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!)