Towards the end of September our ICT group said goodbye to its third volunteer. After Danny had left in March and Ingran in August, it was Dave’s turn to head back to England. We made quite an elaborate film called Come Do VSO With Dave, in which we compiled his best moments and then rated him out of ten. Most of us also managed to make it to Phnom Penh to say goodbye. And then we had a night out that was so much fun that they following day Dave decided not to leave after all. He’s just started a new VSO placement in Phnom Penh for nine months.
In Mondulkiri we have lost two volunteers though: Neil has a new placement in Phnom Penh, and Jeltje left to work in Kampong Cham. Before she left we went to the Sea Forest, and then to her house for a leaving party.
I’ve been in Mondulkiri for over a year now and haven’t written much about the Punong, the province’s largest ethnic group. While Sen Monorom town is mostly made up of Khmers, in the countryside almost everyone is Punong, and having less access to markets, education, healthcare and other services, their poverty tends to be more severe. Most are small-scale farmers and walk miles every day to sell their vegetables in Sen Monorom, carrying their produce in baskets which they wear on their back.
I’m lucky enough to have become a bit of a regular at a Punong family in Pu Trom village, as Tak and his dad have close friends there, but a bit less lucky that it’s considered very rude not to drink alcohol when visiting, so my recent progress on that front has suffered a bit of a setback. It’s always a gamble because sometimes they have the nasty 70% rice wine which is almost undrinkable, but other times they have the delicious homemade jar wine. It’s not as strong and really tasty. They don’t usually make it with clean water though, so it usually makes a reappearance of some sort the following day.
They’re very welcoming and the house always seems to have about thirty people in there. I assumed the extra people were also visiting but it turns out that it’s common for Punong men to have more than one wife, so they’re actually all members of the same family. I find it hard to imagine what that must feel like, and it also doesn’t make much economic sense as, in a country where men are the main breadwinners, that’s a lot of wives and children to support. Apparently it was also common among Khmers too until fairly recently.
I don't have any photos but below are some of the people from Pu Trom performing traditional music at the school open day in June.
At work we’ve been helping schools to update their community maps. This involves community members and teachers drawing a map of the catchment area and filling in information such as the number of school-aged children in each house, and anything that might make it difficult for children to attend school, such as disabilities or extreme poverty. Teachers can then compare these maps with actual attendance rates and work out who is not coming to school, and can then visit these homes to find out what the problem is.
We’re also going to be doing some research on behalf of Actionaid and NEP (an umbrella group for all education NGOs in Cambodia) on children’s rights in schools. Tak and I attended a five-day workshop in Kampong Cham to train for this (although I won’t be carrying out the research myself). It was difficult as I was the only foreigner and after the first morning Tak got bored of translating. I understood most things but found it hard to contribute. It was nice to meet NGO workers from across the country though and see a group of young, educated, opinionated people who are committed to improving their country.
