Where does the time go?

December. 



At last I begin to feel like I know what we are meant to be doing here. I have organised and run my first workshop. We have settled into our new home and made a wide variety of cosmopolitan friends and David has found work. Now I shall have to begin some housework as he has been brilliant until now and done it all. We have also had our first house guest- my sister Cynthia has been to stay for two weeks. So come on all friends, book those tickets and come and visit – its brilliant here!




Standing on the newly built bammboo bridge


We have begun to explore the area and there are some super waterfalls, Yak Loam(look up the lake on google) is wonderful and the swimming is just heavenly at lunchtime when the temp in the office gets to 32 +. David has borrowed a bicycle and been out far more than me at present.

Work for David began in earnest this week. He has 2 full days in Borkeo (about 35k on the road to Vietnam) teaching sport in a boarding school for indigenous children who have to live in school as they are bright but live too far away to walk every day. The dropout rate for these children is exceptionally high. The boarding house is funded by another NGO called CARE. He has a class of 30+ in the morning but 80+ in the afternoon.

 The school has never taught sport before and has no equipment at all. He has introduced extreme frisbee and badminton and football. But we only have the one frisbee we bought with us. So if anyone could possibly send him some equipment which is cheap to post –please do so. He needs some very light softballs, shuttlecocks, frisbeees, table tennis bats and balls and anything really…..

Our address is Janet /David Catchpole. VSO Programme Office. PO BOX 912

Phnom Penh Cambodia.

Once the post gets to PP a member of the VSO office collects it and puts it on a mini bus to here and the driver calls us to collect it to the VSO office here in Ban Lung. I have not heard of any going missing!!

This week he has also been in touch with a Korean nurse working in a school here in the town who would like to introduce sport – so 2 more afternoons are happening soon.

We were very excited to see my sister who arrive for 2 weeks at the end of November. We took her to visit the lake, of course, the lava field, the market is a tremendous experience and we have to go every day. She and David went off on cycle tours and she surprised me by hopping on the back of David’s moto very quickly. We left Ban Lung with her to go to Kampong Cham for 3 nights together and David was thrilled to realise the Bamboo Bridge was being built and was almost ready. This is apparently the last year as there will be a bridge built next year. When the water in the river is high locals rely on the ferry to cross to the islands in the Mekong. Now they have dropped and a bamboo bridge is built by hand every year. We were told cars can go across!! We left her there to visit PP for 2 nights and we came north again to home.

This week I held my first workshop for School Directors and 3 District Directors of Education. It was very daunting but I was prepared and they were all there at 7.30am. However, working through a translator is not that easy and they were so shy! Teachers in England never stop talking! Here, I could not get them to start, they were so anxious about saying the wrong answer; they would not answer at all. Eventually, I watered the programme down and we got through the day with some good results. I shall be very busy for the next 3 weeks as I promised to follow up with a visit to every school with a chat about their requirements for leadership and management skills. Not terribly high on their list as want they would really like is to be paid each month and on time.

This is Narin my VA-Volunteer assisstant. He is brilliant and literally a Mr Fixit. He has at least 4 different enterprises that I know as well as full time work with VSO.  Dont be surprised by the females present. These are the only 2 School  Directors I have met so far so I made sure they were both invited to attend.
Everybody here has at least 2 jobs, the second is usually their home farm. This has to supplement their salary. Corruption levels are also very high here, not quite the stories to broadcast here on my blog but I heard that many teachers had not been paid because someone else had received the money and used it to speculate on the soya bean harvest.

I am also supposed to work with the inspection team here in the province. This has not been possible so far as since September they have not received any budget – therefore no school inspections!

We have made many new friends here – Lucy also VSO in Education from the Philippines and her husband Yasir from Pakistan, Erin:VSO Secure Livelihoods –from Canada, Christina from Canada Education -but another NGO and her husband Boris from Uzbekistan. Ema from Spain(with dreadlocks down to her waist) working in Secure Livelihoods and Tania from Suffolk ( on the border with Essex) would you believe! Another VSO girl who is working in secure livelihoods and trying to keep the lake in the hands of the Tampoun people. The indigenous tribe who own the sacred land. There are also 2 more really nice Phillipino girls called April and Ginny who work for an NGO called Health Unlimited. They are all of course much younger than us but they do not seem to mind –perhaps they see us as surrogate parents!

On Saturday we went  to dinner at Lucy and Yasirs with Erin and her partner Jamie over from Australia but works in a gold mine in Eritrea. I had tried to make dessert for us all. I  prepared some dragon fruit and made coconut ice-cream. However, it did not want to set and was sweet coconut sauce I think. There are no milk products here at all but all the locals eat a lot of condensed milk ( not sure what in except exceptionally sweet coffee). So I bought fresh coconut milk from the market and freshly grated coconut and mixed it with the sweet milk and put it in the ice box to freeze. 5 hours later and no change.
Yesterday I organised a VSO+friends picnic and swim by the lake which was brilliant, except I chose the coldest day of the year and temp was only mid 20s!

Christmas here is non-existent but I came home last night after work to find David had erected a Christmas Tree with twinkly lights which we bought in PP in October and Cynthia had bought us some tinsel. The family below us were very amused! We have been invited for the weekend to Stung Treng a small town about 145k away on a dirt road which is busy as it leads to PP. However, I need to work on the 24th so we are planning to go on our motos after lunch on the 24th and return on the 26th. We shall stay with a Dutch couple Jan and Teah we met whilst doing our language training. It will be quite a challenge for me to drive that far in the red dirt and dust and to traverse the 36 bridges ( well, planks of wood). It has stopped raining only for a couple of weeks but already the dust swirls constantly and if there is a vehicle in front you cannot see for ages. We will be so dirty when we arrive.

Last night was very cold – the temperature dropped to below 20 for the first time and we were chilly in bed. Houses here are just made of wood planks with gaps, etc. so quite draughty. I wore pyjamas for the first time and felt like a local at last. Have I told you that many women wear pyjamas as day wear here. Here is a picture of a woman harvesting rice in her pyjamas.

Enough of us but before I sigh off if anyone is nice enough to send David some equipment please fill the gaps with some cotton wool balls, cheese sauce mix, ind cappuccino sachets or hot choc mixes and j cloths. I cannot find anything like j cloths to clean the house or wash dishes with. Anything easy to post would be a real treat.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Life settling into normality

Well, after 3 months we feel at last that we are settling down. I am getting to grips with the education system and have made my 3 month plan and am presently organising a workshop for Dec 16 for school leaders and Directors of Education in 3 provinces here. From the results I hope to be able to formulate my long term plan.
I have also agreed to go on a study tour in January to Siem Reap (it is really a tough call- but someone has to go)! This is to meet an Australian NGO team to see if they are prepared to help with training teachers back here in Ratanakiri. It is 3 days but will take 2 days travel each way as there is limited roads east to west. I have to travel south until I can cross the Mekong river which is 350k almost to Phnom Penh, then go west.
David is making inroads into working and is off again tomorrow to visit a boarding house for indigenous children who are bright but live too far from the high school to travel so one NGO is funding this project. He is planning to have at least 2 days work with teaching them sport and gardening. So fingers crossed it all goes to plan. Things just happen so slowly here.........
At the moment we have my sister Cynthia staying, she managed 3 flights and an 11 hour trip north on the mini-bus. So all of you reading this start saving those pennies.
There is NOTHING about Christmas here at all! Hurray! I am not missing all the hype and lead up to the big day, the only thing I shall miss of course is the excitement of seeing the family all together.

Work

I have 3 objectives to meet -
1. Provide training for child frriendly schools
2. Work with the Inspection team here in the province and provide training
3. Support the School directors with management training

So after 3 weeks what have I managed?
1.CFS training and such issues are unheard of here as you can see from this picture.  This was a celebration for World Teacher Day. What a good idea-why does'nt the UK celebrate this?

However, there was nothing friendly about the 3 1/2 hours these pupils stood in the sun and 30+ temps while the speeches were made.
Yesterday I met a school director who told me that in Sept he had 80 grade 1 (aged 6 ) children  start school with 1 teacher and 60% could not speak Khymer. There are 7 hill tribes here!

2 .I have not yet managed to meet with the inspection department as their office in the Ministry where I work is always locked. I have been told that the yearly budget for inspections which began in Sept has already been spent so they cannot do any more! Everyone here is also very busy with the soya bean harvest, another reason to stay at home.

3.There are 3 districts I shall be working in and it has taken me this long to meet the District Education Officers - many schools I visit are shut and the teachers have gone home. They get little pay and never on time and no-one keeps a check on absenteeism.
I want to do a workshop with them to find out what they perceive as the problems - but they will not come without being paid. VSO believe in sharing skills not paying for staff to attend training - if anyone pays it should be the Ministry. So an interesting challenge in the next few months.Although we are trying to get some funding from an Italian NGO which may make my work a little easier.

This is a school I visited at 10am in the morning, about 200 children from grade 1-4 and no teachers in sight. Lots of pigs, dogs, etc, and the children were very happy playing and chatting. Eventually, I found 2 teachers asleep (which people do a lot of here - a combination of the heat and mal-nutrition)  on a row of desks each inside one of the classrooms. When they woke they were not at all embarrassed. Just seemed pleased to see visitors.

Janet Catchpole is fundraising for Voluntary Service Overseas

Janet Catchpole is fundraising for Voluntary Service Overseas

First Khymer Wedding

Well after only two weeks in  Cambodia we were invited to our first wedding. We had been informed about the importance of weddings here and the etiquette so here goes.
Firstly the wedding season runs from November to March- during the cooler months! Ha Ha
Secondly, you cannot refuse - its very rude and you still have to pay!
Thirdly, the women really go to town on the outfits and make up here.
Fourthly, they start early from 4am with loudspeakers to announce and awful music.
And they drink a lot of alcohol which you cannot refuse either!
So  this was our experience -
the very flashy invitation in red and gold was from my boss, the Director of Education in Ratanakiri. We rarely see her so we knew how important it was when she came to deliver it personally. Quite a challenge for me with my limited skills. There is no need to reply as apart from illness everyone goes.
Firstly I had to have a new outfit, the clothes I had bought from the UK were not flashy enough.
So the wife of the Dutchman I work with and I met in the market to have outfits made. she went all out glittery but with true British reserve I went for the most simple and plain fabric I could find which was not easy. We were measured and discussed in full view of the market of course and agreed to go back in one week.I paid $10 deposit  which was half the cost.
On the Saturday at 8.30am after an electricity cut for 2 days  for final trying and paying. We communicated via a few words of Khymer from me and hand signals from her. I agreed I would press it at home when the elect. came back.
That afternoon Dave and I went to the airfield here (still complete with windsock and terminal buildings and even a fire engine) sadly no planes for over one year. anyway we practised me riding side saddle for my entry to the wedding and then me driving and Dave as the passenger so he could drink more.
The next day the three VSO females went with one of the female translators to the beauty parlour. This was Sunday afternoon at 3pm. The beauty parlour turned out to be a shack tacked on the end of the market. Why was I not surprised! There is only the market to go here. The place was really busy and I could write a book about my experience that afternoon. So here is the edited version, I had planned to have nails painted and possibly makeup. I was given small bowls to soak my toes and hands in. But they were soon forgotten and I was called to the makeup chair. I pleaded with Sereyden to have only natural makeup - but the next thing was the young girl got a razor blade and proceeded to eliminate my eyebrows and then my whole face was shaved!!!
the next stage was thick makeup, false eyelashes, heavy painted eyebrows and the whole works. this happens in the open shop and everyone is watching the barang in the chair.
So late home and dark with no helmet on my glittery hair I just have time to change and off we go.
The wedding was different! You have to arrive late and you have to pay - $20 for us which is a lot here. You wait until a table of 10 is complete then you are seated and the food is served. We had 7 courses including BBQ duck which seemed raw, pickled vegetables, fish soup and stewed chicken plus lots of rice. There was lots of drinking and only whisky and beer to choose from. After the meal everyone has to either dance or drink toasts. We chose to dance but really only the men dance, the women seemed very unconcerned about dancing. You dance around a table covered in fruit and the moves look easy but of course are not!! When it got too complicated we stopped but then everyone wanted to drink with us so we had to start dancing again!!

The VSO team



The heavy make-up

 We weaved our way home at 11pm watched by the police who are not at all bothered about drink driving just who was there - it was a very important wedding so almost 1000 people there and the police were all dressed in their best costumes.

Waiting for 10 people so we can go in

Wedding outfits

The bride and groom plus myself, Lucy from the Phillipines and her husband Yasser from Pakistan

Week one - only103 to go

Our first week in Ratanakiri (this means gem mountain in Khymer)

Our new home- well just the upstairs.

After an exhausting journey and stressful arrival we woke at 6am to find what I can only describe as a squatter hut attached to the fence one meter from our house and the family are cooking on charcoal pots outside and chattering loudly.

View from bedroom window

So up we get and after a minimal breakfast we go off to the market on the moto – more about that later too!

Trying to find cleaning materials was difficult but we managed and got fruit and bread.

Dave scrubbed the bathroom with bleach and I cleaned the kitchen, swept floors with a soft bristle broom; oh for a vacuum cleaner here as it’s so dusty. In the pm a couple of other NGOs arrived one with a huge bag of longans. I like them, Dave not too keen, he says he does not like smelly fruit.

In the afternoon we went for a ride on the moto around the lake in town and explored a little and then got a text inviting us to sunset snacks not far from us ( well nowhere is far from here the town is about twice the size of Framlingham.

My moto in the garden downstairs plus the awful no gears VSO bike!

First day…

Up with the family and the cockerels at 5.45am so at least I could not oversleep for work today. Nervous about riding the moto to work on my own but I memorised the way and it was fine. I met Myrko the Dutchman and another VSO working in Education and Narin the translator that we share, then I hopped – well straggled my leg over to ride pillion with him to a school about 35k away towards Vietnam. A small school only 2 classrooms and teaches grade 1 – 4 however, the children are indigenous and do not speak Khymer and here if you do not pass each grade or start school late you stay down. So there were about 4 boys who looked about 13/14 still in with the grade 1 and this is not unusual and yet there is no curriculum suited to their needs so most drop out as soon as they can and rarely stay to go to the next school at grade 5 level. You can be a teacher at a school like this as long as you have a grade 9 certificate to say you passed that level.

I was asked if I wanted to make my own way back on the moto and being the only female I had to say yes. It was fine until 34.5k later and I could not find my way to the office whichever way I tried. Eventually I gave up and had to ring Narin. I was 300yards from the office, they were in the coffee shop ( I use this term loosely as it was a bamboo shack) and they had seen me driving round and thought I was doing more practising. On the way home I got stopped by the police. He made me stop my bike, get off and then told me to go another road as this was blocked. Then proceed to laugh with his mates about my inadequacies of handling a moto. All before lunch so luckily I had a quiet afternoon in the office.

Riding pillion.

The women here all ride side-saddle and never hold on to anything.

Cambodian men riding pillion can hold onto any part of their male drivers.

Women cannot touch any part of their male driver whilst riding pillion even if it is their husband.

Only the driver is supposed to wear a helmet – but only the westerners wear them really.

You can have at least 6/7 on a moto. As soon as children can sit up they are on motos.

Signalling left does not mean you are going left.

Even though you are meant to drive on the right you can and do use any part of the road you want to.

So you can see that first thing on Monday morning riding that distance pillion with a male translator was an experience. However, the scenery was magnificent and this really is a beautiful place.

My work hours are 7.30-11.30am and 2-5pm.

Tuesday I spent getting to know my way round the hot, dusty, dirty office in the department for the Ministry of Education. When I am not quite so new it will get a tidy and a clean-up.

Wednesday was another school visit and I played hookey in the pm and went to the bank to get my ATM card –it took over an hour and a half.

Thursday back to the school we visited on Monday for a World Teacher Day ceremony which was very nice and simple and then we played a game with the children.

Playng the circle game

In the afternoon I had my first language lesson and I learnt that she had not prepared anything but wanted to know what I wanted to learn!! So I leant to ask the mother below us if I could use the washing machine – which worked! Also how to ask for things in the market – which was not so easy! I have problems understanding the cost of items as 100 is mapon and 1000 is maroy which in local dialect sounds the same to me.

Being on the top table

Friday was a holiday to celebrate Kings Coronation. We were invited by the family to have a picnic by the lake but we declined and went to the market to buy food and more storage containers as everything has to be kept sealed. We also need coat hangers and all sorts of necessary basic stuff.

In the evening which is after 5pm in Khymer time we went to one of the 3 relative western restaurants where all the NGOs meet up each week. There are about 15 in total of all nationalities but English is the language in use luckily. We ordered drinks, dave a beer and me a lime juice when an Aussie arrived and announced he had just got engaged to a local girl and without asking ordered a round of tequila shots with salt and lemon and that was it we had to drink up. Yuk!! Then get on the moto in the dark ( dark by 5.30pm here and weave our way home – late by standards here as it was 8pm. Then we ate on the balcony still but it was so cold, the temp dropped to below 25 for the first time and we shivered and had to put on warmer long sleeved clothes.

Dave reading on the balcony.

Last training week.

Our last week of training was very hectic. I had an upset tummy and David had to go to the village for homestay on his own. We were prepared for the worst-sleeping above the cows, sharing a bed and potty with the family, indescribable food. All of which were stories we heard from other volunteers. In the end it was not that bad and he had a bed to himself although the father slept on the floor in the same room. There were two children one of which was 17 and could speak English and the little girl(8) wanted to hold his hand all the time……….Something even I cannot do here as Cambodians do not like shows of physical contact at all. He said it was a lonely 24 hours though.

Then it was straight into the moto training which lasted a day and was tough going with a “gippy” tummy.

Rules of the road I am trying to come to terms with –

• Concentrate only on what is in front of you.

• You can use any part of the road even going on the wrong side.

• Give way to traffic coming on the roundabout.

• Any vehicle bigger than you has right of way.

• It is illegal to drive with lights during the day.

• It is not illegal to drive at night without lights.

• Use your horn a lot, once to warn and continuous to keep going.

• Drive on the right. Or on the left or in the middle.

• When you want to turn onto another road go across the road when you see a space and drive on the wrong side of the road until you turn.

• Always beware of cows and dogs who wander in the road at any time.

Then we were packed up and on the bus to Phnom Penh where I had 3 hectic days of meetings and a visit to the doctor for some anti-biotics. The up side of this is I am losing weight fast. David had to visit the dentist which he also said was really good. He also had to shop and haggle in the market for sheets, towels, pillows, kitchenware and a few luxuries such as a toaster, 3 cans of baked beans and some pasta.

On Saturday we were collected from the guesthouse at 5.30am. We went by mini-bus and had many stops, breakfast and lunch where therebwere toilets. A puncture stop ( see picture below) and once for nearly an hour to load an indigenous family of 14 plus all their belongings including a puppy in a sack tied with string. As tere were only 6 seats id did not matter they just piled in and it took the time to string all their stuff outside. We arrived in Ban Lung at 5pm. Hot, tired and the last stretch of dirt road is quite slow and tough going.

Our new home.

We were dropped off at our new home only to find the landlord was still working in the bathroom fixing the shower in and there was no electricity! To make matters worse the son-in-law wanted to talk to us and practice his English………… we were so tired that night but the next day was much better. We went on the moto to the market and bought cleaning products and some food. After siesta we went for a ride on the moto round the lake and to watch the sun set and were just about to cook a meal when we got a call and were invited out for sunset snacks. It turns out to be the home of another VSO volunteer who works with the ethnic miniority on trying to keep their beautiful volcanic crater lake sustainable. She comes from East Bergholt and is a keen mountain biker! She was thrilled to hear Dave could mend bikes and we have her bike in the spare room at the moment as he is fixing the gears.