19-12 to Wales, and a whole lot of grammar

The last week has gone by in a flash. My first week out alone in Cambodia. Though being on my own has been brilliant - not having to worry about anyone else - there is nothing like being surrounded by people you don’t know very well to make you feel lonely. I have been working in a school in the South of Phnom Penh. After being in the tourist centre of the city, this was a whole other world. This area was like an equally impoverished, urban version of the villages I worked in in Ratanakiri. The houses were the same size, though this time made from corrugated iron instead of wood, and the streets were lined with dust and litter. The school - the Centre for Children’s Happiness (CCH) - is the hub school for UWS. This is something Chris has been trying to enforce both here in Cambodia, and in Sri Lanka, where Gilly is going to be working. The hub schools are schools that are already set up, by different people, that can potentially, in the future, have a part in UWS. CCH has been running for a long time and was set up to bring children off the streets. I stayed at the main centre - the school is spread out in a few different buildings - where most of the girls live. I shared a room with five other girls who have all been at CCH for different amounts of time, the longest being around 10 years. The youngest was just five years old.

The girls were all very welcoming. The eldest all wanted to practice their english all the time and the youngest would crowd around me for cuddles and play with my hair. So for a few days I have had to hide in classrooms or the library to get any time alone. Not ideal for my first few days traveling “alone”, but they were all undeniably kind and sweet and seemingly a little deprived of adult attention. They have one house mother, a wonderful smiling, but obviously strict Khmer lady, and Papa Sohka, who lives next door and set up the whole project, but who is very busy, though he tries to make time to play games with the girls in the evenings and has also set up a band with a couple of the older kids that rehearses some evenings. One thing I had against living there was the food, which, though admittedly tasty, always included rice. this would not have been an issue if they hadn't tried to feed me rice for breakfast! I don't care how long I've been in Cambodia, I am never eating rice for breakfast!

The teaching was exciting - I have never really taught in a classroom properly before, so standing in front of a class to teach English was scary to begin with. Most of the time I was just supporting another volunteer - a 20 year old Danish girl - so it was easier. It was interesting for me to be helping teach English grammar, as I know it all but have never really stopped to think about how many rules and irregularities there are. It is difficult to explain the intricacies of a language when, in you head, “that’s just how it is”.

The one thing I found hard about being at CCH was seeing the other volunteers work. Some were wonderful and energetic and good at teaching, but others were blatantly doing the Gap Year thing with very little understanding of what teaching really means. Many classes I saw descended into chaos.There was one memorable incident where a Begian couple arrived one evening to teach for a week. At 8am the next morning, they showed up at the centre, having managed all of 10 minutes of teaching and decided that they were going to leave because they were teaching kids who were younger than they expected, and didn’t know what to do with them. It’s moments like that which make me feel very good about myself, if also a little exasperated and astounded by the panic I witnessed.

Apart from working at CCH, I also managed to watch part of the 6 nations, something I haven’t been able to do before. I was emailed by the Welsh boy I met in Kampot, who asked if I wanted to meet and watch the game together. I went to a bar by the riverside in Phnom Penh and watched the match. There must have been at least 15 Welshies there and the atmosphere was so like that of a pub in Wales that I had to keep looking out at the tuk-tuk filled street to remind myself that I was still in Cambodia.

So, week one alone has been an overall success, I haven’t lost any money, had anything stolen or been taken in by any creepy strangers. Tomorrow I head off to Siem Reap for three weeks to teach in an orphanage. We’ll see what that’s like. I am refusing to have any expectations - apparently I expect too much from things...

the youngest

the cafeteria

play time

evening studying

some of my English students

stepping out alone

So, my first few days outside of Ratanakiri since our visit to Hoi An in October were interesting. Gilly, Vera and I were set to leave Banlung at 6am on the 17th, by 6:30, Bella had come to join us in waiting, and by 7:30, when the bus finally arrived, the entire UWS team was there to see us off, having all arrived at the house to start working, or to pick things up. We spent a few days in Phnom Penh, being cosmopolitan; shopping in the Russian Market, watching live music and having coffee in gleaming white cafes with huge windows and balconies overlooking the river. Gilly left after one day, and the rest of us split up last Saturday, when Cathy and Ingvill went to Vietnam and Vera and I headed down to Kampot.

On the bus ride I watched as the landscape slowly morphed into flat plains with huge rocky hills protruding from them. Kampot itself is a very French colonial style town on a salty, clear river-estuary. We stayed in a dormitory in Bohdi Villa, a beautiful carved stone building with a wooden terrace extended out in three levels right down to the water’s edge. I was able to swim everyday and have proper English Breakfast tea and the guest house was completely full with a mixture of friendly young travelers and older hippies who wished they were still friendly young travelers. At night, if you touched the water, you would see thousands of phosphorescent algae that lit up whenever they came into contact with something. I had never seen phosphorescence before; it is the weirdest feeling to swim in the water and have a glittering glow around you wherever you move to.

On the first day in Kampot we went open-top kayaking on the river, and though I didn’t have time to complete the wonderful looking route that was suggested to me, it was really nice to get back in a kayak and do some proper outdoor sport again. It was nice to know that I can still do it. I suppose kayaking is like riding a bike; it becomes instinctual once you know how to do it.

The next day we went to the Kampot cave, Phnom Chnork. We arrived in a tuk tuk and we immediately bombarded by young children all with wonderful English. One girl was faster at talking to us than the others and became our guide around the caves. We had picked a good day to go, because the foot of the stairs to the cave was crowded by people and everywhere was decorated with banners and tinsel because there was a celebration of Buddha. The cave itself, up 203 steps, was full of stalactites and stalagmites, which according to our guide, were all in different shapes of animals, though that, as far as I was concerned, was down to personal interpretation. In the heart of the cave was a tiny, brick Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva. The simplicity of the 1,400 year old building is a complete contrast to the ornate natural structures around it.

Shiva's shrine

On our last full day in the South, Vera and I took a bus to the seaside town of Kep and then a rocky boat to Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island), a journey on which we saw, not the shaols of fish promised by the guide book, but a couple of dolphins, not more that a few meters from the boat. If ever there was and island paradise, it was this. Golden sand led from the flat sea up to thatch-roofed restaurants and massage beds and behind them, the island rose into emerald hilltops. I spent the day beach-combing, reading, swimming. I also spent a good part of the time snorkeling, following shawls of tiny silver fish and watching bigger ones nibbling at coral. What cut into this paradisiacal day, was that, where ever you looked, there was litter, albeit more hidden than in other places. And the first thing we saw on coming back to the mainland was another beach, not golden, but grey and piled knee-high with rubbish. That evening we went out to a British style pub with some people we had met at our guest house - a German girl, a Canadian boy and a French boy, who hated France and lived in Barcelona. The pub was hosting a pub-quiz and we entered as the “international team”. Considering all of us were under 25 except the Canadian (who answered most of the questions) we did quite well and managed to scrape 2nd place. The team that won were given a huge jug of beer to share, and because of our effort, one of the winners came and offered us some free beer. The boy who came over ended up being a Steff from Caerdydd who was fluent in Welsh so I spent a very happy half hour speaking Welsh for the first time in 5 ½ months - a time period which I embarrassingly discovered has a significant impact on your ability to speak a language! Then, after teaming up with the French boy to be thrashed at pool by a middle-aged Northerner and his stunning Khmer wife, we called it a night and the next morning headed back up to Phnom Penh, where Vera and I finally parted ways. So, now I’m out on my own…

the mountain of gems

It’s finally time to say good-bye to Ratanakiri, to Banlung, to the UWS house and to everything that has been my home for the last five months. Waves of nostalgia wash over me as I go through last times and good-byes.

It’s been a heavy last few weeks. We had to do creative arts teacher training with the teachers from all our schools. Gilly gave the four of us responsibility for a workshop each - Music, Drawing, Modeling and Drama. I did music and got very over excited and over complicated the whole thing and so ended up getting through about half of what I had planned. But it was a lot of fun, and I think the teachers really enjoyed it. By the end, I managed to get three groups of teachers all to perform a Cambodian pop song with home made instruments and singing, which was enough to make me smiling and satisfied.

making paper instruments

pop singing

Vera's drawing workshop - proportion

sport

We also went to Jong for two nights, the four girls, Gilly and Sitha. Jong is the village furthest away from Banlung and the school has had lots of problems with attendace. Nevertheless, the children showed up, not only from 7-11am two days in a row, but also in the afternoon as well. Gilly took charge and the rest of us followed her. We played lots of sport and did drawing with the kids based around a story that we brought with us. We also took out loads of logic games, which Ingvill and I taught the kids how to use, and which they were completely enthralled by. In the afternoon we made cat puppets. Sitha read the children the story, and then Gilly asked if anyone wanted to make a puppet. Only two children said yes. However, by the end of the two hour session, every child bar one boy had made a puppet and they all took them home happily. There was a lovely moment when one of the fathers showed up to watch and asked if he could make a cat too. It’s one thing to know that before UWS these villages had no education, but another to see the joy with which this father took part in the lesson, having never had such an opportunity before. Then, when we had taken a photo of all the kids with their puppets and sent them home, the one boy who had refused to make one stayed behind looking tearful and asked to make one too, so we sat down and went through the steps with him and his face lit up slowly, until he skipped off to the village clutching his creation. The whole trip made me realise that what Gilly expected of us was no more than what we had been already doing in the schools before. I can’t help thinking though, that it would have been nice to know what was expected of us before we started, not at the end! All in all, the trip, what with sleeping under the stars and watching the sunset to the soundtrack of Sitha’s guitar, and washing by the well with the village women, was a wonderful final team project.

Sitha telling the story

Helping the littlest with his pupper

the father joining in

all the cats

We had evaluations with Chris yesterday and I seems as though the four of us all had very similar points to make. We all said that time in the villages should be shorter, that there should be more teaching time and that there needed to be more serious thought put into the project’s structure in general, among other smaller points. I don’t know whether any of our points were taken on board, or how much will have changed when new people come from Atlantic College in September, but the information is there, whether it is used or not. As far as I’m concerned, we made the most of what we had; being Guinea pigs for the project was bound to have both upsides and downsides and more than anything it would have helped to have had more planning in place before we got there. But there was no way of knowing whether what we did would work until we did it. And what we did was, I think, good for the kids, even if it’s had no lasting impact on the schools’ futures.

So it’s good bye to Banlung, and on to Phnom Penh at 6am in the morning. Leaving behind the town that, as Vera said when we first arrived, is like an abandoned house that people are lovingly squatting in. I will miss feeling at home here and I will miss the lake and the friendly people and the schools and the red Ratanakiri dust. But it’s on to the last month of my trip, I can’t have come all this way without seeing more of Cambodia than just this little, littered, red, jungled corner.

in the market

banlung and the red dust

UWS house