small world, lots to see - Tackok Charai in pictures

the bridge between the village and the school

my sleeping corner

washing clothes in the river

up the village

down the village

pigs

a typical Charai house

the old man who never smiles

looking after the younger siblings

where we washed

my favourite kid

Add captionwhere we washed when there was no water left where we usually washed

casava harvesting

camera-lover

more pigs

the entrance to the village

the river

the view of the school from the bridge

and suddenly, like a cup of cold water in the face...

...it’s done. At least, I feel now like I’m at the end of something big, even though it’s exactly two months to the day until I get home. But one job is done.

Today was our last day in Tackok Charai, and so me and Vera’s last day of teaching together. The fact still hasn’t quite hit home. I don’t think it will for a while. I am suffering from mixed emotions; a kind of light relief, but also a deep nostalgia and pride at having made it this far. We did it!! It may not seem like the achievement was that great, considering the amount of free time we had, and considering the beautiful setting we were placed in, but the emotional roller-coaster of the last few months has been traumatic to say the least.

This week in itself was one of highs and lows. Our main plan for the week was to make papier mache animals out of balloons. This was a plan that we made at the very start of our time at Tackok Charai. Sat at the dining room table before this week began, Vera and I looked over our plan. I think my exact words were “Hah! Papier mache - yeah, that’s not going to work!” Bella, sat at the other end of the table, understandably shot me down, saying that we should try, that we could make it work, and other encouraging things. So Vera and I set about figuring out how to make it happen. We made a little papier mache balloon pig ready to show the kids which, despite Vera’s artistic speculation, ended up being very cute. It even had a little, unpainted, newspaper bum, to show the kids how the process worked. At 5am on Tuesday morning we were up and ready to be driven to the school in time for 7am lessons. We packed all our things onto the back of the 4x4 and when we reached the village we unloaded. To our horror, our wonderful piggy friend seemed to have fallen off the back of the van along the road, though it had left it’s badly stuck ears behind. So, we had to start from scratch with the children and hope they picked up the idea as we went along. It was one silly disaster after another. The first stage worked fine. Tuesday saw us out on the school decking with a ton of glue and paper and a lot of very happy, messy youngsters. In pairs, they all managed to coat their balloons in paper which we then left to dry in the sun. Bad idea! We had lunch and read in our hammocks for a couple of hours and re-emerged to a pile of deflated balloons covered with paper that in some cases had broken apart and in others had formed huge dents in their bodies. We repaired as much of the damage as we could, but the fact remained that each of the eighteen or so balloons needed a whole new layer. So, when the kids got to school the next day we got out the ingredients again. They were not impressed at having to repeat the previous day’s activities, no matter how exciting they had been first time round. But they repaired them nonetheless, and with a little extra effort from us afterwards, the balloons looked much happier. So we woke on Thursday morning excited to paint the animals, planning to give each pair of kids a different animal drawing to use as a model for their balloon. Still, the fates were against us. The teachers showed up at 7:30, looking way to pleased with themselves, to tell us, in staggered English, that they were leaving for the day and we had the kids to ourselves, a prospect that would have been very exciting had we had time to plan for it, but we hadn’t! So, we began with the only thing we had planned, which was painting the balloons. We had no time to draw our animal examples however, so instead we gave the balloons out and set about mixing the paint. While we were concentrating on this, the kids decided the delicate paper balloons would be better used as balls and hats, and then proceeded to get so over-excited by the paint that most of it ended up on the decking. It was a chaotic massacre which culminated in the survival of only 7 balloons, all painted in random mixtures of colour, and with the school decking looking much the same. We then spent the rest of the day in a staggered and exhausting attempt to engage the kids, who really didn’t seem to want to be engaged. It was just one of those days! We tried singing “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” which, whether because of my bad Khmer, or theirs (because most of the youngest kids were only just learning Khmer themselves), fizzled into nothing very fast. We also tried symmetry painting, which ended up with one of the classrooms getting a similar treatment to the decking. We eventually managed to engage them with a mixture of frisbee, dominoes and snap cards, but we were frustrated and exhausted by this point. Still, the kids seemed to be having a riot of time, literally! When all was quiet again, we manage to salvage the remains of our papier mache experiment and gave each paper thing eyes in a sad attempt at displaying the disaster which ended up being pleasing enough.

the little girls doing papier mache

and the boys

the halfway point

the final product

actually satisfyingly cheerful

Thankfully, our final day was much more encouraging. It began with a night sleeping under the stars, we Vera and I decided to risk the cold and the morning dew for. The stars here are like nothing I've ever seen in Britain. In a fit of short, deep sleeping and sudden waking I saw more versions of the night sky than I ever considered existed, seeing different colours and constellations every time I opened my eyes. It was possibly the most satisfying, if the coldest, night of sleep and we both woke with so much positivity that Friday couldn't have been anything but better than the day before. We cleaned the classroom first thing and Vera repeated what we did in Rock, this time making a Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Pig, which the kids loved. We played frisbee with them, and I introduced them to real tiddlywinks and what with that, and the popular snap and dominoes, by the time Bella, Gilly and Sitha arrived, we had every child deeply engaged in some wonderfully educational activity or other. Gilly brought balloons with her, so many of the kids were soon distracted by them and finally, we pulled away from the school for the last time with a contented sense of achievement and a deep affection for the children we were leaving behind.

problems, solutions, and tiddlywinks

The work in Tackok Charai has been tough these last few weeks though. The first week back after new year approached me with an intense feeling of dread. I have to admit I was ashamed about that and I definitely kicked myself for it in hindsight, because it was solely a reaction to having had such a wonderful christmas break and knowing that the work was about to start again and all the worries and agitations that came with that. Also I was annoyed because we had specifically rejigged our timetable plans to make sure that the first week back was open for whatever ideas mum and Meg were going to bring out with them, so I was feeling cheated out of the experience of showing the village to my family. Despite all the unhealthy negativity in my head however, the week turned out fine. We focused less on arts and crafts and more on other activities, doing more sport and logic with the kids. This ended up being a breath of fresh air I think, not just for us, but also for the children, who loved being out of doors. 

We taught the kids how to make tiddlywinks frogs out of paper and had a very successful tiddlywinks frog competition, complete with tournament arena! Also when we arrived the decking of the school was strewn with bits of used cardboard which seemed to have been noncommittally dumped there. This turned out to be a blessing as I ended up determinedly cutting it all into playing card shaped pieces and we spent a whole day getting the kids to try and make card pyramids with them. I was worried this task would go over the tops of many of their heads, but even some of the youngest children managed it and even those who didn’t had an undeniable determination and concentration, even if they ended up piling them into completely different structures in the end. A funny moment came with the activity; because we didn’t have enough cardboard for every child to use, we had half the class doing free drawing and then swapped them around later. Vera tried, with sign language, to explain this to the jealous youngsters who were doing drawing first, by pointing at the other children and the pointing at her watch. With returning to the table 10 minutes later came the discovery that she had unintentionally inspired twenty identical drawings of watches!

the complete concentration

"i tried your way, but mine's just more fun!"

the older boys

The next week we focused on observational drawing, because it had been so successful in Rock. Doing this with no language meant that we had to hope the kids understood what we were asking them to. We ended up, on the first day, with a lot of very un-lifelike (I hope!) drawings of me from the youngest kids, and from the grade twos drawings of the school which bore no relationship to the reality except that they all showed three classrooms and a platform. On the second day we took the kids down to the river near the village to draw and this, I think mostly because of Vera’s exquisite examples and deep concentration in observing as she drew, worked a little better. What was lovely to see was that when we got back to the school, one of the eldest boys spent his break-time sat on the decking drawing the view out over they playground with pretty good accuracy, considering that the day before he had been adding extra fencing to the school deck in his drawing, so that what was in reality a rectangle shape had become a wonky heptagon on paper. One child at a time, I suppose.

the observational drawing with the little ones

and with the older ones, on the other side of the river

tiddlywink frog tournament

the most determined tiddlywinkers

trying to encourage the cool ones to join in - it even looks like we're communicating in more than just sign language!

This last week has been the biggest challenge. Not necessarily in the lessons themselves, but in our own heads. In terms of teaching, the week was quite successful, the highlight being that we managed to use up some more of the cardboard in making tiny model stilted houses with the older children. This activity was hard and required lots of editing from me and Vera in terms of the accuracy of each stage of the process, which was not helped by the fact that the glue we were using was not friendly to the time we had to make the models. However, because of the slowness of the process, and the fact that we had to work through it with the children stage by stage (I say children, but most of the older class are actually older that me and Vera, some by three or four years!), we actually interacted with them on a much more personal level, making jokes and laughing together. It was nice to sit with them in that way, pointing at things and naming them in Charai (the tribal language) and English and laughing at each others’ pronunciation. It was the closest we have gotten to really getting to know individuals among the children, something that is very hard to do without language, and it was nice to see how much more comfortable they are with us now. But for the first time, this week, Vera and I sat down together and really talked about how the work has been making us feel. We are only meant to have had two more weeks in Tackok Charai, but having talked to each other we’ve seen that neither of us feel as though we have two weeks worth to offer the school. The teachers in the school are incredibly capable, especially compared to those at Rock, and the two of us, without thinking that we have been ineffective, which I hope isn’t the case, feel as though we have done what we set out to do in the school and that staying longer would change that into a feeling of uselessness that has been playing at the back of my mind for a while. Talking to Gilly, back in Banlung, we realized that just because we planned another two weeks, does not mean that, in the light of our recent courage to speak up about our thoughts, we cannot change that plan. We both felt that we were in danger of losing our enthusiasm for the work and that is a threat that would be picked up on by the children and even the community. So, this coming week will be our last in Tackok Charai, giving us an extra week to fill with exciting projects yet to be finalized. I think we were both feeling very scared of leaving the project thinking that we had lost momentum and not done as well as we could close to the end and this change of plan has relieved me of a burden that I didn’t realise was that strong.

Chris came back to Cambodia this week. He left us here at the start of November; the first time he had ever left the project in the hands of others in this way. I can imagine that was a very scary thing for him and his returning attitude seems to have been one of pleasant surprised mingled with an underlying feeling that he has lost some of his original control. We have changed so many finer details within the project and made, thinking back, a surprising amount of progress, especially in the case of Bella and Gilly, and for Chris to come back and see so much going on behind the scenes I can imagine would be quite a revelation, especially because the whole project started with him alone.

There was a funny moment when Gilly and I joined Sitha and Chris to Padol, another school, on Friday morning. While Chris and Sitha talked to the teacher, Gilly and I took over the classroom for a few minutes and tried to teach the children Row Row Row Your Boat,  which, considering the language, they were picking up surprisingly fast. Chris then strode in in his affectionately domineering way with a “Let me show you how it’s done” and within seconds had the previously timid kids shouting and laughing along with a different song, so Gilly and I left him to it. I did let myself point out afterwards that “That looked like fun Chris, but let’s be honest, they did learn that song three years ago!” It was just funny to see Chris’ enthusiasm to be back in front of a class and display his blatantly advanced (compared to me - not Gilly) teaching experience. He has been working so hard outside of Cambodia trying to raise funds for UWS that he gets very little time to reap the rewards of having 10 schools full of enthusiastic children waiting for any kind of interaction with enthusiastic teachers!

So, in hindsight, I may not have justified in the negativity from the start of this entry, but that may be because all the weight of the last few weeks is now feeling very insignificant having settled any worries into very pleasing solutions.

Christmas, New Year and the limbo in between

Christmas in Cambodia. It’s amazing how much fun it can be to watch people who have never celebrated christmas before go through the traditions, that you have known for years, for the first time, right down to the compulsory wearing of paper hats for the entire christmas meal. You would be surprised at how seriously people will take this rule when they think it’s an important part of someone else’s culture!

The week leading up to Christmas was spent making decorations, which included a little paper christmas tree, which I was stupidly proud of.

the paper christmas tree

Gilly and I sat for hours at the kitchen table cutting and sticking paper, constructing miles of paper chains and making snowflakes which we stuck all over the house when Iain and Bella returned from a brief and Buddhism converting holiday in Lao.

Christmas morning was quiet. We bought cheap Cambodian cava which uncorked with perfect celebratory satisfaction and unwrapped our presents from “Santa”. Secret Santa doesn’t really work with four people, so it turned out that, after picking names four or five times until no one had themselves, Bella and I were buying presents for each other, as were Iain and Gilly. I didn’t take it very seriously, going to the second hand stall in the market and finding Bella a flamboyantly ruffled Khmer version of the christmas jumper, which, bless her, she wore for the entire morning! Bella took the whole thing a little more seriously and found me a tiny, one carat amethyst, which she said was meant to ward off bad dreams if I kept it under my pillow. I was a little worried that it was going to effect the vividness of my dreams, none of which have been “bad”. I happen to enjoy having vivid dreams, but the little stone doesn’t seem to have changed that, shockingly. The stone does match the ring that I always wear, which makes it that little bit more special. The highlight of present opening, along with Bella’s determination that Santa had been to the house, explaining presents with “Santa thought this and that”, was when she and Iain realized they had bought each other identical obsidian Buddha’s without planning it. Also, it turned out that Iain had significantly overpaid for his and was a little put out.

Then came the cooking, which of course took much longer than we were expecting, so that by the time the guests started arriving at 1:30 there were little domestics going on among the other three. I kept out of the way, stirring things when told to and washing up used dishes and arranging the condiments in pretty patterns on our makeshift buffet table, accompanied with bed-sheet table cloth.

By the time all of the food was ready, apart from the roast potatoes which failed miserably, people began to eat. Most of our guests were Khmer and were confused by things like the bread sauce and horseradish sauce which Iain had ordered all the way from the UK and which he insisted on personally spooning onto everyone’s plates. But everyone seemed to enjoy the meal, and the bucket full of beer which people kept shooting off on motorbikes to top up.

the kids opening their Christmas presents

maybe a third of the guests? (Iain, Jared, Sitha's wife, Natzih, Gilly, Bunthen's wife, Swizz lady who showed up, Sitha and me, Bunthen and Pross who's some translator guy)

Gilly, me, Iain and Bella

Solika, Sitha's youngest daughter

By 4:30 the party was in full swing, with Bella, Gilly and I downstairs talking in laughs and sign language to all the Khmer women while the children played with christmas baubles and the present we bought them around us. Upstairs, the Christmas music that I had excitedly downloaded was quickly rejected for terrible Khmer pop which the boys were drunkenly singing, dancing and chopstick drumming along to quite happily. By 6:30, everyone had left, as it is with parties in Cambodia (Khmer people don’t like late nights), including Jared, our American friend who insisted that we promised to come to the bar later for drinks with the rest of the NGO workers in Banlung. That didn’t happen. As soon as the house was empty we all collapsed into chairs around the kitchen table and refused to move, exhausted from the hosting. Instead we played the after-eight game (where you have to move and after-eight from your forehead to your mouth using your face muscles - a game that I was embarrassingly bad at) and the rizla game (where you write a famous person’s name on a rizla and then stick it to someone’s forehead and have to ask yes/no questions to guess who you are). This second game caused lots of laughs, being very funny if you’re not the one asking the questions. Iain made the game by sitting, not quite sober, with a tiny notepad, jotting down all the facts about his person and completely ignoring our hints that asking “am I a sports star/movie star/politician/other variations” was barking up the wrong tree when he had Boudicca written on his forehead.
Boxing day saw us relaxing by the swimming pool in the hotel near the house, where I managed to get completely roasted, despite using suncream. Sunburnt on boxing day, an oxymoron that may have fried my brain a little.
The next week the other three were working so I got some time to relax. Then, on the Friday before new years, I was invited to go with Bella to Jong and Chai Thom, the two most remote UWS villages. An hour and a half in the van, followed by a boat ride and then another hour on the back of a moto. More than anything, I loved the motorbike ride! But it was wonderful to see a village that was actually in the jungle, even if not for much longer. Bella had visited Jong just two months before and apparently the fields of plantations that stretched across most of the motorbike ride had not been there then, which just goes to show how fast the forests here are retreating.

Chai Thom's new student council chairman

The wreckage around Jong school

Jong's village chief (he has scars on his neck from a landmine - a rare sign of the very real, yet almost invisible, conflicts of the past)

the jungle retreating into the far distance

On New Year’s Eve, Gilly and I went with Sitha to Ol Toch, where the eleventh UWS school is currently under construction. It is the first school that is going to have four classrooms instead of three. The villagers were so excited and their need for a school was so great that it made me really understand the purpose of our project. There was a teacher there who has been working for a few months now and has been teaching 150 children in one room, too small for them all. Giving him a proper place to work will be really exciting for us and the village.
Getting to midnight on New Year’s was a challenge to say the least. Iain and Bella had a date in the early evening so Gilly and I went to a bar just outside Banlung that looks over the hills to the Lao border to watch the sunset. Then we all went out to dinner and by 8:30 were seriously considering going home and seeing in the new year from our beds. But the party was on the way home so we stopped off to say hi, where we met the other three girls, just returned from their christmas travels (they ended up disappearing to another party after a while, but it was nice to see them for a second).

Bella trying to get a nice photo with her tipsy guy

Iain, Jared, me and Bella behind the bar (apologies for Iain)

The night ended up being lovely, seeing in the new year with fireworks and singing Auld Lang Syne in huge circle of strangers, most of whom (me included) had no idea of the words. We ended up staying there until 2am. Gilly and I then ended the Christmas season on Sunday with another trip to the pool and a massage courtesy of Mum and both Nannies (thank you wonderful women! I need it!). All in all a lovely, if un-traditional, Christmas, despite the absence of certain special people.