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Published: February 12th 2010
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Hello Everyone,
It is so nice to know I have so many readers! Keep the comments coming, I really appreciate them.
Two young doctors from London have arrived for a couple of weeks which is great news. Every child in the school has been sent in to be examined. However, the doctors eventually stopped weighing and taking the children’s height because they were all severely underweight and under height. The doctors also picked out a lot of heart murmurs. A little boy in my class was sent in and when he took his shirt his chest was covered in severe bruising which was awful. Apparently he had a fever so someone had rubbed his chest really hard with a coin to ‘bring it out.’ It is a common practice over here and must have hurt like hell. Because of the whole ‘giving face’ attitude I find it difficult at times to stay calm even though I am a pretty laid back person because you are seen as weak if you get annoyed. This is difficult if you are trying to explain to a Khmer person that bruising a 6 year old child’s chest will not help a fever.
We now have little desks in the classroom and electricity which is great. I have never been so excited about such basic things!
Near to where I work there are a few hidden temples which I sometimes visit at lunch. There are lots of monks living round there who come over and chat to practice their English. My near death experience happened there the other day…A massive coconut fell from the tree directly above me and missed my head literally by 2 inches. Seriously if I was 2 inches over that coconut could have done some serious damage because it was such a huge thing falling from a hell of a height. As soon as it happened I ran into the temple out of fear another would fall. When I got into the temple I saw a sign which read ‘Danger’ as the temple was at risk of its roof collapsing. Now for the Cambodians to actually put up a sign warning ‘Danger’ then there really is. So I briskly walked from there too. I found myself in another temple (this one was safer.) I chatted to a monk in there who showed me jars of ashes. During the
Pol Pot regime people were killed and their remains left in this particular temple so the monks later cleaned the whole lot up and put the remains (now ashes) into jars on display. The Khmer Rouge was anti religion and it seems they went out of their way to prove this by using temples to place human remains in.
On Saturday night after a meal we went to a place called X-bar. They had a limbo pole there with fire torches either side. X bar is on top of a big block of buildings and is completely open top. Anyway I went in for the limbo with a bunch of other people. I got down to the final two - just me and this Cambodia little man. Anyway fair play he beat me because of the crazy angles he had his legs at whereas I was just arching my back. At the end of the night it was like 3am and we started walking to get a tuk tuk and all these street children just jumped on us. They were really angry and wouldn’t’t let go because they wanted money. They like to prey on the women the most
as we are seen as the most vulnerable. So I was trying to unpeel this little girls tight grip on my fingers which was almost breaking them and I looked down and saw her holding a newly born baby whom must have been like a month old max. The kids were yelling at us. You can’t give them money because they just give it to their parents or whoever is looking after them and they drug the babies so they sleep. Anyway we finally got them off and they were jumping on the tuk tuks. I ending up almost crying because it seemed such a contrast with drunk westerners drinking away money and poor little street kids just desperate for a meal. The children finally jumped off and the two tuk tuk drivers decided to have a race home in all the pot holes.
There are two volunteers out here with Khmer backgrounds. They now live in Australia as their family escaped over there just after the Pol Pot regime. They invited me to go and visit their family for a couple of days in the countryside not far from Battambang. It was an incredible experience meeting all their
family and it was such a massive contrast. It is amazing to think that if they had not moved out to Australia then they would still be living such a simple life. Their family was very poor and did not have much but they all gathered to see us and fussed around us. The fact that they bought a ‘barang’ (foreigner) with them was a bonus to them because they do not come across many westerners. One of the uncles sat right next to me and patted my back because the Khmers admire my white skin. I told them I wanted nice brown skin like theirs and they thought it was hilarious. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to have mixed with such a different culture and to be accepted. I admire the Cambodian people hugely for their happy disposition and welcoming attitude especially to someone like me who lives such a different life.
A load of us volunteers went quad biking on Thursday evening during sunset. It was such a good experience. We drove through the paddy fields and had a lot of fun. The only thing was insurance doesn't exist over here and we
had to sign our lives away to say we would replace the $12,000 equipment if we broke it :S Luckily everyone was fine.
My Mum has come out here for a visit just for a week bless her so today I have taken the day off to show her around. I am planning on taking her to see the Temples tomorrow. Dad hope you are okay all by yourself!
Must sign off now but I hope everyone is good back home and I am missing you all.
xx
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Simon
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Amazing
Wow Ellie. Your blog is brilliant. Just be careful out there! You youngsters eh? Keep having fun and keep writing! Simon and Colin xxx