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.