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!
