Hello from Cambodia 11

So here we are 6 months in and really beginning to feel like ex pats. We returned from Kampong Chang and the language course with Jon’s Khmer much improved and Chris’s not. We have come to terms with the budget cuts and have started with determination on our mission to make the schools of Phnom Preuk District in to models of excellence for the whole of Cambodia!

The first workshop went quite well. We were supposed to be doing a small session for 3 or 4 volunteer teachers but the principal got a little excited and we ended up doing the workshop 3 times for 5 each. Well that was the theory but only 2 turned up for the last one. Yesterday we were expecting 16 teachers to a workshop on Group teaching and got 9, excluding the baby who was breast fed half way through the session. One teacher wandered in 20 minutes late having gone to the wrong venue, then after a phone call (their phones are going off continually and they think nothing of having long conversations while you are speaking) he wandered off to deal with some private business. The Khmer sense of lack of urgency and punctuality takes a lot of getting used to. However at least we feel that we have got started and are achieving something but it’s going to take a long time!

Our dynamic plans, however, have now fallen foul of the 10 yearly census. The government are using teachers as recording officers and most of the schools in the country will be closed for 2 weeks. We never really know what’s going on. We got into the office one day to find it empty and were told that all the education officers would be spending the week at a workshop to train them for the census so we went home as there was nothing for us to do. Quite often we are the only people in the office especially when there is a crop to harvest and their farming commitments take priority over the education system. This also applies to the students. An unexpected heavy shower of rain means that the next tapioca crop can be planted and 75% of the children do not come to school, as they are busy planting it.

Last week Jon was invited to a Chemistry workshop run by a Japanese woman volunteer who works at the Teachers Training College in Battambang. This is teaching with no resources and it really tests your imagination. How do you produce hydrogen if you don’t have acid in the bottle on the bench (or even a bench) or a Hoffmans Voltameter? Well you improvise; a bit of aluminium cooking foil in a plastic bag with toilet cleaner (21% HCl) added, plastic tubing from the local garage, a washing up bowl full of water and a plastic water bottle to collect the gas in. The scientist amongst you can figure out the details.

Electrolysis, no sweat, stick a couple of bits of wire through the bottom of a plastic storage container and seal with super glue. A splash of battery acid and some water and connect up to a moped battery. Jon and Sophea (who used to be a mechanic before he became a head master) improved on this piece of kit by using a couple of syringes that were lying around(!!) Quite a good pop was obtained! Jon really loved being back in the lab again but as our project concentrates on primary education he isn’t officially allowed to be messing about with secondary science, but he’s not going to let that stop him.

Many thanks to every one who has sent us emergency supplies, especially the clothes. The dust here is getting so bad that we have to change our clothes twice a day. Thankfully our cleaning lady also does our washing, by hand in a 25 litre paint tub, at the communal pump, but the severe scrubbing the clothes get dosen’t help their durability. Also she seems to add toilet cleaner to the wash to get that Percil white look, and this has had a few disastrous consequences. Its times like this that a grasp of the language would be useful. Eg “ will you use Comfort fabric softener in my wash please.”

The cosmetics have also been very welcome. It is very difficult to remain chic and elegant here when you are a perpetual sweaty mess. Therefore it is a real treat to pamper yourself sometimes with creams and lotions, put on a dress, make up and high heels and pretend you’re off for a posh night out at the Grange. (and that’s just Jon). In fact what we actually do is cook ourselves a bowl of vegetables and rice, open a can of local beer and settle down to watch an episode of 24 Series 2. Actually its not that bad, we are beginning to learn how to relax and after years of stress and over-work at Parmiter’s having nothing to do comes as a welcome change.

Our translators are continuing to be, not only invaluable in steering us around the minefield that is Cambodian etiquette, but also good friends. However sometimes things “get lost in translation”. Sophen claimed that the bats (see later) were as big as kitchens (chickens) and that the participants at the workshop would need snakes (snacks). The most surreal moment was when we texted Sophen to ask him why the children were going to school on a Sunday. The reply came through “They are going for the understanding of mince”. Was this like the “Diet of Worms”? Now we know that Buddhists are a bit mystical; but mince? What he meant was “mines”. Seems there is a big push by C-Mac, the Cambodian de-mining group to get the kids to understand about not picking up unexploded ordinance etc. We have a big problem here as Battambang is the most mined province in Cambodia and the kids need all the education they can get. Some times S and S provide us with just a little too much information. When we asked if there was a bakery in the village where we could get fresh bread, they replied that it was next door to brothel. They seemed surprised that we didn’t know where the brothel was and insisted on giving us a guided tour to both of these 2 village landmarks.

Our highlight this month was a trip to Phnom Sampov, a mountain about 15km south of Battambang city. This is renowned firstly for the amazing caves from whence millions of bats emerge every evening at dusk. For hours and hours they steam across the sky making a strange smoke-like trail as they weave their way into the distance. The mountain is more notorious as the site of the “killing caves” where the Pol Pot regime murdered the educated people. It is very chilling to note that no one in Cambodia can match Jon’s claim that he has been teaching for 31 years because anyone who was a teacher in 1977 would not have survived.

That evening we went a wonderful circus performance in Battambang. The Ponlun Salapak was originally set up 20 years ago in the Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand to give disadvantaged kids a chance to study art. Some of these kids later set up a school for orphans and street children in Battambang and with help from a French NGO it has expanded its range to encompass a circus school as well. The children were hugely talented and very inspiring.


It’s the dry season here at the moment so getting around is not so bad. It now takes us 3 to 4 hours to get to Battambang by taxi as opposed to the 6 and half it took us when we first came and it was a bit wet. Come the rainy season and we will just have to say put. Chris has come on leaps and bounds in the moto stakes and last weekend drove the 25km to the next town down the border. She was dead chuffed and rightly so, the road, in the broadest sense of the word, was still full of ruts and rocks and she did get up to 40 kph at one point.

The motos are great and dead easy to drive, no clutch and very light. Jon is certainly going to buy a motorbike when he gets back. He’s even done some repair work when he cracked part of the engine casing by riding in to a ditch. Sophea said take it to the local moto repair shop but you know Jon he’s got to have a go himself. He didn’t do a bad job but the repair shop would have done the whole thing for 5000 riels (about 65p). They don’t charge for labour here the mechanics earn about a dollar a day (4000 riels). He has also fixed a puncture. The big mistake was letting S&S help to fix the next one he got a week later. All was going fine until they put the tyre back on and pinched the inner tube to produce yet another puncture. They gave up at that point and we took it to the local repair shop where the boy fixed it for 1500 riels (do the maths).

Continuing the series “The Flora and Fauna of Cambodia” we come to
Reptiles and Amphibians. Our house geckos, Hugh, Carol and Richard, continue to flourish though they do tend to squabble a lot. More dramatic is the Tokai, a 15 inch lizard that lives in the ceiling of our office. We rarely see him but he makes an incredible racket with his “croak” from whence he gets his name (tok-ai). Well the other day he came out on to the wall in pursuit of Mrs Tokai and the two of them scuttled about above our heads. Sophen and Sophea were really worried by this as apparently if a Tokai bites you it takes the combined efforts of 7 widows to get him to let go! The unexpected rain the other evening brought out the frogs, keeping us awake at night with their noise and invading the chicken, whoops sorry that’s kitchen. The other day Chris came across a lizard who had had a close encounter with a moto. His amputated tail was still wriggling about on one side of the track while he watched it from the other side (weird). We also have a beautiful multi-coloured lizard that sits and suns himself on a tree stump outside our office and makes no noise at all. As a post script we have included a photo of the giant flying beetles that bombarded us in swarms last night on the balcony. They dive bombed our heads like a scene from the birds and one crawled up under Chris’s skirt but she did not discover it until she undressed for bed, the screams were heard in Bangkok.

Another surreal moment yesterday was when Jon emerged from the shower wrapped only in a towel to find 2 monks, resplendent in their saffron robes and shaved heads, half way up our stairs. They had popped in for a visit and a chat and to practice their English. This included showing off they new super duper mobile phone and proudly playing a down load of Ronan Keeting and Westlife singing Father and Son. So much for Buddhist mysticism.

We are thinking of you all as spring approaches, we miss the daffs. Keep sending all your news. Happy St David’s Day. J and C

(Just a note, our email addresses are: chrisgreen56@hotmail.com and jondeg1@hotmail.com)

PS. The baby that Jon is holding is Touch, our cleaner's grandson.