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Published: January 14th 2010
Well now, new place. new post. 2 pages of photos this time, ive been snap happy. Remember to scroll all the way down as theres more photos at the very bottom of the page as well as a 2nd page of goodies.
The travelling has subsided somewhat and we are now in Tropaengsdock doing our thing. Its rad. I feel very lucky to be there and alot of things seem to have just fallen into place perfectly. First of all, getting to the village was a slight mission as nobody we've met here had ever heard of it, including all the various taxi/moto/tuktuk drivers in Takeo town, the provincial capital about an hour from the village. It took some time and phone calls and internet maps to explain where we wanted to go. Ended up arriving at around 7pm, and the entire place was pitch black so we didnt actually see where we were until the next day. The team here are all rad. There are 5 khmer teachers and 3 volunteers, me, luke and a German lady whos been there a number of times and is all in the know and stuff. Each teacher also has a side project
Main Building and Mango tree
I sleep upstairs and teach downstairsthey work on. The website/computers, the silk weaving place, rainwater collection, fish etc. Everyone has a vested interest in making the community a better place for everyone. There is now sufficient solar paneling to meet the entire energy needs of the Sorya centre, so the computer classes can run all the laptops plus the projector, plus all the sundry energy needs of 2 schoolhouses and 3 white people.
The place where I teach is called Alaysha Chan School. There is a main school building which has a medium sized room for small classes, the office and upstairs it has the volunteers rooms. I have my own room. With shelves! Theres also a building with the kitchen and garage and the new school building which is 2 large classrooms. There is also a silk weaving/dying 'factory' and a new school being built now which I think I will be effectively put in charge of when it opens. Apparently.
The silk weaving place will employ 5-6 full time weavers who will start making scarves to be sold in German boutiques then progress to bigger, better things if and when lots of profit is made. Also they have to learn how
Blue Peter style well
All the cool kids have one of these. The cow normally hangs out here too. to make me complex things as the art has been somewhat lost here due to rrecent history. The entire process is 100% organic and fully hand made, this is exactly how they have always weaved silk. I asked one of my students, who will work there when it opens, what kind of things are used to make the dye and she told me water lillies, bark from some tree i cant remember, and a weed i dont remember etc. Its pretty raw.
Seriously though, this place is rad. The impact it has had on the community is visibly wicked. There are more jobs, more education, more food and more prospects for the people living here. Not only that but people have more control over their lives. Although it is technically a foreign NGO, or even charity, it isnt run that way. It is run by locals for locals. Despite the obvious pop culture reference that you just witnessed, this is something i think is very important, this community will go in the direction it needs and wants to, not just what some righteous whiteys or government filthbeasts want. Joy. Giving people control over their lives in a country where
they get murdered and raped on every scale constantly forever is far more significant than giving their corrupt politicians money or indoctrinating their kids with stupid jesus. Telling very poor, desperate people you will help look after their kids for free, as long as they convert and eventually pay money to the church is weak. Its not charity, its blackmail. There is already a good faith in place here, people can send their kids to the monastery to be fed and educated for free, after which they can leave. Its also part of the culture but yanqui evangelist pushers have far more money and a stage show mentality so are winning over converts with grand gestures of 'çharity', yet do nothing to actually help people in anything except the extreme short term.Huff.
Anyway, its neat being a teacher of some description. Im here to help teach english, the kids go to school already to learn other stuff then come here in their break and after school to do extra lessons. Teaching english is easier when put in context so the higher up groups get taught cool stuff. Today, for instance, I took the students outside to the fish
Schoolyard
Play football here I do. ponds Sorya made to grow fish to sell and taught them about the ecological community inside and how the nutrients travel through the various organisms until they reach us and so on. Proper science. The bubbling vat of manure used to make plankton and feed the fish served as a wonderful teaching tool to get them interested. A bit.
As of next week I will be teaching in the local monastery twice a day, teaching kids and monks english. Ill be co-teaching with a Khmer teacher but the idea is to train me up as a 'proper teacher' so that I eventually take classes on my own when the new school opens.
The weird thing is is that some of the students are much older than they seems When taking a group of people in their early 20's its hard to maintain the image of respectable authority without feeling like an anus so we end up just chatting alot, which is really why im here. The kind of questions they ask about life in england and the answers they give to my questions sometimes highlights the incredibly disparity between me and them. I can do whatever i want
whenever i want. The main thing stopping most english people from achieving something they care about is themselves and their attitude towards life. The main thing stopping people from doing the same thing here is life. Many people are stuck working in the fields for most of their lives, barely making enough to get by and support the family. When a kid gets older and marries, they then owe their parents loads of money and have to sort them out forever. If a parent or someone gets ill then the daughters give up whatever they were doing and go home to look after the sicko and probably work in the fields, if their 'lucky' enough to be able to do so. Life over. I could go on.
The village is relatively young, it was created during the Pol Pot times to be a rice producing village. The surrounding jungle was cleared,a pond created,dams built to stop flood water and rice fields sown. The village also received its name then. Even though there were a few people living here already it wasnt a proper village until the khmer rouge made it so. Which is weird. In the local meeting
place there are many drawings like the buddhist ones shown, one shows the khmer rouge building the pond. Or making some people build the pond. I suppose its things like this which go some way to explain why the khmer rouge continued/continue to exist way after the 'liberation' by the vietnamese.
The village itself is part of a network of 3 villages, all off a national 'highway' N2. In cambodia, a highway is a road that is mostly paved and flat, and usually straight, yet still only the width of 2 cars. These might seem like minor attributes but they are rare enough to betoken highway status. There is a 'mountain' very near, Phnom Chiso, which is very beautiful. At the top is an old wat, dating back about 1000 years. We went up to have a look and found some wicked drawings of stuff to do with buddhism that i dont understand. Its mixed alot with hinduism so characters like shiva and krishna make an appearance fairly often. When exploring the ruinous old bit some old dudes invited us into the centre of the wat, which had been shut for ages. They had started living inside the ruins
of the temple and were sort of caretakers. Its not uncommon for old people, mostly widows to move into old temples and look after them but to sleep in a 1000 temple in front of statues of buddha and shiva is something else. They were well nice and explained it all to us in khmer, which our friend translated as i know no buddhist terms in khmer. The view from the top of the mountain is awesome. You can see soooo far, as cambodia is retardedly flat and sunny so the entire landscape is illumanated in front of you. The sun can be so strong it looks like mist but its just intense beams of sun beating down, too thick to see well through. You can even see into Vietnam as Takeo province is on the border with them.
Which reminds me, there are apparently no recycling plants in cambodia, all recycling is sent to Vietnam. Little kids and old men go around collecting cans and plastic bottles, which they get a little bit of money for, that gets sent to phnom penh then on to vietnam. Most of the electricity is bought from china and vietnam too,
at something like 50p per kilowatt hour. which is loads of money.check that against your electricity bill sometime. This is typically cambodian as the chinese and vietnamese get the electricity by building hydroelectric dams in cambodia, possibly ruining the Mekong in the process,then sting poor khmer people to use their own resources. The entire country relies on the Mekong for its food and transport too. The countires ecosystem, habitats and weather patterns are dictated by this river, so building 10 dams on it should be good. Oh.The.Joy.
The main bad things about being here are as follows:
1) no cats. not even one. Dont think ive seen one in the whole province. even though cambodian animals are crap and malnourished and scared of everything i would appreciate having a kitten to love.
2) no steak.
3) no white russians and cold beer only on special occasions
4)......
So all in all Im very glad to be here, I feel like the risk I took coming out here was justified, I just have alot of opportunities here that I dont in england, certain things are much easier for me to achieve and Im discovering how much can
be achieved with people work together for their mutual benefit, without any governmental, religious or ideological control. Just a nice dose of western cash spent wisely by the people who will need it and benefit from it as well as commitment and willpower. Also as a side note, nobody cares about how I look. Wiggling my finger through my flesh tunnel elicits some giggles but people really arent too interested in such things, a stark contrast to the rest of the country where people can be extremely rude and make me feel totally uncomfortable about my appearance. Good times.
So i dont see many more travelblogs coming any time very soon as im not travelling anymore but I will be writing on the Sorya website, articles on the silk scheme and the water stuff etc so ill send everyone a link to that as soon as I get my journalism hat on.
Hope all is well, thanks to everyone who reads even some of this.
PEACE!
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mum
non-member comment
New Life
Hi Pat very happy to hear from you and about your new life. The photos are incredible and very illustrative I love the paintings. You sound very excited and galvanized by your new life and what you can do to help the community. It must be very rewarding and thrilling to wake up every day to something new. Glad to see the school buildings and where you play football. I think that it is great that there is a cottage industry being set up so that they can improve their lot in life and give them purpose. You have a lot to give the local community which can be of benefit and enrich their lives there are some positives from our western culture! Hope that you keep well and look after yourself. Lots of love mum