The climb isn’t getting any easier. The teachers aren’t getting any more punctual, the jungle isn’t getting any warmer, there are new insects keeping us company everyday and the kids still don’t really get anything we’re asking them to do. But though we keep trying more and more things, making the hill higher and higher for ourselves, it’s becoming more and more worth it.
Over the few weeks since I last wrote my attitude here has completely changed. I am well aware that there has been an underlying tone of negativity in my other entries, even if the pros of being out here were apparent as well. Now, though, my thoughts are so much more positive. I suppose it was just a matter of deciding on a “come what may” approach. I keep being hit in the face by the realization that “I’m in Cambodia!” and every time I do it feels a little more awesome! I think that, before, I was constantly worrying that I was getting more out of the experience than any of the people I was trying to help, but I suppose that’s just the way it will always be. It’s OK that the process is slow, and that everyone here works with a completely different concept of time to me, it just makes everything that little bit harder.
Now to update you on a few little moments from the previous weeks that have stood out for me.
One day in the village, Vera suggested making paper instruments with the children. We did this, and they loved it… the ‘instruments’ make a buzzing sound when you suck through them and took all of 10 minutes to demonstrate to, and make with, the class. We then had a competition to see which kids could make the loudest noise with their new toys and then sent them to break early. Though the class wasn’t the most exciting we’ve ever done, it sparked an inspiration in the previously un-inspire-able older boys. They went outside, spent 5 minutes disturbing the other classes with their buzzing and then scampered off into the bushes. 10 minutes later, when Vera and I were sitting reading, having finished tidying up their mess, they returned with the exact same style of instrument, but made from bamboo, which they had just cut down themselves. They then proceeded to help themselves to our limited supply of paper and added paper cones to the end of their bamboo instruments, amplifying their sound. This was enough to make Vera and I super-happy, feeling as though we had inspired the event, even if they were only proving to us that they were better than our puny paper ideas. Then, however, the boys began to cut holes in the paper cones, so that they had instruments with changeable tones. Their initiative was something we had not seen yet in the children, and it proved to us that the imagination and creativity which we have been sent to awaken, was well and truly there and alive. One point to team UWS!
We spent a week at home recently, because of a ‘sudden’ (meaning that no one had bothered to warn us about it) international holiday in the form of the Cambodia Water Festival. We spent two full days laminating and cutting things out and organizing resources into a separate box for each school and, as mundane as in sounds, I felt more productive than I had so far. Just the consistence of the job made me feel like I was achieving something, especially when the end of the week came and we were able to see all the resources used in training the teachers and then watch them all drive off on their motos with boxes of teaching materials. At the start of the week I was very frustrated because I felt like I was surrounded by a general air of un-motivated laziness, but I realized that it didn’t matter what everyone else was doing as long as I did as much as I could. Everyone here works at such different rhythms and it’s easy to write that off as laziness when it really isn’t. And feeling so productive made me less questioning about the effect I was having here. The happiness I felt at this discovery was magnified by spending two full days alone with Catherine, because we split the work between us, Vera and Ingvill spending one day at the teacher training, and us spending the other there, and one day organizing things in the house. I had yet to spend a good proportion of time with her and it turned out to be a really nice couple of days. Her opinions come from a completely different background from me, so that it is sometimes hard to relate to her, but it also means that we always have a topic to discuss and having similarly calm attitudes we ended up getting on really well. We spent a little time at the Water Festival, Banlung being full to bursting with people celebrating. There were fireworks and firecrackers to make you jump whenever you felt safe from them, and stalls and deafening music and motos filling the roads. We bought our first Cambodian ice-cream from one stall which proved to be the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted, being blatantly made from powdered something and covered with sweet milk and having a syntheticy baby-purple colour. Everyone was on the street outside our house, setting paper lanterns and wishes out onto the lake and we could see little colored lights floating of into the distance, a perfect contrast to bustle and noise of the street.
Gilly’s birthday was on the 9th of November, and we spent it in perfect celebration, with a day at the poolside at the hotel next door. We ended the day with a meal with our educational advisor, Bunthen, and Sitha and his wonderful, gutsy wife, Ping, at the new Indian restaurant in town, but not before the appropriate humiliation of the birthday girl. We organized a Banlung-wide treasure hunt for her, which consisted of each member of the UWS household being in a different regularly visited place in the city with a clue, and Iain (Chris’s nephew and leader of a new guest-house initiative to raise project funds which I’m sure I will write more about at a later date) driving Gilly around on a moto from place to place. Having never had a treasure hunt organized for her, she was thrilled; not less so for the silly items of clothing we gave her to wear on the way. Having dressed up to the nines in a new dress before leaving the house, she arrived at the restaurant kitted out in slipper-gloves, 3D glasses, granny-skirt, leather jacket and motorbike helmet, looking completely, wonderfully ridiculous. And I have been told by Gilly that, being one of the only two not to have a real birthday during our time here, that Ingvill and I will be ‘suffering’ from an enforced “Queen’s birthday” in February, so that we too can have our own Banlung-style birthday celebration!
Last Friday was a working day in Banlung. I spent the entire day untangling a single piece of string that had been sent from Phnom Penh for bracelet-making in the school. It needed untangling so that it could be easily distributed between schools when the time came, and the job took all of 6 and a half hours, no exaggeration needed. About an hour and a half before I finished, we had a visitor at the house, a John from Zurich. He was perhaps the most eccentric character I have ever encountered. He spent two hours at our kitchen table, and did not stop smoking or talking the entire time. He is about 70 years old and earned his fortune in the Swiss chemists industry. He has spent the last ten years spending that fortune, which he gave the impression was infinite, on schools in Cambodia and other projects in Myanmar. His generosity is undeniable, but for all the respect that I know is due to him as both my elder, and as a bounteous benefactor, I can help but question his methods. There can be no doubt that his schools here are better run, with more resources and care for the children, both medical and material, than any of UWSs schools. But he is currently paying his teachers at least five times more than they would earn without him, and is constantly showering the children with gifts of toothbrushes, torches, clothes, school buses and other un-arguably useful things. This is of course a wonderful thing, but is unsustainable. He is not young, and his money cannot be endless and I cannot help but think of what will happen when his presence here is ended. The schools cannot possibly be sustained with such extravagance, the teachers will not return to work if their pay is decreased and a school bus needs gas and maintenance that is not cheap. There can be no hope of the communities having ownership of a project that is so costly, which in my opinion should always be the final goal. I think now that though making UWS work,ensuring that every school is running smoothly, is a long process, it will be worth it. If we can continue to keep every school running on just £1000 a year, then there is hope of them, sooner rather than later, becoming community led, which would be amazing.
We have just returned from our second-to-last trip out to Rock and it was by far the best trip yet. We had no translator this time, making us anticipate the trip a little more nervously that ever before, but it turns out that not having a translator made our trip much less stressful. We now only have one party to communicate to, without having to make sure the translator understands, and then getting the kids to understand after. Also, it meant that our afternoons were free for Yoga, which I have now become a huge fan of, and reading, and we could cook without the constant judgement of Pao, our translator, who refused to believe that we could fry vegetables without help, and who was always complaining about the lack of meat, and questioning our teaching methods. We met a Khmer NGO worker called Kimsay, who was working in the village too, teaching the villagers about efficient chicken rearing, among other things. He attached himself to us to practice his English and was our almost constant companion, when he wasn’t working. He was very good for our egos, full of “thank you so much for you helping our people” and “we appreciate you so much for leaving your home”. Tiring as it was to have such a polite and eager companion, he also introduced us to an Australian man, Tim, who has been in Cambodia for 2 years now and is fluent in both Khmer and Laos, making us feel completely insignificant. It was nice to put a face to a name, as the other NGO workers in Banlung have been anticipating his visit for weeks, and he has been the topic of many un-joinable conversations. It was also a novelty to see another white face in the jungle. Aside from the new social-life we acquired in the village this time, we had many wonderful moments of calm. My relationship with Vera is now so easy and quiet, I could not have wished for a better companion. We spend hours sat in the sunshine, her reading Dostoyevsky, me Jane Austen, each completely enveloped in separate worlds and every now an then sharing little moments or ideas we come across. And we are also both so much more comfortable with teaching now that it is becoming more and more enjoyable. The last day brought with it the absence of teachers in the school, due to a meeting with the Director of Education. So, Vera and I were given free reign of the school until our boat arrived to take us home. It was wonderful. We spent some time playing games, something which we have had almost no time to do since we arrived, because the timetable is filled with the teachers’ sessions, and our drawing lessons. We had only younger kids, the oldest assumedly skipping school, knowing that the teachers wouldn’t be there. They hardly had any understanding of the games we were trying to explain, but they all included such silly actions and noises that they were always giggling and smiling despite not really playing the games properly. We then gave each child a little paper notebook, a pencil, and a board to lean on and all went down to the river to do observational drawing. Though we could not hope to give them any drawing skills or advice, just the image of so many children sat silent and concentrated, in such idyllic surroundings, was completely satisfying. It was the first time that I felt that the children really appreciated our presence.
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