The itchy and scratchy show.

I am wrecked after another week as a teacher. It's a good feeling. After my crazy week of sightseeing up north, I got back into the swing of things easily and geared up for some intense lesson planning and execution. We actually had another day off on Tuesday, Victory Day here in Cambodia, which slowed the momentum up a bit. I think Cambodia must have the most public holiday days in the world. The other volunteers said that a few months back there was hardly a week where they didn't have a day off. They should give some free days to Holland...

 

Life in the village this week was interesting. I said in my last post that I caught bed bugs while in Siem Reap. I've never been so itchy. Ok, I have a feint recollection of wanting to scratch my skin off at 6 years old with chicken pocks but the bed bugs thing was this week. The worst thing was that I didn't even realize I had them till I got back to the school with a bag full of freshly washed clothes (freshly washed by a launderette) and infected both the bag and my bed with them. So, not only did I have to hand-wash copious amounts of clean clothes, I had to wash my sheets, leave my mattress in the sun for a day and spray the bed frame with some toxic chemical I found in the back of the medical cupboard down in the kitchen. I even cut off my hippie bracelets just in case. I think it did the trick but I've felt paranoid all week. I went for a walk with Cecile the other evening and I had an absolute panic attack when an ant bit my foot. I was also terrified that they had crawled into my hair and were having the time of their lives in there so I bought some head lice shampoo. I was all geared up to wash the (probably non existent) feckers away when we were told there was no water left in the storage tank. No water = no shower = bed bugs building small bed bug towns in my hair. After a couple of hours I couldn't take it anymore and like the arrogant westerner I am I went and bought 12 bottles of drinking water and took a bath in the biggest laundry bowl I could find. The other volunteers called me wasteful and it is but I HAD to do it. I HAD TO. But tomorrow I take a shower with old rain water at a neighbors house so it works out.

My hand washing skills displayed in below pic. 

The below pictures are of my 2-3 ABC class. We've been learning about the body this week, employing the services of Brother Monkey, best known for appearing in 'The Monkey Family'  back in December. My favorite class this week was our creative Friday task where the class could only draw what I told them....e.g. draw two heads, one tummy,  ten legs. We ended up creating a monster and it was the most fun all week getting them to present their creations to the class at the end. 

Between my classes on Thursday I went for a walk around the village. Within 10 seconds of leaving I had a hand in each of my own and was given a walking tour of the village by two of my 8 year old students. I was introduced to every aunt, uncle, cousin and grandparent they could think of and I was made to hold at least three babies. It was amazing and something I'll never forget. 

And an update on the protests I mentioned the last time; 6 people now dead and many more were seriously injured. Factory workers all returned to work with a $5 dollar increase on their existing $60 a month. However, they won't be paid for the next two weeks for the 'damage' they have caused to the garment industry here in Cambodia. The labour unions have been identified as inciting public disorder and will not be taken seriously in worker negotiations again. I also read an article online from a teacher with 21 years experience being paid a paltry $75 dollars a month. And six workers were grabbed off the street in Phnom Penh while trying to deliver a petition, they were detained for 18 hours without charge. My heart bleeds for these people. I can't imagine the hopelessness they feel for their children's future. 

Then, as foreigners, we also have to deal with a certain backlash. My roommate Sophie was in Phnom Penh for a couple days volunteering as a surgical nurse on pro bono operations. She bargained with a moto driver to drive her back to her hostel. For the whole ten minutes of the journey he aggressively told her how selfish she is for bargaining, she is white with a lot of money and Cambodian people have nothing, good Cambodian people are dying for a better life, doesn't she know? She didn't feel it was a dangerous situation but knew the driver had no intention of hearing her story or the fact she assisted in free reconstructive surgery for Cambodians that day, such was his grief. It will be interesting to see how the next couple of weeks and months will pan out. 

Teacher training

My first week of teaching in Cambodia is complete! I won't lie, it was a long week. I was nervous to begin with but really started gaining confidence after 2/3 days. I'm not a natural teacher, it's challenging working with children. It's not easy and it's definitely not any easier when the children are from a different cultural background. However, it's so amazingly satisfying to hear a preschool child frantically call me 'teacher' if they see me in the village or hear a student use a new word you know they just learned that week. To be completely selfish, it feels great and it's more than enough to see me through this challenge. 

The school is located in Samrong, 18km outside of Phnom Penh. I've no idea how many people live here, I thought I heard someone say 500 families but I could also be making it up. There are 5 other volunteers along with myself and a few local Cambodian (Khmer) teachers. The Khmer teachers are there to explain in the local language. The students attend English lessons for all levels, computer classes, PE class, football coaching once a week and there's also a hair and beauty course which is quite unique. The aim is to teach local children skills to keep them away from hard labour. Like I mentioned in my last post, a locals wages in a clothing factory here amounts to little more than 75 US dollars a month. Every skill they can acquire in their youth, particularly English, will stand to them getting a better job in the future and keep them out of the sweat shops or worse again, the rampant sex industry here. 

I won't go into too much detail on the classes themselves but below is a quick round-up of my highlights and struggles in my few days so far. 

Highlights:

- preschoolers recognizing me and calling me 'teeeecha' in the village,

- 6 year old girl helping me teach her classmates the 'teddy bear' song (I didn't know the words OR the obligatory dance moves) I thought it was so sweet and brave of her. 

- evening conversation class with some teenage Buddhist monks who are obsessed with the champions league,

- helping 8 year olds read their first English book,

- giving a PowerPoint class to teenagers. PowerPoint has never been so exciting. 

Struggles:

- I've actually no idea of grammar. You may have noticed from my writing. Present perfect, past continuous, conditional 1 and 2..... These sound like names of 80s girl bands to me. Nevermind making lesson plans, I need to study.

- Being tough. Contrary to what my brothers might say, I'm finding it hard to dish out the discipline. 

I'm living in the school itself on the top floor. I've a comfy bed, mosquito net and my own toilet. There's only cold water in the shower but believe it or not, it isn't a big deal. More importantly, you cannot understand the joy I feel at having a room in one place for the first time in over two months. I've basically sprinkled my stuff in all 4 corners of the room which I realize now was a mistake since I'll be sharing with a new volunteer Monday onwards. Ah well. Although, I did get a bit of a rude awakening about my new home. One of the German volunteers across the hall from me said he had an infestation of cockroaches from leaving his window open. Sure enough, that night I woke up to a baby cockroach crawling on the top of my mosquito net. I now feel I have the potential to be a sadistic serial killer. I sprayed that baby cockroach with my most pungent insect repellent and I swear I could hear him choke. I watched him struggle for a long time with a pang of guilt in my chest, his legs stuck to the mosquito net with the repellent. Half of me wanted to free his sticky little legs from the net but the other half won and I beat his lights out with the end of the repellent can. I don't like elephants being ill treated but I swear I will beat that baby cockroaches brothers and sisters should they ever dare into my room. 

And that rounds off my first week in the school. I was wrecked come Friday evening but somehow found the energy this weekend to visit numerous markets, cycle around the city (scary), visit the Olympic park, try find a non-existent silk factory and assist a German colleague in purchasing copious amounts of Xmas gifts. I'm also eating lots of tasty, tasty food, albeit western. The food in the school is great but let's face it, there's only so much rice and fish sauce a solid Irish girl like myself can consume in a week. 

P.S. A baby snake was caught outside the school in the dark this week. No one would/could confirm for me if it was poisonous. 

Introducing Cambodia

It's going to be hard selling you Cambodia after this post, I think. I'm feeling good about the country, I really am. But I'm overwhelmed. About everything. 

It was probably a mistake but the first thing I did was to take a Tuk Tuk out to the Killing Fields, 13 or so kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. I was emotionally exhausted after it. For anyone that doesn't know, the Killing Fields were the places (about 300 in total throughout Cambodia) where during the 70's the Khmer Rouge government tortured and executed more than 2 million of its own citizens including, students, religious persons, opposing parties and then all their families too in case they might want revenge in the future. That would have been one person in four slaughtered in the space of three years. Why? Oh you know, just a small sacrifice to create the perfect peasant society. I usually detest audio tours but in the case of the killing fields it couldn't have been done better. For two reasons; 1. To paint a clear picture of the situation. 2. To keep the grounds quiet and respectful and 3. (I just thought of this reason) to let everyone take in the horrible details and process them in their own time. I know for me it was incredibly difficult to listen to how children were killed by having their heads smashed on a tree, swung around by their ankles because bullets were too expensive. And then just to bring it all home, when we visited the S-21 museum in the city, there were pictures of each and every single person tortured and sent to die in the killing fields. It seems the Khmer Rouge were as meticulous at keeping records of their crimes as the nazis were. I had zero energy after that and just spent the rest of the day reading. The picture just below is of the memorial stupa at the fields. It's filled with the skulls of those who were murdered here. 

Then there's the blatant sex tourism. Maybe I've been going around with blinkers on for the last two months but I am genuinly shocked here. I went out with the other volunteers from the school on Friday night and we ended up at a night club. Before we could even see the doors of the club the pavement was packed full of horrible, wrinkly, old men salivating over gorgeous, young Cambodian girls dressed up to the nines. I spotted one fella on the street, I'd say he was in his sixties at least. He was giving a hard time to a young girl who couldn't have been more twenty. She was doing her best to get away, him holding her wrist. Once she was free she dashed passed us with him close behind. Me being me, I stuck my foot out and tripped him up which was risky because the potential was there for him to break a hip or two. Himself told me to be careful and watch my temper and I know he's right. I'll have to get over it a bit here but it made me sick to my stomach. Actually, I don't know who I feel more sorry for; the auld lads who come half way across the world to feel wanted by a woman or the girls who are looking for a few extra dollars. I think the girls are doing the most logical thing. The auld fellas are just pathetic. You know, the average factory worker here gets 75 US dollars a month for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. It's the bulk of their family income and they are 'lucky' to have it. If you were struggling to feed, shelter and educate your family, you can't say you wouldn't do the same. 

I went out to visit the school and apart from everything else I wrote above, it's the reason I'm here and I already love it. The village is beautiful. It has a massive Buddhist temple where I think the most senior monk in Cambodia lives. It's incredible. And then on one side of the village there is a lake and on the other side are flooded rice fields, so actually, I can't tell the difference between the two. The children all run out of their houses to shout 'hello, hello!' along with any other random English words they can muster up. The women in the village all give you massive smiles and seem genuinely delighted to see you. The school building itself is quite nice. It has a few classrooms, a back kitchen and bedrooms for us volunteers. The best bit is the roof with its incredible view of the village. Apparently there's no water though and I'll have to wash my clothes by hand. More about that in the next few days. 

The group of volunteers seem like a great bunch. There's just one thing though...when I was working in Amsterdam I was the youngest in the company, apart from the interns but they don't count, ha. Well, here I'm the oldest and I don't like it. I'm with a few other Irish who are in their early twenties and then a million German students who are no more than 19, on a gap year between school and college. Anyway, one of the German girls asked me what age I was and when I told her I was 26 she said 'Aw great! You can be the mommy of the group!' Eh yeah...no thanks. 

Other items of interest would be the following list. But for the love of god, don't mention any of it to my mother. 

- two girls from my hostel had their bags snatched in broad day light,

- two of the volunteers have small but painful injuries from mopeds,

- another of the volunteers had his laptop robbed, 

- a poster in my hostel advertising a shooting range that says 'decide what you want to shoot'. 

And then that's me for the last couple days. I don't want you to come away with a bad image of Cambodia. If anything, this country is amazing. It's been to hell and back and while it has a long, long way to go the people have proved they won't be dragged down by the past. They are extremely loving. If you smile at anyone on the street you will get the most heart warming smile back in return, whether it's a child, a woman or an old man. I can't wait to start work there.