Christmas

Gilly and Sam were hosting Christmas in their house in Kratie, a town on the Mekong river about four hours from Sen Monorom. On Friday, after finishing off some work at the secondary school, Jeljte and I set off on our motorbikes, carrying a first aid kid and two toolkits full of things we didn’t know how to use. We thought it was worth taking them, though, in the hope that someone might stop to help us if we had a problem.

The journey was fine though and really beautiful. We stopped quite a few times to take photographs and arrived in Kratie at around 4pm. It was really nice to see Gilly, Sam and Ingran again, and after some tea and cake we went to watch the sunset on the river and meet the other volunteers who were also in Kratie for Christmas. Much as I missed hugging sweaty drunk people in Crosby village and going back home with my brothers and sisters to snack on food that we shouldn’t be eating till tomorrow, it was a nice Christmas Eve and we stayed by the river till around 11pm – very late by Cambodian standards.

Christmas morning was good: we had a fry-up and lots of tea, opened our pillow-cases (we’d arranged to buy each other $1 presents so everyone had four each) and, starting as we meant to go on, opened a bottle of cava. We also had a walk around the town, stocking up on salad and bread for lunch and had a teuk krolok (a fruit milkshake) by the river, before going back for a cheese baguette lunch. This might not sound like much of a Christmas dinner but some of us got very excited:

We got through several bottles of red wine before meeting the others at the river, where we watched another lovely sunset (Kratie is famous for them). 

Then we headed to a place called Joe’s for a Christmas dinner. I’d heard bad things about Joe’s and, although it was nice to be with lots of other volunteers, it turned out to be pretty bad – in fact, for the first time in quite a long time, I was chucked out of a bar! This was because Sam politely challenged Joe on the prices he was charging for spirits, which were twice what was advertised in the menu, and Joe, being drunk, told us all to leave. I was very glad to as I didn’t like him and the food had been pretty disgusting too.

Anyway, being escorted off the premises was great as it meant that we ended up a party at Kratie’s university, which Sam had been invited to as he’d taught English there. It was lots of fun and we danced a lot, and when in Cambodia it’s always nicer to be doing Cambodian things rather than being stuck in an overpriced expat bar.

The following morning we ate all the food that we hadn’t had time to eat on Christmas Day, and left at around 11.30am. The journey back was also beautiful and, although Jeltje’s back got a puncture, a family stopped to help us. (This isn’t strictly speaking true: Jeltje stood in the middle of the road and waved her arms so they didn’t have much choice.)

 

Happy Christmas to everyone and have a great New Year! We’re off to Phnom Penh so I’m looking forward to that. 

Work!

I think it’s time I write something about my work here. My job title is Community Assistant and I support the work of the Provincial Office of Education as they try to encourage greater involvement from children, families and communities in their schools. It is hoped that this will improve enrolment and drop-out rates in the province, as well as making the schools more child-friendly. Another of VSO’s objectives is to give people a stake and a voice in their local services and to develop a culture in which people are better able to hold their public services to account. Currently, there is very little accountability at all levels of public governance (even at the highest level – Hun Sen has been prime minister for 31 years, the leader of the opposition is currently in exile in France, and most of the press is government-controlled, so there is no real opposition to the government) and, although improving this situation is a long-term project, empowering people to become involved is a useful start.

As I had been told to expect, work is slow here, especially compared to my last two years of PGCE and NQT year. So far I have been visiting the seven primary schools and one secondary school in Sen Monorom district, to begin to develop a working relationship with the school directors and to identify what we can do to help. Charlotte, the previous volunteer, worked with the same schools so we are also continuing some of the projects she started. It has been interesting to learn about some of the barriers to education that result in a situation where Grade 1 enrolment has risen to around 87% whereas very few students make it to the end of primary school. Some students live too far from school and have no transport; some are needed to work in order to help their families feed themselves; many from the Punong group (Mondulkiri’s largest ethnic group) don’t understand Khmer which is the language used in all government schools; many can’t afford books and stationery; informal payments to teachers are common, excluding those who cannot pay; there is virtually no provision for (or even recognition of) special educational needs; lack of water or toilet facilities at schools discourage students from coming; many teachers are not sufficiently trained in child-friendly teaching methods and so lots of students don’t enjoy school; poor hygiene spread illness which also affects children’s attendance. Another major problem is that the district’s only secondary school  has just one boarding house for students whose families don’t live in the town, so children from the rural primaries tend to drop out at Grade 3 or 4 because they know they will not been able to attend secondary school anyway.

These are my initial impressions of the context of my work, although usefully we had a meeting last month between VSO and the Provincial Office of Education to make a specific plan for our work this year. We have been told to focus on one primary school and one secondary, to set up a student council and an effective school support committee in each that the POE can then use as a model for other schools. In addition, we will also work with the other schools on various other community projects, such as well improvements, developing school libraries or vegetable gardens.

After six weeks of visiting schools and making plans, this week we actually had some work to do, as on Tuesday we ran a workshop with 24 students from the secondary school on setting up a student council. We had discussed this in advance with the deputy director of the school, and it was agreed that two students from each class would attend the training, and then be responsible, with support from their teachers, for organising the election process within their own classes.

It was good to work directly with kids again (it reminded me of how much I missed the students from St Gregory's!): they were a really nice group, and they produced some good ideas. Overall, though, I was disappointed by how it went although I think I have learned a lot about how to do it more effectively next time. The main problem was insufficient planning and cooperation between us and the deputy director. It turned out, for example, that he had already organised voting, so the 24 students had already been elected to the student council – this made our sessions on organising an election process completely redundant, and the final hour of the workshop was an embarrassment as he and we were working to different agendas. I do think it is very important that someone from the school is fully involved in delivering the training and that was what we wanted from the beginning, but as they hadn’t been interested and had asked us to do it all, it was frustrating that he intervened so much on the day. In particular, we organised sessions to enable students to produce their own ideas about what the student council could do, being careful not to give too many suggestions of our own. (I don’t think this is very common in Cambodia as all the workshops I have attended have involved a trainer telling participants all the answers.) Each time we did this, he would very quickly fill in these gaps, telling the students what to think, which was, incidentally, quite a limited view of the role of a student council - I think some of the students left thinking that it was little more than a cleaning agency.

It was a frustrating day but a useful one: we’ve learnt to clarify roles and expectations better, and to cooperate more effectively on planning.

Anyway, apart from work it’s been a busy few weeks. I have been to Phnom Penh twice, once to see the doctor for an eye infection and once to learn how to edit the volunteer magazine, as me and Sam are taking over from the next edition. We are also making plans for Christmas and New Year and I’m enjoying the parcels I’ve received – thank you! We are going to Kratie for Christmas and are having baked beans and cheese and red wine. I never thought I’d be so excited about beans.

Here are some of the photos from the workshop:

And here is the roast dinner which we cooked last night in Jeltje's oven:

Phnom Penh tragedy

I don’t really know how to approach writing about what happened in Phnom Penh at the weekend. The thought of suffocating people simply being squeezed off the edge of the bridge and sliding into the water, the police teams searching the river for bodies, the images of the makeshift morgue in the city’s hospitals where unidentified bodies are left uncovered for relatives to search for the missing, and the thought of army trucks leaving Phnom Penh for the provinces carrying piles of coffins are all very disturbing. Outside one of the hospitals there is a noticeboard with hundreds of photos of dead bodies for people to search for missing relatives, and I think this inevitably recalls the photos of the Khmer Rouge victims at Tuol Sleng – death on such a scale becomes not an individual experience but something impersonal and systemitised.

I think I will give a personal account of my experiences in Phnom Penh this weekend, often very close to the centre of the tragedy yet knowing nothing until several hours later. I am aware that this will sound self-centred but, reflecting on the weekend, I feel that I was self-centred, enjoying three days of partying and, at the time of the crush, completely ignorant of what was going on.

All weekend the atmosphere in Phnom Penh was excellent. Three days of boat racing began on Saturday and, although I missed watching the VSO team as I didn’t arrive till late afternoon, it was great to see the other volunteers and watch some of the races from the riverside. While they went for a post-race celebration, I went to meet Chak who, having been given leftover alcohol from a friend’s wedding, had a weekend of parties and heavy drinking planned. This began at his mum’s house where we drank red wine with ice and ate some Cambodian bar snacks, which I’m becoming used to although still not liking very much – duck foetuses (duck eggs that are cooked when the duck has already begun to form), deep fried crickets, unidentifiable bags of meat. I enjoyed chatting to his mum and his Phnom Penh friends and neighbours, one of whom invited me to his engagement party the following day. When Chak passed out at around 8.30, I went back to meet the other volunteers for a few more beers. I was exhausted and drunk when I got back to the VSO programme office where I shared a room with Dave and Ingran.

At 6.20, Chak phoned to tell me to get ready for the engagement party. Perhaps foolishly, I’m assumed that it would be in the evening or the afternoon at the earliest, but I was told to prepare for a 7.30am start. I did as I was told and, after stopping for breakfast, we were on our way out of Phnom Penh along flat straight roads surrounded by rice fields, until we reached the village where the fiancée’s family lived. I was mortified to discover that the party was actually a dinner in which the husband-to-be brought his friends and family to meet his fiancée’s family. It was an embarrassing few hours and I felt terrible to have intruded, but they were very welcoming and genuinely didn’t seem to mind, while having lunch with a bottle of rum and whisky helped smooth things over. Completely drunk by 12.30, we went back to Phnom Penh and slept for a few hours.

I met Danny, another volunteer, for a drink (water) at around 4pm and then, after showering at Chak’s mum’s, we went daa-leing (literally ‘walk-playing’) around town. It was very busy and there were times when we couldn’t move for several minutes. Some people seemed to be enjoying pushing their friends through the crowds although there were lots of children so I didn’t think it was at all funny. Anyway, we had food in a cheap burger place, went to two nightclubs and had lots of fun, and sitting along one of the main streets eating Cambodian meatballs at 1.30, I took some photos of a sleepy, happy, drunken end to the evening.

It wasn’t the end though. We met Chomnit (the friend who had just got engaged) and drifted through the still-busy Phnom Penh streets towards Wat Phnom where we had coffee in a cafe that had two TVs, lots of coffee, board games and about twenty-five customers, almost all of whom were fast asleep. I found it hilarious that so many people would sit sleeping in a cafe at 2am rather than going home, but soon I was joining them and had to be woken up to go back home.

We woke up early again the next morning, bought a mountain bike to take to Mondulkiri, and then enjoyed riding it towards Chak’s cousins’ house where, inexplicably, there was to be another drinking session starting at 9am. His cousins are students in their early twenties and it was really good fun, this time the drink being accompanied by dried squid and small shells that were a bit like mussels. Feeling like I was living a chapter in a Kerouac novel, we went back to sleep in the afternoon before heading out at around 5pm.

This was Monday, the day of the tragedy, and the streets were very busy. We had a beer in a concert sponsored by Anchor Beer, and the concert being pretty dire, Chak suggested going to Diamond Island, the place where the accident later took place. I had heard of Diamond Island and had mistakenly thought its name came from the rich Cambodian elite who partied there, and this was enough to put me off ever going. Had I realised it was named after its shape and that there was a big free concert going on that night, I’m sure I would have said yes. As it was, we met his cousins again and went somewhere else, where we had a nice time although I was pretty exhausted from the whole weekend and in fact we were all a bit subdued. On the way back after the cousins had left, Chak and I stopped for food. It was around 1am and there was a television showing pictures of a police officer holding a collapsed girl. Not understanding the language and not really watching anyway, I assumed it was an isolated case. When we got back Chak mentioned something about lots of people being electrocuted from the lights on the Diamond Island bridge, but I didn’t really take it in. Perhaps because I was drunk and tired, and perhaps because mass electrocution didn’t seem realistic, I thought it was a rumour that had got out of hand, and fell asleep.

Waking up at 6am, I saw that Jim had phoned and texted to ask if I was okay, and that was when I realised that something serious had happened. Chak had heard more from his friend and told me that there’d been a stampede on the bridge, but still I remember nearly asking, ‘But nobody’s died, have they?’ I didn’t ask, I think because I didn’t want to know the answer.

Four hundred dead was the figure quoted. I cycled to the VSO office to check the internet as I still wasn’t at all clear what had happened, despite being within a kilometre or so of the events. The news was obviously very shocking and so were the pictures. It didn’t occur to me to cycle towards the river although later I wished I had. Instead, after some tea and a shower, I headed to the bus station to catch the bus back to Mondulkiri.

Phnom Penh’s central market was already bustling, the station was crowded with buses pulling in and out of gaps on the side of the road, and the only sign of the catastrophe were the bloody pictures on the front pages of the newspapers that were being sold by street sellers along with bread, chewing gum, sweets. On the bus we passed the Calmette hospital where most of the bodies had been taken; already food stalls had been set up at the entrance. We listened to the news for a while and people talked about where they had been and what they had seen, but within an hour the usual karaoke videos were blaring out and people were settling down for the eight-hour journey. I felt a bit sickened by how uncaringly life was continuing and how I, by taking a bus, was part of the indifferent carry-on-as-normal routine. It wasn’t how I imagined being close to a major international disaster to be.

When I got home it was no longer a major international disaster anyway: the story had already slipped off the main pages of most of the news websites, Will and Kate’s wedding plans taking precedence over the four hundred dead and missing.

Inquests and investigations will follow, and as many have said, Cambodia’s disregard for even the most basic health and safety precautions will probably be blamed, but still what I am struck by is this seeming indifference to a massive tragedy. I am especially affected by this feeling because I was part of it: at the time of the tragedy I was enjoying myself in a bar, and within hours of finding out about the situation I was on a bus out of the city. 

Waterfalls, water and falls

I’ve been meaning to take some photos of the countryside in Mondulkiri because it’s very beautiful and quite different from most of the rest of Cambodia – green, hilly and sometimes misty rather than hot, flat and humid. But I keep forgetting, so until I remember you’ll have to use Google images.

It’s been a good few weeks. We have a cat in order to kill the mice that are living in the walls, floors and ceilings. I was a bit worried for the first few days because it spent about two hours chasing a plastic peg thinking it was an animal, so I did wonder whether we’d accidentally got ourselves a bit of a special cat. But two days ago it emerged triumphantly with its first mouse, so that’s good. I’ve also started running with Jeltje who knows lots of lovely routes, so that’s been good. We briefly took up volleyball, probably Cambodia’s most popular sport, because Chak was keen on getting two tall Europeans to join his team. After two fairly embarrassing sessions (the neighbour asked at one point if we were playing volleyball or just practising throwing the ball into the bushes), Chak hasn’t mentioned playing again, so I think he may have changed his mind. Another friend called Hong has invited me to play football, so at the risk of repeating the experience of joining Tremp’s football team when in Spain (billed as the new young striker from Liverpool and substituted off after four and a half minutes) I will be making my debut soon. We’ve also had lots of nice dinners and I have a few friends to do language exchanges with, including one (Hong) who is a bit keen and turned up at 7.15 last Sunday morning. Jeltje and I have also started having Khmer lessons which is good, as for the first few weeks here I barely spoke any Khmer and was beginning to forget what I’d learned in Kampong Cham. We’ve also seen some really excellent teaching, including one class with 73 students where the teacher did group reading (one book between 12), had the whole class absolutely under control and completely engaged in the book.

A different but equally good lesson involving drama.

And now to this week’s ill-fated ‘team building’ expedition to a waterfall in rural Oreang district. The VSO team – Jeltje, Daniel, Chak, To and I – stocked up on barbecue food and headed off across narrow dirt tracks through metre-high grass over some beautiful hills and forests. We had barbecued beef and vegetable skewers dipped in a delicious black pepper and lime sauce (try it – lots of pepper and the juice of a few limes) and played cards. 

At around 2pm To left, with Chak confident he knew the way back. About an hour later the weather seemed to be turning, so we packed up and left too. Within five minutes it was raining and our bikes were sliding all over the place in the mud. Not having driven in mud before, I was the first to fall but actually all of us fell off a few times in the afternoon, even Chak and Daniel who are very experienced in motorbiking. Luckily, there were three bikes between four (Chak having left his in Phnom Penh), so being the least experienced I went on the back with Chak. The rain was unrelenting and the paths were sometimes unpassable, so Jeltje and I spent a lot of the time pushing one of the bikes which was very tiring and even then we were sliding in the mud. Spirits remained high until it became clear that we were completely lost, the tracks were petering out into nothing, and it was four-thirty, leaving us with just an hour of light left. At one point we saw what looked like a proper road a few miles across the valley, and in the absence of any kind of path we were seriously contemplating going directly across the steep hills and thick forests to get there. It was looking like we might have to spend the night outside in the rain in the middle of the forest, and it struck me then that there is no safety net in Cambodia – no mountain rescue, no emergency number we could call, no mobile phone reception anyway, and not even a house in sight anywhere.

At this point I thought taking a photo might cheer us up. It didn't. 

We decided to take the path in the opposite direction which soon became wider and looked a bit more promising, although it was still very slippy. We were all relieved when the path emerged onto a wide road with a sign for the Vietnam-Cambodia border, so we took the opposite direction as the weather became dark and misty. Although the road was wider, it was still very difficult at times (I was on the back with Chak so I didn’t have to drive) and it was worryingly long – at one point we joked, half-seriously, that we might have ended up in Vietnam and were now heading further and further away from the Cambodian border.

Finally we emerged onto the tarmac road and were soon coming into Sen Monorom, just in time to fill up with petrol and get some food. I think it was only then that we realised how cold and soaked we were, but it was a great feeling to be back home and safe, warming ourselves with hot tea and soup. 

So, another week another adventure! We also now have a five-day weekend so we are heading to Phnom Penh to meet up with some volunteers and celebrate the water festival. I will also be stocking up on teabags!

First two weeks in Mondulkiri

I’ve now been in Sen Monorom for two weeks. They have been very good and I feel quite settled already. Following the tradition we started in Kampong Cham of naming everyone after what they sell (fish lady, beer lady, noodle man etc), I’m happy to report that I have settled on a very nice vegetable lady who has a friendly child and husband, an expensive UHT milk man, a bread and fruit lady, an egg and banana lady (shops often sell quite a random selection of products, and for some reason bananas are never sold in the fruit stalls) and a fish man. It sounds silly but it’s actually quite nice to buy from the same people, as you get to know them in a way, although that knowing is mostly them laughing at you and you laughing as well to pretend you’ve understood what they’ve said. Being laughed at is something I’m getting used to: the other day a woman pointed to my bag of tomatoes, said ‘tomatoes!’ and started laughing, which I couldn’t understand at all until I realised that people tend to buy green tomatoes, so my red ones looked as silly as buying mouldy bread or brown bananas. Anyway, I now have a kilo of respectably green tomatoes.  

Having been here over two months, it’s probably about time I mentioned work. As I had been warned, work has been quite slow, especially as the beginning of a VSO placement is focused on meeting people and building relationships rather than launching into activity too quickly. It’s been a useful fortnight, though: I have visited most of the schools in the district I’m working in, and have a few more to see this week. Jeltje, another volunteer who’s working in the same schools on improving teachers’ capacity, has been here a year already so I have tagged along with her, which has actually been very helpful because I have been able to join her in lesson observations, to see some of the things going on inside classrooms. I think it’s too soon for me to make any conclusions about teaching in Cambodia, but I was struck by the scarcity of resources and how this places huge limitations on teaching techniques – it’s very difficult for a literacy lesson, for example, not to be teacher-led when there is only one copy of the book for the whole class.

As well as visiting schools and meeting school directors, I have attended quite a lot of meetings and workshops, including the annual meeting between VSO and the Provincial Office of Education to review the partnership between the two organisations. It was very useful to have that meeting so early in my placement as it has given me a fairly clear idea of what they want my work to consist of. There is no finalised plan yet, but one of the things we discussed was supporting the creation or development of groups such as School Support Committees (similar to a PTA, I think) and Student Councils that can take responsibility for organising and implementing school improvement projects. It’s not necessarily what the school directors want, I think, as they are understandably focused on immediate needs such as fixing wells and rebuilding roofs, but if they function effectively, such groups can help the schools become self-supporting in the long-term rather than reliant on hand-outs from NGOs. Anyway, we’ll see what happens.

In terms of social activity, Sen Monorom has proved itself surprisingly good fun considering it’s a town where everything is closed and silent by 6.30pm.  Apart from last weekend which was a bit lonely because Chak and Jeltje went to Phnom Penh and it rained all weekend (I read three books!), there’s been lots going on. It’s a small group of volunteers in Mondulkiri (Jeltje, Daniel and me, plus Chak and To, the translators) but a very friendly and sociable one, so we’ve met up many evenings for food, and yesterday some of us visited a nearby elephant project.

Chak, too, has been great in inviting me when he goes out with his friends, all of whom are very welcoming although I do wish I could speak the language more fluently, or at all, even. Last night was particularly good: we went in a big group to a town in the next district for what looked like a wedding party – lots of immaculately-laid tables with delicious food, a massive sound system and people dancing - but turned out to be a birthday party for a one-year-old child! I’ve never seen so much alcohol at a child’s birthday party, nor so few children, so I think it was more of an excuse for lots of people to meet up, eat good food and get drunk. I was the only foreigner there which was nice but also dangerous, as everyone found it hilarious to make the foreigner down all his drinks. I felt a bit like I was a 13-year-old being made to drink by a group of irresponsible 17-year-olds, and felt a bit ashamed of being in that position, but it was good fun and after about the eighth beer they were right: it was hilarious, although I was aware that it would stop being hilarious if I threw up over them. Luckily it was only beer which Cambodians drink with ice, so it was quite diluted, and we were downing small glasses rather than pints.  That was fortunate as losing face is a big thing in Cambodia, with people careful to avoid anything that would make themselves or others publicly embarrassed. I definitely don’t think I’d be able to recover my lost face very easily if it was dribbled with beery vomit.

Anyway, in my reluctance to write too much about my impressions of work before I feel like I’ve spent enough time there, I’ve once again made it look like I’m on a year-long holiday. I’m not, honestly!   

Homestay and moving to Mondulkiri

Saturday 16^th October was our final day of language training, and on Sunday we went on a home-stay to a nearby village to practise our Khmer and to experience how most Cambodians live. I was looking forward to it although we left very early, arriving at the village at 9am, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make my Khmer vocabulary last for a full day.

VSO had arranged for us to go in pairs to different families, but some of the volunteers were very ill over the weekend so couldn’t go, so Dave, Ingran, David and I each had a family to ourselves. We were met initially by the village chief and various members of the commune council in quite a formal welcome ceremony, where we introduced ourselves in Khmer. The families were waiting at the back and our names were called out one by one, and I went with Leandra (who was just coming for the morning because Andre, her husband, wasn’t able to go) with an old-looking man who led us to his house about 200m away. This was a little bit worrying because I’d brought a beach ball set and a small plastic football with cartoon characters on it as a present for the children, and I wasn’t sure this 64-year-old retired farmer was going to appreciate it. Luckily Leandra had also brought biscuits and fruit, and when we got to the house there was a fourteen-year-old boy – too old for the toys, but young enough for everyone to laugh about it.

The family was quite a small one, with the grandparents, a mother and the son. The boy’s older brothers were all working in Phnom Penh, and his father had moved to Canada where the family were hoping to move the following year. They talked a lot about this and were clearly looking forward to being able to go, with little awareness, perhaps, about how difficult it can be to be an immigrant in a Western country. Anyway, I hope it works out for them.

After looking round the house and sharing photos, Leandra had to leave, which caused lots of confusion as they had assumed Leandra was my wife (despite her having showed them a photo of her actual husband, Andre, and not me). I think they eventually understood, or else they assumed we’d had some kind of domestic.

All in all it was a nice experience – delicious food, friendly people, a nice trip to the wat in the afternoon – but also quite difficult socially, as I really couldn’t understand enough Khmer to be able to sustain the conversation. I enjoyed helping the son with his English, though, and remembered how much I actually like teaching (easy to forget when you’re an NQT) – when he left for school the next morning I wanted to go with him and offer to teach his English class!

Surviving volunteers and villagers as we were about to leave

After that we had a day of motorbike training and then headed back to Phnom Penh for a few final days of briefing and shopping for our houses, and on Saturday 23^rd, Daniel and I came to Mondulkiri. We had quite a lot of luggage and I was concerned about fitting it all on a minibus, although I shouldn’t have been – minibuses usually have up to about 35 people, plus furniture, pigs, chickens… VSO had booked an extra seat each for our luggage but in the end we had spare room, so we invited someone who was squashed with two others on one seat to sit next to us. It was fine until he took up all the leg room and started sleeping on my shoulder, but unfortunately I didn’t know the Khmer for ‘I’ve changed my mind – go and sit on the floor’. Seriously, though, I was almost glad to have a slightly uncomfortable journey because nothing about my experience so far has been particularly uncomfortable – not really what I was expecting from volunteering.

We arrived at around 4pm and I spent most of the weekend cleaning because my house hadn’t been occupied for a few months so there was dust and lots of cobwebs. On Sunday Tak moved in which was good – I’m really glad I’m living with someone rather than on my own, and he is also a pretty good cook, which is nice. I am getting a bit sick of rice and noodles though so I reckon his Christmas present might be a Delia Smith. We also went for a swim in Sen Monorom Falls with the other volunteers, Jeltje, Charlotte and Daniel, which was lovely.

I’m a bit apprehensive about starting work as the more I’ve learned about my job, the more I’ve realised it’s got nothing much to do with education and much more to do with community work, which I have no experience of. Luckily Charlotte seems to have set up very good relationships with schools and communities, and Tak has been working on the projects all year too, so I will be able to rely on him. 

  

Of monks and monkeys

About seven kilometres from Kampong Cham there are two mountains called Phnom Proh and Phnom Srey, meaning Mount Man and Mount Woman. Firstly, it should be pointed out that ‘Phnom’ – ‘mountain’ in Khmer – is used for anything over about 25cm tall, and both Man and Woman took about four minutes to climb, but they have quite an interesting legend attached. There was a woman who had an illegitimate child and had to send him away. This child returned as an adult and fell in love with the most beautiful woman in the village, who happened to be his mother, and asked her to marry him. The mother came up with a challenge, saying that she would marry him only if he could gather up all the men in the village and build a higher mountain than all the women in the village. Both groups worked overnight and had until sunrise to complete their mountains. The women lit a fire while they were building, which fooled the men into thinking the sun had risen, so they stopped working while the women carried on until it was taller than the men’s. And that was how she got out of marrying him. All in all a slightly more palatable version of the Oedipus tale.

Anyway, twice this week I’ve cycled down to Phnom Proh and Phnom Srey, once with Dave and once with Ingran and Gilly. It’s a nice enough place with a large temple, lots of monks and lots of monkeys. Monks are good; monkeys are bad. 


I’m not quite sure how to behave around monks, because generally they should be given maximum respect, but quite a lot of them are novices and so are about 13, and every time I’ve tried to greet them formally they’ve laughed. Anyway, the ones we met today were very friendly and after allowing us to take a picture, they got all their mobile phones out (which I’m not sure they’re allowed to possess) and took photos of us!

Monkeys, however, are not very friendly. It was quite fun to watch them initially, but on Sunday we left quite late, after everyone else had packed up and left, and so I think the monkeys had reclaimed the temple as theirs for the night. As we were leaving, one of them ran quite aggressively towards Dave, who responded by throwing stones (not what I would have done). About forty-five then appeared out of nowhere, including a massive one who was clearly the daddy monkey, so they were definitely up for a fight. After a brief consultation, we decided against it, hopped on our bikes and escaped unscathed.

At least somebody got some boom boom. 

Pchum Ben

There’s quite a bit to catch up on as the last few days have been quite busy. Friday was the final day of Pchum Ben, one of the biggest Buddhist festivals in the Cambodian year. It is the time of year when people remember their dead ancestors who, for fifteen days, are released from hell and allowed to return to Earth. Most people seem to have little faith in their ancestors, as virtually everyone participates in Pchum Ben, suggesting that everyone assumes their ancestors have gone to hell rather than being reincarnated. In hell people are starving, so people leave food for them in the temples, usually via the medium of the monks. Friday was the final day of the festival and, along with our teacher Dara, we went to the main wat (temple) in Kampong Cham, where we were invited to eat with the monks. They were very friendly and welcoming and the food was great, although I think we all felt a bit uncomfortable because we weren’t sure whether we were taking food away from people who needed it more than we did. We did try to ask Dara about this but he said there was loads of food and that the monks enjoyed being hospitable.

To coincide with Pchum Ben, a Thai beer called Leo have had a week-long beer festival on the river front, and on Friday we went along (as well as on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday). They have a very catchy song which is much better than all contemporary Cambodian music, as well as cheap beer, and there were lots of people there. Some of these people were very friendly indeed, as detailed in Ingran’s recent blog posting, ‘It’s not gay, it’s just Cambodian’ (http://ingran.wordpress.com). After chatting to some people for a while, it was only when I leaned over to Ingran to say, ‘I’m a bit concerned that the one next to me still has his hand on my thigh’ and he replied that his companion had asked him, ‘Do you think I’m handsome?’ that we realised that maybe it wasn’t Cambodian, it was just gay. On a separate occasion a man who spent quite a while explaining how much he’d like to kill Thai people (although he had no problem with Thai beer) offered us ‘Cambodian boom boom’, which we politely declined before making a quick exit.

More seriously, though, we were all a bit disturbed by the number of children, some of whom were as young as four or five, who spent the evening collecting beer cans to sell for money, and eating leftover scraps that people had left on their tables. It can feel especially hard because we can’t do very much for them: we have been advised (sensibly) not to give to child beggars because it turns begging into a lifestyle, one which limits their opportunities and puts them in extremely vulnerable situations. I suppose our VSO placements, most of which are in education or infant health, will hopefully have a positive impact, but it will be a long-term one and won’t directly help those whom we see struggling every day.

I think we felt similarly uncomfortable yesterday, when most of the group (eleven of us) went on a boat trip to a very poor island in the Mekong river. The island is usually flooded during the rainy season and the population moved to the mainland (although this year there hasn’t been much rain). It felt like medieval England, which ragged houses made of wood and straw, and the school had no walls, just stilts and a straw roof. Our guide said quite a lot of tourists visit the island but at the moment the island received no economic benefit – we were in fact told to bring sweets for the children, which wasn’t something I felt very comfortable with. We were discussing this last night and found it frustrating, as it would be so simple for the islanders to benefit from the tourists – they could sell food and drinks, local handicrafts, or just request a donation for the school rather than sweets for the children.

Anyway, it was a nice day: we continued along the Mekong river, passing close to the bank which allowed us to see lots of people bathing, fishing, washing clothes or just playing in the river, all of whom were very friendly as virtually everyone is here. There were also quite a few men doing jobs that might traditionally be done by women – bathing their children and even washing clothes – which I thought was quite positive, especially as we’ve been told that gender inequality is a big problem in Cambodia.    

So all in all the last few weeks have been lots of fun but always with a sense of guilt that we are having fun amid such poverty. The fact that we are in Kampong Cham only temporarily means that we can’t do very much; when we settle into our placements hopefully we can have a positive impact, however small.

To explain the above photo: we had managed to find some cheddar cheese and even some pickle (provided by Kath who found some in Phnom Penh). I think the excitement had some adverse side effects, mostly affecting Gilly and Dave but also troubling my hair. 

Placement visit week

We’re now on placement visit week so I am in a guesthouse in Sen Monorom, the town where I will be living. Daniel (the other volunteer coming to this area) and I arrived on Sunday on a bus journey that was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Lonely Planet says the place is “only for the hardcore” but luckily they have just finished building a tarmac road all the way to Sen Monorom, so the less hardcore can also come. Unless by ‘hardcore’ Lonely Planet was referring to the megaloud Cambodian karaoke music videos (mostly involving love in the countryside, with lots of tea-towel-wearing and rice farming) which they played non-stop for the entire bus journey. That was admittedly quite a trial.

Anyway, we arrived about 4.30pm and chatted to some friendly motorbike-taxi drivers, which was nice although probably quite annoying for them when it turned out our guesthouse was about 25 metres away. We left our bags there and then Charlotte, the current volunteer who I’ll be taking over from, took us to a house-warming afternoon for a British-Swedish couple and their children. We met some nice people there and had some proper tea with milk, before going to a decent restaurant for dinner.

Sen Monorom is as small as I was expecting and there’s nothing really happening in the evenings (people get up early and go to bed early), but it’s pleasant and lively enough in the daytime. It’s also very beautiful, with lots of green rolling hills and jungle areas not too far away, as well as some famous waterfalls which we’ll see in time. The best thing about it is the climate: it’s much cooler and less humid than the rest of Cambodia as it’s 800m above sea level. It’s about as hot as England in the summer, and in the hot season (March-June) it apparently only gets a few degrees hotter.

We went into the Provincial Office of Education, the office where we will be based, on Monday and met a few of the directors as well as the two volunteer assistants, Tak and To, who are both great. They work primarily as translators and are key people for volunteers coming to a new place for the first time.

After spending two hours in the bank opening an account (they put full length films on at the bank for people to watch while they’re waiting, so I don’t think two hours is unusual), we started house hunting. Quite a few previous volunteers and other foreigners have lived here so there are a few houses available, and the ones we saw are huge! I’m in negotiations about a really nice house which is pretty big and is already set up with things like internet and even a fridge, and if I manage to get that I’ll share with Tak as it’s far too big for one person.

This morning we did a bit of motorbike practice. The motorbikes are semi-automatic so are easier to ride than the ones I practised on in England, and it was fine. We went to Sen Monorom falls, the nearest waterfall which was very nice. The water looks quite brown at the moment but in the dry season it is clear and it’s a good spot for swimming.

The school year starts on Friday so it’s a busy week for people at the office, although I think we will get to go to a school opening ceremony on Friday. Apart from that we might visit another school this week, or will do some more exploration of the area before heading back to Kampong Cham for two more weeks of language training.

Cycling in Kampong Cham province

Er, I didn’t mean my first entry to the blogosphere to be quite so harrowing, so I thought I’d follow it up by an account of yesterday, a brilliant full-day bike ride around the countryside near Kampong Cham.

Six of us – Ingran, Dave, Gilly, Sam, John and me – set off around 9.30 on bikes that were definitely not made for Cambodian countryside, and stopped at around 9.50 at the first bike repair shop we saw. Cambodians tend to be very resourceful, though, so they managed to sort out Sam’s chain while we had some breakfast and tried to work out how to wear the traditional Cambodian krama - a large checked tea-towel that people wear on their heads to protect from the sun – without looking like an old woman. As you can see, we weren’t particularly successful.

We were back on the road soon after and cycled for about an hour on Route 7, one of Cambodia’s main provincial roads. I had my first Cambodian road accident when a motorbike carrying logs overtook me, forgetting that its logs were horizontal, and whacked into my leg. No harm done though. The Cambodian countryside was beautiful: lots of water and bright green vegetation, and we passed some floating houses. These look like massive rafts where people live and fish with massive nets that they lower into the water. It looked very peaceful although it’s probably a very tough life for people living on them.

We arrived at one of the many rubber plantations in the area. They had been planted by French colonialists and after independence were given to the Cambodian government. Technically, they are state-owned but apparently they just line the pockets of a few rich people. We stopped for a drink, saw some wild water buffalos, and recovered for a few minutes from the immense heat.

We then went onto some small roads and cycled for another hour or two, and everyone we passed was extremely friendly, saying hello in English and smiling. Children, in particular, were very excited and came out of their houses to say hello – I felt a bit like Jesus must have felt when he cycled into Jerusalem. I’ve read that cycling in Cambodia is something done only by people who can’t afford not to, so they were possibly quite surprised that we would choose to do it. Anyway, it was very nice.

And then I had my second (minor) road accident when I fell off my bike. I had a few cuts and grazes, but to keep them covered I had to put bandages on because I was sweating too much for plasters to stay on. This had the added advantage of making it look much more serious than it was, so I got considerably more sympathy from everyone. Just before we stopped for lunch, though, Gilly almost fainted due to the sun and lack of food, so she returned in a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached) and the rest of us carried on.

We were getting a bit anxious because apparently we needed to get a boat to avoid having to go back the way we’d come (about 35km), and they weren’t running all day. So after a quick lunch we carried on in the direction of the port. When we got there, though, it was really easy to get someone to take us across: four of us went in one narrow wooden boat and Ingran went with the bikes in the other, along with a small child, his captain. It was a really nice experience to travel by boat and see other boats on the Mekong River – the biggest and most important river in South-East Asia. We followed the bank downstream towards the Kizuna Bridge (a Japanese-built development project that will have brought huge benefits to the area but which, incidentally, must also have completely destroyed an entire boating industry), passing some very basic-looking wooden houses on the shore. People here were noticeably less friendly and probably have a much harder life than some of the villages we’d passed earlier in the day.

We paid half a dollar each for the boat trip and they laughed a lot when we paid them, so we wondered whether we’d given too much! The final stretch was cycling through a busier road towards the bridge, with lots of market stalls on either side of the road, back in time for some beers by the river.

It was a really fun day and we saw quite a lot of Cambodia. I’m going to be working in a very rural province in the east of the country so I’m now feeling very excited about it all.   

First impressions

It’s siesta time, Saturday lunchtime on 18^th September. We are in a small town on the Mekong River called Kampong Cham, about three hours north-east from Phnom Penh, the capital. We have been here since last Sunday for intensive language training and are here for another four weeks. Siestas are very long here so, two and a half weeks in, I thought it would be a good time to start writing this blog.

We arrived on Thursday 2^nd September, flying from Bangkok to Phnom Penh early in the morning. It is the rainy season at the moment, so on the way in Cambodia looked completely flooded, with patches of lush green vegetation here and there, and lots of wooden houses on stilts, the traditional Cambodian house. It was already hot when we arrived and two VSO staff met us at the airport to sort out visas and to take us to the VSO programme office.

       The first week or so was spent getting to know each other, acclimatising to the sweltering heat, getting to know Phnom Penh and having lots of briefings and training sessions about VSO’s work, the political context of Cambodia, health and security etc. All very interesting, especially the political briefing with the British ambassador at the Embassy, although sadly we weren’t offered any tea or biscuits.

       We also spent quite a lot of time seeing Phnom Penh, which is quite a small capital but very busy. Everyone rides motorbikes or moto-variations, including tuk tuks (local taxis made up of a motorbike and a wooden cart) and stalls attached to motorbikes. It took us a few days to get used to the Cambodian traffic system: everyone does exactly what they want to do regardless of the flow of oncoming traffic. It was quite fun cycling round the city once we understood how the system worked. I didn’t see that many of the tourist sites as there will be plenty of time for that later, but we did go to Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge interrogation centre which is now a Genocide Museum. I had read quite a few memoirs and history books about the Khmer Rouge period but I still wasn’t prepared for the experience.

      Tuol Sleng had been a secondary school in Phnom Penh, but when the Khmer Rouge took power in April 1975 and the entire urban population of the country was evacuated, it became the main interrogation and torture centre for political prisoners. 14,000 people were imprisoned there between 1975 and 1979. Each prisoner was photographed and tortured into writing a full confession of their alleged anti-regime activities, before being taken to Choeng Ek where they were clubbed to death and left in the most famous of Cambodia’s killing fields. Of the 14,000 prisoners at Tuol Sleng, only seven survived.

      I think the most striking thing about the site were the room after room of black and white photographs of the prisoners as they arrived into the museum, particularly as quite a lot of them were children. Apparently when the museum first opened in the early 1980s, quite a lot of people came to look for their missing relatives among the photos. The fact that the site still looks like a school was very disturbing too: classrooms, still with their blackboards, were used to hold prisoners and for interrogations, and the monkey bars and play area had been used as part of torture techniques.

      Overall the experience was horrible and I felt nauseous as I came out, but given that everyone over the age of about 35 has memories of the Khmer Rouge period and that it is only very recently that the political situation has stabilised, it’s an important place to visit, I think.

      That’s all very grim and there’s a lot about present Cambodia that is very disturbing too – huge levels of street poverty, high levels of infant mortality, complete absence of any social security and very inefficient public services – but overall Cambodians seem very positive and cheerful, and the atmosphere is a happy one. They are also very welcoming towards foreigners and particularly here in Kampong Champ where we are more of a novelty, lots of people smile and say hello (in English) when we walk past.

      Last Sunday we came by bus to Kampong Cham which is apparently Cambodia’s third biggest city but feels very small. Language lessons are going well and are very useful – we are already able to communicate fairly well in markets and restaurants and can even have basic conversations, (as long as the conversations only involve words and phrases we have learned.) Yesterday Gilly’s husband Sam arrived so we are now a complete group of sixteen volunteers. We are here for another week and then go to visit our placements for a week, before returning for two more weeks of language training.

      So, so far so good! I’m even getting used to the food although I’m not that keen on rice soup with chicken for breakfast. Those interested in visiting should note that every café or restaurant offers free tea all the time! (No milk though.)