The Start of a Bike Club

VSO is moving offices to smaller quarters. The old house will probably be torn down to make room for some high-rise. This is an unfortunate trend in Phnom Penh now. Lots of building going on. What was a very cozy and charming city is turning into a high-rise hodge-podge of modern buildings that block the breeze and sun.

The new office will be much smaller, so VSO sold some equipment it no longer needed. I was able to use donations to buy 14 bicycles to start a “Bike Club” at the Provincial Teacher Training College. I also got some furniture for the resource room.

Before buying the bikes, I had a conversation with the Deputy Director, where I introduced the idea of “Student Life” and how it would be good to have some fun things for students to do. She was excited about the bikes because they could go to practice teaching easier. This is also an issue, and it is true that bikes will make this all much easier, but getting them to see the quality of life issue will be more difficult!

I have wanted to get bikes for students for 4 years, because I see that students are basically stuck on campus, many with no transportation. A lot of students are poor from rural areas, who receive $2 from the government as a stipend each month, and families send them rice to keep them going. It would be a great improvement if they had some mobility and could enjoy the town a bit more. But bikes cost normally $45 and buying 2 bikes for 200 people didn’t seem so helpful. But 12 bikes for 200 people seems more reasonable. Each bike cost $10-12, and $5 each for transport to Kampot, and on average about a $5 repair. So for $20-22 we get a new bike.

I included 2 bikes to give to trainers who are helping fix the bikes and who help around the school a lot. One trainer actually lives in the student dorms and has no bike himself. I realize that helping students (the littlest people on the hierarchy) requires that you help some people above them too, otherwise you get no support. The whole system is broken (trainers get $70 a month and that is not enough to live on), so at every level, there is some sort of bribe or support demanded. They have a legitimate point, but that just makes it more expensive to help the people you want to target in the first place.

The bike club will fix the bikes, paint them crazy colors and number them. Hopefully, we will be able to have students responsible for the borrowing of the bikes as well. We will have a fund that each student contributes $0.10 to each month to repair the bikes.

I am hoping also to work on community building activities next year so that students have a better experience at the college. There is still a lot of stealing and non-supportive behavior that goes on and changing that will take time.

This photo is of the bikes in the resource room waiting for repairs. I was heartened that the bike repair guy in town could fix two in a day, so after we discuss how we will do this, it should go quickly!

The first year students study until August, so I hope to have an experimental bike club for the next 2 months and then make improvements based on that experience for the start of school in October.

New Microscopes at the Teacher Training College

Learning about microscope parts

The Provincial Teacher Training College received 15 microscopes as a result of amazing effort and fundraising from Cathy Smith. The microscopes are the first at any teacher training college, and the first even for many universities in Cambodia. Some select high schools are starting to get science lab rooms, but still lack basic equipment. So these microscopes are very special.

The microscopes were shipped directly from China to Cambodia, requiring Cathy to coordinate the efforts of the microscope manufacturer, C & A Scientific (with outstanding support from Karla Carias in their US office), a DHL expeditor, the VSO receiver, the delivery people in Cambodia, an intrepid taxi driver to get them from Phnom Penh to Kampot, and Sam At, to receive them in Kampot. It all went well, amazingly!

Receiving microscopes in science store room

When the microscopes arrived, we set one up and the trainers looked at the prepared slides. They kept asking what they were seeing and why they couldn’t see it on the slide with their eyes. We tried to explain the basic function of a microscope and what it meant that they were able to see. I was not sure that they really understood that they could see things that their eyes could not, but that were still there, just too small for us to see. Opening a microscopic world to someone who has never really thought about it is not as easy as it would seem at first. But once they grasped the concept, they were ready to find viruses in their cells and wanted to see if anyone had AIDS! So we made quick progress from not understanding the concept of the microscope to wanting to do medical science!

Learning how to handle the slides
Trainers were excited but also nervous about using them and teaching with them, since they have never seen one themselves. Yohai, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) volunteer placed at the college, taught the trainers how to use the microscope. He cooperatively designed a worksheet for students to use when they first learn about the microscope and look at some things. He went to every class that the trainers taught and supported them and the students using the microscopes for the first time.

The trainer started by explaining all the parts of the microscope, which students labeled on their diagrams. The microscopes were not in the classroom, and one student after about the 5th part, was so excited, she said, ‘but teacher, when are we going to SEE the microscopes?!’ The lesson went quickly after that. Then we all walked over to the science storage room and got the microscopes. We tried to explain to carry them carefully (stored in their boxes) with two hands. But some students were waving them around with one hand, giving me a heart attack. New equipment and delicate things that break are not everyday experiences in Cambodia, so there is a surprising lackadaisical attitude about caring for equipment. They are amazing at fixing any broken thing with the parts available at hand and some extra wire, but ensuring that the thing does not break in the first place is more difficult to do.

They learned how to unpack the microscopes, how to store them, and how to put the batteries in.
We started with an onion skin, which they mounted themselves on the slide and put water on it to get the air out. There is a prepared slide that comes with the microscopes, but because of our experiences with the trainers, Yohai thought it would be better if they took the piece of onion themselves, so they could understand where it came from, and then look at it using the microscope. They started with the lowest resolution and worked up to the most powerful one. Then they had to scrape the inside of their cheeks for cells. The students were very excited to actually see their own cells. They drew what they saw.

The trainer then asked them what the differences are between animal and plant cells. Students said that the plant cells are more square and animal cells are round. They found the nucleus in the cells as well.

It was really exciting to see students using a microscope for the first time. They said that they had learned about the idea of a microscope in high school. In fact, the students could name nearly every part on the diagram, because they had memorized this information in high school. But they had never actually seen a microscope. They said that this helps them to really understand the ideas about cells better. There was a lot of laughing and helping each other with the focus and trying to understand what they were actually seeing.

Students had found out about the microscopes and could not wait for their class’ turn to use them. Some students climbed in the window to get a peek from their friends in the class!

The trainer said that he saw that students were much more interested and understood the lesson more now that he had something real for them to use. He said before, he had to teach the same lesson, but with no equipment, so the students could tell him the answers but he had the feeling that they really did not understand. Now he could see how excited they were, and could help them with solving viewing problems and explain the cell parts to them more easily.

Each class in the 2nd year has now had a chance to use the microscopes. The microscopic world that exists has been opened to them and they are excited to share it with their future students as well. Next year, the microscopes will be more integrated into lessons and the Science Club will be able to view more complex slides and view pond water.

Just receiving the microscopes has generated all kinds of conversations about microscopic organisms, boiling water, pond water, drinking boiled water, diseases, and all the things they can look at. It really has opened a door to a new world for them.

Thank you to all who helped make this possible. It is really special to be part of opening a world, opening learning, and opening the possibilities for the trainers as well.

Back to School

Update from Cambodia – August 2010

I am writing to ask for funding for At’s ½ salary for another year and to update you on our work.

One announcement I would like to say right away is that my German host father used his 70th birthday as a fund raising opportunity and collected about $1,000 for projects for us. So now all I need is At’s salary and we can do a lot next year!! So we need $2,150 for another 12 months, starting in December.

Briefly, our plans include starting a mushroom farming small enterprise with 30 of the poorest families from three villages, developing teaching resources at the training college and contributing to New Teacher Starter Kits, supplying rain water catchers to poor families, developing chicken farming with poor families, and supporting a remote first grade.

If you would like to contribute to our work here, please send a check to Charlene Bredder c/o Karen Gilmore, 3795 Hickory Branch Trail, Suwanee, GA 30024

The Year in Review
I find it is now time to review another year—I suppose I am still wedded to an academic year, as I have been for most of my life. Of course the Khmer New Year is in April and the International New Year prompts reflection too. And now the start of the School Year sets me thinking again.

For the last few months, I have been keeping a Western schedule in the Cambodian heat, which is not something I recommend or find remotely survivable. There is a reason things are slower here and a reason when I see other Westerners trying to keep up their hectic schedules here that it all seems a bit insane. The rains have been late in coming and it has been the hottest recorded hot season in human history, apparently. People have been getting quite sick and there have been some deaths as well, due to lack of rain. The hygiene is not good here, with only about 30% of households having access to a toilet, so if the rains do not come, the water becomes more and more polluted and sickness and illnesses breed. There are now many scarecrows strategically placed at entrances to people’s yards and houses, and scary icons drawn on houses in order to ward off evil spirits. In a village where two people died, people have been drumming through the night for several nights to ward of evil spirits. Even the school principal bought firecrackers to scare bad spirits away. School kids came sleepily to school and meetings were held at the local pagodas to talk about how to boil water and wash hands and bury waste.

I am glad that as I write this, the rain pours down in sheets, alternately pitter-pattering and crashing on the tin roofs. It is a welcome sound, although I have gotten used to not planning on rain and being able to do what I want with my days. Today we cancelled going to buy large wooden posts to build a chicken house because the roads will be too muddy and we will not build in the pouring rain. Tomorrow At assures me that it will not be raining as much. We will see!!!

Village Work
Libraries
We are very excited about some developments that have taken place recently. First, we have one community library that we started as an experiment with Community Involvement in Schools money from a project with VSO and NEP. The school director and village chief recommended a house that has many people gathered watching TV, eating snacks, and hanging out. Now they read books too. We even see that some people are borrowing the books too. At an island school with three villages, we will put three more community libraries next week. The librarian at the school built three mobile book holders that are essentially suitcases for books—like a traveling salesman with wares, you can open the wood boxes and the library is open for business! Not only did the librarian build these, he had books from another project that he put in the boxes and we contributed some as well. We will buy more, making each box different and the villages can trade boxes every month, so that they have access to approximately 200 books over time. We got books about health, farming, simple life improvement ideas, as well as popular music, story books, and short picture stories. This will be an experiment to see if a village really takes on the idea and wants to establish a more permanent library.



Remote first grade
On the same nearby island, there is a remote village so far across the rice fields and deeply muddy roads that the small 6-year-old first graders cannot start school on time. It is simply too far for them to walk and they are not strong enough to ride a bike through the mud. No one in the village has started school on time. The director came up with the idea to start a “remote first grade” at a house in the village. The teacher will travel to the village and the children will attend school there. In second grade, they will go to the regular school, when they are bigger and can negotiate the roads. The village is supplying the house and posts for an extended roof. NEP will supply the teacher’s and students’ desks and chairs, and the metal for the roof. KCF will provide the teacher’s salary. The district office of education supports the idea and the school arranged for the teacher. We will support the teacher and provide resources and teaching ideas. It is exciting to have a great partnership and to have the villagers solving problems that are important to them.

Chicken farming
At and I are working with another NGO, Cambodian Children’s Advocacy Foundation, to help poor families increase their incomes and quality of life through chicken farming. CCAF held a chicken farming class which we attended with members from one family who we will start this project with. This family, a mother, her 20-year old son, and her 12-year old son, lives in the middle of a rice field. With Kampot Children’s Fund, we have been supporting younger child to attend school. We know them now for 2 years. A year ago, we suggested that they plant some trees for shade so that their tin-roofed grass hut would not be so hot. But the father had recently died of dehydration working in the salt fields and the mother was too beaten down (literally) to do anything. She cannot do much work because her husband beat her so severely. The older son had left the home. But now, he has come back and has built a fence around the property and has planted coconut trees. We bought mango trees and they planted those. It is exciting to see this place of violence blossoming under his work.

We went together to the chicken farming class. I thought my Khmer was pretty good, but I was quite confused about what we should be feeding the chickens. There is a mixture of:
1. 6 parts water and one part the following:
2. vinegar
3. EM (Effective Micro-organisms)—some sort of magic stuff that keeps immune systems up and is all-natural
4. Corn sugar (burnt)
5. Rice wine – I am serious!

Apparently, chickens need to be well-fed as well as happy on their rice wine!!! This mixture is given to them to drink and mixed into their food as well as sprinkled around the chicken house.

We went to see a chicken house that a family has built. They have been supported by CCAF for 6 months and in this time have bought a plow and are trading chickens for a cow to plow with. They got a tarp to extend the sheltered place of their grass house. And their children can go to school and have enough to eat. It is very exciting to see this level of progress in such a short time!

There is a lot of work to do still: we will support the family with buying the large wood for the structure and help with our labor to build the 3-roomed chicken house. We will give them 5 hens and a rooster and they have to give the same back in a year, so that we can continue for other families. If this goes well, we will expand to other families At works with as he continues supporting children with the Kampot Children’s Fund.

In addition to the monetary support for buying supplies, emotional support is crucial. When we stopped for breakfast, the mother would not sit at the table with us. At was able finally to get her to come sit and eat. She sat at the back of the lesson and was very quiet. For lunch, she stood under a tree until At coaxed her back to sit with us at the table. I hope that slowly her confidence will increase as she becomes involved in helping her own family and sees begins to see herself as someone who can do things. This will all take time. But we have made the first steps.

Teaching Work

Resources
We have made resources with students and I had a Resource Making Club of 6 highly motivated students. We met twice a week from 7 to 9 pm and cut and colored and laminated all kinds of things for their teaching. We played games and used the curriculum books to look at lessons and think of things they can do with the materials. I am so excited with this small experiment—they had great ideas for lessons and caught on quickly to activities for children to do.

Next year, we will have a room for resource making, some basic supplies, and hopefully some grant money to photocopy and buy tape for easy “laminating” (putting clear tape over paper is the same as laminating—keeps the moisture out, and is cheaper and quicker!).

Informal Interactions
I will use this summer to develop some “Evenings with Charlene” –informal learning opportunities including:
• basic theatre exercises --maybe developing into theatre skits to solve problems they have
• basic leadership ideas--maybe developing into a leadership club that proposes and carries out activities at the school
• basic communication and community building--maybe developing into a student counseling service run by students
• resource making and games playing--maybe developing into more resources related to the curriculum and lessons
• Harry Potter reading—maybe developing into a book club
• basic science experiments—maybe developing into a science club

And anything else I can think of to extend my interactions with trainee teachers. The key to understanding the above list is the part after the -- is the “maybe maybe maybe I hope” part. I will organize one or two evening activities and if it is interesting to students, then we will make a club and keep going. If not, I have to say it was nice and move on. I think that these more informal spaces will be more effective and I will have more time to interact, than the formal teaching times which are very limited to me.

You would think that after 3 years, it would be easy for me to communicate in Khmer, but of course, I still need a translator. My Khmer is good enough that I can say things and then look at students’ faces and find someone who seems to have understood and have them explain what I said. Crazy!!! But we will see. Given that 45% of the population is under the age of 15, I think it is a good strategy to work with young people and develop their capacity to think critically, make changes they want, and help them lead. The trainers are very nice but are busy and underpaid. If I can effectively work with the younger generation, maybe they will make changes needed to help develop the country, or at least their students!

Lessons Learned so far
Village well
We supported building a village well, which is finished and looks good but might not be deep enough to supply water consistently. We are in the middle of the worst drought in a while and so we will wait until next dry season to see how it fairs. It might have to be dug deeper, which will require some more discussions with the villagers about how to do this. We had the idea that supplying work to the village would be productive, but it has turned out that it would be better to only provide the supplies and have them build it for themselves. So next time: only supplies!

Playground
As part of our “Community Involvement in Education” project, we funded a playground for a local elementary school. It had all the elements of kids participating: they looked at photos of playgrounds I had taken in Germany, they drew their own ideas for what they wanted, they voted on the one they wanted most, they made a cardboard model, the man who built it came to see the cardboard model, we used a local metal worker.
BUT: the kids copied the pictures and did not understand the idea of designing their own (this is OK—at least someone asked their ideas, which is unusual). The older kids moved the younger kids’ votes. Great. The cardboard model was done in the hot hot sun, with me and a colleague as the only adults (and me not knowing how to do this cardboard model and my colleague being an artist and not a person used to working with children). You can see how this combination could go horribly wrong: I got sunburnt, the kids stole the supplies, we were there all day and in the end, the kids dismantled the thing due to strong winds and the principal never saw the model. Ugh. But they participated and now several village families have cardboard, staplers and strong glue for various household projects for which I am sure they will find those supplies useful!

The day the playground was installed, 100 children were out of control climbing on the structure, sliding down the slide standing up and 10 at a time, climbing up the slide, hanging off various edges and pushing and shoving so roughly that I was afraid they’d push me off the 8 foot tall slide. I swore never again.

But then I read a New Yorker article about the first playground in the US in New York City in 1900. The opening ceremony was cancelled when 20,000 children showed up and started jumping on the police cars and creating general havoc. I now count my playground project as a success!!! Only minor injuries so far and only 100 children who were out of control.
Seriously, next time I want to do something with / for kids, we will have more experiences in working together and developing leadership and ownership before letting them loose.

Overall
We are making great progress, step by step, and are getting to know the villages better. Through the Community Involved in School project, I have met 5 village chiefs, 3 from villages we will be working more in. They are really open to ideas and contribute as well. It is so important to have this support and involvement and to develop trust.

Again, thank you for your support and encouragement. It is sometimes difficult and isolating here, but generally we are surrounded by supportive and interested people who are working hard to improve their lives and the lives of others as well.

Wishing you a happy Fall,

Charlene and At

NGO Keep Going

Pictures : left :making our own books for a community library ("About Me")
next: school kids playing before school starts
next : the finished well with the first water. Sam At and the woman are the ones who have organized this.
next: Charlene working with a teacher on teaching methods; a village girl who benefits from the well
next: village house
next: building the well; cooking lunch while the well is being dug
next: digging the well; watching the well being dug
next: making resources from card board at the teacher training college
next: making resources; a very remote school with only scrubby trees around for miles (typical rural situation where our student teachers will be placed after graduating)




















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March 2010

From Charlene:

It has been a long time since the promised posts about the developments of our little NGO Keep Going. I find it hard to write about things that are happening, because on the one hand most are so mundane, and on the other, it’s only mundane because I am used to life here. So I will attempt to explain the ups and downs of our endeavors here.

I am really proud of Sam At’s approach to village work. We started this as an experiment, and he is doing a great job. He is very good at hanging out and talking and listening to people. He is using the Kampot Children’s Fund, which is a separate fund that supports poor children going to school, as a lever into the community. He asks school directors to recommend poor children for the fund to support. Then he follows up on these families and slowly integrates himself into the community, learning the issues.

Sam At has written a small piece about his experiences, which follows on from my piece here. We are trying to give both our perspectives as we continue this work.

If we can continue, we have some ideas for further projects: helping a very remote community to increase its agricultural production; building another well for families that have a long way to walk to haul water; mobile libraries; and small business lessons and support for people to think of their own ideas. We are finding that the longer we spend in a community, the more we get to know, and the better help we can provide.

First, the great successes:

1. The well is being dug!!!! We got the water in the area tested—there are 3 other working wells and a pond in the village that other families use. One of the wells is pretty contaminated with bacteria but two of the wells are quite good and have low bacteria counts. The pond is of course high in bacteria counts. In our survey for who will use the well and how they currently solve their water supply issue, we asked if they boiled the water. The answer was that they get the water from the pond and put ice in it, so it is drinkable. This is very sobering. So we will have to do some education around bacteria and water and filtering the water or boiling it first. Boiling it is expensive, so we will supply filters to 10 families (9 who will use this new well and the one family who has the highly contaminated well). We will do a skit to explain how people get sick from bacteria and how they can solve the problem….!

The well will be about 7 meters (21 feet) deep, which is about 15 pieces of pipe. We hired 4 local men to dig the well and find the place for it. Before finding the spot for the well, and digging, they offered a small offering to the gods to express thanks and gratitude for helping find the place. The first day, they dug 6 pieces of pipe deep and the next day the water was at the bottom of the well. The village women used the first water for washing clothes. The next water was clearer because of not digging for a day and that was tasted and pronounced very good. They will continue digging deeper so that water supply is assured throughout the dry season for 9 families. They are down to 12 pipe lengths now, and are using an old wheelchair seat to sit on as they are suspended by ropes, digging at the sides of the well to widen it enough for the pipes. We will put a cap on the well and build a simple rope and pipe pump so that it is easy to pump the water. Pat An, a 5^th grader in a wheel chair, will be able to help his family draw water if we put the pump in. We will also make a cement base around the well so that he can easily get his wheelchair near the well.

2. Group work boards for one school!!!!! One of the elementary schools we work with was heavily flooded last year in the rainy season because a dam broke upriver. The school hosts student teachers for their teaching practice. Part of the education reforms here is getting students to work in groups and have group discussions, instead of just listening to the teacher lecture. But the teachers and the student teachers could not put pupils into groups because all the boards for writing the answers on had been damaged in the flood. Because of some more donations to Keep Going, we were able to get 6 boards for each class. The most exciting part is that this idea came from the teachers, who really wanted it. Our students were saying they wanted to practice with group work. And the teachers requested 6 boards instead of 4. I have been saying for 2 years that groups need to be smaller, that they need more group boards in their classrooms because 8 or more children in a group is too big. The ideal size would be 4 or 5. So now, of their own suggestion, they have 6 boards, for an average group size of 6 instead of 8 students!!! I am so thrilled.

We went to buy the boards, which are sold in huge sheets. One sheet makes 6 boards, so we got 6 sheets, one for each classroom. The teachers went with me to buy everything. The next day, I came to school to find all the student teachers standing on desks sawing the on their day off from teaching. We glued light-weight frames around them so that the sharp edges of the wood would not hurt the students. Now, the teachers and students are using group discussions. The changes in teaching that these boards support is a very big step from just lecturing. These boards will continue to support teachers as we continue to develop new ideas in methods and allowing students to think more for themselves. The boards are great because they allow a group of students to discuss a question and write the answer together in chalk. The teacher then discusses each group’s answers. The boards can be used over and over again. We could learn a lot from this idea in the West, as we use way too many non-recycle-able resources. This is an easy solution which requires chalk and boards!

3. Resource making at the Teacher Training College—Over the last 3 years, trainers have started to realize the importance of teaching resources in helping to support student learning. At and I have been working to get resources that are good for each grade (students don’t know what grade they will be assigned to until a few days before school starts). Students will make some resources over the two years they are at the college and will take those to the districts when they start teaching in the rural schools. We visited some rural teachers who are in their first year of teaching and the challenges are immense: 50 students in a classroom and only 5 books; no electricity and sometimes no water; no photocopiers or paper . No books or library. So we hope to have some games that are flexible, teach some ways that children can help make resources out of locally available things (counting rocks or leaves for first and second grade, having students write questions in the bigger grades for games). We started some resources now and are having to refine what we do so that students practice it in their teaching before they leave the college too.

4. Literacy Activities in Elementary Schools We are working with two schools on a separate project to involve the community more. But before we can involve the community, the community needs something to be involved in. So at both schools, we are working with 5^th and 6^th grade students to write simple books for 1^st and 2^nd grade students to read. There are not many beginning readers at all and the literacy rates are low because children do not get to practice reading books at their level. Students have made beautiful books. One school will start a community library soon of these books so that people can come and read for a few hours each day. We will have the library at someone’s house and they will learn how to take care of the books and keep track of them.

Challenges and other issues

There are specific issues related to my job:

1. Resource making at the Teacher Training College We have a simple kit so far that will allow students to have some games, some words, a few wall charts and maps, and some simple resources (measuring sticks, number cards, letters, fraction strips, number strips). These will support their teaching in multiple grades. If we want each student to have a basic “Teacher Starter Kit” it will cost $10 per student. We have 200 students and so we need $2,000 per year to support this development. The first challenge is to find the money. The second challenge is to support students in learning how to use the resources so that their teaching is more interactive and their students are the ones who do the thinking. If anyone has some ideas for fund raising, let us know!!!

2. Village Work We have been talking to the villagers about planting some vegetables and trees, both for eating and for income-generation. We will need more money to help them start planting seeds and doing small-scale farming. We hope to start with 2-3 families and see how it goes and if it goes well, others will want to follow them too.

There are other issues related to living here and confronting larger global issues in our own back yard:

3. Environmental Issues The town of Kampot (the mayor of Kampot really) has decided that it needs to “be more beautiful”. This is a laudable goal. However, the governor has decided that chopping down all the trees near roads is a way to make the town more beautiful. First they started at the river front and only got a few trees down and forced the restaurants off the sidewalks. It became cramped and hot and unpleasant at the restaurants. I am not sure how this is supposed to attract more tourists? Then they suddenly appeared on my street. I had no idea this was a “policy” for the town. Before we knew what was happening, all the beautiful mango trees and shade trees in front of our neighbors’ houses were all cut down. If you did not cut it yourself, you’d have to pay the town to do it. And they stood over you while you cut your trees. It was very sad. The next day, the broken and twisted limbs still lying about, they came back for the potted plants. While I was gone, all the bushes lining our driveway were taken out. So now we are sitting in the hot sun, with dust coming into our homes at a higher rate than before with the trees. They say they will pave the road, which will lead to fast cars driving down a street which currently has toddlers learning to walk and small children running here and there. The culture has already changed: people don’t sit outside as much anymore. It’s simply too hot.

One week later, Chris was at the river front at night, looking at the National Forest Parkland across the way and saw that there were three separate fires on the mountain. It looked like a volcano, with the red fires spreading over large areas. They are clearing it for plantations or for logging, we are not sure. The same night, as Chris was watching the local owls (there are 4 large owls and they had a nest with chicks on the riverfront), a man came and told him that one of the owls “had died”. What happened is that someone killed it with a slingshot. The nest is gone as well. It really felt like Armageddon – the mountain burning up, the dead owl being carried away in a plastic bag, and returning to a denuded, dusty street.

These issues are issues faced every day in many parts of the world. That it can hit so close to home here is an indication of how vulnerable the population is. The street I live on has educated people, the foreign restaurants are run by educated and relatively well off foreigners. None of my neighbors nor the restaurant owners could stop the governor’s decision to cut the trees. Now we sit in the hot sun.

The forests of many developing nations are being set up in smoke every day to make room for farming, plantations, cash crops. We are losing the environment at astonishing rates but are not aware of it because usually no one is burning the mountain across the street from our house.

Confronting these issues here is quite depressing. My first instinct is to question what I can do at all here. How can anything I do matter if the environment is being destroyed and people cannot even take care of their own back yard in a reasonable way? But then I see that these issues are connected to so many global issues and solving these problems will take one step at a time. It is figuring out those steps that is hard. And seeing the slow slow progress is hard. I know that I am laboring in a world political environment that is not supportive of the changes I am fighting for here. But I suppose that is why I am here, in a way. I see that if things are to change, someone needs to keep fighting, one step at a time, and side by side with everyone else.

Thank you for your continued support. In a way, as it always is with this kind of work, the changes are small and slow, but that does not mean they are insignificant. We thank you for your faith in us, for your encouragement, and for your monetary support.

Charlene

From Sam At:

I am Yin Sam At- I am working with Charlene in the community. This year we are focusing more on helping kids in the rural areas to go to school.

Some reasons that I started to think about this problem is when I visit schools in the rural areas, I see that kids do not have enough stationary for school and do not have bikes, but the schools are too far for the kids to go by foot.

I have spent some time to visit kids’ parents with Charlene. We found out that all their parents could not afford stationary, clothes and bikes for their kids, because they work seasonally, cleaning dishes for wedding parties, harvesting in the rice field for somebody else in exchange for some rice…etc.

So first we are trying to help kids with the stationary and learning in school. But this does not change the family’s situation. They are still poor and depend on others to send their kids to school. I think that the parent’s situation can also affect the children’s learning.

Based on this real situation, I came up with the idea to change the way of thinking of children’s parents, such as suggesting to them to do small farming on their own land.

One day when I was in the village one kid’s parents came up to me and told me that she would like to have a well so that she can make the family’s situation better. Based on her suggestion I did a survey and found out that ten families around her house can benefit from the well if she has it on her land.

On the first day of digging the well, many people in the Village came and helped with this project and they were so happy to see and use the water from the well. Now they are using it for cooking and drinking. In a little while, I will try to encourage them to plant some vegetables and banana trees around the house. I am looking forward to see how much progress they can make in the near future.

I would like to thank everyone for the support for both of us who are overcoming many difficulties to get all the kids in rural areas in Kampot province to go to school and have better life in the future.

Sam At

Health care in Cambodia

Heath care issues

We had heard that health care could be a bit tricky in Cambodia but had also heard that the local hospital was good and that if something happened, we could probably get reasonable first stage care there. This is probably true if you have money. But for people with no money, the story is different. Of course, in all societies this is true. It just takes on a different look in each place, but the same issues are faced: lack of supplies, overwhelmed staff, underpaid staff, and an inability to see the humanity of those understood to be “lesser than”.

Our friend’s aunt was pregnant with her second child and went into labor. She is 43 years old and lives in a very remote, rural area. She traveled the one hour to the local hospital, but it was the weekend and the doctor wasn’t on duty. He should have been but wasn’t. Because they are poor, no one bothered to help them much in any way. Then the hospital said that they didn’t want to be responsible for her and sent her by ambulance to the regional hospital, in Kampot. The “ambulance” is a van with no equipment. The road is paved but bumpy. On the way, the baby died. They had to do a C-section at the hospital and got the baby out. She was given an IV with antibiotics and fluids but that was it. The family ran around trying to find blood to buy but none in her type was available.

The hospital staff asked if the family wanted them to bury the dead baby. It would cost too much money, so they could not afford that. The other option would be to transport it back to their homeland for burial. But in Cambodia, no one will transport a dead body because it is believed to be bad luck. So there was no way for the family to deal with the body. The hospital staff wrapped it in plastic and threw it in the garbage.

After 2 days, the staff was no longer coming to check on the aunt because the family was too poor to pay the fees (bribes) to the staff to come into the room or to do tests. She was being given Tylenol and some antibiotics and that was the extent of the care. She had lost an incredible amount of blood but none had been replaced. She was swollen and the family didn’t know what to do. I asked what blood type she was because I thought I could ask around to find a donor. I assumed I would not be a suitable donor because I have B+ blood, which in the US, only 8% of the population has. It turned out that the sister had taken the paperwork with her bloodtype back home. I didn’t want to call this woman, who was now out planting in the rice fields, for her to read English letters and possibly get it wrong, thus risking killing the aunt. So I asked if my friend thought the hospital had any records. Of course, with the doctors and nurses not talking to the family, any question is problematic. I asked my friend if showing my foreign face would help. She said yes. So our goal was to get the blood type and to see if anything could be done to get the aunt’s swelling down (ie get some sort of care).

I bicycled to the hospital, which is a nice, airy, bright, clean facility. There is minimal equipment and services. For example, the beds are red cross beds donated, so there are not mattresses but instead a piece of linoleum flooring on the frame, so that it is easy to clean. Blankets and towels and pillows are brought to the hospital by the families. Families are responsible for cooking and feeding their sick members and themselves. Clothes can be washed outside in a bucket and hung on a communal drying line. Of course, the uncle was not prepared for this stay, so they did not bring a cooking pot or rice or anything to eat. My friend and her family were cooking at home and bringing meals into the hospital (a 30-minute bicycle ride) or giving money for them to buy food from vendors who are nearby. There are no beds for family members, so the uncle slept under the bed on the floor and his wife slept on the bed.

In the same room was another woman who had also just had a C-section, although her baby lived. Both the mother and the baby were very skinny and weak. Her husband had been able to buy blood—one pint—for his wife. But she needed more and there was none available and they were poor. A pint of blood can cost anywhere from $75 to $150 depending on the availability (in Phnom Penh, the capitol, it is closer to $150, whereas in the provinces it’s closer to $75). To give an idea of this cost, people who work in hotels and as cooks and even teachers make about $50 to $60 a month. So it is asking more than your month’s salary for a pint of blood.

As I entered the room, I saw the two women lying on the beds and a man attending to the woman with the baby. My friend and I greeted her aunt and then we sat on the empty bed—there were two more beds that were empty and being used as seats by the families. I thought the guy with the woman was the doctor, but it turned out that he was the husband. We had to leave the room to find the doctor. So we went to the nurses station and found someone there to talk to. She was quite rude and wanted to know what I wanted. I spoke clearly and slowly and June, my friend, helped translate when the person did not understand. She was quite abrupt and dismissive. I thought she was a nurse—she wore the traditional skirt and a white coat. But it turns out she was the doctor. We asked whether the hospital had other records of the patient’s blood type or whether we had to go get her typed again because the sister had taken the papers home. The doctor suggested we take the aunt over to get typed again. I was able to use the fact that I am not fluent in the language to ask again if the hospital had records. She said she would look and we could wait in the room.

We went back to sit in the room and the others all said that they didn’t think she would help us at all because we hadn’t paid anything to get her to look stuff up. We waited about 20 minutes. We were just strategizing about how to be a nice pest and see where we were at, when the doctor appeared and we went to have a conversation again. It turns out that the aunt has B+ blood as well and that the reason she is so swollen is because she needs blood. I say immediately that I will give blood.

Now, I have never given blood because I get faint if I see blood, I hate needles, they can never find my veins and end up using the smaller ones on my hand, which collapse and we don’t get the blood we need. I am really not excited about this prospect. And of course we’ve been warned to make sure that the hospital uses a new needle. But after the aunt’s experience, and knowing the history of this country, the small jab to help is nothing. June and I go to the lab to give my blood.

They call the doctor to come. He arrives from someplace and opens the office. I explain my fainting problem and how I don’t want to see my blood and how difficult it is to find my veins. He says “yes yes yes” has me make a fist and then and jabs me, expertly finding the vein on the first go. Poor June, who seems only slightly more able than me to cope with blood, watches and I keep asking if it’s working. They get the pint, give me something to drink, I get a bandaid, which June holds on my arm, and they finish the paperwork. Then he wants to give me my pint—still warm and nearly still circulating in the bag—to bring to the aunt. He takes one look at my face and puts some paper around the pint bag. June carries it out.

We go back to the doctors in the C-section part of the hospital. They prepare for the transfusion and realize we didn’t bring some tubes that were supposed to come with the pint. They blame June. She goes out and back to the lab. The doctor is gone and everything is locked up. She calls him on her own cell phone. He is driving his motorbike someplace. He comes back. The other doctor sends June out to get the tubing. It’s raining and she comes back soaked but with the tubing. The doctor and nurse set up the blood and find a vein—the aunt is so swollen that this is difficult. They leave. The blood stops flowing. We have to go find them again. Sorry to bother them. Sorry sorry. Can they please come look. The doctor comes back—chastises the aunt for moving her arm (I swear she hadn’t moved at all), moves it and the blood starts again. She leaves. It stops. We go find her again. Sorry sorry. She comes back. Moves the needle around, it starts again. She leaves. It stops. We find her again. Sorry sorry sorry sorry. She finally comes and stays a while, showing June how to apply pressure to the vein to get the blood to go in. She leaves and June applies pressure. It stops again but this time we move things around and apply pressure and it keeps going. After half of the pint is in the aunt, her color has changed part way down her face. It’s like a science fiction movie—her skin changes color as my blood drains into her. It’s an hour and a half. The blood is nearly in. The other patient’s family starts saying that it must be done because it is now “white blood” that is going in. We go get the doctor again. That is the end-it’s the platelets and they don’t use the platelets, so they are finished.

In the end, we paid about $12 for this: $2.50 to take my blood; $5 to initially put it in, and $2.50 more for the trouble with the veins and the extra work the doctor had to do by coming back and forth. Pretty cheap, since usually you pay for the blood as well.

I came back the next day—the family wanted to say thank you and I wanted to see how she was doing and to see if she needed another pint. A different doctor was on duty and seemed nicer. She looked at the charts and announced that the other patient was in more need for blood than the aunt. That is possible but now it is awkward because we wanted to help the aunt. But of course, it’s blood and if someone else needs it more, then we should give to them. Chris is O+ and can give too. So because the family was in the same room and knew that the other family did not pay for our blood, we thought it would be OK to donate—the doctors could not charge them either. But I would like to know some reason for this decision. So they did another blood test and June called me with the results later. The aunt had 19 and the other woman had 12 (after a pint of blood already—this means she must have lost a lot). I called my mom to see if she could figure out from some random numbers what they could be and what that could mean. She immediately said what it was and that a normal person has 35 or more. In the 20’s would be fine, but 19 and 12 were anemic and the 12 could have a heart attack. OK. We will give again.

Chris gave on Monday morning, with the doctor expertly massaging his arm and having him make a fist and getting the blood immediately. He had brought needles for the doctor to use and to donate some as well but the doctor used his own. They were new and wrapped but it does give pause to think for a second and hope it’s OK. He stayed to watch the blood go into the other woman as well.

Both women left the hospital the next day. I went to say good bye to the aunt and the other one had already left. The aunt told a harrowing story about the night after I had donated blood. First, a cleaning woman came by and asked if the foreigner had also given money to her. She said no, that the blood was certainly enough. At night, the doors are closed and the families can put a padlock on the door from the inside, which they did and went to sleep. In the night, two people started banging on the door and demanding that they open the door. The families told them no and told them to go away. Finally, they went away. The family suspects that because I was there, other people thought they now had money and wanted to come steal what I had supposedly given them.

There is no way to know how my presence will affect things. It can be positive—I started talking about big families and how people had to be tested and donate blood. The aunt will get a pint from a sibling when she goes home. It can be negative—the family being put in danger because I have a connection with them. I try to remember this, and try to act in a way that I believe in and which I hope is helpful and not harmful. Dealing with my position and not just who I am as a person has wider implications that I am confronted with in ways that I had not anticipated.

pictures from Angkor Wat and places nearby Kampot

This is on the way to Kampong Trach, a rural area outside Kampot

Year 2

The Two Year Mark
It has been two years now that we are in Kampot, Cambodia. Charlene has been working at the Provincial Teacher Training College and has managed to build good relationships with people and improve her language enough to have general conversations about things. Chris has weathered many computer problems but has developed a good attitude about getting them solved. We have developed a network of computer fixing places, so that if one doesn’t work, the other will.

Things have settled into being “normal” life, so it’s sometimes hard to write interesting stories about going to work and coming home. But I realize that many things that we now think of as normal, are by far out of the “normal” range of experiences we had before and so we will try to capture that. In addition, we are starting a small NGO to address village development and help with my work at the Teacher Training College. Below, I write more about that in addition to including musings on other topics.

Keep Going NGO
(Kampot Education Empowering People, Giving Own Ideas for New Growth)

The small NGO I am starting with my friend and assistant, Sam At, focuses on linking education needs of kids with economic development needs of families. Keep Going is an appropriate name for several reasons:
No work can be done with people unless we keep going to see them, “show our face” a lot, and gain the trust of the people.
Keeping going means we develop a deeper understanding of problems and issues faced in the community. Social, family, economic and education situations change and if we do one thing and don’t go back, we lose that close contact and the work loses relevance for the people.
Change is slow and we have to keep going and keep our spirits up in order to do this work. If we lose hope, become frustrated by the slowness of change, or begin thinking that nothing will change, we should re-evaluate our own motivations. We have to just keep trying, keep going towards our goal no matter how slow it all seems.
Linking education with community development is a good combination. Many families face economic hardships that impact their children’s education. If we can address both issues, the overall situation will improve. Addressing one alone helps but has a more limited impact.

We have chosen two local villages to begin working in. We have contacts to families there already because their children receive school support from a sister organization called Kampot Children’s Fund.

One village has requested a well, which would not only provide them clean drinking water but would also provide a constant source of water so that they can grow vegetables in a garden at home. The other village we are getting to know and will see what their needs are as we proceed. In one family we are working with, their son has stopped going to school. He repeated 5th grade twice and is 16 now. He would need to repeat the grade again and we all feel that given the same teaching methods, the same pressures on him to help earn money and the lack of sleep because of catching frogs and fish at night to sell the next day, it is better for him to start an apprenticeship to gain a skill. We are working with him now to see what he would be interested in doing.

Sam At will work part-time with me at the Teacher Training College and part-time for our start-up NGO. He will spend time going to the villages and talking with people to develop projects that they are interested in and that they feel will help them.

Teacher Training College Goals:
I (Charlene) will continue at the teacher training college for another 2 years. We have the following goals:
1. New Teacher Starter Kit: Have student teachers make resources for themselves, which they will then take with them when they leave. In the last few years, the college has realized the importance of using teaching resources and has had an end-of-year exhibition of resources. But students are still unclear how to use them and don’t get to take many with them when they leave. This “New Teacher Starter Kit” will be made over 2 years and will have enough resources (durable ones) to have students work in pairs or small groups. Since classes are quite large in rural areas—40 to 60 children is common—it will take the two years to make enough things to change the teaching style from lecture to interactive.
2. Critical thinking: Have students go through the elementary school curriculum and think of resources they can make to match some lessons. This critical thinking about teaching will give them more skills for addressing their needs later on.
3. Student Council: Improve student life by working with students to become leaders and generate activities that they are interested in. The leadership skills will hopefully transfer to their lives as beginning teachers in rural areas.
4. Improve Trainers’ teaching: Work with 4 trainers on their lessons and lesson planning so that lessons become more interactive and with more critical questions.

Neighbor Kids:
I have the neighbor kids over on Thursday afternoons and Sunday mornings for an hour of playing and art work. It’s usually controlled chaos, with balls, hula hoops, paint, dominos, Uno, and Jenga in use at one time. I keep wanting to have more of a focus, but sometimes I am too tired to put in the effort to plan something for them. So I now have the goal of one art project a month, which is more involved. But even with my minimal effort, the kids are doing great. At first they would not draw at all because they “didn’t know how” –it took a few sessions and scrap paper before they would dare to color something. Then they gave me their pictures and wouldn’t take anything home. What should I do with 100 drawings that they refused to take home? Sam At explained to me that they view their drawings as mine because I provided the paper and the crayons.
I hung them up on the walls downstairs where they play.
Instant art gallery—now they want their drawings hung up. We rotate them out every few months.
They have now gotten to the point where they will take some drawings home, but most still stay with me. I can see why, too. The culture emphasizes things that look nice and emphasizes ability. Learning is not something that is a publicly celebrated event. So the drawings are not viewed as “nice” because kids did them, and they are not professional. I had one girl spend a long time coloring a heart and pasting it onto a piece of paper. She asked if she could bring it home to her mother and of course I said yes.
But the mother refused it. The girl came out the next day and gave it to me, so I hung it in a special place.
I hope that by creating a fun place that respects the kids (and demands that they respect each other), they will learn a bit of a different way of being.
Even just playing with kids—tossing them in the air, being silly on bikes or playing a game with them—is unusual. I am sure I am viewed as pretty crazy, but if it makes people stop to think for a minute, it’s a good thing. I view part of being here as just sharing a different way of being, which of course works both ways. I am learning an immense amount about time and family and how things are negotiated differently here.

Rice Planting
It is now Monsoon Season, which means that in Kampot, it rains most days for part of the day or night. It is not so hot anymore, and it’s windy and wet. The fields go from a very dusty brown to slick mud. At the first rains, farmers are out plowing with their cows or water buffalo. The “nursery field” is planted by sowing seeds in fields that are lower and have a more constant supply of water.

After the rice plants grow big enough (around the length of your forearm), the other fields are plowed and fertilized. In many cases, the mud is so sticky that it can only be plowed the day before planting, otherwise it will all settle again into a hard brick under the water and the people cannot easily plant the rice. Before we can start planting, the young plants in the nursery have to be pulled out and put in bunches. The nursery fields are planted closely together, which is fine for the young plants, but too close for mature ones.

We start by pulling the plants out, standing in the rice field and grabbing the plants sideways. If you pull quickly enough, you get the root and not so much mud. Of course, being new, we were slower than everyone and had more mud on the roots than anyone. Everyone takes the bunch of plants in their hands, and slaps them against the foot or shin to get the mud off. There is great skill in this process, which we don’t possess yet. I ended up covered in mud from head to toe, in addition to covering poor Chris, who had the unfortunate position of standing behind me! It took us a lot longer to get the mud off the roots. It is important to get the mud off because the plants are tied in bunches and the bunches are then hand-carried across many fields to be planted someplace else. If there is still a lot of mud on them, they will be heavier. It is hard work but also beautiful. The water reflects the sky, there are so many small bugs and creatures to see amongst the plants, and people have a fun time telling stories and jokes together. (OK, if we had enough time to enjoy all of this, maybe that is why we were eons slower than everyone else!!)
The next day, the plants are transplanted into the rice fields. This involves taking a bunch of plants in one arm and getting about 3 small plants together to put in a hole that you dig with your thumb, then smoothing the hole with the plant over so that the plant stays put. People explained to me that I have to keep my legs apart and one in front of the other so that you don’t have back problems later on. Of course, not only were we slower than everyone, the plants I stuck in kept swimming away instead of staying put. Trying to catch them as they floated away was slowing progress as well. There is a rhythm to planting: 5 or 7 rows, in a V-shape, so that you are not over-stretching, it naturally follows your movements, and you end up with nice rows. I can tell you the theory but in practice, you can see where the foreigners planted the rice. There are no discernable rows to speak of, the plants are either too close or too far apart, and there are still some stragglers swimming around! Given that we were so slow, I am sure we did not do too much damage to the potential harvest.

The rice fields turn from the muddy brown to an iridescent green. Absolutely stunning with the clouds reflected in the fields as well. A patchwork of various greens starts to cover the ground, as the fields are all planted at slightly different times, lending a natural color difference to the plants. The planting continues for about 2 months. Then we wait until dry season to harvest, which is in November.

At the harvest season, we go out with sickles and hand cut the stalks—very much like wheat in color, with the rice grains at the top of the stalk. The stalks are put in piles and bundled together. The bundles are carried home. Most houses are on stilts, with a safe, dry place underneath where the rice can be separated from the stalk. Mostly this is done by beating the stalks against a board and allowing the grains to fall onto the sheet spread on the ground. The grains are then dried in the sun for several days, with people manually turning them to make sure that all the moisture gets out. After that, the grains are bagged and brought to a machine that separates the husk from the inside of the grain. Then they are dried again and then bagged for storage, selling, or eating.

After experiencing this process the little that I have, I have come to really appreciate a single grain of rice and the work that goes into getting it onto my plate. The fields are plowed twice: once after the harvest to turn the stalks down, and once or twice more to put fertilizer and get ready for planting. This is generally done with a cow or water buffalo with the farmer steering the plow behind. Then the fields are hand-sown, hand-pulled, hand-transplanted, and hand-harvested. It is an incredible amount of work that requires everyone’s efforts to do. The pride and feeling of working together cannot be overstated either. I like working in a group to accomplish these tasks, but I have seen many people out on their own planting entire fields. That must be lonely work, on top of already being difficult.

Blog Status
We hope to update our progress with Keep Going and with our lives each month. Sam At will be contributing his perspective to our work as well, so we will have two features a month—Charlene and Sam At’s reflections.

Many thanks for reading and keeping up with our lives!