more interesting!

It’s funny what goes through your head in a place like this when the threat of illness raises its ugly head though. I think I have a fairly high tolerance for pain and discomfort but all the time I am quietly calculating how many hours it might take me to get to hospital in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap or whether in fact it would be quicker and probably a better bet medically to get to Bangkok, and oh, where is my passport? And I wonder how long it would take me to go blind if I left this untreated?

In the end, it took me about 2 hours to get to a pretty good hospital in another district where another VSO volunteer Tricia, works in the Health sector. There I was shown to see a very competent Khmer eye specialist who gave me some ointment for the bad eye after a few painless tests. What a relief! While there though we encountered a slight moral dilemma. It was similar to an imaginary one given to us during our pre-departure training in Birmingham to encourage us to think about this type of situation we might find ourselves in. What do you do if you come to a hospital with a potentially serious problem (ok, the eye really wasn’t that serious but bare with me) and you are seen by the doctor immediately despite the fact that there is a queue of locals waiting their turn, each with their own potentially serious problem for the doctor to see? It’s funny to observe how I am treated here due to the colour of my skin. Well, I walked straight past the queue of locals and asked the doctor if I was jumping the queue. Thankfully, I wasn’t and the seated line of patients were all waiting for dilation. Phew! The Director of the hospital still refused to take my money for the ointment though which was a little frustrating to say the least.

Viva Las Poipet!

2008-07-06T07:38:00.002+01:00

Poipet is the biggest and busiest border town crossing with Thailand. It’s a couple of hours bumpy journey from Phnom Srok and now home to Elise, another VSO volunteer. It is the place where the gap between rich and poor couldn’t be starker. The quality of the roads is so poor that the slightest bit of rain turns them into swamps. There is filth and rubbish everywhere, always being scrupulously picked through by scruffy looking, bare-footed children in rags hoping to find something they can make a few hundred Riel from. All day, poor Khmers, adults and children alike, pull wooden carts across the border and back again, transporting food and goods to sell in the markets. Landmine victims with missing limbs cycle their carts with their arms, children play with syringes and cigarette butts in the dirt and women sniff glue from plastic bags on the street. It’s really depressing stuff and sadly helps form negative first impression of Cambodia for many tourists passing through to Angkor Wat.

On the flipside, it is a town of immense wealth riddled with huge shiny and often grotesque looking Casinos and hotels. As far as I know these are all Thai owned as gabbling is illegal in Thailand so the wealthy Thais skip across the border in order to satisfy their needs to part with copious amounts of money. Khmers aren’t allowed in, unless they work there of course, or have been hired for the night! Corine and I have passed through Poipet a couple of times on trips to Thailand, not wishing to stay longer than we had to and despite our efforts, unsuccessfully trying to dodge the scam buses to Siem Reap.

So Elise lives somewhere between these two worlds, each as depressing as the other but both offering fascinating insights into lives different from ours. Again, on paper our job descriptions are practically identical but in reality very different issues face us both. Phnom Srok is a very poor district but there are still smiling faces whereas Poipet has intoxicated smiles and lifeless faces barely willing to make eye contact. But I have confidence that Elise will find some genuine smiles amongst the rubbish and mud! I joined her for a really fun weekend and had a great time enjoying her company and the contents of her fridge, meeting some of her colleagues and visiting some of Poipet’s highlights. We did visit a Casino which was very surreal as it was like stepping into a different world; slot machines, roulette and poker tables surrounded by pizza restaurants, duty free and clothes shops. We enjoyed a huge swimming pool to ourselves on Saturday afternoon... what a crazy world!

A Week Without

2008-07-06T07:37:00.001+01:00

“A Week Without What?” I hear you cry. A week without a translator. With Soroth gone – now working for ICS in Oddar Meanchey – and the disastrous and fruitless interviews behind me, I was absolutely determined not to let the obvious language difficulties deter me from the work I had planned. After all there are many VSO volunteers across the globe working without a translator. In fact, VSO Cambodia are currently reviewing the system in place here for the education volunteers who have intense language training AND a full time Volunteer Assistant.

The plan for the week had been to work quite intensely at one targeted school with the idea, eventually, to use it as a model Child-Friendly school for the rest of the district. I worked there for 3 days with the help of Daney, a young colleague from the DOE. With her 8 words of English and my 9 ½ words of Khmer, I think we managed alright. Daney has worked with Soroth and me a lot so her understanding of Child Friendly Schools has increased amazingly. She also used to be a teacher herself so feels comfortable in the school setting; talking to students and teachers which is surprisingly unlike some members of the DOE.

Luckily, the work was more about ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’ so the lacking language wasn’t a huge deal. By the end of the 3 days we had managed to persuade all the teachers to rearrange their desks into groups and organise their posters into subject areas lower down on the walls so that the children can actually see them and use them.

We also managed to involve the students by meeting them at the flagpole one morning, identifying members of the student council and getting everyone to help litter pick. We had a lot of fun doing this and the children seemed to love the fact that a crazy barang women was walking round with a plastic bag chanting “Put the rubbish in the bin!” in Khmer! However, the success was short lived. Despite Daney’s fine explanation and questioning about the school grounds and why we should keep it clean and litter free, by lunch time it was dismally covered in litter again; plastic bags, straws and wrappings. But, it’s a problem nation wide. The knee-jerk reaction of Khmers is to drop it on the floor when it’s finished with, whatever ‘it’ is, which is why there is so much rubbish in this country – everywhere. Like trees drop their leaves where they’re not needed anymore, so the Khmers (I am generalising somewhat) drop everything and anything where they stand, or out the window. I guess in years before food from the market would be bought wrapped in banana leaves, or similar, which would naturally decompose and not make the environment quite so ugly. I was kidding myself to think that one morning picking litter was going to change that. It’ll take much more than that but it’s a start at least!

If nothing else, being without a translator has helped improve my Khmer language. Suddenly I must understand what’s being said to me or how to explain an idea without turning to someone for an English translation. It’s been fun in a way too as we have to mime what we’re trying to say to each other when vocabulary is insufficient. It has also helped build the capacity of Daney. As a young female working in an office of older men she can often be mistaken for the general dogs body, fetching, carrying and cleaning, but she has an amazing amount of knowledge and a real gift for presenting to a large crowd be it students, teachers or directors. I’m hoping my other colleagues will catch on to her talents. I’m not saying I can do without permanently though and as I wonder how on earth to find and recruit another new VA willing to work in Phnom Srok I am well aware that another few weeks without might prove to be a few weeks too many!

Wild West

2008-07-04T07:12:00.002+01:00

I went to visit Onno this week in Bavel district in the province of Battambang. Onno arrived in the same batch as me, way back in September last year, and seems to have a placements most similar to mine. He too is alone in a fairly poor district, an hour from his provincial town. He too is the first volunteer to work in his district, lives in a really nice little Khmer house (unlike mine!) and has managed to build really positive relationships with his willing Khmer colleagues.

I was on my ‘Dream’ for almost 4 hours to reach him from Phnom Srok, where we caught up and planned our few days together. Then, interspersed with visiting the market, meeting friends, watching DVDs and visiting the office, I joined Onno, his VA and DOE colleague as they finished a series of CFS (Child Friendly Schools) Introductory workshops.

It was great to see Onno in his natural habitat and fab to steal some ideas for work to take back to Phnom Srok. He had written the workshop himself, initially presenting it to his DOE, in order to give it at 9 target schools. However, by involving and encouraging his colleagues so well and training up his VA, it is now them running the show rather than Onno which is ideal! As their understanding of CFS increases so the DOE takes on more and more ownership of it. It also means time isn’t wasted going through everything in 2 languages (and Onno is Dutch so presumably has to go through a 3rd language too!).

Corine joined us for a party on Friday night which started as a small get together and ended up a slightly bigger event. Onno’s landlord and lady came bringing a table and chairs, apologising to me about the state of the garden!, some of Onno’s colleagues joined in as well as some Khmer friends from the local moto garage. Fortunately, for Onno the reluctant cook, his friends had friends who worked at one of Bavel’s restaurants so after a quick dash to the market, all the food was brought round ready prepared. Perfect!

On Saturday we all travelled further west to visit Chris and Jon in Phnom Preuk. Now they really live in the Wild West! I was amazed at the change of landscape as we drove into the district. There were no more rice fields here as the land is not flat, instead they grow corn. Many ‘mountains’ (the Khmer ‘mountain’ is more like a hill really) dot the horizon. In fact I nearly fell off my moto in surprise when I had to drop a gear to get up one of said hills. It was really beautiful countryside and so different looking to Phnom Srok. It was nice to be recognised by one of their DOE staff who visited Phnom Srok last month and they even have my photo, amongst others, on the wall to remind them of their trip!

Phnom Preuk is on the Thai border and has only been established recently (i.e. in the last 10 years) and is an interesting mix of residents including ex-Khmer Rouge cadres and displaced families. Again, it was fantastic to see fellow volunteers at home as it makes it so much easier to picture where they are. Weary from the long moto journey, we turned down the offer of a guided tour and instead opted for Pimms on the balcony.

It was a great evening, 5 of us volunteers as well as Chris’ son and his mate from the UK; I felt like we were all part of the family! We ate a delicious Bar-B-Q and spent the evening chatting and playing games. And then, thankfully with not a rain cloud in sight, we travelled back to Bavel for a quick pit stop, on to Battambang where we met Jean for lunch and left Onno to catch a bus to Phnom Penh. Corine and I took the road back to Sisaphon together and except for a near miss involving a young cow; the journey was smooth and fairly enjoyable.

In some ways I can’t believe it has taken us this long to take these longer moto rides to visit friends but I guess we’ve all been busy settling into our placements and gaining confidence. I’m so glad we did it this weekend, just before the big rains are due to start, as now the country seems a little smaller than before and friends feel a little closer.

Building Bridges

2008-06-29T11:31:00.001+01:00

Unlike the previous day’s spontaneous, on-the-spot, thumb sucking, today’s meeting was a little more planned for. One of the priorities of the DOE here is to create a model school in the district which meets as many of the Child-Friendly Schools criteria as possible. I think my colleagues understand more about investing time, energy and money into a few schools initially in order for the district to have at least one model of what a Child-Friendly School should look and be like. Rather that than spreading the time, energy and money to more schools but with less impact. Quality, not quantity! One at a time, it is hoped that other schools will follow the examples set by the model schools and the first school identified in Phnom Srok, for now, is Chey Oudom Primary School. Luckily for me it couldn’t be much closer to my house or to the office which is great as I often bump into the director and teachers around the village and amazingly I recognise at least one child in every single class! It is such a wonderful feeling to know some of the children at this school. Some I know from just hanging around the shop on the ground floor of the house and others from the English class. I recognise some as being the really poor children who hang around the wedding parties in the hope of collecting a few cans for their parents to make some money from. When there is a mutual recognition (well, as the only barang in the village, it would be difficult to mistake me for someone else) there is something quite fantastic about seeing their little faces light up and smile at me.

I’m really keen to get stuck into this school and help with displays, classroom layout, management, teaching and so on. I’m keen to help pick up all the rubbish making the grounds look like a dump and I’m even keen to teach some demonstration lessons (with a bit of translation help, obviously!). But, one-step at a time! On Soroth’s last day working with me in Phnom Srok we visited the school for a morning meeting. I am consciously, but not comfortably, turning a blind eye to the fact that when a meeting happens like this, the children are usually sent home from school with no teaching or learning taking place at all. (I know, I know, this is all wrong and completely goes against the examples I am trying to set, but for now I can’t see an alternative.) The meeting was to act as a preparation and planning meeting for how the DOE and VSO would support the staff, students and community to improve their school in line with the Child Friendly Criteria. Many of the staff had the ETL training back in April and also visited the Child-Friendly Schools in Monkul Borei district in May, all of which has already had a visible impact on the quality of the learning environment, teaching techniques and the value given to display and using teaching aids. Great stuff! So, leafing through my VSO book of Participatory Approaches, Soroth and I chose and implemented the Bridge Model as the most appropriate to the aims of the meeting and, using a Guided Visualisation helped participants imagine what they wanted their school to be like in the future. It felt a bit ambitious to say the least but, thanks to Soroth, we managed to pull it off. Two community members as well as four Grade 6 students joined the staff of the school in writing statements about what Chey Oudom was like now. Soroth then asked everyone to close their eyes and imagine the school in the future. He did the Guided Visualisation brilliantly and I was so pleased with how the participants took to it! We then created a bridge of ideas and activities which would get us from how the school was now to how we wanted to be. The pillars of the bridge were then identified, the three key factors affecting the success of the activities: Budget management, Community involvement and Teaching.

From that, the staff made a list of how they wanted VSO and the DOE to support them in making the first steps over the ‘bridge’. The list was more or less what I expected and did indeed include VSO (read ‘me’) providing demonstration lessons (bring it on!). It was great to get such involvement from all the different stakeholders in this school and it also felt great that they were telling the DOE and me (rather than the other way round) what they needed support with. It was a successful (although the proof will be in the pudding!) and interesting meeting but sadly Soroth’s last day. Next week, the plan is to spend every day at Chey Oudom, give some immediate feedback, do some practical activities, ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ and generally get to know everyone better. I’m not quite sure yet whether I’ll be doing that alone or with a brand new VA who hasn’t materialised yet... Watch this space!

Sucking My Thumb

2008-06-29T11:30:00.002+01:00

After the less than successful VA interviews in Sisaphon on Monday I returned to Phnom Srok by truck in the evening.

Tuesday morning I attended a follow up meeting for the Study Tour conducted last month. It went really well and I'm hoping that this group of teachers and school directors are really dedicated to implementing some changes in their schools. After the meeting, Soroth and I thought we had the afternoon to prepare for another meeting the following day so we relaxed a little. Little did we know Mr Sophan had other plans, which quite frankly I'm getting used to and have decided to accept the fact that I probably work best under a little bit of pressure anyway.

So, at 10.30am I discovered that there would be a DOE (District Office of Education) staff meeting that same afternoon and Mr Sophan wanted me to tell the staff about working rules of the office, work hours, being transparent (i.e. not corrupt!), committed to work, etc, etc. He had a list of items that I think he basically wanted to tell the staff off about! My first thought was "well, there goes my carefully planned preparation time for tomorrow's meeting...!"). My second thought was "THIS REALLY ISN'T MY BAG!" There was no way I was going to lecture his staff abut their work ethics. No way! But I have learnt that "no way" is not something that is terribly well understood here!

So, I sucked something out of my thumb with absolutely no idea whether it would work or bring about Mr Sophan's desired results but which I hoped would get me out of this particular tight spot: I suggested a role play!

The staff got into two groups, one with the task of acting a scene from the 'best' DOE ever (they were expected to use their imaginations for this!), the other acting a scene from the 'worst' DOE ever. It took a little explaining and funnily enough all the participants wanted to act as the 'worst' DOE. What followed was one of the funniest afternoons I've ever spent in Cambodia so far!

The 'worst' DOE were very convincing (a little too convincing perhaps?!): they acted drunk, half dressed, late for work, uninterested and uncommitted to their jobs. The director of Phnom Srok DOE acted brilliantly; fag hanging out of his mouth, slumped in a chair and showing little respect for his colleagues. The 'best' DOE had a much harder job as they really couldn't decide what the 'best' DOE would be like. In the end, they acted a 'meeting' scene whereby the director greeted everyone, all the staff arrived on time and then the meeting proceeded with the director doing all the talking and the rest furiously scribbling notes and not speaking a word. 'Best' DOE? Hmmm, typical DOE perhaps. Anyway, as is often the case, I probably learnt as much if not more from the exercise as they did as it really helped inform me of their understanding and awareness of what looks 'good' and what looks 'bad'.
When the acted meeting started getting a bit boring (like most meetings here, it went on a bit!) I decided to scroll through my phone to see which of the actors phone numbers I had as we have an ongoing battle of getting people to turn their phones off during meetings and I was feeling a bit cheeky. Usually the Khmers take the phone call, even if they are mid-way through chairing a meeting. Either that or they stick their head under the table to answer their phones. The participant playing the director and leading the meeting at the 'best DOE' had evidently not thought to switch off his phone so was a little embarrassed and certainly surprised when I called him from the audience! It caused a lot of laughter as I tried to speak to him down the phone in Khmer and he tried hard to stay in character. Following the hilarious role-plays, I tried to highlight the link between acting and reality and made the point that it was much easier to be a poor performing DOE than a really good one as the actors had found out themselves. The staff then created a list of work ethics which a 'good' DOE should have and low and behold it matched Mr Sophan's original list of 'tell offs'. Phew! I was really relieved to have managed to get Mr Sophan's desired results without actually having to speak a word about how staff should follow rules, come to work on time and so on. Just like teaching kids, its preferable for your students to reach the answer themselves through facilitation rather than be told. After all, they are much more likely to remember what they have learnt if they had fun getting to the answer or result themselves. This idea is often a little lost on the teachers I've tried to talk to about how their students learn but perhaps after a few more role plays we'll be getting closer.

Don't get me wrong, the DOE I work in is far from being the 'worst' DOE ever and after the role-plays and list making the staff rated their DOE on a 1-10 scale along with the imaginary DOEs. They gave themselves a 7 which I would probably agree with. Time will tell whether the role plays will've made any bit of difference, or satisfy the proverbial bee in Mr Sophan's bonnet but at least we had fun!

Three in a row

2008-06-22T10:32:00.001+01:00

Parties are rather like the buses on Fulham Palace Road: when you're desperate for one to come along there's nothing in sight and just as you're about to give up all hope, 3 come along at the same time.

Thursday night, her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II turned 21 again so the British Embassy threw a bit of a bash at the Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom Penh. All the volunteers received fancy embossed invitations and were expected to ditch the flip flops for the Lounge Suit dress code. And what a party! Fish 'n' chips, roast beef with horseradish, union jacks, the national anthem, the Olympics promotional video playing in the background, the royal crest and ice sculptures of some of London's landmarks. I've never thought of myself as the least bit patriotic nor one to feel much in the way of national pride but the sight of so much red, white and blue and the sound of so many British accents in one room made me feel quite sentimental!

Friday night, Sandra (volunteer based in Mondulkiri) caught up with me by turning 29 and starting with happy hour cocktails at the FCC we merrily danced the night away. It was great to hear some proper DJ-ing and familiar 'Western' music. We seriously bopped til we dropped!

The third party was Saturday night in Battambang on my way home, by which time I was pretty much all partied out! It was fun though and the hosts had organised some Khmers from the circus school in Battambang to perform which was excellent to see.

So, returning to Sisaphon on Sunday, I was very tired (I think I'm getting old!) but it had been just what I needed. The previous few weeks in Phnom Srok have been a bit tough. My fantastic VA (Volunteer Assistant) resigned so was working out his final weeks, the evening English classes have become too much so I'm feeling a bit like a pathetic failure, and a young man decided to completely lose his grip on reality and was subsequently tied up outside my house and bundled in a taxi to Battambang psychiatric hospital.

Also, very sadly, Mr Sophan's father-in-law died suddenly so all work plans were scrapped as Soroth and I attended the immediate 2 day funeral which followed. I found the funeral fascinating to say the least and observed many differences to the 3 year funeral I described in 'Good Grief'. The speed at which the whole of the neighbouring community pitched in was astounding: the women turned up and cooked continuously for 2 days so that all the guests would have something to eat, while the men put together the wooden coffin and cut out fancy shapes from shiny paper to decorate it with. Soroth was great at explaining all the different parts of the rituals and customs of the ceremony as we watched and it was great to have a running commentary.

Photos of Embassy party will follow...

The Visitors

2008-06-09T07:39:00.004+01:00

I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking why has she named this entry after the final, and probably most melancholic album ever produced by Abba. Does this entry have anything to do with the best pop band of all time? Does this entry have anything to do with the greatest thing to come out of Sweden for the past 30 years (other than Lina Gardek)? Well, no. This entry is so titled because this week Phnom Srok was treated to not 1, not 2, but 9 visitors from afar.

My friends and fellow colleagues Jon and Chris brought their translators and 5 members of their DOE (District Office of Education) to visit me and mine. It was a bit like a study tour, an exchange visit in order (well, in theory!) for our DOE colleagues to learn from each other about the work that they do and how they work with their VSO volunteers. I count myself very lucky that I have such a fantastic DOE colleague to work with, and we really do work WITH each other. We meet regularly, share work plans, speak the same language (metaphorically) and have the same goals and ideas for the development of the district. And, my DOE do not seem to be on the ‘take’, trying to sponge every penny they can out of VSO in order to fill their pockets. Ok, I still get frustrated at the communication problems, the last minute changes of plan, the slower than slow progress, days when without warning I am the only living soul who bothers to turn up at the office, and so the list goes on, but I don’t seem to have half the problems that some other volunteers face in more challenging districts.

The ‘Arrival’ (another excellent Abba album by the way) was on Thursday and we swiftly ushered the visitors to Tropieng Tmar reservoir for a very Khmer lunch. It was like a holiday for the visiting DOE and it was fantastic to have some barang company in my little corner of the world. I also think my DOE were very pleased and proud to be hosting. After a relaxed lunch I persuaded Mr Sophan that we had time to show our visitors the traditional silk weaving which is gradually putting Phnom Srok on the map. The Khmer Rouge regime all but destroyed this traditional art during their reign of terror over the country but with a bit of help from Pass (a French NGO) Phnom Srok has become one of the only places in Cambodia to have resurrected the sericulture. The visitors got to see how the silk worms were fed on mulberry leaves, the silk spun and dyed with natural dyes and the silk woven on huge looms. Jon even succumbed to peer pressure from the rest of the men in our group and bought his wife a beautiful scarf at a bargain price thanks to me! Well, I’m practically a local so I expect local prices!

Mr Sophan had prepared a presentation in the afternoon which went down very well and we divided into groups for question and answer sessions in our own languages. It was fantastic to share experiences with Chis and Jon and even better as they got to see all that I was talking about. We have the same job remit but despite the identical placement objectives, our work lives seem quite different in many ways.

I had a house full for the night and on Friday we journeyed out to a school who were conducting a meeting with their community in order to raise money for a wall for the front of their school. I have given up trying to point out that there are more important things to spend money on than a blinking wall. To these folk, a school wall IS very important and I have resigned myself to the very positive fact that at least this school has a really good relationship with their community.

The meeting was really positive and was great to be a part of and also great for the visitors to experience. I had the impression that communities in my district didn’t value education and their local schools that much. Communities seem to pile money they don’t seem to have into their local pagodas which are huge, ornate and well kept buildings, while the local schools still have bullet holes in the roofs which let in rain water, are vandalised by the village teenagers and generally left in a state of disrepair: far from being stimulating learning environments. I am happy to admit that my initial impression of a distinct lack of community involvement was most definitely wrong. Phew! I was very pleased to see such a large turn out of community members, both male and female and all with great ideas of how to raise money for the school and showing great commitment to put dates in the diary and come up with a joint plan. Great stuff! Maybe after the wall they’ll think about raising funds to repair the school buildings themselves, or to kit out the classrooms with resources, materials, teaching aids, learning games and the like. I live in hope!

The visitors left feeling happy and full of ideas, and even gave me a lift into Sisaphon for my weekend retreat! It was a great visit and I’m hoping to reciprocate the gesture and get out visiting other volunteers in their placements rather than a bar! A great learning experience for all. Whenever we volunteers get together, our work dominates conversation topics and we all seem to be doing much the same work. However, until you see someone in action in the context of the work they talk about it’s really difficult to actually know what each other is doing. It was wonderful to have visitors and have a good catch up with Chris and Jon ... check out their blog: http://www.chrisandjonincambodia.blogspot.com/

Srei Saart

2008-06-07T07:29:00.003+01:00

Srei Saart translates into English as ‘beautiful girl’. When I first met Mr Sophan’s wife I thought she was really beautiful with a youthful and very kind face. Many Khmer women of her age have lost a few teeth and/or developed a stony, weathered expression after years of child bearing and rearing, labouring in the sun and generally working hard for their husbands and families. Mr Sophan’s wife has done all those things and more during her 55 years of life but I thought she glowed! So, with my limited Khmer, the best words I could find at the time to describe her were ‘Srei Saart’. This of course caused much hilarity from everyone within earshot, including Mr Sophan himself, as it is a term reserved for much younger unmarried girls. However the name has stuck and he has even taken to use it himself.

Khmer culture dictates no physical contact between husband and wife in public and their roles are also quite clearly defined by the culture. This can make married couples appear quite distant from one another and, with arranged or semi-arranged marriages being the norm, this is quite often the case. Mr Sophan and Srei Saart seem different from the norm, as I have observed it, but this may also be due to the fact that I have developed such a close relationship with them. Often, within 10 minutes of getting back to Phnom Srok after a weekend in town I receive a phone call from him asking me to dinner and to share a few beers!

One morning last week Mr Sophan told me he was going to meet his Srei Saart in the rice fields as it is the right time of year to sow rice seed. Not one to miss an opportunity, I asked if I could come along to help! Slightly bemused, my offer of help was accepted and we hopped on our motos at the hottest time of the day and trekked out to the fields. It was a fantastic thing to experience and really raised my awareness of how dependant all the families in Phnom Srok are on the rice harvest. We met other families and workers out on the fields and I had no translator with me but did my best to understand what needed to be done.

Tractors ploughed the fields, turning over the soil, men and women alike walked up and down in rows with rice seed in a basket on the hip and threw the seed onto the soil. It is a much more complicated process than I had ever imagined, I mean how many ways can you throw rice seed on the ground? I was shown the correct way! And was laughed at (but in a supportive way) as I did a few lengths of the field. I got the impression I was being humoured slightly when the basket of seed was promptly taken from me after my second length and a Khmer took over. I think they found it a bit off the wall that a barang wanted to help sow their rice! I believe the tractors turn the soil again so to bury the seed and a better rice yield comes from transplanting the rice once it has grown a foot or so. I think I still have a few things to learn!

We had some interesting conversations about why I hadn’t worn a long sleeved top and I explained that I would quite like a tan! This is such an alien concept as all Khmer people want lighter skin and think white skin is absolutely beautiful. As we have tanning creams in the West, here in SE Asia they have whitening creams made by the same brands! (By the way, despite my protestations, I was literally forced to wear a hat and cover my head and neck with the traditional krama – scarf.)
Mr Sophan’s field didn’t get sown that day. I couldn’t see a dark cloud in the sky but all the farmers were standing or sitting around, after we’d had a picnic lunch of rice and fish, looking intently at the sky and muttering something about rain. Apparently it would be disastrous if they planted the rice seed just before it rained. We left Srei Saart and the other farmers at the field and whizzed back to the village on the motos literally being chased by large raindrops. It was a great experience and this week Mr Sophan told me the rice I did help sow has already grown! I quite fancy myself as a farmer! I hope to go back to the fields myself and observe the whole process and if nothing else, to understand more about this major part of everyone’s lives here. Most families in the district are primarily farmers and own at least one small field which is either their entire livelihood or helps to supplement another poorly paid job. All the school directors I have met, and a lot of the teachers, are farmers as well as they simply cannot live on their government salary alone. I am starting to understand more about some of the problems schools face in student (and teacher) attendance during these times as many poorer families need every pair of hands they can find to help in the fields which means many children miss a significant amount of school. Mr Sophan can afford to hire a tractor to turn his field but I have also seen many farmers ploughing with smaller motorised ploughs or cows, which obviously takes a lot more time. The Khmers find it hard to believe that we have no rice fields in the UK but think that our beef must taste better as they have a lot more grass to eat!

Good Grief

2008-06-02T10:07:00.003+01:00

In the UK, a typical funeral ceremony is held 1-2 weeks after the death, a wake proceeds the ceremony when family and friends toast the deceased, wonder why they haven’t seen each other since the last family wedding/funeral/christening, inevitably drink too much and after paying their respects to the closest family members of the deceased, leave until the next family wedding/funeral/christening. Here in Cambodia there seems to be a lot more to it. As soon as possible after death, the body is burned and a 2 or 3 day ceremony is held, depending on the wealth of the family. But that’s not the end of it: after 7 days another 2 or 3 day ceremony is held, then again after 100 days and then again after 3 years. Originally I thought this seemed a little excessive, if not expensive, but I’m coming round to the idea that it might be a good way of easing the grieving process, remembering the deceased and their family and it’s a good excuse for a get-together.

I was invited to attend part of the 3 year ceremony for the dead grandfather of one of my colleagues, 24 year old Daney. The whole family turned up from as far away as Phnom Penh and almost the whole village were there as well. I recognised that he must have been quite a popular man, but then again the whole village seem to be related to each other in some way or other.

Monks came to the house where a shrine to Daney’s late grandfather was erected. They chanted a lot of monotone Khmer, none of which I understood, musicians were also present playing traditional ceremonial music and the place was a mass of mainly women dressed in black sampots, white tops, toothless and with shaved heads. I believe these women live at the local pagodas and are widows, many of which have no family hence the pagoda is their home. 'Lay women' was the word translated to describe them. We then ate a lot of food and were slowly organised into a procession line to follow the ‘relic’ of Daney’s grandfather being carried to the local pagoda.

The relic is a small collection of bones which didn’t manage to get burnt when the body was cremated. They are kept in a small urn, in this instance in a glass case. Once at the pagoda the closest family members carried and some followed it around the family stupor 3 times before it was placed inside the stupor with a lot of chanting, prayers, incense and offerings of water and food. Fascinating to watch. Then there was more monk chanting and the family gave more offerings to the orange clad fellows. Then everyone drove back to the house for more food.

It was a sombre occasion in a sense but also a celebration. It really was quite amazing to witness, surrounded by a sea of shaved grey heads, black, white and orange, although I can imagine it would be a real bind if you didn’t much like the deceased! A lot of value is placed upon appeasing the spirits of the dead which isn’t particularly Buddhist as I understand it but rather derives from animist beliefs which were absorbed into the country’s national religion along with a hangover of Hinduism way back when.

Road Trip

2008-05-23T09:41:00.002+01:00

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!

2008-05-20T03:27:00.003+01:00

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

2008-05-20T03:25:00.002+01:00

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

2008-05-11T10:16:00.003+01:00

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.