January

January is usually the worst month of the year, particularly if you spend it in a secondary school classroom, but this one in Cambodia has been lots of fun. There have been more weddings, trips to Pu Trom and Sreiee, parties with Eng’s friends from the bank who, having a bit more money than Tak’s friends, tend to have really good parties, and lots of nice evenings with friends. (The recycling man who came yesterday was pretty staggered with the amount of beer cans we had and had to go home to get bigger bags.)

Work has been a bit slow because there have been lots of workshops and trainings, making it difficult to do activities with the teachers in schools. Luckily, I seem to have found alternative employment as cheap foreign labour on Tak’s building site, as his house-building has finally got underway. After a long process of applying for permission from the Forestry Administration and various other departments, Tak managed to get his wood from the forest to his friend’s house in Pu Trom, which at one point involved carrying a massive log through the forest on the back of his motorbike. I couldn’t help very much, so was pleased when it came to loading the wood on to the truck to take to Sen Monorom. As this involves no skill whatsoever, I was able to help, and in fact I was better than most of the other people because they were all about a foot shorter than me. I was particularly pleased that I was much better than Tak who, though quite strong, hasn’t done any exercise in all the time I’ve known him.

Tak has hired two builders who come from another province but spend their time going from one building site to another, where they set up camp until the work is finished. They wear hats and have loud, deep voices which I find hard to understand, and smoke all the time and squat and sit round fires in the evening, and so they remind me of characters from a Steinbeck novel. I think if they were Steinbeck characters they’d probably be a bit nicer though – Tak is finding it hard to get them to do any work and he seems to be doing a lot of the work that he’s paying them to do. Eng’s dad has come to help out which is good as he can oversee things while Tak is at work. ‘Overseeing’ was the job I was after, but Tak says he’s got me earmarked as well-digger, which I’m not sure is the most glamorous job on the site. Expect me to come back to England looking like Hulk Hogan. Or to be stuck down a fifty-metre hole in Cambodia.

We have also been to Sreiee twice this month, probably my favourite school and the one that used to require an overnight stay. The first time I went it felt like Macondo from the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, a village that you stumble across unexpectedly in the middle of a vast jungle – it even has smooth round rocks 'as big as prehistoric eggs' which Garcia Marquez describes in the opening page of that novel. But things are about to change: a new road has almost been finished and you can now reach the village within about 45 minutes. This might be good for economic development, but having seen what’s happening in the rest of the country, it will probably mean the arrival of big rubber companies throwing people off their land and cutting down the forest. Either way, Sreiee will change dramatically, I think.

Christmas and New Year

Happy New Year. I spent the night eating soggy fish and chips for one at Heathrow Airport, followed by twenty hours on planes where not a drop of celebratory Cava was served. They’d also run out of food from the ‘Western’ menu so my last meal before returning to Cambodia was something disgusting, pickled and Korean, served with rice.

Before all that, however, I had a great two weeks in England. I’d planned ambitiously to put on ten kilos in order to survive another three months of the Cambodian diet (as well as my tendency to spend too much money on beer and not enough on food). But despite eating past the pain almost every day, I failed miserably, putting on just 200g, which I think is the equivalent of a low-fat sandwich. I did manage to fill my suitcase with chocolate and Christmas cake, so I might be able to put on a bit more weight over the next few weeks, although I probably need to learn the Khmer for ‘Get those thieving Cambodian hands off my English food’.

As this blog is about Cambodia, I won’t write everything that happened over Christmas, except that I had a great time seeing everyone and eating everything. It made me realise that I’m very lucky to have such good friends and family, and made me wonder why I keep moving so far away from them. The fortnight was also the first chance I’ve had to make direct comparisons between England and Cambodia; here are some of the things I observed. (I’m copying a similar format used in Sam's blog after he returned from England last year.)

1. Hot water from the tap is really great. After a few months in Cambodia in which I’d told people that British taps have hot water, I’d begun to have doubts and wondered whether I’d imagined it all, as the idea seemed so absurd. But it was true. I really enjoyed the washing-up I did over Christmas.  I did a lot of it, partly because it was a bit like a nice bath for my hands, and partly because I’d also forgotten that many British houses have dishwashers.

2. Things are much easier when you’re speaking your native language. I really like learning Khmer and I particularly like the ego-boost you get from speaking to strangers who are highly impressed with even the most basic phrases, often responding with warm invitations to come and have a drink with them, or marry their daughters. I’d even learnt so much that, when trying to speak Catalan or even Spanish to Jim’s friends Luis and Muriel, I could only think of Khmer, and in fact the only Catalan word I could remember was ‘Adeu’, meaning ‘Goodbye’, which I decided would sound a bit rude in mid-conversation. Nonetheless, it was really nice to speak English again.

3. Breakfasts are much better in England. Tea and toast beats a bowl of super noodles any day. Similarly, cheese, pizza, roast chicken, chocolate, fresh milk etc are all better than rice, and are considerably better than insects and intestines.

Jim cooks chicken

4. Saying hello is nicer than saying goodbye. The two weeks were over very quickly and, although this time it won’t be for long as I’m due to finish my placement at the end of March, coming home will also mean saying goodbye to lots of good friends here.

5. I have good friends in both places. I was obviously very impressed with all of the parties that were organised for me in England (although I think some of the guests were a bit confused and kept going on about Christmas or something), but I was also quite touched that Tak organised a surprise leaving party the day before I left. He’s living in particularly austere times, so he did his usual trick of inviting friends and then telling them to go and buy beer, but it was very nice all the same.

6. Cambodia really is very poor. You get used to the way things are here, but spending two weeks in one of the richest countries in the world, and also returning via South Korea which must be one of the richest places in Asia, makes you see it all afresh.

7. South Korea is definitely not on the way home. After flights of over twenty-four hours, I’ll make sure I’ve got a world map next time I’m booking plane tickets.

Hospitals and more weddings

A few weeks ago, Tak’s dad fell unconscious while in our house and was taken straight to hospital. I’m not sure what he was doing in our house but it was lucky that he fell at lunchtime when there were lots of us about. (He has an irritating habit of turning up at our house at all hours, usually drunk, in search of more alcohol – luckily we’ve usually drunk it all already.) This time, though, he hadn’t been drinking and was feeling ill. He is now much better and is at home, having escaped from the hospital in the middle of the night without the doctor’s permission. This was very embarrassing for Tak’s family although the doctor was probably glad to get rid of him – he is a stubborn man and kept removing his various needles and catheter.

The week or so that he spent in hospital did allow me to see more of it than I’d seen before. I had been quite impressed when I’d given blood at the doctors’ professionalism (although the approach is different from in the UK – there you have about four interviews about your travel history, illnesses and sex life, whereas here they just said, ‘Feeling ok? Right, lift your sleeve.’). On the first night I was touched when a man I didn’t know invited me and Tak to join him and his friends for a drink. Then I realised he was on night duty in A&E and in fact all of the doctors were heading to their staff room with several cases of beer. I’ve read blogs from health volunteers about that sort of thing but I think if I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed it. We didn’t join them, anyway.

Pu Choo Open Day

In the past few weeks we’ve helped more schools organise open days which is good fun, and attended VSO meetings and workshops in Phnom Penh, which at times involved almost all volunteers and staff. It was a really nice opportunity to see everyone again and I remembered what a great group of people there are here. Our ICT group is getting smaller though – Kath was the latest to leave last week, though she may be back at some point next year to continue her support for the Cambodian Midwives Council. At her send-off, there were around forty or fifty people, which shows what a good friend she’s been to many people. There was also a VSO Christmas party the following night which was lots of fun, especially as Gilly was drunk enough to agree to go to DJ Club.

Wedding season has also restarted, which is good because weddings are fun, but bad because it stretches the VSO allowance to the limit – I’ve been told that the minimum we should give now is $12.50, and that is should be closer to $15 or $20. Tak and I went to one in Phnom Penh for one of his close friends Rathna, whom I also know very well, and it was good fun – I especially liked the fact that his wife ended the night in pyjamas. (At the wedding venue, I mean; I didn’t follow them home or anything.) 

Tak and I are definitely pushing at the boundaries of acceptable behaviour though – last week at a wedding we drank far too much and then sneaked out with a bottle of brandy each. In fact I was so anxious not to be seen with the brandy that I have a horrible feeling that I forgot to pay my $12.50. I didn’t have the money in my pocket when I got home, so I’m hoping I paid.

The VSO Mondulkiri team: Kim, Daniel, Edwin, To, Tak, Torn and me.

Finally, Come Dine With Me Cambodia has been released (though it takes about four hours to burn each copy so the distribution is quite slow) and has been well received so far, even though as editor I’ve manipulated the footage to make it clear that Ingran and I were robbed when we came third out of four. It’s too big to put on Youtube or anything but I’m making as many copies as I can.

I’m also going to England on Friday. I will be in London until around Tuesday 20th or Wednesday 21st, and then Liverpool until about the 30th, so let me know if you want to meet up.    

Learning Khmer

I've been meaning to write something about the Khmer language for a while now, and I was reminded of this this morning when Tak's mum temporarily forgot that we've been speaking Khmer together for a year and decided without warning to switch to French, and I realised I was finding it much harder to understand her. This might be due to the quality of her French, which she learnt at a time when almost every French-speaker in Cambodia had been killed, but still, it felt like a milestone in my progress with Khmer. 

It's not an easy language to learn, especially as it's the first language I've studied which doesn't use the Roman script, so I'm learning entirely through speaking and listening. The good thing is that people don't expect foreigners to speak any Khmer at all. In fact I get quite annoyed about this - if I go to a café with Tak they usually ask him what I want. But still, it means that people are very easily impressed and I get lots of nice compliments for the most basic phrases. And as the soon-to-be-realised Come Dine With Me footage will show, Ingran admitted on camera that I was better than him in our Khmer lessons back in March. 

I'm interested in languages and the logic with which they come up with their words. Some of my Khmer favourites are bear (honey tiger), giraffe (long cow), to grow up (get big and fat), jellyfish (sea cloud), and snot and ear wax (poo from the nose and ear respectively). I also like the fact that they use the same word for the inner tube of a bike and for the intestines of an animal. I've probably never eaten inner tube (though you can never be sure in Cambodia), but I'm willing to bet it doesn't taste that much worse.

About a week ago I began learning the Khmer script, because it suddenly seemed ridiculous to be illiterate at the age of 26. It looks daunting at first and I'm not sure of my teacher's pedagogical commitment (an increasingly bored Tak is teaching me), but it's very satisfying because you make progress very quickly. When I get round to learning how to type, I'll write something in Khmer.

I don't have any photos to go with any of this, so I'll just add some of the open day that was held this morning at Lauka school.  

Comings and goings

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.