The Visitors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Would VSO send an air ambulance for me?’

‘Would I die here?’

‘Who would tell my mum?’

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

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

Doin' it for the Kids!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bangkok

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

And Bangkok had pink taxis!


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

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

Back to the Grindstone

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

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

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

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

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

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