Phnom Penh

Suas Dtai! I'm in Cambodia and loving it. I leave Phnom Penh tomorrow and wish I had at least one more day. I've had such an amazing time here.

Short version:

Me to Steph - My trip mostly consists of learning about really depressing stuff and then meeting little kids and taking pictures with them.

Steph to me - Glad that things are good in Cambodia even though things are bad in Cambodia.


Well put, Steph.
In addition to my first statement I also built a huge water tank out of cement, kind of.


Long version:

I don't feel like making paragraphs. So this'll have to do.

- RDI (Resource Development International) is one of the coolest organizations I've heard about in a long time. I was so impressed with all the stuff they're doing and I hope I can figure out some way to work with them in the future. They do the super serious stuff like the water purification and how to deal with animal waste so it doesn't cause disease for the humans (just to name a few, I could go on and on) but then to get all of their messages across they use kareoke and puppets and really cool media that people actually pay attention to! Check their website here! We got a tour to see all of their projects and I was just walked around with my jaw dropped. It was really really cool.

- CCF 1 (Cambodian Children's Fund) is such a happy (and sad at the same time)place. You see the kids there and they are look ecstatic all the time. They love life, people, talking, playing on the computer, doing their hair and everything else they do. We went to CCF (boys and girls (age 5 - 13) and got to sit in on their drama class. THESE KIDS CAN ACT! Oh my god. They were doing improv scenes (I think) and there was one scene where a girl died and her friend was kneeling by her side screaming her name. I started crying. And the whole scene was in Khmer. I couldn't believe it. Dane (American, English teacher in Japan, on the trip with his Japanese girlfriend) and I did a scene (in English) and when we sat back down a bunch of kids were saying, "Good good!" and then one kid said, "It was not good, it was Iceland!" Ok not really, he said, "excellent!" but I heard Iceland and was confused for a minute. But overall it was just so amazing to think about the things that we've always taken for granted that these kids are learning for the first time. Health and hygiene is a very very very unknown concept for these kids. (Remember, 80% of them were picking garbage and living at the dump) Most come in with lice, scavies, diarrhea, salmonella, and a ton of weird diseases I've never heard of. And then CCF has to cure all of that so they don't give it to the rest of the kids. Personally, when I heard "Medical Center" I thought of a nurse's office, which, technically I guess it is, but it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more important than any nurse's office in a school or anything. In addition, they have to teach them how to use their own toothbrush, brush, etc. All of this stuff is very very new for them. So you go there are you're totally blown away by how eager they are to learn, to talk to you, to give you hugs and it's really easy to forget that these kids can by 13 years old and have picked garbage for their entire lives, may or may not have a family and have probably never been to school. Two girls there were the youngest daughters of a mother of 4 who had sold her first two off for prostitution and had just been caught for trying to sell the last two. She's now in jail and her daughters are at CCF. AND EVERY KID THERE ARE SOME EQUALLY DISTURBING STORY. It's intense.

- CCF2 was built for older girls to give them vocational training. Girls have way less value in Cambodian culture and, because of prostitution and the rest, are in need of more help. So CCF2 is just for girls and has vocational training for the older ones. We went there tonight and got (absolutely hideous) makesovers from the girls in beauty class. Blue eyeshadow, bright pink lipstick. It was applied quite well, they just need to work on their coloring. Don't worry, I have pictures. The girls there (and at CCF1 also) also have culture class from 6-8 where they either learn about Khmer instruments, dance, and just general culture stuff. Their dancing is awesome! So as soon as you walk into CCF2 you have like one or two girls grab you, give you a hug for like 5 minutes and then hold your hand for the rest of the time you're there. It's quite surreal. But again, as with CCF1, each girl we saw was just SOOOO happy to be there.

- Rainy season is no joke here. We went to the work site Tuesday, worked for an hour and a half and then it started raining. When you're working with cement you're not left with many choices. Wednesday it rained a little bit but we still worked and then today we finished just in time before the biggest rain I've seen since getting here. I really wasn't impressed with Bangkok's "rainy season" but Cambodia's convinced me that it exists. Rainy season is no joke.

- Oh yeah, we were only at the work site for three days. We were in a tiny village outside Phnom Penh. We drove up to two huge piles of sand and one of rocks. First we moved to rocks over to the area, then we made cement and started making the foundation. We were grassroots, yo! Manual cement mixing. We had enough time to get the foundation laid down and then it started raining and we called it a day. Construction is pretty boring, but you know what isn't? Hanging out with kids! School was out of session but as soon as the kids see a van of foreigners drive up they were all over us! And not begging for money! The boys started helping and then the girls got in it too! I was so proud of them! We were just passing buckets of cement down a line and then they would run the empty buckets back to the top of the line. So cool! We also learned some names, some Khmer and some hand games. Wednesday was also really fun. We got to know the kids better, and one of the mother's actually invited us to her house across the street. The 12 year old son went upstairs and put music on and we had a huge dance party. So fun. She's the "English teacher" for their school and knows about 10 English words. So we said those 10 words over and over. I had such an awesome time on Wednesday I was kind of sad that we weren't going back on Thursday, but we went back today and everything was still fun! Katy (Australian, English teacher in Japan)brought a soccer ball and we had an intense game of soccer (kinda) at like 8 in the morning (while waiting for the cement). I say kinda cause it was 3 against 3 but without any goals. Every one seemed happy enough just trying to pass it to their teammates and keep it away from the people who weren't on their team. How un-Western, huh? Katy started saying, "Let's set up some goals!" but it never really caught on and then we realized maybe we weren't being very culturally sensitive and we don't NEED to have goals all the time, sometime just having fun is just as good. I was so sad to say goodbye to them all today. Of course, I have a billion pictures and I'm hoping to get a ton printed up to give to them. After a while I just gave my camera to one of the older boys, a 12 year old named Ro-Tua (I think) and told him to go nuts taking pictures. He really dug it. THESE KIDS LOVE CAMERAS! And digital is so satisfying because then I can feel like I'm taking it for them and not just for me. As soon as they see a camera they put their arm around their friend and start smiling and then race to the camera to see the finished product. It's a really handy tool to have. I'm planning on getting a lot of the pictures developed and sent back to the village when the RDI people go back to 1) finish the tank (we couldn't) and/or 2) do the whole education aspect of it (which we didn't get to do because school was on break). They also taught me Khmer! So that was cool too. We had Dance Party 2.0 today too which was a nice way to say goodbye. One thing we saw today that we hadn't seen any other day were a bunch of orphan kids. You see these kids like Li-asa (you'll see a ton of pictures of her) and you think "aww, her clothing is so old and ripped, and she's getting covered in mud as she plays in the rain, and she's not even wearing any shoes. How cute and poor Cambodian villge of her" and then you see a family of 4 kids, half of them not wearing any clothing, not speaking, with infected cuts and scrapes all over them and the inflated stomach like in the Sally Struthers commercials, looking like they haven't washed in a week, staring at you as you eat your lunch and then you think, "Woah, I guess Li-asa's living the life of luxury up here." Turns out their parents are both dead and they live in a shack together. Or something like that. We gave them the leftovers from our lunch and they took all the utensils too. Scott (CCF founder) is actually going to go up there tomorrow and see what their deal is and maybe bring them to CCF.

- So since we were only at the site for three days here's what we were doing the other days. Sunday - killing fields, genocide museum, which used to a torture prison, which had used to be high school. Pol Pot was a, excuse my language, fucking nut. I can't even get into it right now. Informative, depressing, powerful, emotional, intense. Monday - Royal Palace (could have skipped, not into that stuff that much), then Stoeay Machey to see the dump. It's literally a dump with about 100 dumps a day. People just stand around waiting to go through and get what recyclables they can. They all have a little village there which is all just on garbage. We had to walk over a strange combination of sludge and plastic bags. The kids seemed super happy, very different than the pictures on the CCF website but they all had weird things wrong with them and occasionally there would be a really sick one and or a tiny girl bald in spot with raised purple spots and then you realize, oh right, they live on a dump. I have a ton of pictures which can explain it a lot better. In the afternoon we went to, I don't know, maybe an old capital or something? I wasn't paying any attention. There were kids there and I was hanging out with them. There was a group of about 15 boys and they tried to be tourguides, taught Khmer, played in the rain with each other, showed off their breakdancing skills, smiled for pictures, and spoke in English. There was one kid in particular, Tu-nah I think, that I was talking to and he was so cool to hang out with. He was 12 and really smart and funny. When I saw the bus I was kind of bummed because he and his friends had been so interesting so I was saying, "I got to go, bye" and he says, "$5 for school?" and then it was all over. I said "Oh. Um... I'm sorry. I can't." And it just got weirder and weirder. I felt so used! So then I was thinking "wait, so did you just put on an hour long act to get $5 from me?" It's really kind of frustrating. They seem to genuinely have a good time and I can't decide how I'm supposed to feel. You're not supposed to give them money because then it encourages begging and the money definitely won't go to school, but then what are his options? How else is he going to possibly have a chance to go to school? (Schools cost money here) CCF can't just take everyone. But then you also don't want to raise a nation on begging from Westerns. ARGH! It's really frustrating.
Oh and on Thursday we took a boat ride to a silk village where they tried to toally rip us off on silks but we also got to see horse and cow drawn carriages which was interesting. And then we took cyclo tours of Phnom Penh. Cyclo = a bike with a seat with a wheel on either side instead of a front tire. It was with an NGO that helps smokers or something. I don't completely understand. There are a lot of NGOs here. They all had non-smoking shirts. IT WAS FUN! We went around town getting really confused/happy/excited looks from people. It felt very similar to what I imagine the obscure country singers feel during the Thanksgiving Parade.

Ok - I'm tired. I have a flight tomorrow to Siem Reap.

Last thing - being with a group. It's been interesting. I was totally freaked out at first. I'm one of 4 non-JETs (English teachers in Japan) and the sight seeing with a bus and a tour guide just felt so weird. But, by today I'm feeling a lot more comfortable. It's nice to be with a group of people sometimes! I can ask their opinions about what color scarf I should get and talk about Justin's new album and be with people with senses of humor much more similar to mine than the TEFL people.

So that's me! I'm doing well.