Week 14

Poor Bethany has been ill again this week. We went to the doctor on Wednesday and she was diagnosed with asthmatic bronchitis, just in time for the Christmas party. She couldn't really join in as much as she would have liked, but I had great fun shopping for and running the party.

 I went food shopping with the group home manager, Key, which I really enjoyed, I love shopping with the Cambodians because they introduce you to lots of exciting new places and food. She bought me some delicious sticky sweet rice with coconut and we went home via her house to pick some mangos as it is now the season. For the children we found fizzy orange juice and a Cambodian version of pizza with no cheese but a kind of cheesy salad dressing squirted on top. We have been learning the vocab for pizza and orange juice so the children were very excited to be finally trying them. We had intended this to be their lunch, but silly me, how can that be considered a meal, we didn't eat rice! So they had a second lunch half an hour later. The children manage to eat so much yet stay so so skinny it's crazy. We think the ARV treatment is partly responsible.  In the very early morning of the party I felt very much Cambodian. The mister (father) of the group home I live in, and I, picked up 62 pizzas on a moto, more of my bum was hanging off the back of the Moto than was on and my muscles the next day were like rock. The amount of people, furniture and food the Cambodians manage to squeeze onto the moto scooters is amazing. I saw a huge wicker basket of small pigs on a moto the other day!

At the party we played team games which both the children and the Mas really enjoyed. We played relay races with; balloons between their legs, balls being passed under chins, raisins being moved from one plate to another with the winning team receiving lolly pops. We played pass the parcel, and had a visit from Santa. The children seemed very happy with their presents, although the Mas kicked up a fuss over the trouser length as it is the cold season, we found this a bit ridiculous so with the help of Key told them there was no way we're traipsing back around the market to exchange 48 presents. They also kept telling us the clothes were too small which was not the case, the children are used to over stretched hand me downs so their clothes are actually mostly too big and the new outfits fit well. So that was all a bit frustrating but the children's delight at their presents made up for the ma's reaction.

I had a really interesting though slightly sad chat with Phearun the main (soon to be the only) magna teacher. He told me about the history and politics of the country, including the problems with corruption.  The government makes it very hard for those such as teachers in the public schools to avoid corruption. The salary of a teacher is $100 dollars a month which is not enough to sustain a family therefore the teachers are forced to charge the students an extra fee, which the police (I expect with the same problem, as they frequently pull people over and demand money), turn a blind eye to. We also spoke about the children. I have been surprise by how little the children's HIV status affects them. They make frequent visits to the hospital to be monitored but it seems they are mostly very healthy. However I think the status has a big effect on them emotionally. Phearun says they are full of fear; he has had children say they are very scared as they know they are going to die young.  He wants us to try and help them tackle their fear in the PSHE sessions. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that yet.

Bethany and I had a very nice Christmas weekend, it was sad being away from home but we kept ourselves busy at a couple of parties with other expats which were very fun. I won't be doing another blog for a couple of weeks I'm afraid, as we are leaving for a 2 week holiday in Thailand on Tuesday, I'm very excited. I hope you all had a fab Christmas!

Month 3

The weather at the moment can only be described as divine.  We are in the cold season at the moment and according to the Cambodians ‘the wind is falling down’. We have lovely hot sun with a cool wind and the nights are cooler at the moment which has meant I have been sleeping really well, though the cool weather does make cod showers quite a challenge. I have worked out a method of one limb in the shower at a time.

We took the children to the dentist this week. The children were so brave, not making any fuss despite many of them having baby teeth pulled out and it seemed most of them left the chair bleeding. We were told that is clear through their visits to the dentists how well magna are looking after the children, apparently the condition of their teeth is hugely improved and whilst it previously took a week to get through all the children it now takes a morning. Whilst at the dentist we were surprised to be invited to their Christmas party, so we are looking forward to that, especially as the dentist has some expats volunteering for them.

Much to the children’s excitement the Magna Christmas party is fast approaching so this week we began the rather daunting task of buying Christmas presents for 48 children with a budget of $144. It has taken us two trips and some very sugary drinks but we now have a complete and very big selection of outfits music, pajamas, jewelry, hairclips and toys, all ready and waiting to be wrapped.  We also have a Father Christmas outfit ready for me to wear on the big day.

We had a meeting with our Boss this week and we have some new exciting and rather daunting tasks. We are going to be pretty much solely responsible for activities and education of the young children outside of school, we are going to be doing updates for the children’s sponsors every month. The Magna orphanage in Cambodia is quite new so this is the first set of children they have had, many of the children are now turning into teenagers so we are going to start holding PSHE sessions. This involves teaching topics such as politics, sex education, drug abuse, exploitation of women etc. Denisa wants us to hold these using the teacher to translate. These PSHE sessions are really important as the schools don’t really give the children any of this information. The government includes ex-khmer rouge and the political system is far from democratic therefore the teachers are scared to talk negatively about the government or the Khmer rouge regime. Magna had some problems when the eldest girl started her period and didn’t tell anyone and apparently there are problems in other orphanages with the children having sex with one another due to ignorance. I can’t believe this would ever happen here as there is such a family atmosphere but we are to help discourage them. We have been asked to encourage the children to question and discuss as this is strictly discouraged in the schools.  I’m a little scared but I’m sure it will be ok; I will have to do lots of research. Denisa has told us some slightly scary stories, for example last year they had a couple of people trying to give the orphanage free cakes after some fuss the police were called and apparently the cakes were laced with drugs. They were trying to get the children and caregivers addicted. Apparently this is common outside of the schools.

The oldest boy at Group Home two has taken on the role of Magna hairdresser and has given poor blind unprotesting Sothy a hideous haircut. He has shaved of (very badly) the bottom half of Sothy’s hair the whole way round. It’s awful!

Week 12

One, maybe two of the children are going to be leaving the home soon. Sokong is 18 and is being handed back into the care of her sister. Sokong ‘s sister will pay for her to go to a training college so that she can then get a good job.  I think Sokong will be magna’s second child to leave due to their age. Sayha is the three year old sitting on the Tuk Tuk in a previous picture, he has been taken off his ARV treatment as it is suspected that he maybe HIV negative. If so he will have to leave the home as it is an HIV orphanage. It would be very sad for him to have to leave his magna family especially as he has lived his whole life here. The magna staff was praised for the excellent care they gave him as it was suspected that he would die as a young baby malnourished with TB. His mother unlike his father is alive but addicted to solvent abuse and has no contact. Of course it would be great if he was negative though. Sayha is so cute it takes all my willpower to stop myself giving him a huge cuddle when I’m meant to be telling him off, sometimes I can’t resist.

I have a very exciting project at the moment, that will help me, if successful, to leave my stamp on the project. Magna have had a few members of staff leave recently leaving other members with a greatly increased work load.  Key, who I love, is the Group home manager, and has asked me to help make a system of collecting all the profiles of the children, working out the yearly costs for all the children and work out a rolling budget for the Group Homes. Which they don’t have already! I think that when staff left they didn’t pass on various pieces of useful information.  So, lovely Key and I are going to set up a database. Neither of us knows how to use Microsoft access so we are going to learn which should be very interesting.

We have been experiencing lots of power cuts recently, almost every night in GH1 where we live, almost  every other hour at the hospital, and at GH2 electricity is a rare luxury.  At the hospital there is the added excitement of temperamental running water. The bathrooms have huge buckets of water that are kept full ready for the common cease of running water. Last week the buckets ran out though, so I was forced use the toilet using just my baby fingers so as to avoid getting my hands too germy. Whilst I’m on the topic, the Cambodians don’t use toilet paper, all the toilets are accompanied by tiny shower hoses as a replacement. On my arrival I thought they were for washing your feet, I still use them for just that.

Beth and I went to Sihanoukvile for a long weekend as it was a national holiday yesterday. We visited two project trust volunteers who are in a teaching project. They teach 18 to 24 year olds. They have accomodation with en-suite, and a big kitted out kitchen, with a big kitchen table that doesn’t wobble! We are very jealous.  Some of their students were Apsara dancing at a Christian church service so we went to watch. It was a Christmas service in Khmer so we saw a nativity play, was the story we know but with some small Cambodian details, e.g. they wore adaptations of the traditional Khmer dress. It was very entertaining and interesting to see. We spent the rest of the weekend on the beach, seeing Sihanoukville, and eating some delicious seafood. On two of the bus journeys we have taken we have been given food by Cambodians, they are very generous with food, I have been told that this stems from the huge amount of starvation during the Khmer Rouge era.

My Khmer is getting quite confident now, I’m not really learning anything new but I am confident with the vocab I learnt on the course. I’m particularly good when I’ve been drinking. I was under the impression I would absorb vocab without really trying, it turns out that’s not the case at all.

King Herod

Week 11

I'm feeling great this week, very settled and happy.

I am also feeling better about my teaching I was beginning to worry I was falling into a teachers rut and my lessons were becoming a little repetitive so this week we played lots of new educational games including the children's particular favorite 'bang bang'. The children compete for the winners position by being the first to guess the name of the flash card. The winner 'shoots' the looser who must die dramatically. I am going to make them a worksheet this week to help them learn the order of the days of the week, they were being a bit thick about it last week.


We began advent by introducing the children to advent calendars we had made for each home, with a day for each child. They found it very exciting and had memorized their 'day' very quickly. The advent calendars consist of a sweet for each day wrapped in a square of red material tied onto a long green ribbon with thick gold thread. Each sweet is numbered. I think they look pretty good.

Aids day on the 1st went well. We did some hygiene related activities including teaching the children to wash their hands properly using glitter and matching body parts to utensils. Its particularly important that these kids take care of their hygiene as their immune systems are low due to the  HIV virus and their treatment causes side effects such as very bad teeth.We spent the second half of the session playing some fun games. The day didn't go quite as well as hoped as some activities took longer than expected and others less time than expected. I also found it hard to give instructions and explain to the teachers and children what I wanted them to do  because of the language barrier. It was quite stressful but a very good experience. I expect the next fun day will go more smoothly.

This weekend we went to the cinema and then dinner with two expats which was really nice.We also decided that we are spending 2 weeks for New Year on the Thai island, Ko chan which I am very excited about.

Also I got two hugs from my favorite ma this week.