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.