Week 13: Garbage and green fingers

I think it’s fair to say that this was definitely the rubbishiest week so far.

Never in my life have I seen so much rubbish as on the Saturday of our visit in Phnom Penh last weekend. Accompanied by a number of CDCC (Cambodian Dump Children Centre – where a few of the PP volunteers work) children, Tom and I and the PP volunteers visited the Phnom Penh dump. I had seen a documentary about the dump before and learnt about the health hazards and devastating living conditions the workers endure every day but even so, when I saw it in front of me, it was so surreal that it was hard to believe what I was seeing. To get to the dump we walked through the small neighbourhood of tightly packed houses cobbled together with wood, corrugated steel, tarpaulins and bricks, some of which housed some of the better-off dump workers. We followed the CDCC kids (who had come to visit their families who were still living there) along the puddly paths, trying to watch our footing. Then, suddenly turning a corner, the dump appeared in view. We stood for a few minutes just taking it all in. Mountains and mountains of trash, as tall as 3-story buildings for as far as we could see, every now and then punctuated by a small shack-like houses or a bulldozer. There was hardly a patch of earth in sight. Making our way through the dump to try and find some of the CDCC kids’ families was almost like landing on a different planet. I had left my trainers in Kep but managed to borrow a pair which I was very glad of. I’m not sure what was more worrying – looking down and seeing among the waste all the broken glass, sharp cans and syringes, or looking up and seeing the black smoke billowing from the side of one of the litter mountains, making silhouettes of the rubbish pickers. Nowhere was there relief from the dirt, the grime and the horrible fact that hundreds of men, women and even children have to work here every day breathing in the toxic fumes of burning waste, walking around – sometimes shoeless – on those mounds of squalor and earning only barely enough to get by. Following the ridge of a mound, we came to the most active part of the dump where bulldozers and rubbish trucks were at work moving and depositing litter. Apparently a significant number of people jump into the trash compactor and die in an attempt to get the best litter before anyone else gets it. We stood for a long time in the middle of this strange landscape watching the jerky movement of the machines depositing the never ending supply of trash and the bent-double shapes of garbage pickers – bag in one hand and tongs in the other. To me it seemed like the longer I stood there the stranger it became and the more helpless I felt.

However, this experience definitely put an edge on our motivation towards carrying out the anti-litter campaign in Chamcar Bei on Wednesday. Unfortunately the loudspeaker was not to be found but our students and the Youth Team did very well in handing out all the leaflets even though it was another scorching hot day. In the follow-up discussion we decided to do it again in March and to hopefully include a drama performance in the market as well as a village clean up day.

We took the morning off on Tuesday so we could do some more work around the Red House. We planted the remaining three banana trees and prepared an area for a flowerbed. While we were in PP Tom and I went with Leron to the Garden Shop where we got lots of seeds so we can start growing different kinds of fruits and vegetables. However, I think that will have to wait until we get back in January because we only have one week left until we go to Singapore.

The main purpose of our visit up to PP was to meet up with Kevin Morley to talk about the UWC scholarship application process and what we’ll be needed for. Arriving back in Chamcar Bei, we told the Youth Team applicants all they needed to know and decided to take them to Kampot today to buy some exercise books and English novels so that they can continue to practice their English while Tom and I are away in December.

As of this week I have an addition to my teaching schedule. Instead of supervising the Coconut Project from 3 – 4pm, I will be teaching another class of students at CLC from 2 – 4pm. They have roughly the same level of English as the youngest kids that we teach in the morning so it shouldn’t take much extra lesson planning. However, that class is pretty exhausting to teach. There are usually at least 25 students ranging from 4 to 8 years old and I’ve noticed that there are quite a few pretty feisty characters! Before I taught this class I used to cycle to CLC at 5pm (to teach the second Youth Team class of the day) after teaching the Coconut Project students for an hour at the UNESCO site (now renamed as the Vocational Skills Training Centre or VSTC). However, now I have to use the moto to get to all my classes on time so I take the moto to CLC at 2pm, teach CLC kids until 3:50, drive to the VSTC to teach Coconut Project students at 4pm, drive the moto back to CLC at 4:50pm to teach the Youth Team at 5pm and then drive the moto back home to VSTC at 6pm. Ay-ay-ay. I miss my 5pm cycle ride. 5pm is my favourite time of day in the village. The sun is just about to start setting so there’ll usually be a beautiful crystal clear blue sky above the crisply lit green rice paddies and trees lining the sides of the long straight red-brown dirt road which I cycle along from the VSTC to CLC. This is the village’s artery road which runs from the big main road (route 33) to the pagoda perched just above the base of the mountains from where you can look back along it and beyond it towards the sea. While I cycled along I had more time to glimpse patches of village life as the day’s work came to an end - the small children jumping off the road embankment into a big pond, the women preparing the dinner, the heads of water buffalo peeping above the surface of the small irrigation canal alongside the road as they bathe at the end of the day. There’s no electricity in the village (except for car batteries) and it’s always dark by 6pm so at 5 o’clock work stops and there’s a peaceful sense of everything winding down for the day and coming to a halt before nightfall which is often an event which fails to be noticed when it’s so easy to flick on a light and continue working until late in the night – which I did all too often in the IB!

- Joss

Week 12: Serious agriculture and visiting Phnom Penh

Sunday 23rd November 2008

Week 12 was marked by the appearance of yet another volunteer at the Red House! Leron arrived over the weekend, he is a scientist who specializes in plant science and will be helping the farmers at the UNESCO site. Fred also spent the week in Chamcar Bie but he will be heading to Siem Reap next week to see if his engineering skills will be more applicable there. Bif, Abbey and Erin were in PP this week for various reasons too.

The biggest news this week has to be the long awaited start of a proper garden at the Red House! On Tuesday we dug 14 holes and transferred 14 banana trees. This took pretty much the whole day as the earth was baked hard! The work payed off though as we now have a small banana plantation and are anxiously awaiting fruit. Leron is also helping us to develop a more varied garden. When we visited PP at the end of this week for a meeting with Kevin Morley about Cambodian scholars we all went to a The Garden Shop and bought various herbs and fruits to plant around the Red House! However, since Joss and I will be heading back to Singapore for most of December I think Leron will be doing a lot of the gardening on his own.

Teaching this week was very fun as we finally have some split pins! This meant Joss was able to make the clocks she has been dreaming of with the youngens. Another creative class we had this week was a session of leaf and bark rubbing which yielded a large multi-colored tree (that now decorates the back of the middle kids classroom). This was an extremely tiring class to teach as you might imagine since I had only one pair of scissors and over 20 kids in each class. Although I was exhausted afterward it was one of the most enjoyable lessons I've taught so far since there was a good balance between English vocabulary on nature and fun, memorable activities.

It's strange to think that in a few weeks we will be back in Singapore for almost a month! I think there will certainly be some getting-back-to-your-own-culture shock, but I am looking forward to seeing friends and family and just relaxing a little for a few weeks. However, I have no doubt that after a month I will be ready to get back to Chamcar Bie, especially since Joss and I plan to work for part of the time in order to fund some more of our gap year!

Although the Phnom Penh visit was in my week Joss would really like write about some of the things we did so I am not going to talk about that right now. Instead I will update you on the level of our Khmer! Joss and I have finally learned all the letters in the alphabet. All 23 vowels, 32 consonants and 31 "feet" or subconsonants. Now we are trying to spell all the words in our limited vocabulary, which the kids in some of my classes find very amusing. It has now become part of the routine for my afternoon class that I sing/recite the Khmer alphabet at the start of every lesson.

Thats about it for this week and I need to get on with my lesson plans!!

Bye bye!

Week 11: Water Festival week

Monday was the only day of work in Cambodia this week because on Tuesday the 3-day Water Festival began. This is one of the most spectacular festivals of the year, particularly in Phnom Penh where about 3 million people from all over Cambodia turn up to join in with all the festivities, watch the dragon-boat racing and see the city ablaze with lights. The Tonle Sap river which, with the Mekong River, flows alongside the Eastern side of Phnom Penh, is the only river in the world which flows in opposite directions at certain times of the year. The Water Festival celebrates the reversal of the flow of the Tonle Sap river when it starts to flow into Tonle Sap lake which swells to almost ten times it's volume. The lake becomes full of fish which brings in a lot of wealth for the fishermen. One of the main events is the river boating competition. Each boat can hold about 50 people and each village/town has the opportunity to represent itself in the contest.

Tom and I were originally planning to go to Phnom Penh to see all this but decided to go to Kampot instead which is not as far away and much less busy. Kampot is a pretty laid-back, quiet town where most of the buildings are shophouse-like which reminded me abit of China Town in Singapore. We were a little dissapointed because there weren't any Water Festival celebrations in Kampot. However, we still had a good time and jumped on the opportunity to eat Indian food which was delicious. We went to the zoo one day which entailed a very hazardous 30 minute tuk tuk ride along the most potholed road I've ever been along. The zoo was of course nothing like Singapore Zoo. It's set on the side of a large hill and most people (of which there weren't many) went around by moto. They had quite a number of animals, particularly birds and apes, but, not surprisingly, the enclosures seemed a bit small.

Anyway, going back to our one day of teaching - Monday was not the most productive day ever as you might imagine. It turned out that it was the monthly test day which we weren't expecting to happen until next week. Unfortunately this was also the day that we had planned for the Youth Team to come into the CLC middle kids' class to teach them about the problems of litter pollution and to help them to make posters about it. The plan is for these students to join in with the campaign as we walk around the village. The test only lasted for half the lesson so we still managed to get some nice colourful posters made by the end of the lesson. Afterwards, Tom and I walked around the market taking photos of rubbish to put in the campaign leaflet.

In the late afternoon we were invited to Lalin's house for a party. Most of his family was there as well as some of our other Youth Team friends and some of Lalin's neighbours. Seng, his mother, had cooked some delicious food which I can only really describe as Cambodian tacos.

By Friday we were back in the BAB office in Kep where we had a meeting with Savoeurn and Theary. We hadn't met with Savoeurn for some time so we had quite a lot to talk about including building the basketball court and organising the litter pollution campaign. Speaking of the basketball court - our Mum's are holding a fundraiser bake sale at the ISIBL basketball finals at UWCSEA next Saturday where you can buy pieces of court by the square foot. So if you'd like to help us to bring basketball to Chamcar Bei, please don't hesitate to go along! Click on 'comments' at the bottom of this post to find out exact details.

During the meeting we also looked through a big bag of teaching supplies that the Canadian DWC group had donated to CLC. We found a lot of very useful items ad made a list of some other items which we still need. Tom and I will be trying to gather some more equipment (see the list on the right) while we're back in Singapore in December. If you have anything you would like to donate, please let us know before we fly back to Cambodia on 6th January. A-kun j'ran! (Thank you very much!)

Week 10: Not so quiet at the Pteas Krohorm!

Week 10 was supposed to be marked by Val and PJ leaving to Vietnam and the Red House being once more devoid of people. However, on Wednesday we found out that Fred will actually be working in Chamcar Bei (not Takeo), Abbey will be working for 2 weeks per month in Chamcar Bei, Biff will be living there all the time and Erin will be spending more time here. So we now have a full house!

Teaching was pretty disrupted this week because once again it was agriculture helping time for all of our students. This meant that more than half our classes were spent outside de-weeding, ploughing and re-planting flower beds and small fields at CLC. This was really fun but unfortunately meant that what class time we had tended to be disrupted and full of fidgeting xp. Teaching the teachers and youth team members was good this week, since they were not as involved with the agriculture. The youth team started reading novels with Joss and I which everybody seemed to enjoy. We are also nearly ready to launch the youth team campaign for keeping Chamcar Bei litter free. We are projecting that the day campaign itself will take place some time in late November. The youth team members have all been fantastic so far and we are now expanding the project so that some of our younger students can also get involved.

Thursday night marked PJ and Val's last night in the Red House and the first night for Abbey, Biff and Fred so we celebrated by inviting over several of our youth team friends and throwing a small surprise party for the new volunteers. Using our new coldbox we were able to have cold beers and cokes which, in Chamcar Bei, is a pretty big luxury! It was a nice send-off for PJ and Val and everybody (especially the youth team members) really enjoyed themselves.

On Friday Joss and I made a first trip to Rabbit Island, which was a nice way to regain some energy after a tiring few weeks of teaching (I taught roughly 100 hours in October). While we are teaching it doesn't seem at all tiring but once we get home after a few days I certainly feel pretty worn-out. Next week we will also get a good chance to recooperate since it is the Water Festival and we therefore get almost the entire week off.

Still loving it here!

Tom Kemeny

Week 9: The tourist season comes to an end

The tourist season at the Red House seems to have come to an end for now so this weekend Tom and I are enjoying the chance to finally recharge our batteries. We waved my family off from CLC on Tuesday at the end of their very successful visit to Cambodia. We had a great time showing them around and getting them to join in with some of our classes. I got my 12-year old brother Harry to stand at the front of my class of youngest students who then stuck body part post-its all over him which was very entertaining. We also took them to see the view from the pagoda, jump in the reservoir and gave George and Harry the full Red House experience as they stayed with us there for 2 nights which was great :) I reckon Tom and I should get part-time jobs as tour guides in Chamcar Bie because whenever we show people around they seem to really enjoy it. Or perhaps it would be more fair if I put that down to how awesome it is here! In fact, while wondering what to do with our advanced teacher training class (which will now be renamed as the Youth Group class) we came with the idea, or more truthfully my Mum came up with the idea, of getting them to plan a tour of the village and make brochures to advertise it. Quite a number of Youth Group members we've met have said that they want to be tour guides when they finish school so they were quite interested in the activity.

I had quite a fun few lessons with my youngest student class at the beginning of the week. I found some magazines and cut out some arms, legs, heads and bodies so they could make Misfits on Monday to wrap up the topic of 'the body'. Then on Tuesday I taught them how to make origami paper hats and introduced the next topic 'clothes'. Unfortunately the hat lesson got a bit chaotic towards the end as I was giving them each a sticker to stick on their hats. I ended up nearly drowning in my students as they clambered over each other to try and get one more sticker. Our middle class has also been studying 'the body' although at a higher level so we started teaching them illnesses on Thursday.

I reckon my Mum enjoyed helping Tom out during one of his less advanced teacher training classes (now renamed as just the Teacher Training class) when he was teaching them how to understand recipe instructions and how to write a recipe. I don't think many of the women here look at recipes when they cook as the instructions are just passed on by word of mouth. This made it a little difficult for them to grasp the concept but with my Mum and Tom's help most of them understood eventually.

One of the highlights of my week though, was at the end of my Coconut Project class on Wednesday when two or three of the girls came up to the board and wrote down a few words that they had learnt to spell outside class. They were quite random words like 'dare' but nevertheless it was great to see them being confident enough to come to the front of the class and show everyone else what they had learnt because they were so extremely shy when I first started teaching them. One of the words was 'crazy' which was quite funny because it's one of Sara and Reat's favourite words. They can spend the whole hour from 3 to 4pm (when I hang out at the Coconut Project with them) saying 'Sara you crazy!', 'No! Reat you crazy! Teacher, you say "Reat you crazy"!' I always enjoy their silly joking and there's no doubt they like to hang around with me as they even came up to see me at the Red House on Wednesday and Thursday after lunch and stayed until I went to the Coconut Project with them at 3pm. Skoout na! (Very crazy!)

Valerie and PJ (or PP as all the Coconut Project people call him now) finally managed to find something else to do besides the monotonous job of scraping paint off the UNESCO buildings and went to help the DWC volunteers to build a house for some Family Dream village members who had finally managed to save up enough money to afford a better house. The DWC group have also nearly finished our outhouse kitchen (left) although the rest will be done by some of the villagers as the DWC group are leaving tomorrow. Val and PJ leave next weekend and it turns out that Fred, the engineer volunteer who was going to come to live with us, has been placed in Takeo (the nextdoor province) instead of in Kep province. We also thought that Elizabeth, another volunteer, was supposed to have arrived by now but she's not here yet so it looks like it'll be just Tom and me again in the Red House in a week's time.

Last night at the Riel bar we met a man called Stefan who owns the Botanica guesthouse in Kep. Tom mentioned that he's planning to set up a basketball court and train up a team in Chamcar Bie and by the end of the evening Tom had a contact for someone who would lay down some concrete and do some welding as well as Stefan's offer as an assistant coach. He even offered to help continue the coaching after we leave which would obviously be fantastic. Speaking of basketball, Tom and I went down to an orphanage down the road (in Kep city) yesterday where they have a basketball hoop. No more than 5 minutes after he'd started playing, most of the orphanage kids were on the court playing with him while I played games with a group of them with a beachball. They all asked us to come back again so we'll definately rock up again next weekend!

So Tom's basketball plans are progressing nicely. I've decided to try harder to put more time into my yoga because when Elizabeth comes I'm going to hopefully help her to set up yoga classes in the village. Another up and coming sporting event is the annual Kep Half-Marathon, 10K Run and 10K Bike Ride in February 2009. This is a fund raising event to raise money to support Bridges Across Borders' projects in Chamcar Bie. The aim is to sustainably provide improvements to the quality of life of the villagers, particularly in terms of their health and education. For example, if you decided to do the Bike Ride, locally supplied bikes are provided and, at the end of the ride, all the bikes are donated to the villagers so more people have transport to get to school. This is important because some people live too far away from school to be able to get there by foot. If you're living in Singapore and are interested in participating, here is a fact sheet from last year's run (sorry, haven't got anything about the 2009 event yet):

http://www.babsea.org/Images/docs/Kep_Event_2008_Fact_Sheet.pdf

Tom and I are hoping to join in so maybe we'll see you there!