Getting on a bit

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

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

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?

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

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

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!

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...