Hey all,
Well, what can I say? Quite a lot actually. My time in Cambodia has certainly been full, and very welcoming.
To begin with, we arrived late on the Thursday night way back in June, and were met by 2 of the VSO office staff who had all the papers we needed ready to give to us and just sign, then this was taken by an official with our passports to be stamped. This meant that we didn’t have to queue at the visa desk like everyone else just arriving. The program office has accommodation upstairs so anyone coming from the provinces for meetings has somewhere to stay. This is where we stayed for our first few days.
On the Saturday, we had a cyclo tour around Phnom Penh (PP). A cyclo is best described as being a push bike with the front wheel converted into a seat with a wheel either side which you as the passenger sit on. PP isn’t very large, so it doesn’t take long to go from one end of the city to the other. We where shown the “critical”stuff, where the markets where and what each one was best for, where the internet cafes are etc.
On the Monday the real work began. The first 2.5 days where meet and greet the VSO program office staff, with each telling us there roles, what kind of help we can expect from each person. Also what kind of assistance they can give us when we start looking for accommodation. We also had some basic cultural awareness training, the serious dos and don’ts.
Wednesday afternoon we then moved to Kampong Cham (K Cham). VSO have accommodation here as well which is used for the language training, so I expect you have guessed now why we moved to here, and if you guessed for the language training, you would be correct.
We stay here for a week and a half. ; Six days a week, we have 3 hours of teaching in the morning, and “free” time in the afternoon, but if you are like me, it is further study to try to get what I have learned in the morning to stick in my brain, so I don’t feel lost and overwhelmed with more words and sentences the following day. Our tutor is Tham Dara, kwot bonn rien peea sai k’mai (he teaches language kmer). When ever you see the language written in the English script, it is a phonetic representation of the language. The actual script is an elegant series of swirls with more swirls above and below the main line to add accents. It is going to be beyond my capabilities to learn the written language.&n bsp; Some volunteers are trying, and good on them. Oh, before I forget, when ever you see a Cambodian name written, the family name is always written first, so we call our tutor Dara.
Sunday 2 July, we departed K Cham to return to PP for our cultural awareness training.
We had some very interesting guest speakers who could talk from their personal experiences about life in Cambodia. We had a man called Huot Totim. He has set up the Vithey Chivit organisation. It is a support group for people with HIV/AIDS. Chivit doesn’t know how he contracted the disease, but he was very open, talking about the time he was ill, and after discussing options with the doctor, decided to have a HIV test, the counselling he was given, and what he felt and did afterwards. Now, he and his team go to different groups and organisations to give presentations to try to dispel the myths about the disease, and let everyone know about the support they can provide to fellow HIV/AIDS people. Although they do have access to some drugs, the team regularly loose members through death and illness, so when they do have a booking, they may have to cancel at the last minute, or send someone else if there is someone else available.
Our tutor Dara was also a guest speaker. He lived through the Pol Pot era, and he talked about life through the Khmer Rouge reign, and the subsequent years. During the Khmer Rouge, people where killed almost indiscriminately. To prevent being killed, people changed or shortened their names to try to make them sound boring and prevent attracting attention. If you could speak a foreign language you where killed. If you showed any kind of intelligence you where killed. If you surrendered, you where killed. Temples where used as torture centres. Dara described the country as turning into a prison without walls. The film “The Killing Fields”Dara has watched and says it does not really depict real life, only 10% of what it was really like at that time.
The Khmer Rouge where in power for 3 years, 8 months and 20 days. People fled the cities and had to scratch literally for food. Every grain of rice was sacred. Through trial and error, you discovered which parts of the plants your stomach could tolerate. The UN came Jan 1979 to liberate Cambodia. Refugee camps where set up along the Cambodian Thai border which brought their own problems, and where Dara was for the next 12 years. In the camps, food was available, but it was the same day in day out, rice and tinned fish. When you first arrived, you had to be careful how much food you ate. Because you had been malnourished for so long, your stomach wasn’t used to food, some people gorged and died because they ate too much.
When people started to return to the cities, it was first come, first serve for housing. Any papers you had proving property belonged to you where no longer valid. If someone was in your house when you returned, tough. Some people managed to claim more than one property. Others where unsuccessful. That is why there is a huge problem with displaced people and land issues today. The huge loss of well educated people has left the country with a very low standard of education. English teachers can barely speak English, but at leas they can teach what they do know. As the land wasn’t farmed for around 15 years, agriculture has suffered.
This is only a very brief summary of what Dara told us, but hopefully, it has given you a bit of a background to how the war affected Cambodia, and the legacy it has left.& nbsp;
Corruption. Well every country has it. It’s just in different forms and shown in different ways. In the UK it is almost hidden which is why probably most people are unaware of what type of corruption occurs in our country. In Cambodia, it is there for all to see.
The main reason there is corruption is to allow people to get a job, and/or to supplement their salary. Teachers, police and other government workers salaries are only around US$40 per month. They would have to pay for their position. Usually it is the person who can pay the most that will get the job. The boss above them would have to pay for his job, so it is a way for him to recoup the money. Very few are actually appointed for their ability to do the job. This means there is a lack of skills, motivation and interest with our colleagues, so it can be frustrating at times for us as westerners working along side our Cambodian counterparts.
Police supplement their salary by stopping people for the slightest mid demeanour on the roads. Particularly in PP, road management changes. For example, some roads are made one way overnight. The no entry signs are not always put up. As long as you keep a very friendly manor, and can laugh while discussing, you can usually pay less than the official amount, and save yourself a trip to the police station if you pay the fine directly to the police man.
Teachers supplement their salary by accepting payment to give children good marks in exams. If the exams are official, the children sitting the exams have their pockets and socks searched to make sure they do not have any of the questions written down. During the exams, there is a huge crowd outside the exam centre. These are people wanting the children to do well, and hope to bribe the official to pass on answers they have found out from paying teachers while the exam is taking place.
This gives you the general picture of corruption we will encounter on a day to day basis. I could give you more examples, but I am aware this is turning into a long email that will take some time to digest, so will leave this topic here.
We also had a trip to a mine clearing training centre. Boy, have they got a task and a half. The training centre is as it describes. It trains teams of people and dogs to de-activate land mines. Once out in the field, a team of 30 people with dogs and appropriate machinery can clear a high risk area of 1 hectare in 2-3 months depending on weather and terrain. It is not just landmines they have to deal with, but unexploded ammunition. The longer the mines have been in the ground, the harder they are to detect, as each year with every rainy season, they sink deeper into the ground, or tree roots grow around them. The head of the centre cannot see Cambodia being free of landmines in the lifetime of anyone living now, the area affected is too vast.
Last week, was our placement week. As our placements are all in different areas, and working with different projects, we disperse around Cambodia to visit our particular project and meet our employers and fellow work colleagues. Vann Piseth the VSO livelihoods program manager and I take one of the VSO vehicles (other vols had to use public transport, so I count myself lucky) and head out on the 4-5 hour 390km trek to Battambang (pronounced Batambong). This is where I will spend most of my working time.
Oh, I must just interrupt the newsletter to give you info on the road system here. It’s mad. You have to learn the art of blend and weave. This is as a fellow driver, or as a pedestrian to cross the road. As first it is frightening, but you do adapt and learn how it all works.
So what do I mean by blend and weave. Well, you have to smoothly mix into the flow. Most of the traffic in the cities is motorbike as petrol is relatively expensive, so bikes are cheaper to run.& nbsp; Apart from the motorbikes provided by VSO, I haven’t seen a bike with mirrors, so nobody looks behind them. If you hear a horn, it is probably aimed at you, asking you to move over to allow someone to overtake. Traffic doesn’t stop for anything. If you want to turn left (traffic is on the right, same as France) which means crossing a line of traffic, you weave your way across well before the junction, so you go round the corner against the traffic, then weave your way across the oncoming traffic, blending back onto the correct side of the road. As a pedestrian, you just step out. Traffic will weave their way around you. If in doubt, stand still and let the traffic move around you, then you know the traffic cannot incorrectly judge your movements.
Ok, back to Battambang. The day after the journey, I’m taken to the department of Environment to meet the Head of the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) and two of my work colleagues for the Tonle Sap Environmental Management Project (TSEMP). The aim of this meeting is to introduce myself, tell them my background and what skills I have (they haven’t seen my CV, it is still in PP with the big boss), and for me to learn about them. Also to find out what I need to focus on during my initial few weeks. Part of this process is to plan day by day my first 2 weeks to help me orientate. I’m only in the office for 3 day!! The rest of my time is out and about being taken to local communities and fishing villages around the Tonle Sap Lake I will be working with, attend an environmental education awareness program, observe a pesticide chemical impact training course, and a 3 day trip to Prek Toal for fieldwork. Next I am taken on a tour of the office, shown where my desk will be (the computer is on the floor as no one knows how to set it up), and shown my motorbike which they have been able to purchase for me. I was made to feel so welcome, and the staff seems keen to show me around to the different places. I feel so positive about this placement, even though there will be many challenges. The initial one, to show my colleagues how to set up and use a computer!! As we leave at the end of the day, Piseth tells me he has known my boss for the last 3 years. During that time, my boss has never made an attempt to speak English. He is now having English lessons after work every day to help him to be able to communicate with me. How’s that for effort. It just goes to show the lengths they are willing to go to, to make me feel welcome.
The other task while we are here is for me to find and secure accommodation ready for when I start my placement. Houses for rent are not advertised. It is word of mouth, or drive around looking for the “house for rent” sign. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be for me this time. Our housing allowance is US$150/ month, and I couldn’t find anywhere under US$200. I’m not worried, a couple of vols working up here have said I can stay with them when I first arrive and look for somewhere. Chris another volunteer has said he knows of non VSO volunteers who are leaving around August September time, so I may be able to take over their lease. Time will tell.
The next day is the big trek home. I say big trek because it does take all day, as the above has to be repeated in the other PIU’s I will be working with in Pursat and Kampong Chnang (K Chnang). We left Battambang at 8:30 am and arrived back in PP at just after 7 pm.
It’s strange. The Battambang office is the most advances PIU in the sense that this province already has a conservation core zone area marked out, has stronger links with other NGO’s and government departments, but is the least advanced in the technology stakes, it doesn’t have a computer set up, and very few additional staff in the building. There is so much room, I will have my own office. As you travel back down, in the Pursat office, I am shown the computer I will be sharing with my other colleagues. The computer is set up; they are just waiting to learn how to use email. The final office we see in K Chnang has air conditioning! The office is crowded with people all working for the department of environment, not necessarily on the TSEMP.
Oh, I must tell you, one of my colleagues in the Pursat office lives in a village near a floating village on the Tonle Sap Lake on the way from Pursat to K Chnang. As we leave this office, we stop in his village at a restaurant for lunch then we do a boat trip out onto the lake where I am shown the floating project office, where I may stay from time to time, amongst the floating houses. I found it extraordinary, so took loads of picture, some I have attached to this email as long as it works.
Now back to reality. Now our placement week has finished, all us new vols have met up again in K Cham. It’s back for some more language training. We are here now until the VSO conference in August. Our placement starts 21st August. Unless something exciting happens, I will probably write another newsletter after my first 2 week which takes us into September.
For a country that is struggling to get electricity out to all the provinces, there has been a technology gap. Most people in Cambodia have a mobile phone, and there is reception in most of the country.
If ever you find you need to use snail mail, all post has to go to the program office, and then it is distributed from there. It is the only reliable way of sending post to us. The address can be supplied upon request.
Well, I think I’ll leave this marathon newsletter here, get it sent, and then I can get on with some study before I fall behind with the language lessons.
Keep well,
Caroline
PS If ever you want to send me a Christmas or birthday present, red bush and chamomile tea would be good.