Week 23

Our luxurious new room

Beds!

Pao (translation-chubby)

Sothy and Sayha

Nary and Srey leap

Srey mom

We’ve been living in GH2, now the group home, for two weeks, its lovely but quite a change from GH1. Mostly due to our 5am starts. The young children are all up at 5 ready to be showered and fed so we, rather bleary eyed help with this. The children all have nits which seem to be thriving at the moment. The caregivers don’t really see it as a problem but the expats do, so we have been trying to encourage hair to be tied up and we are trying to get hold of knit combs. Most mornings I spend my time brushing and tying up hair.  Another big change is the lack of water and electricity, for a huge majority of the time we don’t have one or the other and sometimes we don’t have either. We have been told that although this is because we are further outside of the city now, it is also the case that as peak tourism season ends, as it is doing now, water and power cuts become more frequent.  Almost every mid day recently when there is no electricity to feed the fan I decide I can’t hack it and I’m getting the next plane home to lovely cold England, I change my mind pretty quickly though.

Since being in the new group home we have discovered lots of nicknames of the younger children. The most entertaining being Dannet’s nickname, pi roy ha (250). Apparently his mother was told by their relatives that magna had payed the family $250 when they took him in. The children seem to respond much better to their nicknames, apparently when Dannet and Somnang (Che leang- big eyes) went to school the teacher though there was something wrong with them as they didn’t know their own names. Bun Sathya had a bit of a sad week this week as his father died. We were slightly surprised when he came back from a family visit with his head shaved and wearing a black ribbon, the symbols of mourning (I didn’t hesitate to show my disgust at the new hair cut, ignorant of its meaning) as the files say both his parents are dead, but apparently magna suspects a few of the children’s relatives have lied about parents being alive.

We have had a couple of trips out recently. The first was with a couple of the older children to a promotional thai trade fair, at Key’s suggestion. It seemed a very strange place to take the kids as there was just a large amount of stuff that the children didn’t have the money to buy. But they really enjoyed it and when we got back all the children that hadn’t gone were asking to. I think they just like getting out of the orphanage.  We managed to make it fun, by trying all the free tasters we could find. The Children couldn’t believe they were allowed to try food without paying and were extremely reluctant at first but they got into it by the end. We had a trip to a large and extremely impressive playground with the younger half of the children. They loved it! I really enjoyed myself as well. We had a mid morning snack of bread bananas and a big dollop of condensed milk (very popular in Cambodia) which was really tasty before using the last of or energy in the playground. The children were clearly exhausted as they spent the very noisy, bumpy tuk tuk journey home fast asleep, whilst I and the ma watched in great amusement as they fell off their seats.

We have had the rather exciting job of preparing for the wedding recently. An ex magna teacher took us to buy material and then to the tailor who took our measurements so she could create our outfits. We were rather shocked by how much it was going to cost us, but apparently we are paying no more than the Cambodians do, and I am pleased about where the money is going after seeing the tailor’s house. We picked up the outfits today after making a few adjustments and I am very impressed It is a work of art and must have taken great skill.  I’m not sure I really like my outfit though; Cambodian traditional dress isn’t really my style.