My Schizophrenic Life

Week 5/6 and I can safely say that I’ve only now just started to enjoy being here. I think I’ve been able to step back and everything is now not so new.

It’s taken a long time to get used to things, get used to the fact nothing will move very quickly (knowing this and the reality of it have been two different things and I’m sure it will be until I leave) and to break through the barriers with the founder, teachers, students and villagers as they see a lot of people come and go.

I’ve accepted that Cambodia will always be a place of extreme highs and lows. It makes me feel like a total schizophrenic some times. One minute I’m loving the kids, the laughter and general madness of all of them and the next I’m pulling my hair out when looking at the organisational side of things and the constant brick walls I’m hitting.  I’ve realised I need to make my private time as stable as possible.  I know downtime is vital to keeping myself sane and doing my job effectively. I think I’ll need to take time out, especially out of Siem Reap, every 3-4 weeks. This job also means I’m giving energy to people all the time.  I’ve just come back from five days R&R in Bangkok (I know that doesn’t sound right) with my brother George and his fiancée Olivia and it was definitely the answer to me getting better both mentally and physically. Thanks a million George and Olivia.

When I went back to work after being away sick and then in Bangkok it had been about 10 days since the children had seen me. The children here are not affectionate at all. They do not hug or get close to you. They watch from afar and raise their hands in a prayer like motion every time they greet you, which is respectful, but also creates an immediate distance. In some ways it’s a good thing but how do you break through the barrier? Is it possible, necessary or just something cultural that I need to get used to? When I returned to school the children threw themselves at me. We ended up in a ‘Leah Pile Up’. The kids were standing on my head, stomach, legs. I’m not sure you could see me under a pile of 5-10 year old Cambodian boys and girls who were screaming and laughing.  Barrier smashed through!!

I think being able to keep up the pretence of the project being perfect worked for about 2 weeks. Now all the issues are jumping out at me. I suppose that’s why I’m here for so long.

I’m usually quite good at being able to separate how I feel about something personally and professionally but that’s a very hard idea to maintain when I’m faced with something in the project I strongly do not agree with while at the same time seeing the teachers language and teaching skills improve and the children reacting to that. The organisation side of things sometimes makes me think why the hell are we doing this if I care more than they do? If I was sitting at my desk in the UK, after some of the problems I’ve faced so far, I would say “Walk away. Who cares?” But being here on the ground, seeing the teachers and kids learn something new and the look on their faces when they have a breakthrough moment is priceless and I can see why I need to slowly pick away at things (and scream a little sometimes).

The Cambodians seem to think that money will solve all of their problems. I’m finding this one hard to relate to. These people are incredibly resourceful and a lot of villages survive on less than 25c a day. Obviously, it’s not ideal but surely working out of poverty is more satisfying than being rescued and is sustainable long term?

Sadly I come across 4 major problems on a daily basis while trying to work here.

1.     Money burns a hole in a Cambodians pocket. Anything they get is spent immediately and not always on the most necessary of things.

 Explaining that the kids need books so they can move onto the next level and not footballs, as nice as they are, has been the latest brick wall.

2.     In Khmer there are no tenses. With no future in their language it is almost impossible to be able to budget, plan for emergencies, set goals and plan what directions the schools are moving in.

3.     They think that money will solve all of their problems including the organisational ones.

Explaining that a project needs a good foundation to start with and that the money can come in later when people can see that you are providing what you say you are is a concept that they find very hard to take in.

4.     A lot believe they will be rescued. 

Burying your head in the sand if there are problems and waiting for a western volunteer or tourist to throw money at it seems to be a good strategy here, especially with the guy I work with. And really who can blame them? It happens all over the place and seems to work until the next problem comes up.

Point 4 is a big problem with the guy I work with which is why I need to work very differently with him. We, the SAFE Foundation, are in a position where we could provide that financial support but we’ve had to work in a different way. No one will learn any new skills or ways of working and doing business if they are not shown or persuade to do it. We can’t just hand over money with no set goals or targets. Their attitudes and actions need to change and as they all seem to think the same way I’ve realised that can only be done by showing them. Telling them doesn’t work. If I tell them, the answer I get is “You don’t understand because you have money”.  Last time I checked I was a volunteer!

Saving face. Translation: Thorn in my side!

I’m pretty sure this is in the Oxford English Dictionary. If it’s not your dictionary is out of date.

What it actually means is no one will own up if they have done something wrong.  I raised a few very important organisational issues the other day and we agreed a solution and when the changes would happen. I announced it to the teachers and I leave for one day and everything falls apart. When I approached what had happened and where the problem occurred I was faced with a complete shut down and lack of ownership. They avoid the use of the word no and just do what they want anyway and I feel like I’m having to pick up the pieces. It’s so hard cos I have to remain calm as any form of aggression does not work here, I have to allow them to save face and get the job done at the same time. I’m not overly fused about being bull shitted at the best of times but am finding new ways of working. Maybe more manipulation and less bulldozing?  

Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse…………………..

After being so sick I thought it best to take a week off work and take some much needed time for myself to recover and regain some strength. I wanted to stay here and was determined to complete what I’d set out to do. But if I thought I was going to have a quiet week OH BOY was I mistaken!!

A few days of being out of hospital myself the two volunteers who are here went out to the village for work as usual, a 45mins tuktuk drive each way.  At a time when they would usually be home or nearly home my phone flashed up with a text from the founder of the schools saying “Beth and Natasha got accident. Come and help me”. Immediately I was on my feet running for a tuktuk and trying to call to find out where they were and what happened. All he told me was where they were and that “they were in an accident in the tuktuk” (tuktuks here are a motorbike with a cart on the back). It took me about 15mins to get to the clinic the girls were at. It must have been the longest 15mins I’ve ever experienced. With only a small amount of information, knowing the pitch black road they drive down, the torrential rain we’d had for the past few hours, after about 6 days of no rain, and not knowing how serious the situation was, all I could think about was “how do I call their mothers and say that their daughters are in a critical condition in a 3^rd world country or worse yet, dead?” 

I ran into the clinic, if you can call it that, and saw Natasha lying on the bed holding her head and Beth sitting next to her. They both started crying. I’d never been so happy to hear someone cry in my life. Noise meant they were alive and conscious.

Their tuktuk was hit head on by a car that was traveling at speed. The car hit the tuktuk and continued to speed off in the direction it was going. As the tuktuk was hit, the back cart spun and flipped over with the two girls inside. Natasha landed head first on the road and Beth, whose side of the tuktuk had taken the full force of the hit, landed on top of Natasha.

It had rained for the first time in about 6 days so we used a different tuktuk. One with rain covers.  Amazingly the rain covers were the difference between the girls being in the position they were in and ending up in a more critical situation. The covers held them within the tuktuk instead of skidding them across the road (one of the few sealed roads) and into the trees on the side of the road. The one day I wasn’t going to curse the rain!!

The clinic they were in was not really up to a standard I would have thought you would take someone to who’d just been in a car accident. While the girls lay on the bed I went around checking where all the medications where, if they were sterile and who their doctor was. Was he really capable of being able to assess and treat the girls? As we do in the west, the Cambodians just trust that a doctor is doing the best they can and that they have the right equipment for the right situation. I’m pretty sure these doctors had not seen a road traffic accident in a while and had very limited experience of emergency response. It’s a strange situation to be in where you feel like you have more knowledge and understanding than the doctor. They seemed to lack the ability to look forward and consider any injuries that they could not see or may come up when they leave the clinic. They were not impressed that I questioned everything that was happening and wanted to look around but at that point all I cared about was that the girls were getting the treatment they needed otherwise I would transfer them. Beth who had taken the full brunt of the accident was not being assessed and they could not understand why I was asking them to look at her. Luckily I’d met a Kiwi/Cambodian A&E doctor, NZ trained, a few weeks earlier. I called him and went through the situation. We came to the conclusion that he didn’t need to attend, that they would be ok and he prescribed what they needed and what I needed to do when I took them home. Two minutes later he called me back and said he was on his way. Ahhh relief. He turned up and assessed the girls and spoke with the doctors in Khmer, which was really helpful and gave me peace of mind that they would be ok.

I took the girls home and got up every 3-4 hours to wake them, give them medicine and check that they knew where they were and what was happening. When they were in bed asleep I sat on my bedroom floor for about an hour thankful that they were asleep in the room next to me.  What sleep I did get that night I had with my door open, concerned that they would call out and I might not hear them. I’m sure that’s how it feels to be a mum.

I monitored them for the next few days, while still feeling pretty ill myself. I don’t know how they did it but they walked away with a sore head, whiplash and some bumps and bruises.

The teachers were so worried about them, most having never stepped foot in a clinic or hospital, and 7 of them, including the tuktuk driver, turned up the next day to check on them. They were so pleased to see that they were alive and well. They must have stayed for 3 hours just asking them question after question.

I understand that the value on life here is different than where I come from but I was not overly impressed with how the founder behaved during the whole thing. All he seemed to be concerned about was whether the girls would sue the driver,  it was a hit and run, or not. A lot of pressure was put on me to get the girls to sign a waiver saying that they did not want the police to continue searching for the car, for which we had no details. I managed to avoid getting anything signed the night of the accident by explaining that they needed to call their travel insurance companies first. I’d tried to explain travel insurance to him for about 45mins, a concept they just don’t get here, the week earlier and now understood why I went through that battle.

The girls asked me not to call their mothers as they were going to do it which was ok but I knew I needed to make that phone call at some point. Totally prepared for a mother to have a go at me and cry for hours I called Beth’s mother the following day and explained that they were ok and they were resting but I was here and taking care of them. She was amazing. She said she was very impressed with how I’d dealt with the situation and she’d offered to fly the girls back but they said no they were having ball and did not want to leave. When I got off the phone I felt like I could breathe again and finally get some much needed sleep. 

How you know it's all worth it in the end........no matter how shit you feel

One night before class a wee girl came running up to me and gave me this. Needless to say my heart just melted. 

The kids made these fish during out arts and crafts days last week.
The top one was made by a wee girl called Srey mom and the bottom by Leak (pronounced Leah).

Meeting so many children all the time it's hard to actually notice any but Srey mom caught my attention on day one. Cambodian children are not overly affectionate but she was in my face from day one. She came running up to me after we finished arts and crafts, gave me the fish and gave me this HUGE hug. Srey mom has a story to tell, probably not the easiest one to hear, I just wish she could speak enough English to tell me.  

The highs, the lows and not much in between

I’ve quickly learnt that Asia and volunteering involves a lot of extreme highs and extreme lows, both of which can take place within minutes.

You’ll all be delighted to know, god knows I was, that we’ve sat down and put together a more comprehensive budget for the schools. The funding we are looking for is to cover the main teacher training school and 2 classrooms, which provide 200 children with an education, for 3 years. Now just to wait for the funder to agree to it. Exciting times!!

Another one of my jobs was to put together a more suitable orientation for the volunteers. We sat down a few weeks ago and I explained what volunteers needed to know and what they didn’t. I didn’t get the most detailed orientation and was kind of left to fend or myself. A few cultural difference and a few hours later we had a list of what to go over with volunteers. Everything from where the hospital is, to what to wear to school. It was an interesting conversation as the Cambodians do not want to say anything to anyone through fear of offending and I think people don’t want to offend the locals with something as simple as what they are wearing. Simple things that could create big issues if not addressed. Explaining what travel insurance is to someone that has never travelled outside of Cambodia was a challenging one!! The next week the orientation was put into practice.

2 new volunteers arrived this week to assist with the teaching training programme and to work as teaching assistants in the classrooms. Natasha and Beth are both 19 and from Swansea. They have taken to the role like a duck to water. I’m so impressed with them and the way they have taken everything in their stride. They have listened, soaked up the culture, even trying crickets and snails at the local market, and most of all have provided really good feedback and have just got stuck in.   They are here for 3 weeks and I can easily say I will miss them and the kids and teachers will miss them when it’s time for them to leave.

When I first came here I was discussing birthdays with the teachers and they said that they didn’t celebrate them. I thought, well we have an English class not just for language skills but to also learn about the culture so told them I would bring in cake on their birthday.

This week 2 of the teachers had a birthday so I decided that if we were going to celebrate their birthdays we needed to do it properly. So me, Natasha and Beth went around town looking for party hats, balloons, cake and candles. Not the easiest things to find in a country that does not celebrate birthdays!! But we pulled it off and managed to coincide the birthday party with a day that a volunteer from Australia was coming to do arts and crafts with the kids, so everyone could get involved.

I managed to hide the birthday cakes from the teachers, get through a 2 hour arts and crafts lesson and get everyone together with them having no knowledge of what was happening. When the cakes were pulled out the look on Pok and Phallas faces was worth every penny. They had never had a birthday party before and of course never tried cake, let alone their very own birthday cake. We had to explain that they needed to blow out the candles, whilst not spitting on the cake. Pok was not overly keen on cutting the cake as he didn’t want to ruin it. Cake over and done with and all the kids were given a balloon to take home. Seeing them all ride home on their bikes with balloons hanging from them was quite sweet. These kids don’t need fancy toys. A balloon, some coloured paper and they are happy for hours, if not days. Days like this make it all worthwhile and I’m reminded what the project is all about.

You can see the pics on the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/set=a.237989249552343.65371.100000238085236&l=0ac7505280

And now for the lows………………..I’m pretty sure I can safely say I’ve never been so sick in my life. I was all prepared for this when I left the UK. I took as much medication as I could possibly get my hands on for any type of illness that would be thrown at me but this one has totally wrecked my body. So far I’ve been ill with something or another since I landed.

Last weekend I got what appeared to be food poisoning. One of the other girls at the guesthouse I live at got it too so I didn’t really think too much of it. Hers passed in a day so I thought this was nothing I hadn’t done before and it would be over and done with soon. A week later and it’s still not passed. I’ve had a really rough week. I’ve taken everything I could, eaten 3 meals a day but continued to get sicker and lose more weight. An effective way to shed the extra weight, just not the most comfortable!! Thank god for a sense on humour and having no boundaries about what you can talk about amongst friends!!

Saturday morning it all got a lot worse. I’d spent the past 6 hours on my bathroom floor not being able to move (it’s my blog but I’ll spare you the details). I knew I needed to go to hospital but being on your own is a little hard in these situations. I could either ask people I don’t know that well to help or I could do it alone. 

New lesson – Asking for help and not always being so independent and doing it alone!!  

(We all know I needed to learn that lesson)

So I sat on the floor just outside my bathroom, opened my door and waited for someone to come out of their room so I could call out to them. My neighbour Cathy came out, I’m not sure she knew what hit her when she saw me. Within about an hour I had new antibiotics in my hand (can’t swallow pills – a western disease apparently), a Popsicle and Inga, a nurse who is also a volunteer here, taking me to the hospital. It all went very fast until we went to get the tuktuk. Tuktuks are like busses and taxis. There are 100s there when you don’t need one but when you do, they are nowhere to be seen.  About an hour later I was in the hospital with drips coming out my arms, a nurse speaking to me in broken English and me struggling to understand what was happening. I spent the next 3 hours being pumped with anything and everything and being comforted by nurse Inga. Not feeling overly better but at the end of my course of treatments I was discharged and given a $200 medical bill for 3 hours work. May not sound like a lot but this is Cambodia, $200 can keep a family going for 4 months!!

My body is very weak at the moment and the decision over the next few days will have to be, can my body actually recover and can I stay in the tropics. It’s going to be a very hard decision to make but I may have to leave it all behind and return to London or go onto New Zealand for more medical treatment. 

East meets West in the office

Most of you reading this will have worked with me at some point or will be family and will know that I’ve been desperate for a challenge workwise since I was 19. The pattern so far has been, I get bored and become destructive. No doubt, I need to be kept on my toes. Well I’m not sure why anyone didn’t ship me off to Cambodia ages ago cos there is sure challenge here!!

It’s been an interesting 2 weeks workwise to say the least.

On my second day I started teaching the teachers English. I was given a book and the responsibility was dumped on me from then on. No explanation. Nothing. The head of our partner charity I’m working for disappeared for days with no contact.  I wasn’t 100% sure if this was a sign of things to come or what.

First contact was late Friday, a week later, when he called me and asked if I could attend a meeting on Saturday (Cambodians work 6 day weeks with Sunday being the only day off) with a guy who runs another charity. I had no idea what the meeting was about except for that this guy wanted to meet me.  So I agreed, thinking, what’s the harm in it.

I arrived at this meeting and this guy is your typical New Yorker (Chuck I know you’ll know what I mean). Really loud, really brash, spoke about things I would consider a little more confidential really loudly in the middle of a café and was generally very forceful. At first I was a little put off by him but after a while I got a little used to his way of communicating.

He’d provided the charity with some volunteers the week before and wanted to give some feedback about the schools, the teachers etc. The feedback was great, for me especially, given that the project has a few isues that need to be ironed out and I’m not sure how many people provide feedback of what a westerner would expect to see on a project. This helped my cause a lot!! This guy has been here for 16 year and does know his stuff, how things work here and has set up and run 6 very successful schools throughout Cambodia, 4 of which are now self sustainable.

The feedback this guy gave was that the level of English for the teachers needed to improve, especially their conversational English, the curriculum needed to be re-addressed to make it more relevant to Cambodian life and he wanted breakdowns of the budgets for each school (these desperately need to be revised as corners have been cut everywhere possible which makes thing very tight) and the short, medium and long term goals need to be addressed for the teachers, students, schools and charity. If we can have this done within 10 days he can guarantee funding for 2 of the schools for 3 years! So, everything I was meant to be doing in 6mths was suddenly condensed into 10 days. Oh crap!!

So thinking we would get to work the following day I arranged for us to meet the next morning to discuss what we needed to do to prepare (10 days to me means 10 days!). Next day got myself all prepared for this meeting, thinking it was quite an important one and waited and waited and waited for him to arrive. I finally get a call that evening saying I’m sorry I was busy can you do tomorrow? So I said yes that’s fine but call me in the morning to arrange a time. No phone call all day!! I was prepared for Asia time but this is a joke!  Accepting Asia time and not flying off the handle in a full on Leah rage is a difficult balance to find.

I thought a lot about how to approach this and I let the week pass as normal (well normal for 2 weeks here). I could sort this and provide the guy with what he needs but at the end of the day I’m not here to sort shit out. I’m here to assist and to teach others how to sort shit out.  So I have to step back, let go of my desire to control and sort shit out and be here to assist, advise and teach. If they are not stressing about it then I need not stress about it. If there is any stressing due to time constraints then some shit might go down!!

A week later and I’m sitting in another meeting and suddenly the guy I’m working with turns to me and says, “So in the budget we need to include………….” OH MY GOD. BREAKTHROUGH!! I couldn’t believe it. I’d left it alone, he’d thought about it and we were on not just the right track but the same track. So he says “when are you free to meet this week to get things ready?” I got a little less excited this time round as I’ve learnt my lesson (smart cookie).

So lets see what this week has in store………….  

Week 2 - Have I really got the hang of this place yet?

Week two almost complete and I can safely say I never knew you could feel and see so much happiness, sadness, joy and misery all at the same time. This week has been really hard emotionally. I’ve felt really vulnerable. I’ve had my first, second, third and forth lot of tears, often at the oddest times as well. I’ve had days where I love Cambodia and my job and days where I’ve had ‘WTF it’s not worth it’ moments. This week I’ve lived off arnica, rescue remedy and the medical kit my aunty Judith sent me before I left (massive thanks Judith).

As usual though, I’ve found that a wee bit (sometimes a hell of a lot) of good old kiwi banter seems to get me through most situations. Laughter really is the best medicine for keeping yourself sane.

I knew life here would be different, challenging and sometimes just downright shit but knew that the good would go with the bad and there was no use in over analysing, preparing for how it would be or how I could react to certain situations before I came. Everyone asked me if I was excited before I left and really, I wasn’t all that much. I’m not even sure I’ve been overly excited since I’ve been here. Don’t get me wrong, I have this amazing opportunity that I will forever remember but I’m not here as a tourist. I can safely say that I am seeing a different Cambodia to what the tourists see. I don’t get to see and do all the fun stuff all the time. I get the everyday life. The highs, the lows and every other thing in between. Sometimes all within the space of 10mins. 

Working in a community with people that are ex Khmer Rouge is strange. Knowing that people I come into contact with everyday could have potentially been murderers but watching them be gentle grandmothers and grandfathers with their children is well, strange. Given that the Cambodian Prime Minister is ex Khmer Rouge does not surprise me. There seems to be acceptance one day of their past and mass denial the next.   One day Pol Pot is God and the next the Devil. I haven’t yet decided if I think this is cos they actually believe this and their views change or if the sudden denial is out of fear. There seems to be a lot of ‘looking behind their shoulder’ when talking about the past. Modern history is not being taught at school here as no one can decide what happened. Some say the Vietnamese are to blame for everything, some say Pol Pot and some deny anything happened at all, despite the fact someone is making money out of the killing fields and many museums around the country. It’s frustrating, but mainly sad that I know more about their history than most of the people I meet on a daily basis.  

There seems to be this wasted generation here. Men and women in their 30s and 40s are generally shit parents. Fair enough given that they would have either lost their parents or their parental authority was taken away. They didn’t have any role models but you seem to see the very old grandparents raising all the children instead of the parents. The women are very strong, amazing workers and I’m pretty sure, run this country but what they expect and accept of their husbands is a whole other world to me. The men…….well……….lazy, cheating, drunks. I’m not male bashing.  There is a whorehouse right outside my place. I can see it with my own eyes. I’m pretty sure the money in the family is spent in the following order:

1.  Alcohol
2.  Hookers
3.  Food for the family 

I don’t really find the poverty all the concerning. What it makes people do, on both sides – that’s the concerning part. It’s when a figure is put on a human life that you can see how desperate people really are. US$70 for a child, US$10 for a shag – child or adult. You choose.

Some days, all I can say is, this is a bizarre place.

Cambodia seems to want to develop and can see the advantages but as most post war countries go, $$$ seems to talk, way before human rights are taken into account.  

There are “safe “ centres for children all over the place. Child abuse and trafficking is obviously a very important issue to the Cambodian community and full credit to them cos they are working very hard to protect the children and show the children and their families a life outside of the sex industry. It’s a shame that the government doesn’t seem to support that view in practice. Cambodia is one of the easiest countries I’ve ever gotten into. There are no criminal checks or declarations at all so they can, and seem to, let in everyone. There are some shifty buggers around the place!! Front page news the other days was about a guy that had abused 17 different children in Cambodia and his sentence was being reduced by 6mths and then he would then not be deported but let back out in the community here.

I’m pretty sure I could make a bucket load off a bumper sticker that says 

“ Asia – where every white man feels like a stud”

I couldn’t help but notice that there were so many Koreans in Siem Reap. Not just tourists but shop owners, restaurant owners etc. Siem Reap is a nice city, by 3^rd world standards, but I just couldn’t understand what the draw was for them so I started asking a lot of questions. Cambodia has relaxed the visa requirements for Koreans to come here and set up businesses and buy land. There is quite a bit of resentment towards the Koreans and the land grabbing that’s going on. There is this huge Korean building that I drive past everyday to get to work. I started asking questions about it as it’s not in keeping with the environment it’s been built in and was informed that a community of approx. 800 families were forced to sell their land at a stupid figure to allow the Koreans to build there. Like most things in Cambodia, there is often no appeal process. I’m not anti development at all. I wouldn’t do my job if I was.  But if Cambodia wants to play with the big boys then development is their way forward and will bring in the big bucks. But there seems to be, as usual, little forward planning of what this place will be like in 20 years time, who theses decision impact upon short and long term, remembering what human rights are and apart from money, what is the country and the wider community going to gain from this development. 

I can’t help but wonder, with the second Khmer Rouge (case 002) trial taking place at the moment, if they will be able to allow justice to be done, if anyone’s human rights will be taken into account and if corruption can take a back seat for a while.