dusty roads

The dry season is now well and truly underway - at least in our part of the world. The boat trip to the village this time (our third time) was interesting because there was a metre of sandy-coloured leaves at the bottom of the trees by the riverside. It was amazing to see how much the river had gone down in the three nights that we had been away from the village.

This trip into the villages felt more productive somehow. We had a drawing session with all the children. Getting them to draw themselves was a mission in itself. The youngest children, especially, had no concept of what drawing involved and we had to demonstrate for them over and over again. One little boy - the smiley one from the photos - refused to put crayon to paper, even after he watched me draw him and then try to get him to copy it. It wasn’t until I started again and did the drawing literally shape by shape, stopping each time for him to follow what i did, that finally managed to draw himself. His drawing actually turned out much better than mine! The next day we got the kids to frame their drawings with leaves. It was a bit of a shame because that day there were much less kids in the school, as the rice season is coming to an end and they are needed to help in the fields, but the younger children got so into playing collage with the leaves that we ended up getting everyone’s picture framed anyway. That afternoon Vera and I stuck all of the pictures up on the wall and it was lovely to the kids arrive in the morning and crowd around the drawings, laughing and pointing at theirs.

One little boy in the second grade sat all on his own to make the frame for his picture. everyone else was crowded around another table and I was sat in my hammock, playing my ukelele while they drew. The little boy on his own started imitating the ukelele as i played and making up his own songs to go with it, making the whole class laugh. 10 minutes later they all went  out to play on the school decking and as he played football he kicked the ball and caught his foot on a splinter in the decking. the splinter was about 10cm long and an inch thick at the end and went straight through the bottom of his foot and out of the top. It was such a shock to see the boy that had been the life of the classroom in so much pain and all we could do was give him some aspirin and send him away on a motodop. He didn’t show up to school the next day but we’ve been told he’s fine. And that little drama is nothing in comparison to what Sitha, our project manager, was having to deal with at the same time. He was in another village when he visited a family whose 7 year old daughter was very ill with malaria. he drove the family to the hospital in Bunlung straight away. Upon reaching the hospital, however, they were told that it was closed, at 2pm in the afternoon. The one person there wouldn’t contact the doctors on account of it being their time off. after nearly five hours of waiting they finally got the little girl into a hospital bed and on a drip, but by that time the doctors couldn’t do anything and she died that night. We were told all of this when Sitha picked us up from the village. It sort of exploded out of him and his anger was so desperate and hopeless. It made me think about going to the post office the other day and waiting for an hour because the place didn’t open until two and the postman had decided that day not to turn up until half past. As a postman in a culture that works like that obviously isn’t a huge issue, if a little inefficient. But as a doctor using the same work ethic, the effect can be so terrible that I just don’t see how you would ever be able to work like that. There must be a moment when you realise that the system has foundational floors and I don’t understand why no one has any drive to fix them.

Some more positives though. We’ve now decided to work on a project in the two villages, Rock, where me and Vera are, and Kong Nork where Catherine and Ingvill are. We’re going to make puppet shows in each village, with the older kids making the story and directing and the younger ones making the set, the puppets and acting out the story. If all goes to plan we can then invite the kids from the other school to come and see our respective shows, because the villages are only about 4km apart. It will be very hard work though. Vera and I tried to explain the theory of constructing a story to the older kids on our last trip out and just introducing the idea of characters and context was challenge enough. But we’ll keep trying for the next two weeks before we move to another village.

Being so close to the other girls and their village is really nice. Catherine celebrated her birthday the other day and so Vera and I went to Kong Nork to spend the night and have a meal with them on her birthday-eve. We had our usual veg-and-noodles supper but followed it with makeshift rice pudding, made by overcooking rice and adding our synthetic milk and too much sugar to be healthy, which was definitely one of our better ideas!! We were then all woken up at two in the morning by the cow-bell adorned buffalo that were eating around the hut, and the sound of Catherine’s first action as a nineteen-year-old, angrily chasing them all away!

We are now in Hoi An, Vietnam, having a compulsory holiday. We had to leave Cambodia because our tourist visas ran out and we couldn’t get our NGO visas without re-entering the country. So we’ve made a five day trip out of the inconvenience. Hoi An is so colourful and full of Western tourists and we’ve found a cheap hotel with a swimming pool outside and what feels like the best burgers I have ever tasted. We are spending our time wandering the markets and wearing clothes that show our shoulders and doing everything that we would be considered culturally insensitive for doing at ‘home’ that isn’t here. The journey here took nearly fifteen hours but now at least we have a little time to breathe. Here are some photos of our holiday:

the stupidly long journey from the border to Hoi An

getting dropped by the bus in the middle of nowhere by a motorway - c'est la vie

Cathy - when a little girl walked along side her, grabbing her hand and smiling

Vietnamese lampshades

our frog - it was swimming in the outdoor pool with us

bamboo bike, made in a workshop of handmade gifts that employs the "differently abled"