Week 10

I went on my first home based care visits this week. I went to two homes. The first was the home of 4 children and their parents. One of the children and the two parents are HIV positive. I found the first home really sad. It was in a big block of flats that were still being built at one end. The flat consisted of one room with a tiny balcony and a small bathroom built into the room. The father is a motodop (scooter taxi) driver and the mother sells dried chilli. They are very poor and were both out at work leaving the children at home alone. The flat was a mess and very dirty and had just a double bed frame and a small TV. The Home base care worker Srey mom and I sat with the children for a bit and Srey mom spoke to the children about not being lazy about their hygiene and invited the HIV positive boy to our aids day celebrations on the 1st. The second home seemed much nicer, it was a similar size but had more furniture, (some deckchairs and cushions and matts that are used to sleep on) and was much cleaner. A family of a Tuk Tuk driver and his wife and daughter, they seemed like a really lovely family and they gave us cold water and jack fruit to eat, which I considered very generous. The mother and daughter had both been in a traffic accident but they were pretty much fully recovered.We spent more time with this family, I got a little bored as I couldn't really understand what was being said but it was really interesting to see the homes. At some point Bethany and I will start updating all the files of these Home based care children.
We have been doing some much more productive liaising with Lakina, one of the Cambodian Magna staff, about Aids day, this week. We have it all organized, Bethany and I will spend most our day doing hygiene related activities and playing games with the younger children. These children are very early on in the stages of disclosing their HIV status, so we are not doing HIV related activities.

Bethany and I have been finding living so closely together in the orphanage a bit emotionally grueling so we are looking for some outside activities. Bethany has found a christian home group which she is going to start attending and I am looking for a music group to play with as I (much to the children's and ma's amusement) brought my trumpet with me.
We made an English speaking friend this morning! She is doing an internship for the Phnom Penh post newspaper for 3 months and she is going to come to the cinema with us next week to see 'Breaking Dawn'.

Skin infection much better :)

2 Months

We split the classes this week, which worked really well. My slightly smaller class takes place in the hallway and Bethany's more advanced class use the desks to write, in the classroom. We did the first of out monthly mini tests, they generally performed very well, with a few extremes, one very clever girl amazed us with her speed and accuracy whilst Vicheka the boy who's memory was affected by meningitis remembered one flash card. He seems to absorb the vocab quite well in the class and I had hope that the meningitis hadn't effected him as much as anticipated, but it must be his long term memory that is the problem. He also seems to have problems with pronunciation in Khmer and English, which I would be interested to know the cause of.

Bethany went on the home based care visits this week, but she think we may not continue this as the families don't want their neighbors to find out that they are HIV positive, and having westerners going into their homes will make the neighbors suspicious.

We also had a meeting with the Cambodian hospital staff about International Aids day on the 1st. We found it slightly frustrating as the response to most of our ideas was telling us what they had done in previous years. It was nice however to find out that it was not our sole responsibility to organize the day.

I look a bit of a mess at the moment our swim in the reservoir in Siem reip has given me an infected leg, foot, fingers and face. Its really hard to keep wounds clean here as our feet and legs are so exposed, and due to humidity and sweat I assume, they don't scab easily. Gross I know, poor Bethany has to look at me all day. I have started taking antibiotics though so should be back to my gorgeous self soon.

Week 8

We have had two little traumers this week at work. Sayha, the little boy pointing at the camera in the picture of the tuk tuk, fell down the stairs and had to spend a couple of nights in hospital, we couldnt really find out how he was hurt because of the whole translation issue, but hopefully he will be back at home bouncing about, when we return on Monday. Thearak, a girl of, I think 9. Has a recurring scalp condition. Therefore she has had her head shaved a couple of times. She had gorgeous ringlet hair to her shoulders but it was shaved of  at the weekend. It has really knocked her confidence, in the lesson she didn't want to join in and she has been very clingy. I feel very maternal and extremely sorry for her.
Group Home 2 had a bit of a roof mallfunction this week. We had extremely heavy rain and then our lesson was interrupted by water gushing through the ceiling. We had to do some frantic 6 man mopping and pushing water on to the balcony before it went through the floor, so that was quite exciting.
We also had Sorn, our supervisors leaving party, which consisted of really yummy food. We had beef kebabs and stripped vegetables with bread and chicken curry wth rice. I enjoyed it a lot, I even ate some of the beef.
We have spent Wednesday to Sunday on holiday in Siem Reip visiting Gabby and Katie, two other project Trust volunteers which has been really nice. Siem Reip is really lovely. It is cleaner and smaller than Phnom Penh and quite quaint. The French colonial influence in the architecture is very prominent here. We decided to wait  to see Ankor wat and the temples, when our families visit. We visited Gabby and Katie's project, I think we have it a bit tougher than them, they have a lovely big ensuite room a short picturesque cycle ride from the childrens home. They provide their own breakfast, so no rice. They have alot of short term volunteers that come and go which must be really nice to add a bit of excitement and much needed effortless  conversations in English. Seim Reip seems very western compared to Pnom Penh, and they often go out and weekends to bars and restaurants where they meet other westerners.They also have internet access at their accommodation. I do prefer our project though as we seem to be involved in more aspects of the NGO, I prefer our children and I just get a better feeling from our project,  but then im probably biased.

Week 7

I've been a little bit homesick mid week this week. I think it was because I was getting a bit bored. The lessons are great but in between I have about 2 hours spread out of just playing with the children which gets a little bit tedious. However we had an educational meeting on Friday and we have built some more into our schedule.
After the water festival we are going to start doing Home based care visits on a Friday afternoon, we will visit the homes of HIV children on the Magna program but not living in the orphanage, so as to monitor their health and the taking of their treatment. This means that we have had to shuffle our schedule leaving us with less free time, which makes me much happier. We are also organizing trips swimming at a hotel with Sothy the deaf and partially blind child, and an arts and crafts club on a Thursday morning. Application for materials has to be made a month in advance though so it can be put in the monthly budget, so the arts and crafts club wont start for a little while, its very strange and a bit frustrating not being able to have materials and stationary on demand. We have  been asked to set monthly mini tests for our English students, write reports on the kids every 3 months and update the children's files and send reports to the sponsors every six months. Hopefully this will all keep me sufficiently busy.

The very young children started pre-school this week  which means that we are left with the slightly older ones for the morning lesson. I am happy about this as the children left in our class  are old enough to learn some English, and some of them are behind in their education due to time spent ill or in hospital so it is nice to give them extra attention.

This week I was taken for dinner, by a couple of the staff to a street cafe serving what they call porridge. It ][you either couldn't taste or got overwhelming amounts of in a mouthful, strips of a vegetable which tasted like ginger soaked in sugar, eggs which at first I was pleased to see but I think they were pickled and in the very early stages of growing a chick, served with stuffed intestine and stomach. I don't think i disguised my horror very well and ate very little under the excuse that I find rice incredibly filling. I went home however to find the mas had cooked my favorite of their dishes, a spinach and chicken and sauce stir fry thing. Which I ate with delight. We had our first Cambodian deep fried battered banana, it was sooooo yummy, but I think contained enough calories to last a week. I am getting used to the orphanage food now and enjoying it, though I still pick around the meat.

I received parcels this week! I had to wait 5 days before I could go to the post office and pick them up, I am pretty sure I was more excited and probably more grateful for those parcels than I have been about Christmas presents in a long time.

We only have two days of work this week and then we are going up to Siem Reip as we think there will be some celebrations for the Water Festival, and we are going to visit two of the other Project trust volunteers, I am very excited. 

Going back home now to see how well our mattress is drying out, we had a massive downpour in the past 12hours, so we came in for lunch today to find the home surrounded by water and a huge puddle in the middle of our room and our mattress was sodden.

Jum reap lear

Week 6

Bethany has Dengue fever, a bit like a bad flu that you get from mosquitoes.
So she has had the week off work leaving me to teach on my own. I was a bit scared at first but I've actually really enjoyed it and I think it has been good for me as I have been forced to make all the quick decisions and come up with ideas rather than relying on Beth. We have studied the weather this week, which has been a lot of fun as we have actions which the kids continued to demonstrate with their new vocabulary on tuk tuk journeys to and from GH2. During the week we had a huge storm which I found terribly exciting as there was so much rain that it almost came under our bedroom door, it provided a great opportunity to practice vocab. The kids struggle a lot with pronunciation, in a similar way to how I struggle with pronouncing Khmer. The Cambodians have a much softer accent than us so it is hard to pronounce hard letters like ds and ts, which makes it difficult for the kids, even if they know the word I don't always understand what they are saying due to pronunciation.

On Thursday morning three monks came to visit and bless (I think that's what Buddhists do) the new Group Home House. We all gathered in one room in front of the monks and some Buddhist ornaments, and I was promptly told off by one of the Mas and a whole bunch of the older children for showing the soles of my feet to the monks, by sitting with my legs outstretched in front of me. I was told I could either sit in the kneeling position(ow) or with my legs to one side with my feet pointing backwards. I chose this option, but I had to have my hands in the praying position so had no support. As the Buddhists chanted my feet and legs got pins and needles, then became very sore and then finally I lost all feeling. The chanting went on for ages and I was far more restless than any of the kids. Then to mine and a few others great amusement Sayha a boy of 3 years who had to his disgust been forced into a pair of trousers that morning, stood up let out a huge yawn and threw his trousers to the floor. The monks were not perturbed but just as I was beginning to think I would never feel my feet again, one of the monks' phone rang and he answered it! I was shocked that I had to suffer such pain but the monks could interrupt Buddha with a phone call,  but I decided to take the high ground and stayed on the floor. During the blessing we had to give the monks a donation of rice and stew, which I think was also blessed and we all had to touch the person in front whilst the front group handed the food over. We were also sprinkled with water, I think in a similar way to how Christians cleanse themselves of their sins. I got the impression that the water was being directed towards me the Western sinner, but I may have been mistaken.

This weekend has been really nice Bethany was diagnosed on Thursday and as it is so tricky to sleep well at the orphanage, Bernadette our country representative generously invited us to stay with her in Phnom Penh. I joined them on Friday and I have enjoyed a weekend of Western food, dvds, swimming, a sofa and air con. It has been so nice. Although I think I had a 24 hour bug yesterday and threw up so that wasn't so nice. It was the anniversary of the kings coronation, the Kings father's birthday, and a Buddhist celebration this weekend so we have enjoyed two impressive firework displays.

Our little night light broke during the week so now we have no light what so ever in our room after 5 30, and I found a bed bug in our bed. Not pleased.

Week 5

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This week has been our first week of teaching. I think my favorite week so far. At the moment Bethany and I are teaching together, we are going to gradually split the classes as we get more confident. Our first class on Monday was the older Kids, it was extremely stressful and tiring but it went ok, we didn't really know their abilities so had to think on our feet a little when they worked through out lesson plan quicker than expected. We repeat each of the older children's lessons, and the second group seemed less able than the first group, I think this was due to chance. The lessons with the older children became less and less stressful through out the week as we settled in, I enjoy them allot. There does seem to be quite a range of abilities however within the groups so Bethany and I are going to  try and split the group with in the classroom soon.

The pre-school group that we teach however are a nightmare. Our first lesson was hilariously terrible, it resembled a scene from cheaper by the dozen (a comedy film about parents that can't handle their twelve children). We had completely misjudged their abilities and concentration span. We changed tactics for the next lessons and made coloring in worksheets and slipped in English vocab whilst they were coloring in, this was much more effective. It was really nice by the end of the week watching the children so eager to get our praise.

The floods here have been so bad that the annual water festival, a bigger Cambodian version of Henley Regatta,  that happens mid November has been cancelled. The government has said that the money will go to the flood relief effort (there is an election at the end of the year), many are sceptically however of how much of the money will got to the relief effort. We will however still have a three day national holiday, during which we are planning on doing some traveling.

I'm not sure whether i am getting used to the food or it is getting more tasty, but I am enjoying meal times more and more. I feel less rude now not eating the meat as it has become clear it is not their cooking it is the meat, and they are giving us more vegetables which is very nice. Whenever we are given food such as egg or fried rice, we tell them in our best Khmer how much we enjoyed it so I think this may be helping too.

I went for a run yesterday as it was cool and a little bit rainy. I felt like Paula Radcliffe running the marathon. Everyone I passed either stared, stood up, waved or laughed, one man even ran next to me for a bit. They found it very strange seeing someone out running for the sake of getting some exercise, even the Mas (caregivers) thought it was funny. One of the amused moto drivers gave me a free lift across a flooded patch of road though which was kind. I have also been playing some volleyball with the two older boys, which I enjoy allot.

We have been given the task of organizing a fun day in celebration of International HIV/AIDS day on December the first (I think). It is going to include all the Magna children and staff, and all the children and parents on the Magna program at the Hospital. So that will be fun but take allot of thinking and ideas. If anyone has any good ideas they would be greatly appreciated, we are doing a mixture of educational (HIV, nutrition, hygiene etc) and fun activities, games and things.

Beth has been quite ill for the past few days feeling sick, headachey and had a temperature, if shes not feeling better on Monday were going to talk to a Magna doctor just so were sure its not Malaria. Better safe than sorry.


Love to all

Month 1!

Sour S'dei
I have finally felt settled in this week. Our schedule has been similar to last week with a few additions, including some administrative work at the hospital. We are transferring various test results e.g. white blood cell counts, cd4 counts, from big folders going back many years into a grid which magna is then going to be putting on a computor database. Its quite interesting work as although I dont know what many of the numbers mean I am able to see how much they change, I assume showing how much healthier the children are under Magna's care. Its also quite a nice break from the hectic orphanage, and the room we work in has air conditioning! However I did find it slightly mind boggling to start with as apparently I don't know the days of the year.

We have also gained a little furniture including two comfy chairs and two stacks of shelves so I thoroughly enjoyed turning our slightly bare classroom into a gorgeous homey flat, which I am very proud of. We could just do with some light bulbs now so that we can see our way around after 6pm in the evening.

Mid-week I decided I was brave enough to attempt to teach the kids how to play a card game called Uno, using the little Khmer I know and alot of miming. I am chuffed to say that I managed, Uno went down a storm. I think we may have beaten the world record for longest stint of play, and largest number of players, we were cramed around a table for 2hours! I was then greeted as I woke up, to little hands poking through my window demanding round two. I was very amused by their attitiude towards the game, it seems cambodians play games with alot more emotion, they slam cards and chess pieces at the table. One little boy seemed to enjoy slamming the card at the table so much that he didnt seem to mind which card he was throwing.

On Friday afternoon we took some of the older kids to a U21s football match between Cambodia and Thailand. Sadly Thailand won but it was alot of fun cheering Cambodia along and munching on snacks of fruit dipped in various sugar,salt and chilli combinations.5 people were strechered of the pitch! Seemed a bit unnecessary really.

This weekend, being our one month anniversary we stayed in a guest house on saturday night in Phnom Penh. We celebrated over an expensive ($6.50) dinner of greatly missed western food. Having settled in now at the orphanage I have been able to do some exploring of the local area and have discovered lots of tasty food. On the way to the hospital I often treat myself to something from the bakery, most reasantly a cocunut filled sweet dough which was delicious and cost just 25 cents, we have also found deep fried banana chips, rice and sesame seed sugary tablet stuff, lychees in a scary looking tentacled shell, tomato and shrimp stir fry, and iced milk coffies which are so yummy. They are made from condensed milk and coffee poured over crushed iced, and in very cambodian cafes cost just 2000 riel (40p ish).

Next week we start teaching which is exciting but a little scary, we have made some rather beautiful flash cards (well Bethany's are)this weekend in preparation.
Cambodia is suffering from the worst floods in eleven years at the moment, which is very worrying for those in the countryside as alot of people have died, have had to leave the homes and rice crops are being damaged, but Phnom Penh is high so I'm not really seeing the effects.

We have discovered that the postal service is much more effective than imagined which is good, Bethany has recieved lots of lovely parcels from her family taking under two weeks to get here. I haven't received anything from my family but I hope this will be rectified soon!

Lear hi