Week 29: Goodbye Chamcar Bei...

17/04/09

Unfortunately it has come to our last week in Cambodia - however, I'm glad to say that we made the most of it and spent it well. It turned out really well that our last week coincided with Khmer New Year because it meant that we had the opportunity to have a good time with our students and friends at all the parties that were going on before we left.

Khmer New Year is really only a three day holiday from Tuesday to Thursday but of course Monday and Friday get sucked into it too. So, instead of having to teach on Monday, we spent a day enjoying the peace at the Red House.

Tuesday was spent in a similar way except we had to get down to doing some house work since Paa was also on holiday this week. In the evening however she had invited us round to her house for dinner with Saran. Paa lives right by the market so, eating outside the front of her house on a low wooden table which most Khmer houses have, we saw quite a few of our students going by. Sengly also showed up and entertained everybody with his miming skills. We've seen quite a lot of Sengly recently and were wondering if he had stopped going to Epic Arts but apparently they have a 2 week holiday for Khmer New Year. After dinner we went down to the market where, traditionally, there is a village party every night during the celebrations. A music system had been set up and kids were running around with big balloons. Soon enough we were part of a giant game of duck duck goose - although instead of running around the circle on your own, the person next to you had to run with you as well. Then of course we were engulfed into the whirlpool-like mob of people dancing around a table. The phrase 'work hard, play hard' sums up Khmer work ethic pretty well - except you could say they put a bit more emphasis on 'play hard'. By the time we got home we were pretty exhausted (although perhaps more from the 15 minutes of trying to kick-start the moto into life as usual).

We'd bought bus tickets to Phnom Penh on Thursday so we decided we'd give ourselves the whole of Wednesday to pack and do last minute things. However, at 8am I got a call from Phirom asking if we'd go to his house for a party at 5pm. Although we had to be up early the next morning to catch the bus, we didn't want to miss out on our last chance to see Phirom and some of our other Youth Team friends so we said we'd come for a couple of hours. By about 2pm we'd just gathered together everything we wanted to give to CLC or keep at the Red House when I got a call from Lalin saying that Phirom had asked if we'd come for 3pm instead. We still hadn't packed our own luggage yet but reckoned we could do it when we got back. So we went at 3pm with Lalin and soon enough the rest of the Youth Team showed up hawling tables and installing the sound system. Unfortunately we could only stay for a couple of hours so when we left at about 6pm the proper party hadn't even started yet. However, we had a pretty good pre-party time with Bo, Lalin, Phirom, Ramit and a few other Youth Team friends. Phirom even fished out some English music which he'd been given by a previous volunteer so we sat around the table eating minced beef rice pancakes and salad, joking around with our friends and listening to American Pie and John Lennon. Nice :)

We arrived back at the CVTC to the wonderful news that tonight there was no electricity. Urrr...so we will pack our bags how exactly? So I called Chaney, the guard's wife and voice box (strangely he doesn't talk to us) and, although I didn't understand half of what she said, managed to arrange for electricity - phew! Back at the Red House we took our bags off their hooks on the wall where they'd been for 3 months to discover that Tom's was absolutely seething with ants. Oh yay. Eventually locating some bug spray we managed to get rid of them all after about half an hour. Then we saw another zip all along the bottom of the bag and opened it to find yet another cavern of ants. Having used up about half of our electricity time we finally got to work doing actual packing when suddenly the lights went off again. Ayoh! So, another phone call to Chaney - this time I had no idea what she was saying so I had to call Theary to ask him to call her. Anyway, eventually we got electricity again and in fact it stayed on way past the usual time so we got everything sorted. What a calamity...

The next morning Paa and her sister Sitat came by to help us get ourselves and our bags to the bus. Chaney and her husband came along with their moto as well so, at 8am we rode in our little convoy of 3 motos for the last time away from the Red House to the main road and got on the bus. As the bus set off and we waved down to Paa and Sitat it felt like we were leaving behind a place that had really come to feel like home. Despite all our differences we made some very close friends who we'll never forget and will always welcome us back if we came to visit again. Everyone always says that the more you put in, the more you get out - I feel like we put quite a lot of effort into getting the most out of our experience and although it was pretty tiring at times - the teaching and the general lifestyle - it definately paid off and when we look back at what we've been through I have to admit that we feel very proud of having done it :)

Friday 17th April, 5am: two UWCSEA gappies, 1 Vy and just under 60kg of luggage squeeze into a tuk tuk at the Bridges Across Borders office. A squashed 30 minutes later we all arrived at Phnom Penh airport and flew back to Singapore...

Week 28: Almost the end!

12/04/09

Our penultimate week in Cambodia was spent finishing off the second module of Cutting Edge. This seems to be going really well and the kids seem to be enjoying the structured lessons much more than our temporary syllabus. I think they particularly like seeing the progress they are making so clearly and being able to recognize the purpose of what they are doing on a daily basis within a longer-term plan. The children also love using the speakers that were kindly donated by the Cleal family who visited Chamcar Bei a few months ago. The new technology works hand-in-hand with Cutting Edge because every lesson has at least one listening exercise. This will be particularly useful when we have left because the children will have some idea how to pronounce new vocabulary.

The basketball court was finally made useable this week as we spent the last of our funds on some heavy soil to be packed down over the rocks and pebbles. I am told that this will make it easier to lay concrete later if we can afford it so it seems like a good investment. The men who delivered the soil just left it in big mounds all over the court and because of this a whole new sport was born. Our kids discovered that basketball without dribbling is much more fun if you can chase each other around, over and through small mountains of earth. On Thursday we requisitioned the youth team to help us flatten out the soil. Although it is now significantly better, the soil is still too loose to really bounce a ball on as it absorbs most of the energy. However, looking at the ground of the volleyball court it seems that repeated use of the court will solve this problem. When I get back to Singapore from Ladakh in late August I plan to do some fundraising (hopefully with the help of my Mum as she is proven master) and get some concrete for the court.

Since this was our last week of teaching, which all of the children were well aware of, once we had finished module 2 of Cutting Edge many of our lessons got hijacked after the break and we ended up just swimming, playing mountaineering basketball or just mucking about and taking photos together. This was actually a really nice way to wind down our teaching because we weren’t sure how much we would see the kids during the week of Khmer New Year.

Friday was Jocelyn’s birthday and we had planned to spend the morning in Kampot to pick up some birthday cake and spend what was left in our education fund on education equipment for CLC. We thought that if we left at 10am we would have plenty of time to get things done and be back in Chamcar Bei for the leaving party which was due to start at 3. Unfortunately we foolishly called a tuk-tuk driver who we had met during the project week volunteers’ stay who was cheaper than our reliable Bun Tien. As we learnt - cheaper is not always the best option. Our alternative driver didn’t show up for a whole hour so we tried calling him and when we got hold of him he told us he had gone to the Champey guest house in Kep! He promised he would be with us in 20 minutes, which we found hard to believe as Kep is a good 45 minutes away. Half an hour later we tried calling him again and he told us there was a problem with his tuk-tuk. At this point our phone credit, which we hadn’t topped up - thinking we wouldn’t spend it before leaving Cambodia - ran out. So we were forced to get our moto (which wouldn’t start for quite some time) and head to the market for phone credit. We called Bun Tien who had somehow heard about our dealings with another driver and was rather sulky but still agreed to pick us up. By the time he arrived it was already getting on for 12:30 and, since it takes about an hour each way to Kampot, time was getting very tight. We just about got everything sorted out in time and made it back to Chamcar Bei in time to grab a change of clothes and head to CLC for our party. Upon arriving hot, sweaty and already quite tired we found that Savoeurn (the organizer of the party) wasn’t even there yet! He arrived at about four and the party started at about half past. All our stress and rushing was for nothing!

The party started with us all standing in a huge circle on the basketball court while BAB staff said some very kind but often unintelligible things about Joss and I during which the children started to get pretty restless. When the speeches were over Savoeurn asked me to explain the rules of basketball in 5 minutes or less to the Under 14s who had been chosen to play the first official game on the court. Although they obviously understood the need to clear the ball after a shot and that the ball was supposed to go through the hoop I think most other things were a bit lost on them since this was the first they had heard of basketball. Still, another great sport was born: basketball rugby!

Game 1 commentary:

The children insisted on playing girls vs. boys and although the boys won the game the girls were definitely the more physically intimidating side. Srey Pao and Srey Ney especially decided that the best defense was to grab the boy who had the ball, throw him aside and thereby get the steal. Still, in the end the boys’ slightly better shooting won the game despite the Srey Pao/Srey Ney blitz.

After this memorable game we had a full-court Youth Team vs. BAB staff match. In the first half none of the foreign BAB staff played and the Youth Team jumped to a huge lead through dint of, well… youth. However, in the second half Joss, Erin, Biff, Savurn and I subbed in and fought hard to make the game respectable.

Game 2 commentary:

On our first possession Joss surprised herself and everybody else, including the defense -who foolishly left her open - with a beautiful set-jumper. Going back the other way Erin came up with a big time block on Vanna and Biff scored again at the other end. The CLC mob went wild! Erin and I locked up at the defensive end and grabbed all the rebounds that were going. Biff took over the point and fed Erin and I for some easy buckets to get it close. The Youth Team gave up going inside and started throwing up some prayers from long range. Miraculously, a lot of these shots went in and that sealed the game for the Youths.

Our kids kindly came up to us at the end with cries of “la-or na!” (very good) meaning they were impressed by our performance - no doubt trying to console us since we had been schooled by the Youth Team.

After this epic clash we were all quite tired and in need of some refreshment so we bypassed a few items in Savoeurn’s itinerary and went straight for dinner. But of course we couldn’t eat until there was another round of kind well-wishing from our friends. By the time this was finished everybody was gagging for some food! After dinner the YouthTeam began blasting Khmer pop which, by this point, Joss and I were getting quite attached to and we had a great time dancing with all our kids and the Youth Team. We danced until what felt like the wee hours of the morning but what was in reality half past 9. This is how long we have lived in a village were lights out is at half 9. Throughout the evening our friends took us aside to give us gifts, photographs and letters to remember them by. Some of our younger students took us aside individually and burst into tears. Despite having known several months in advance exactly when we would be leaving the party was the moment for many of them when they realized we would be gone next week. It was very sad for both us and the children but after a big hug and a promise that I would be back some time in the not too distant future they calmed down a bit and we went back to enjoying the rest of the evening. Later on, the children discovered a cache of water bombs that we had forgotten about and after that a late night water fight was inevitable. All through the evening our Khmer friends (Youth Team and students alike) ambushed each other and us with talcum powder. Although this tradition had been occurring on and off for a few weeks everybody went wild at the party and we were all covered in talcum powder that stuck to our faces, hair and clothes! Later, after most of the children had gone home and only a few of our close friends remained we sang Happy Birthday to Joss. By that time we were exhausted and went home for a shower and some sleep.

The next day we were up bright and early for a very solid early lunch with Sitat and Paa at Sitat’s house. It was really nice to just relax quietly and have a nice lunch with them at their house. We intended to go swimming with Paa and Sitat that afternoon but the weather conspired against us so we postponed it until the next day. We had a lovely time swimming with Sitat and Paa before heading home for a good rest before our first and last Khmer wedding.

We had been invited a few weeks before to the wedding of Sarim’s close friend and had accepted, forgetting that we had another party just a few days before! When we arrived we were seated at a table which I think must have been for out-of-town relatives since nobody at the table was from Chamcar Bei and it was the only table with several bottles of Red Label whiskey on it. As it turned out we were in for some social drinking in the extreme! The rule at these occasions is apparently that if one person is seen taking a sip from their drink then everybody around the table must do their best to “chin up!” as the Khmers say. Luckily there were enough people around the table to distribute the Red Label into fairly reasonable amounts so nobody got too much! A Khmer wedding can be accurately described as stunning; it is stunning in the sense that people who really don’t have very much can be willing to give so much to their children for their wedding. Of course a large part of it is neighbourly jealousy - a kind of “well the X family had a big wedding and I won’t be outdone!” mentality - but some of it is a genuine delight that Khmers have in doing the best for their family. A Khmer wedding is also stunning in that some senses get totally overwhelmed. The noise of so many people and the blasting Khmer wedding songs make conversation almost impossible. It’s also a very popular fashion for the ladies to wear the brightest-coloured party dresses in the wardrobe. The heat from so many people packed into such a small, low ceilinged place is intense. Although all of these things take some getting used to, a Khmer wedding is above all an extremely enjoyable time. Everybody has a huge smile on their face (except occasionally the bride and groom when the MC has really picked up momentum!) and is completely enjoying the party atmosphere. Again we went home after the wedding totally drained of energy and ready for bed!

This blog seems to have gone on muuuuuuuuuuuch longer than anticipated but there’s one more thing I want to mention since this will be my last official post on the Cambodia blog. It’s been an unbelievable 7 months here in Chamcar Bei and I wouldn’t have changed anything about it. I feel very sad now that our time here has come to an end because even if we come back to visit we will never be able to fully relive the experience. We won’t be living in the community and the people here won’t be able to share so much with us. However, it is comforting to know that we will always have friends here who will welcome us back and it is also comforting to know that we have a whole leg of our gap year yet to begin!

Tom Kemeny

Week 27: Khmer New Year on the horizon

05/04/09

I reckon that, although we still have 3 more weeks left, this was probably the last week of productive teaching. The week after next is Khmer New Year but we can already sense the party vibes seeping into the classroom and threatening to reduce any allusion of concentration to mad excitement. Break times are already get longer and, instead of the usual skipping, tagging and wacking games, bottles of talcom powder and water balloons have appeared on the scene. Some of the kids have also put orange dye in their hair which makes for an interesting look when also mixed with the white talcom powder which everyone covers each other with. After break time it seems like half the class has gone grey!

However, despite the potential disruptions we've been making good progress with the Cutting Edge in Sarim's 10-14 year old classes. We're now on module 2 which is all about countries. I think it's quite difficult to find a good quality English text book for Asian students as they are usually very Eurocentric and the content is largely irrelevant to Asian learners. However, we chose Cutting Edge because, although some parts are verging on irrelevant, it's the best we've come across that is readily available in Cambodia. For example, I think that teaching the students at CLC the names of lots of countries isn't the most useful set of vocabulary and Tom and I decided that not all the activities in this module are possible in this class (as they don't even know most of the countries in their own language). However, the grammar is clearly presented and practiced and there are some good 'real life' sections such as having a conversation about where you're from.

The beginners class of 6-10 year olds is still going to use the old books although this week we read them a book which had lots of description of people's faces and then told them to draw their friend's portrait. They really enjoyed the activity and now we have some new student's work to put on the walls instead of the big, ripped "Selfintro Duction" posters.

At the end of last week Savorn (an ex-Youth Team student who is going to take over my CVTC class) and I went around to talk to all the CVTC students to talk to them about attendance because it has been steadily dropping and, more often than not, the class has been cancelled because there are only 2 or 3 students whereas we would like at least 8 (even though it's supposed to be compulsory for all 30 odd of the producers). We decided to merge the 12:30 class and the 16:00 class and they now start at 15:30 instead. On Monday and Tuesday we had 8 students but then on Wednesday no one came because they were busy sorting out their salaries and on Thursday there were only 3 students. Progress with the book has been extremely slow because of the poor attendance so we're still only on the 3rd or 4th page of the book which is pretty frustrating. Savorn and I are quite surprised because we both regularly get people asking us to teach them sometime in the midst of their busy schedules.

On Thursday we had a meeting with Theary and Savoeurn who gave us lots to think about before we leave. Savoeurn has asked us to help him plan a 1-day workshop to train teachers how to use the Cutting Edge books effectively. BAB Cambodia has education projects in a number of other provinces around Cambodia and they're hoping to standardise the English education by implementing Cutting Edge in all of these projects. Tom and I were already thinking of spending a day training Sarim as we're slightly worried about how she'll manage the book so we were glad to help Savoeurn with this. Another of his and Sara's ideas is to use some of the land behind the school building as a student agriculture project where each class gets a plot of land and can grow whatever they like there to give them a sense of responsibility. If they grow vegetables or fruit they can either keep it for themselves or sell it at the market. The basketball court is now complete - although it's hoped that eventually some more funds can be raised from visitors' donations in order to be able to purchase enough concrete to lay a better surface as bare earth isn't ideal for basketball - so Savoeurn has asked Tom to give him some ideas about how to set up some teams for basketball as well as for volleyball and football.

One other thing that came up during the meeting was Savoeurn's idea to have a leaving party for me and Tom with all the villagers who we got to know during our stay. Of course we thought that would be awesome so we came up with some ideas such as basketball contests and funny games. And Savoeurn plans to have the party on 10th April which is also my birthday!!

This week we also got invited to a wedding on the 12th and to three Khmer New Year events - dinner at Paa's house, a celebration at the pagoda and a celebration at CLC. Please forgive us if we spend the first few days back in Singapore sleeping!

On Friday, after going to CLC in the morning to talk to the CLC Education Team in a workshop about why we've introduced Cutting Edge, we came up to Phnom Penh again to buy 3 CD players for CLC and the CVTC so that they can play the listening activities from Cutting Edge. We got them from a huge shopping centre called Sorya (the only one in Phnom Penh to have esculators!) which was like stepping into Singapore. There were adverts for head massagers and we even had ice cream at Swensons!

I only have 5 minutes to pack my bag before we go back to Chamcar Bei so I'm off! Although wait I nearly forgot to mention that the King has decided to visit the village on the 29th of April!

Week 26: Project week volunteers!

28/03/09

This week we had five UWCSEA students from grade 11 come and spend their Project Week working in Chamcar Bei. We were in P.P. for the final selection of the UWC grade 8 scholars last weekend anyway so on Saturday night we decided to meet up with the five volunteers as we had not met them when we were at UWC. When we met them we were very relieved as they were all genuine UWC students, all very motivated and ready to get to work in Chamcar Bei but also to be as culturally sensitive and polite as possible. Since the episode with the ISPP I think we were pretty desperate for them to be good to everybody in the village, and they didn't let us down.

I had a lot of fun during the week since I was able to take a little time out of my usual schedule to help the volunteers build a house from scratch. This was a really nice experience but I'm very glad we had the help from Theary and some other people from the village or I doubt the volunteers and I would have known where to start! In the afternoons the volunteers came and taught at the school - two working in the nursery, two working with Joss teaching the small kids and one working with me teaching the older class. We also had them rotate through the different classes so that they got to see teaching at different levels. Their stay also included some epic games of pi-niak (two-people) a favourite game in which everyone pairs up and one person carries the other on their back. The people being carried have to throw a ball around and if they drop the ball then the people doing the carrying have to try and hit them with the ball before they run away. If the people on top get hit with the ball on the first throw then everybody switches over, if the ball misses then the people on top stay on top. A fiendishly complicated game! But a very fun one when played with 50 children, all the teachers and half of the staff! It was really nice having the UWC students working with us for a week since they were all really hardworking and willing to get involved with anything that was available. It was great to see how much they got out of the experience and I'm glad I could be involved with it.

Another huge event occurred this week! The basketball court is finished!!! We now have a semi-functioning basketball court at CLC! The only problem now is that the surface has waaaaay to many rocks in it so you can't really bounce a ball there just yet. We have started clearing the rocks now and its already looking better and until we can afford concrete we are buying seven trucks of good quality sand to pack down on the court so it can be played on. These surface problems haven't slowed down the students at CLC at all! They are often outside at play time now shooting hoops. I'm really glad the children are already taking such a liking to basketball because it is something I can really leave behind for them after I leave (which is awfully soon now). Not to mention it would have looked pretty bad if I was the only one in Chamcar Bei playing after all the hassle we have been through to get the thing built :).

We went back to Kep with the volunteers on their last night and ate at the Veranda since that is where they were staying. We took some of them to see the Riel bar and played pool for a little while and then Joss and I stayed on for a little while afterwards to hang out with Marcel since that was probably the last time we would see him before we leave. Although I'm sure I will be back here some time soon it's still sad to be saying our goodbyes already - the 6 months went by so fast!

Although I am so sad to be leaving I am also looking forward to getting back to Singapore to see my parents and my friends there. Another silver-lining to the cloud of leaving Cambodia is that Vy, the volunteer co-ordinator in P.P., will be coming back with us and staying for a week! She will probably stay at my family's house for part of her stay. Joss and I are really excited about showing Vy around Singapore. At least to start with we can bring some of Cambodia back with us literally!