Been awhile but I've been busy....

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It has been awhile but I have been busy. Since I last blogged now live with 13 people in a three story house on the outskirts on Phnom Penh centre which in itself is eventful - getting to know everyone. I spent four days in Stung Treng observing the CRDT project I volunteer for and have started teaching as of monday.

So, I live with thirteen interesting people. All of whom are lovely, funny and over a few events which have happened, I realise I am very lucky to have them around. Yesterday and today, I have been very ill. Yesterday was pretty bad. I woke with an upset stomach but had stomach cramps in the night. It was not my time of the month so was not sure what exactly was going on.... I went to work and taught the first lesson no problem. Second lesson was going well until with twenty minutes left of the lesson my stomach started to twist. I knew I didnt have long but tried to brave it to the end. If I was at Brockhill, I would have run to Giselle or Richard and asked them to keep an eye on my classroom whilst I go to the ladies. I would then have seen CJ and told him I was ill. He would have rolled his eyes and told me off for attempting to come in at all. But I was four stories up and no bathroom insight until the ground floor. At 7:55am, I had to stop the lesson early. I let the students go and then I ran. Fast. Í'm pretty sure i flew past some of my students. The cramps didn't set in until I got home. They were pretty severe and I decided I was dying as did poor Natalie. I had a high temperature of 38* and was force fed coconut juice from a huge coconut, vitamin C drinks and plain rice with salt. The coconut juice was to settle my stomach and stop sickness from setting in. The vitamin C was to get my antibodies fighting the blighter inside of me and the rice with salt was to replenish salt lost through sweating.
Whilst my imagination run wild with all sorts of horrific possibilities, my thirteen friends and two CWF support team friends - Peap and Soso nursed me back to sanity and partly back to health. I had Helen for hugs, Natalie and Amy for mummying, and Alistair for his horrific descriptions of what I should expect next (he had only recovered from something similar a few days before). Day two, I felt bad. Still attending the ladies like it's my first and second home but the cramps and the high temperature have nearly gone.
I am lucky to have people who care. This is not the first time I have seen these people respond to another in their time of need. Ultimately we are still strangers who have lived together for two weeks, developing relationships but it makes me feel safer to know I am not alone. It is scary being so far away from family when all you want is your own bed and a cuddle from Carl and my Mum.

The CRDT project
I work for CWF: Conversations with foreigners. These guys run a school in Phnom Penh to raise funds for rural projects in order to help poorer communities around the country (CRDT). The place we went to visit was near Stung Treng along the Mekong river. It was an 8.5 coach journey followed by a 2 hour boat ride to the island. The coach journey took forever. We stopped several times for breakfast and lunch and wee stops. The main road is not a motorway but a dirt track which is rarely covered in tarmac. Every so often the coach veers from side to side in order to avoid huge pot holes and probably death. And you English complain about the state of the roads in Engand - try Cambodia. The watering holes aligning the roads in the UK are wonderful open spaces where you can buy a McDonalds or friendly sandwich for a pricey sum. Here, you can buy tarantulas, cockroaches and all under the coregated roof of a tin shack. The toilets are your typical hole in the floor. Luckily I had my sheewee. A clever contraption which means I can stand and wee like a boy. Definitely something required to cope in these parts. Unfortunately, wee stops consisted of pulling over by the road and whipping the trousers down. Luckily, I avoided this.
The bus driver was demented, but so were all the other road users. Every other second was a honk. honk on the old horn. At first I assumed he was over taking or letting road users know he was coming up behind them. But no, the guy was honking at road users approaching him who could clearly see the blot on the landscape coming up quickly towards them. No chance of sleep.
Since being in Cambodia I have become addicted to iced coffee and sweet milk (condensed milk). It is amazing and I bought one at every stop I could, all for a small price of 35p - Take that over-priced Starbucks!
Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia, and as I have described before, it is a mass of under development and over development which is happening before it is ready. They have wifi nearly every where but no starbucks or Mcdonalds. In the city centre there are a high rises but some buildings are wooden shacks. As soon as you leave the city centre you see an immediate change in living standards. Every house was a wooden shack on stilts, some beautifully carved others laden with corregated iron. These shacks were surrounded by lush greenery in the form of rice paddies - some small, others bigger. I saw whole communities farming the rice together. They would lay the rice out on to large rectangular shaped pieces of material along the roadside. on the way back from stung treng, we saw these communities rolling the material up and putting them in to bags.
In some cases, the areas where the huts were had been flooded. Even though these houses were on stilts, their entrance steps led straight in to the murky pools below. Some were getting from house to dry land in boats.

Early next morning we left Stung Treng to catch a boat to Koh Preah (Island of Gods). I am not good with water - i hate not knowing what is beneath me. The boat was rickety, it moved far too easily if you stood on it and I was certain it would flip, particularly when alpha males played "let's see how Jess reacts when I rock the boat". Not well my friends - you found out the hard way.
Unsteadily, we moved towards our next destination. Upon arrival, the coast of the island was littered with wooden houses beautifully carved. We were introduced to the people who were in charge of the project, which consisted mostly of women and were eventually shown to our prospective houses, where we would spend the night. I with four other girls, climbed the stairs on to an open veranda with a swing. In the near distance you could see a small kitchen with very little in the way of contents. Immediately off the veranda were two rooms - the rooms we would be sleeping in. In the first room there were two double beds, i say beds - they looked like them through shape but the mattress was little more than a mat on a wooden bed shelf. The second room had no bed, just two carpets laid on top of the other on the floor. Natalie bagged that room - lucky girl. We spent half an hour trying to communicate with the lady and daughter who owned the house with our limited Khmer and their zero English before we decided to take a stroll and see the sights for ourselves. Here we saw the locals lolling about in their hammocks, or on their porches staring at us. Children would run up to us and smile or scream "hello". There were no cars on the island, just a few mopeds. The road around the island was little more than a dirt track crowded with wooden houses, all on stilts. we saw pigs tied up to trees, cows roaming about grazing, chickens clucking away as they picked at what they could from the grass. All the while, we saw no one walk along the path, just us with the staring observers up high in their wooden towers.
Later that day we visited the local school which roughly had 50 attendees from ages 4 to 13. We had bought balloons, pens, pencils, books and lollipops for them, gave them out and played with them. The balloons were a big success - if a child was lucky enough to get one, they would run off with it. We managed to persuade some to play catch with the balloon but if they ended up on the floor it would pop. One boy I blew a balloon up for grasped it so tightly in fear someone would nab it from him that it popped in his little face. I quickly blew him another and made silly faces at him in the hope tears would not be shed. He must have thought "what a silly white fool". One girl ran off with her balloon and watched the rest of us play games. You could tell she wanted to play but didn't want to give up the balloon. The next morning, we saw many children still grasping their balloons as they waved happily at us from a safe distance at their parents porches. Probably fearful that we might try and play catch with them and kill their new latex friend.
As night time drew upon us, we filed to our houses and headed for bed. Amy and I were the first to go and our lady helped us set the mosquito net down. Hopeless really when there are holes in it the size of my face. I woke up to a cricket staring at me the other side of the net. As Amy and I settled for sleep we could feel people walking in to the room and not leave it. At one point someone had a light and just stopped in the middle of the bedroom. I know we have different coloured skin and speak a different language but it comes to something when they have to stare at the white girls as they sleep. Bit out of my comfort zone there.
Still, it had been a long day and I was tired. Would have been great if i could have slept though. We awoke with the cock-a-doodle-doo's of the cockerels and the clucking of the hens far too early at 4am. If I had a gun...... I apparently touched Amy in the night too - bit too friendly considering we had only met a week or two before. Since then I have kept my distance from her in the hope she doesn't think I have a thing for her.

Groggy and not in best shape, we trudged towards the main area where we had been eating our dinners. So far we had been chewing on rice and morning glory - a green vegetable that looks like long stringy beans and burns more calories to chew. We had eaten this for lunch and dinner the day before. Guess what was on the breakfast menu?! Not the most adventurous chefs. Still, it prepared us for the day ahead, a trip on the boat for two hours towards to God rock island. On the way we passed many islands with few inhabitants who lived in less than shacks. Some seemed to live on boats. I find it incredible that people choose to live this lifestyle, away from humanity and shun development. So many had their own boat but were fully kitted out with fisherman's wares. I myself could never choose a life like that. Maybe if I had been brought up like it, but since I have been party to the delights of modern and western civilization I choose not to back track to the stone age. At university we used to cruelly steal eggs from other people's halls and then pelt their windows with their own eggs. When we had plastered an unsuspecting victims window and surely put them in to cardiac arrest through shock we would chortle to ourselves "we just egged them back to the stone age". Well now I know what it looks like, almost.
Two hours and sore bottomed, we eventually arrived at God Rock island and were told we were going on a hike, even though most of us had only flip flops to our names. Cybil (67) and Gareth (Beef cake 22) decided to sit this one out. With Cybil you could understand, with Gareth, well...Gareth, I say no more! The bravest of us ducked low branches and trip wires made from roots. We hauled ourselves over ants nests and marched on through muddy waters. If you stopped anywhere near these huge ants, they would bite you. I found out first hand that it hurts. A lot. For quite a while. Still, we made it to the rock. It was a rock. The guide told us that each time someone comes here, you are to leave a gift. He left a lit cigarette. Interesting choice for a God.
They believe this is rock which belongs to the Gods and has super powers. Another idea is that it is a meteorite that landed here long ago and does not have super natural powers.

The journey home was one I looked forward to. I am not someone who needs creature comforts but would like to be able to sleep. If i see another chicken, I will punch it.

Still, being here on the island made me feel like the centuries had fallen away and I was shot back in time. There was no electricity readily available, but they had TV's and would use them for short amount of time at night from a generator. It gets dark at 6 so they go to bed at 7. It gets light at 6, so they wake up at 6. Animals roam freely and are undisciplined, the people own very little. Life is very basic and there is little to do except sit in a hammock and laze the day away. It is very easy to see how many ex-pats come here to find peace and tranquility but end up realizing 40 years have just peeled away. In contrast to the life I know in the UK which is GO GO GO GO GO from the moment you wake to the moment you sleep. Sleep is not determined by light, rather by how you feel or if there is nothing good to watch on TV. You get up because you have to get up for work at a set hour, not because it is daylight. It is refreshing to see a community connect in different ways and fill their time with activities so different to the western world. Maybe something we can learn from.

Back in Phnom Penh, we start work. we wake at 5 to start teaching at 6. We finish at 8am and stat again at 4-8pm. It is a busy and hard day with those hours. Feels like i dont get enough sleep and for me I only managed to get to day 3 and a half as I have been ill since. I teach four classes, and amongst them some interesting people. One of them is a lawyer who is taking a huge international company to court over the treatment of their factory workers. I teach the minister of Defense and the minister of Education (although there seems to be two of these guys as another volunteer teaches one). Some of the volunteers teach monks, blind or disabled people. A marvelous collection of Kmers (pronounced Kumai). I am yet to get to know everyone, i have only taught them three times so far. But teaching ESL is so different to anything else I have done in five years of teaching at Brockhill. I realise how I have let some students down with my lack of understanding of their ESL needs. My school definitely have a long way to go in understanding effective strategies and they are more advanced than most schools in the UK. A lot of work has gone in to recognising those needs but although they might be recognised, I myself did not understand how to implement them. I mean, how do you teach a kid RE when they have little o no English amongst a class of 30 others who also need your help. Differentiation is not enough. But I am starting to recognise key issues that can be altered and worked on. Maybe it is best to throw a kid with limited English to the lions, that way you have to learn the language in order to survive, and maybe this is the best way to learn a language. In some lessons here , where the level is very low, you have to use pictures to translate an idea - I guess it's not too different from the UK. With my advanced class, we are reading the Cinderella story and we pick up on vocab and try to use it in different sentences. One thing I have realised is how messed up our language is. I have to be so careful with what I say and make sure it is not slang. I have to speak very slowly so that they can hear every word. The weird thing, is they understand each other when they speak English but they dont understand me and I sure as hell can not understand them. They drop the s's and t's and d's and the end of sentences so rice becomes ri and that becomes tha and dad becomes da. You have to keep picking up on their pronunciation. Tedious but repetition is key. I am a big fan of tongue twisters.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be back at school and able to work on these issues more. I like a challenge and keen to explore ways in which I can better their language skills. Even better if i can bring it back with me to England.

Take care, have fun, more stories to follow i'm sure

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Photos

mid day - nap time
shop keeper taking a nap in koh preah

cambodias favourite
the famous egg foetus

do i take part?
a boy looks upon the strange white people and assess the situation.

looking out
a boy looks out amongst the roots of a huge tree along the mekong river

mother and daughter
koh preah

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a girl watches me take photos of her and her friends

listening to dad talk
children listen to their father tell CWF volunteers about how CRDT have made improvements to his life

shy
the reaction a child gives towards a balloon is amazing

peeping
peeping through the floor boards

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a girl watches the other children desperately wanting to take part but knows if she does, she will forfeit the balloon she has worked so hard to keep

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comparing lollipops