'Tis the Season (for Dengue)

VSO Programme Office, Phnom Penh.

My toes ache so much that I’ve considered trapping them in the door just to change the feeling in them. Yesterday it was my heel that was causing all the pain and the day before my forearm. I expect that tomorrow it will be my little finger or some other equally trivial part of my body which I usually never give a second thought too until this “Break Bone Fever”, otherwise known as the Dengue fever virus, decides to manifest itself there.

Anyone who saw me at 6am last Thursday would be forgiven for thinking that I had just crawled in from an extremely heavy night in Heart of Darkness and the other watering-pits of PP. Clutching my head, bouncing off walls on the way to the bathroom, each time uttering progressively worse expletives, and eyes so bloodshot Frankenstein’s Monster would have run scared – it must have looked like the worst hangover in history. The truth is that for once I’d been tucked up at 7pm after taking antibiotics and hoping to be back at work the next morning. Now, having been confirmed to have dengue, it looks like I’ll be off for at least two weeks.

Caused by a virus carried by the Aedes mosquito, prevalent in both urban and rural environments during the day, there’s not much you can do to prevent dengue except for walk around in a giant mosquito net every second of the day. Being a little too fashion-conscious for that, I’ve chosen to stick to just wearing DEET mosquito spray but unfortunately this hasn’t been enough. Now, I’m just one in a long line of volunteers who’s been on virtual house arrest in the Programme Office during these months of “Dengue Season” whilst I rest and wait to feel better.

While I feel ill and that’s obviously never pleasant, the timing is also particularly bad. I’ve only done 3 day in my office at work and really just want to get stuck in. The real reason for me coming out to Cambodia to start with seems to be getting further from my reach with each passing day. I know I have to be patient and I’ve been told by so many serving volunteers “don’t stress – work’s never as exciting as it sounds when you have to do it” but still, I’m getting frustrated. At least my colleagues in Mlup Baitong are all sympathetic. Most of them have had krun chiam – blood disease – before so know that I’m not just being a pathetic foreigner and I really do need to rest. Even though I sound miserable, I really am in the best pace to be ill. There are people in and out of the PO most of the time so word has spread quickly that I’m ill and in between the DVDs and the Disney Channel I’ve been having phone calls and messages to keep me entertained. In fact, within half an hour of coming back from the doctors with my results, I had texts from volunteers in 4 different provinces wishing me a speedy recovery (if you ever need a message taken from one end of Cambodia to the other, VSO vols are by far the fastest way to do it – we should start our own communications service). So, having already had two visitors today, Richard and Alan, I’m worn out from socialising and plan to go back to bed for another few hours.

Home Sweet Dusty Home

Village 5, Treng Treung Commune, Kampong Speu.

My aircraft hanger of a house (second gate on left in picture) is starting to feel and look more like home. The front room is still bare except for the two rucksacks I haven’t unpacked, my bike and the huge heavy bench and chairs which sit at the edge of the room. I keep meaning to move them into a circle rather than a straight line so it at least looks like maybe people will socialise around them but the space is proving useful for me skipping and Becca, the German volunteer at Mlup Baitong, to work out in. I suspect the front room will remain a garage/gym for the rest of the year. It’s far too dusty from all the trucks outside to be pleasant and it’s difficult to stay away from prying eyes in that room even when the 8’ tall double glass doors are shut.

Instead, I’m spending a lot of time in my tiny kitchen at the back which feels like mire with all the ‘luxury’ items like pasta, sesame oil and, of course, peanut butter* from Pencil market in Phnom Penh. I’ve got a 2 ring gas stove to cook on although one hob doesn’t work unless you poke it with a knife first. I’m not sure what this does to it that makes it work but it seems to be the magic trick so I’ll carry on doing it. I’ve also got a charcoal-burning pot in my back yard but I haven’t had time to find where I can buy charcoal yet. At the moment it’s just decoration which makes my home look more typically “Cambodian”, along with the reed sweeping brush, string hammock and multitude of plastic plates, sieves, draining trays and boxes specially designed to keep ants out of cans of condensed milk. I never knew how much every kitchen needs these “bits of tat” as I’ve previously dismissed them until I was trying to balance dirty vegetables, soaped vegetables, rinsed vegetables and a bowl of pasta on 6 inches of work surface in front of my toothbrush and wash bag (the kitchen sink is the only one in a house with 2 bathrooms which is actually connected to a water source). Nevertheless, I still fail to see how every third person in the market can make their living from selling these life-saving-bits-of-plastic-tat.

My bedroom is also starting to take shape out of the grubby mess. I have a huge desk/dressing table and a big double bed neatly enclosed with the VSO standard issue mosquito net and a fan (in the same sun-faded blue as all the plastic-kitchen-tat). There’s no chair for the desk or anywhere to put my clothes so I’m still living out of a rucksack but hopefully that’ll get sorted soon.

So, that’s my house. There’s also another 2 bedrooms but they’re so full of dirt that I can’t even bear to open the doors at the moment but don’t that put you off visiting. The door of house 2, Village 5, Treng Treyung Commune, Kampong Speu is always only 3 hefty padlocks away from being your home away from home in Cambodia.

* You do not know the use peanut butter has in a multitude of recipes until you’ve been stuck in the Mekong Hotel for 6 weeks.

Forty Barangs on a Boat – “Go Go VSO!”

VSO PO, PP (there's never too many acronyms in Cambodia)

Piling into a cattle truck in our luminous pink t-shirts and spotless white caps the VSO boat-race team, all 40 of us, looked more like a gaggle of overgrown nursery-school kids being on a day trip than serious contenders in Cambodia’s most prestigious sporting event – the Phnom Penh Boat Race. Years ago the annual race down the Mekong was held to identify the strongest and bravest Khmers who would serve as the king’s personal guards. Today, the prize at the end of three days of racing is monetary rather than a job promotion but the prestige remains the same. Provincial teams qualify throughout the year in a series of trails and Phnom Penh teams are given places based on previous years’ merits, ability to pay and the closeness of their relation through marriage to those in power. Unsurprisingly, Hun Sen’s cronies had two boats in the race. Then there was us. And the Army boat. And the Navy boat.

Luckily, we weren’t actually pitted against the Cambodian Navy but against Kandal Province, who, kitted out in their professional looking red and blue uniforms only served to make our bright pink affairs even more laughable. One benefit did come from them however; it made our impending failure seem less great as it was made clear from one glance at us that we were not in this with any expectations of serious sporting prowess. They must have jumped for joy at being drawn against the only Barang boat in the competition. It was effectively a free ticket into the next round.

After being pretty much towed up the river by our opponents and setting off back downstream, they were ahead of us by half a boat length after just a few strokes. Finally, we reached the end of the course (although missed passing between the actual finishing flags having veered off course sometime before) and had an official position of 3rd out of 2 boats due to our being overtaken by the winning boat of the race behind us. Nevertheless, this is a considerable improvement on last year’s 7th out of 2 boats so it’s a considerable achievement in my eyes!

Even if our race was a debarcle, the atmosphere whilst we were squeezed in the boat rafted up between some of the best rowers in Cambodia exchanging pleasantries, jibes and dodging flying bottles of drinking water which I think were thrown in generosity, is not something I will forget soon. Yet again, I feel privileged, if slightly uneasy about it, that I have experienced something that even most Khmers won’t get to take part in.

One Barang Off Her Bike

In-Country-Training is almost at an end and VSO (in it’s questionable wisdom) has decided that to practice our Khmer we should to stay with Cambodian families in homestays for 24 hours. The “objective” of this is to “learn about the Khmer way of life and build relationships with Khmer people” (because we’re not doing that by living here for one or two years anyway..?) Although I feel quite confident in Khmer class and probably struggle less than some people with the concepts, my language ability is by no means good enough to be dumped in a bamboo house and make polite conversation with an 89 year old and a 60 year old all day. I’d much rather talk to the nice beer-lady in an evening, the hotel receptionists and cleaners or the sewing-ladies in the market who I keep having to ask to mend, shorten or lengthen various pieces of clothing – there’s no shortage of people to practice Khmer with.

So, anticipating that following the introductory “my name’s Hollie. I come from England. I speak Khmer tick-tick (a little bit)” would be followed by many hours of smiling and nodding to incomprehensible questions before realizing I’d just said “yes, I’d like a plate of fried spiders please” (it’s very possible that could happen), I agreed to be shipped off with my mosquito coils and night potty.

As it turned out, the woman who myself and another volunteer, Nono, ended up staying didn’t even understand my well-practiced “my name’s Hollie. I come from England. I speak Khmer tick-tick”. In return, we didn’t understand a word she said to us either and we might as well have been speaking Chinese for all the good it did when we asked her to speak slowly. Consequently, the awkward silences started even sooner than I expected. Nevertheless, we were determined that we’d learn something from the trip so managed to sign our way through a cookery lesson in which we learnt the correct way of preparing water-lily stalks and how to cut carrots into flower shapes - skills that are apparently going to be very useful when looking for a Cambodian husband. The afternoon was spent playing a kind of group keepy-uppy with a shuttlecock with some local teenagers. Thanks to Nono’s basketball chat and the few words like “winner”, “loser” and “miss” that I learnt playing volleyball in Treng Treyung it did end up with it being quite a lot more competitive than it would otherwise have been. I never knew batting a piece of plastic back and forth could be so addictively entertaining!

Traditional wooden Khmer houses are built on stilts and are more-or-less open plan upstairs. The floors are made of thin strips of bamboo with quite wide gaps between them and the eves are open. The overall impression is of a big wooden tent and essentially, you’re sleeping outside but just surrounded by a few walls which provide privacy from prying eyes but not from prying ears! You can hear everything that goes on in the village and when sleeping on a rattan mat on the floor everything seems to be amplified several times over. In general, going to sleep with the sound of crickets and frogs is a it’s a pleasant way to go to sleep. Unfortunately, if you’re not used to it, it’s difficult to get more than a few hours kip in one go. Not great if you have to do motorbike training the next day like we did.

So, once back in Kampong Cham town, off we set this morning on our motorbikes to the old air strip to practice our off road riding (this tells you a lot about the state of the air-strip!). Before coming to Cambodia I’d only ever ridden a scooter for a couple of hours but I’m enjoying riding the motorbikes here a lot. They’re semi-automatic so even though you have to change gears, there’s no clutch control. So, once we’d got our confidence at riding around the massive pot-holes and through the smaller ones, a few of us set off “da-leing”, to explore. However, me being both a bit clumsy and a bit of a girl-racer (never a good mix) it wasn’t long before I’d realized I was going too fast down a hill, tried to change down a gear but ended up knocking down the stand instead, tried to put up the stand again and so didn’t see the pothole in front of me and ended up in a heap on the floor. Luckily, I know how clumsy I can be and have bought myself a canvas jacket and some thin gloves for motorbike riding so the only injuries I have are a couple of grazes and a bit of a headache. That’ll teach me not to be so confident from now on!

A 1am whinge and the novelties on Cambodia are wearing thin.

1am, hallway of Sontakia Mekong, K. Cham.

What really takes all my effort here is just day-to-day living. Work and lessons are tiring but day-to-day living is exhausting. Firstly, communication is a problem; that’s a given and not worth my dwindling energy to explain. Secondly, everything you do is watched by not only the other 20 volunteers in our group who are currently holed up in the Mekong Hotel but also by every Khmer person in Kampong Cham. Unfortunately being a Barang here seems to make you public property in the same way that appearing on a reality TV show makes you public property at home. If you meet any Khmer person in K. Cham who speaks English they’ve already spoken to half of the rest of the group and will tell you the gossip about the other volunteers that you’ve miraculously missed out on (if that’s possible). If you don’t pick up on the gossip in the market place or on the river front, it’ll come out as a topic of a translation sentence in Khmer class. Trying to keep anything off the gossip hit-list gets tiring.

Thirdly, searching for the few things you need on a day-to-day basis is ten times harder than at home. For manufactured goods, medicines or even seeing a doctor you’ll have to go to Phnom Penh even though K. Cham is supposedly the forth largest town in Cambodia. Then, getting back from PP is a problem because even though K. Cham is only 3 hours away, buses are likely to be booked up or you can sit in a taxi and wait another 2 hours for it to fill up before it’ll set off. Not to mention that all this has to be done on a VERY tight volunteer allowance which doesn’t stretch if anything happens to go wrong which needs extra expenditure (like fish-juice being spilt all over your bags in the bus meaning you have to spend $20 on new bags because the other ones won’t come clean and are making EVERYTHING you own smell of rotting fish).

Although I’ve traveled to and worked in developing countries before, I’ve never been anywhere which is quite so removed from the big chain corporations as Cambodia is. Even in Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Americas, there were a couple of shopping malls in the capital and you could get pretty much anything you wanted if you were willing to pay the right price. In Cambodia, that luxury just doesn’t exist. Many things you can’t get no matter how much you’re willing to pay. The only way to get decent quality clothes is to hunt in the markets for seconds from the Gap, Next and H&M factories and most other commercial goods are imported and can be found randomly in markets or in back-street shops that you were never expecting to find. This is fine when you’re just browsing but if there’s something you want in particular it can be very frustrating. In a country so closely, and often mistakenly, associated with Thailand where Tescos, Boots and a new Marks and Spencers outlet have recently opened, this comes as somewhat of a shock.

I’m whining, I know. But it’s 1am and I can’t sleep so these things need writing down.

Home Sweet Home

Treng Treyung commune, Kompong Speu province.

“We’re here”
“Where?”
“Here”
“Where’s here?”
“Treng Treyung”
“Really? Oh.”

It would be very easy to drive right through the small cluster of houses flanked by a scruffy, smelly food market without even realising that you’d been there. There is no village centre, just the National Highway 4 (NH4) which is the Cambodian equivalent of the UK’s M1. It ships tonnes of goods every day from the port of Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh and even at 3am causes the houses on either side of it to rattle. This is where I’ll be living for the next year, just yards away from the Cambodian M1 and opposite the wooden shack which serves as the office for Mlup Baitong, one of the larger environmental NGOs in Cambodia.

I never had high hopes for a rocking nightlife in the village I’d be moving to but I did hope for a little more than this. Maybe a bakery and a pharmacy. Even an internet café. But no. There’s nothing. When I told the YfD team that I could cope with being on my own so long as I could get to civilisation, I never thought they’d really take me at my word on that one. I hardly even need to explore to know that there’s nothing here and for the first time since I’ve been in Cambodia, my heart is sinking to the pit of my stomach. It takes all my energy to smile faintly and mutter “Great. That’s not too far from Phnom Penh really is it?”

Having said all this, the villages where I’ll be working are nestled in idyllic mountains and seem to have some of the strongest community programmes I’ve seen. The Mlup Baitong staff are obviously well known and respected for supporting the attempts of villagers to bring themselves out of the poverty they’ve been left in since the Khmer Rouge. The villages in Kampong Speu are mainly remnants of the forced labour settlements which were created in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge when the citizens of Phnom Penh were marched out of their homes at only a few hours notice. Those living in the north of Phnom Penh were sent along the quickest route out of the city towards Battambong, those in the east towards Mondulkiri, those in the south to Takeo and those in west of Phnom Penh were sent along NH4 to Kampong Speu, my province. I’ve been told that many of the farmers were, just 30 years ago, part of the urban elite of Phnom Penh but all their wealth was lost in the 4 year dictatorship and when they returned to their homes in PP after the Vietnamese seized control of Cambodia removing Pol Pot from power, other people had already moved into the former homes in PP. As all the legal documents which would prove ownership had been burnt by the Khmer Rouge, the only choice many people had was to find a small plot of land in the countryside and try to scrape enough food out of the ground to feed their family. The regression in Khmer society from a burgeoning Asian country to an agrarian wasteland is unbelievably difficult for me to comprehend. I doubt that even a year living in Treng Treyung is going to be enough for me to even half-comprehend even one village’s situation but it’s going to be an interesting journey all the same.

Bad Lady Barang, Bad!

I’m running late for a hot Skype date with my mum at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Phnom Penh so I’ve hailed a tuk-tuk with particularly swish leather seats (which turn out to be a mistake as I melt into them on a night like this). We’ve just done a U-turn because the main road is blocked and I’m getting rather a long tour of Phnom Penh by night. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I’m just sat here thinking how much I like this city already. Sure, I’m also in a tuk-tuk because I don’t feel 100% safe walking around in the dark with my laptop but then again, in how many cities in the world would a lone girl feel 100% safe doing that. Here, I feel about a 65%.

Monks are still pacing the street although minus the yellow umbrellas which, in the day-time, are as essential as their bright orange robes. Street vendors are cooking up a treat on their barbeques and as we drive up Sisowath Quay I do a double take as I spot a couple of people I know from university. Small world. I’m too shocked to shout-out for a second and by the time I do the tuk-tuk’s passed them. The traffic in this bit of town looked to be moving but we soon reach a police blockade which needs to be bypassed slowly.

The whole time I’ve had a scarf over my head because I’ve found it means you get fewer stares as it’s not as obvious that the 5’10” giant in the tuk-tuk isn’t Khmer (at least that’s my thinking – how much it actually works is debatable). But, as we’re going slower, the police man spots me and walks over to the crawling tuk-tuk walking alongside with his hand on the side just inches from mine. I move my hand and avoid his eyes. I’m thinking “Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit”. The police are known for handing out random fines or attempting to take you to the station for no reason other than being a Barang. It supplements their $50 a month income. As it turns out, all he wanted was a good stare at the Barang in a tuk-tuk but as he moves away after a curious “hello?” (see the last entry for my views on this sort of greeting) I think hmm, at least I could have sworn to myself in Khmer now even if I can’t say anything else. In fact, swear words seem to be the only things that are understood without having to be repeated.

"Kñom chong choy pro-chea-chon kmae"
It’s a mouthful and I’m not pretending I could say it any more successfully than the volunteer who declared at a meeting with the Ministry of Education that he “wants to f*** Khmer people”. What he meant to say was “I want to help Khmer people” - Kñom chong chooy pro-chea-chon kmae.

Choy and chooy are unfortunately too similar. More unfortunately, Dara, the infamous language teacher, had already told me and Claire this story before yesterday’s class so when Roger, star pupil and former French and Russian teacher, came out with exactly the same phrase I don’t blame Dara for breaking down into a pile of embarrassed giggles in the middle of the class. This probably wasn’t helped when he caught my eye and realised that yes, of course I remembered how to say “f***” in Khmer and had found Roger’s faux pas just as funny as Dara had.

Unfortunately, YfDs are not known for their conservatism and whilst discussing the incident later in the evening at pregnant-ice-box lady’s ice-box beer bar, the word was repeated several times more loudly than was intended (I won’t name the culprit for the sake of the YfD-manager’s mental health). The true power of this new word was shown by the speed at which pregnant-ice-box lady came running over to shout “Ot la-or! Srey ot la-or! Ot la-or!” (bad, bad lady Barang, bad!) Promising we wouldn’t use the word again and muttering a few apologetic som-toh, som-tohs, we skulked off to bed only to be found the next night at dinner asking Dara the correct pronunciation of yoni. He never told us but the giggling gave it away. And yes, it does mean the same as in Sanskrit and no, I won’t be shouting it loudly at the next police-man who approaches my tuk-tuk.

Six Soggy Barangs on Six Broken Bikes

P’chum Ben festival is like the Cambodian Christmas although all the ‘cultural-awareness’ that as a VSO volunteer I supposedly possess should prohibit me from making such sweeping and ignorant comments. Let me defend myself a little further.

P’chum Ben is a celebration of….

Well, no one’s quite been able to explain that to me yet. Every Cambodian who would be able to shed some light on the matter is too busy entertaining relatives who have travelled from around the country to stay with them (invited or not), cooking far too much food, realising that what’s not in the cupboard can’t be bought because every shop in Kampong Cham is shut for the holiday, complaining about the cost of hosting so many relatives and pulling the best clothes out of the back of the room to try and look nice for Granny* For this reason, P’chum Ben is like the Cambodian Christmas. Obviously, it actually has nothing to do with Christ, Christianity or Santa Claus. But, the stress levels seem to be very much the same.

Not being sufficiently integrated into Cambodian life yet, six barangs set off on their bikes on the 20km ride to Wat Hanuchey. Ok, this is exactly what Cambodians were doing too although usually on motorised and less labour-intensive versions of our bikes. But, we set off because, well, there’s nothing else to do in Kampong Cham and that’s as good a reason as any to give ourselves numb bums and aching calf muscles.

Every other time I’ve visited wats I’ve been welcomed in and handed plates of rice, invited to sit with Khmer families and felt completely at ease in the temples. Today, however, was another matter. Grumpy mothers shooed whinging children along the parades of monks while harassed fathers tried to keep the extended family together in the throngs of worshippers. Bear in mind, this is ‘grumpy’ and ‘harassed’ by Cambodian standards and Khmers really don’t display negative emotions so it’s still all pretty tame. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was very different.

Wat Hanuchey is set up on a mountain overlooking the Mekong in all its silted, swirling and ever-changing technicolour glory. It’s beautiful and well worth the climb up the hundred-and-odd steps (although why so many religions insist on building their places of worship at the top of bloody great big hills is beyond me and anyone who’s travelled in Latin America will have heard me make the same complaint about the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans too.) However, our spectacular view was abruptly cut off when the clouds moved in and curtains of rain herded us under tarpaulins to sit and watch the few remaining stragglers who hadn’t found a kneeling space in one of the drier buildings of the pagoda complex. As seems to be the pattern here, Khmers found it the most amusing sight they’d seen all day when six sunburnt barangs became six sunburnt, soggy barangs.

But what of the bicycles? “Six soggy barangs on six broken bicycles” is what I promised you. The six, at this point not-so-broken, bicycles were not-so-cleverly propped in one of the flood drains at the bottom of the hundred-and-odd stairs which had themselves turned into a waterfall. Like I said, not-so-clever.

“The whole place is washing away”
“I know. Even our bicycles will be gone by the time we get back!”
“Hehe … Where did we leave our bicycles again?”
“In that drain”
“… Bugger.”

Luckily, when we finally tried to retrieve our bicycles when we were so wet from the holes in the tarpaulin that it didn’t matter if we went out in the rain or not, they were all still more or less as we left them just with a bit of added storm-debris in the wheel-spokes. To top off our sighs of relief, the drinks-lady who’d been looking after them for us wouldn’t even accept any money for her troubles so we bought some usually-fairly-priced coca-cola off her instead. Sometimes you can’t even give away your money in Cambodia but more on that another time.

The ride back to Kompong Cham was even more pleasant than on the way there as the rain stopped the sun beating down on our backs and had cleared some of the traffic from the roads. Even so, the calls along the edge of the road of “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” “hello!” had not been scared off by the rain. From such a bike ride one could be tricked into thinking English is widely known in Cambodia as everyone from the toothy toddlers to the gummy grandmothers shout and wave at the bunch of hapless Barangs on their way past. However, as we soon discovered, the conversation ends with the very same word.

Khmer: “Hello!”
Barang: “Hello!”
Khmer: “Hello!”
Barang: “Sour s’dai! Sok s’bai dtey?” (‘hello, how’re you?’ in Khmer)
Khmer: … … … (look of confusion) “Hello!”
Barang: “Hello.” (look of disappointment at the rejection of their Khmer language skills.)

As it turns out, ‘hello’ is the extent of most people’s English but, to be fair, ‘sour s’dai’ is about the extent of my Khmer at the moment, especially when trying cycle on a bike with non-functional brakes (they don’t work in the rain) and a saddle that won’t stay in place (that doesn’t work even in the dry) all the while making sure you pay enough attention to the road to avoid the Khmer chavs who spend so much time staring that they forget to look where they’re going. Just another bike ride in Cambodia.

* Except that not many ‘Grannies’ are to be found in Cambodia. So many people were killed during the Khmer Rouge regime that it’s rare to chance upon those over the age of about 50. Those who did survive were often so malnourished or ill from the atrocious conditions they were forced to live in that they have not survived the thirty years since the Khmer Rouge ended. Over half of Cambodia’s population is under the age of 21.

Water-Breast-Cow (in Roger’s Car) (With Dara)

Khmer lessons are currently our raison d’etre in K. Cham. They dictate the time we get up in the morning (6.30am for some, or significantly later for those with afternoon classes), they keep us busy for 4 hours in the day, restrict how far we can wander and still be back in time to do the homework, fill our daily conversations and even nightly dreams with lists of incomprehensible and half-remembered words, and, most noticeably, dictate the number of cans of 75cent Angkor beer which are enjoyed by the river after dinner.

The importance of the latter is not to be underestimated as the 15 or so volunteers who regularly frequent one lady’s make-shift bar (an ice box surrounded by plastic chairs and tables) are probably trebling, if not quadrupling, her monthly income. Volunteers – we’re just always thinking about ‘the community’.

Beer-economics is a delicate point and dependent on 2 variables:
1) How well or badly today’s class went.
2) How difficult tomorrow’s is likely to be.
I.e. if today’s class has gone particularly well, concerns about tomorrow’s are likely to be less and more beer is drunk. If today’s class has been difficult but just about manageable, less beer will be drunk because more studying will be done with the hope that tomorrow’s brain-pain can be lessened. If, however, today’s class has been truly horrific, plenty of light relief is needed to recover and the amount of beer drunk rises sharply again regardless of how much worse this will make tomorrow’s class. Like I said, it’s a finely balanced science.

To suggest that anyone in the group finds Khmer easy would be ridiculous. Both vowel and consonant sounds require oral acrobatics (no jokes please) that most English-speaking tongues need years to master. Therefore, to expect us to be able to explain concepts such as vegetarianism after just 6 lessons when vegetarianism isn’t even understood in Cambodia even when explained by a native Khmer speaker, is rather ambitious (and yes, I’m looking at you with your unrealistic expectations Veary!).

There are, however, a few saving graces of Khmer which give me some reassurance that reaching a conversational level is possible. Firstly, tenses are quite loose and the future and past are often referred to simply by clarifying the time about which you’re speaking. For example, ‘yesterday, I go to Phnom Penh’. Secondly, it is generally a logical language. For example, ‘milk’ is ‘teuk-doh-ko’ or ‘water-breast-cow’. Makes sense really doesn’t it? So, in similar logical fashion, ‘morning’ is preuk so ‘tomorrow morning’ is preuk sa-ike (morning-tomorrow) and breakfast is ahaa-pail-preuk (meal-time-morning).

So, in class, anticipating the sentence I’ll next be asked to translate, I sit waiting and practicing the tongue-twister in my head (e.g. rol-preuk, neu-pail-preuk, kñom ñam ahaa-pail-preuk neu p’teh pon-tai pii-preuk-min kñom ñam ahaa-pail-preuk neu po-chaa-nee-ya-taan – throw in a few more preuks for extra-measure because Cambodians like repeating their words). After so much mental practice, I could, at least by how it sounds in my head, convince even King Sihanouk himself that I’m really an over-grown Khmer who’s just used too much skin-whitening lotion. However, unsurprisingly since I’m nothing but a Yorkshire girl with not a hint of a knack for languages, the stuttering, babbling jumble of words that fall out of mouth when I’m finally stared down by our teacher, Dara, doesn’t even resemble the shadow of what it was meant to be.

Nevertheless, after stumbling over every word, there’s a small feeling of relief a few syllables from the end of the phrase. Unfortunately, Dara all too often jumps in at this point to make the sentence longer with a completely unrelated “in Roger’s car going to the VSO office in Phnom Penh on street 214 near the hospital.” Another few desperate-sounding approximations of Khmer words later and you hear added “With Dara.” Always, always “with Dara”. And probably his bloody “song-saa” too.

Road-kill and cats

Besides the constant worry that what you’re being told is chicken is actually cat, rat or unknown road-kill, I love Khmer food. It’s full of flavour, spicy, light and usually reasonably healthy (provided said road-kill hasn’t been deep fried). But I’m craving chocolate and coffee like you wouldn’t believe. There is actually quite good coffee here but it’s both expensive, too hot in this weather and the only milk that seems to be available in the whole country is either UHT or condensed milk. Visitors be forewarned – under no circumstances do you want to ask for milk in your tea. You’ll be served with a sticky, muddy coloured goo which resembles what I imagine the road-kill/cat would look like if it was boiled for several hours.

Nevertheless, I had a particularly good lunch today of barbequed fish, fresh bread, bananas and dragon fruit bought from the market which cost me a little under $1. Still, I'd consider troughing one of the boiled eggs with the foetus still inside in return for some chocolate at the moment.

Then again, maybe I'm not that desperate yet...

Barangs on Tour

I’ve finally cooled down after a reasonably long bike ride to Phnom Proh this morning. ‘Barangs on Tour’ (barang meaning foreigner/long nose) set off around 8 am attracting a lot of attention and laughs from Khmers who don’t understand why white people are cycling off along the main road to Phnom Penh when they could most likely afford a motorbike. Nevertheless, everyone greeted us warmly and children can’t resist waving and shouting hello. Riding a bike here is also far less daunting than in Phnom Penh. The roads have a little more space on them and while motorbikes and lorries still rush past at a startling speed, it’s more relaxed.

Phnom Proh is beautiful. It’s several centuries old and although it’s smaller than Wat Nakor which I visited a few days ago, the architecture is more elaborate and the paintings more refined. Although, my impressions are undoubtedly tainted by the bustling community atmosphere at Phnom Proh this week during the lead up to the water festival, P’chum Benh which is held at the end of September.

Most people in the temple are dressed in traditional clothes, their ‘Sunday Best’ I presume and several women were keen to press bowls of rice into our hands so we could join in the ceremony. This involved spooning some of the rice into each of 13 larger pots on your way out of the temple (although you then have to sneak back in to go out of the door you first came in at in order to retrieve discarded shoes).

The significance of the rice-sharing was entirely lost on a bunch of uneducated and naïve Barangs although when I find out I’ll pass the message on. Nevertheless, the amusement it gave Khmers to see us join in was undeniable and it even gave some of the younger generation cause to reach for their mobile phones to take pictures of us on, a paradox I’m not used to.

Peanut butter in Kampong Cham

Sour s’dai. Kñom rien kmae.

Hi. I’m learning Khmer. I had my first lesson this morning. I’m also eating peanut butter out of a jar with one finger as I type with the others because lunch has been a rather haphazard affair today. Let me explain.

We travelled from Phnom Penh (PP) to Kompong Cham yesterday, all piled into a bus which Jan and Keith had miraculously managed to book for us all in their first week using little more than a few Khmer words and many hand signals. VSO have sent us to this sleepy little town for our language training in order to remove the tempting nightlife of PP. Given the amount of beer which has been consumed over the past week, that was probably a wise idea.

K. Cham has little in the way of entertainment. Once an important port town on the Mekong River, it now survives on faded memories as the newly built bridge has usurped the need for goods to be brought to the province by boat. Thus, while the town has more or less some approximation of most things you could want (eg. no sun screen but countless skin whitening moisturisers, an unreliable bus service but enough motorbike shops to put Silverstone to shame), the nightlife is hardly ‘rocking’. In fact, the one establishment which would be most likely to call itself a bar has a cocktail menu but the staff don’t know which liquor or juice is which and only have half the ingredients. Queue barman James nipping behind the bar to help the lost looking Khmer woman to find the closest thing to what was on the menu. I’ll stick to beer in future. Peaceful bike rides in the sun followed by a trip to the market to check out the plethora of fish, fruit, vegetables, and ‘miscellaneous plants’ are the order of the day. VSO were probably right – there’s a lot more likelihood that we’ll actually get some work done here.

Anyway, as a result of us being in K. Cham, we’re being put up in the Mekong hotel. Usually, volunteers (Neak-Smak-Chet in Khmer) stay in a volunteer house owned or rented by VSO. However, as seems to be the case with a lot of VSO Cambodia, there’s a lack of funds and the house was given up. This means that we have to eat out for every meal, every day which adds up to being very expensive on a volunteer allowance (which has also been cut by $40 since last year). As we’re not in a house, there’s no fridge or anywhere to store food. Leaving it in your room only invites in ants and other creepy crawlies and since it’s a constant battle to avoid mosquito bites at the best of times, especially now in dengue season, I’m not keen to invite more six legged beasts into my room.

So, the best plan seems to have been to buy a jar of peanut butter for an extortionate $3.40 and just buy bread to go with it every day for lunch which works out at a much more reasonable price than even the roadside pit-stop rice sellers. However, today the heat had left me with no appetite and I didn’t bother to buy bread earlier. Hence, in a very roundabout way, I’m eating peanut butter out of the jar with one finger whilst typing with the others.

The Cambodiana, Phnom Penh

It turns out that the ‘rabbit hole’ is a hot, sticky, polluted, dusty place where rain can last all day in miserable and apologetic showers closely resembling the grey skies I though I’d left back in England. However, as with all ‘good’ weather (in the sense that it’s sufficiently variable to be the topic of English conversation) it’s now raining with all the ferocity of a true South East Asian thunderstorm. The Mekong river is in full flow at this time of year towards the end of the wet season and the swollen muddy waters are rushing past sweeping away trees like matchsticks.

Luckily, Maghan, Claire, Nono, Sarah and I have taken a break from playing the part of committed, hard working volunteers and we’re indulging ourselves on our last day of freedom before training begins properly. We’ve come to a four star hotel (five start being beyond the reach of Phnom Penh) to use the pool and enjoy the last throws of “being skanks” – ie. wearing very few clothes and worrying about where the tan lines are developing. Given that exposing your shoulders or knees is considered bad form in all the places we’ll be working, it’s best we get this last bit of western frivolity out of our systems now.

Thus far on the training we’ve had the security briefing in which we were told, word for word, “the police are the last people you want to go to if you get in trouble.” Notorious for their ability to extort money from anyone for anything, the police are not the people to ask directions from in Cambodia. Training also briefed us on how few rules VSO actually has about their volunteers’ safety. While this is not a bad reflection on VSO, it’s more a reflection of the trust they have in us to use our common sense. No one can stop us walking around Phnom Penh in the middle of the night through the most dangerous neighbourhoods and it would be over-protective of VSO to impose such restrictions. However, anyone who would think it’s a good idea to take such a stroll probably wouldn’t have made it on to VSO as a volunteer anyway since intelligence is valued here...

Nevertheless, the one strong warning we were given is that there are only 3 doctors in the whole of Cambodia which VSO would suggest we use if we’re ill. This means that for anything more than a minor sniffle, volunteers should make the journey to Phnom Penh or Siem Riep even if this means a 12 hours bus ride with dengue fever.

So, while I may be indulging in a little luxury now, I’m pretty certain the rough times are going to be just round the corner so don’t judge me too harshly for using the swimming pool just yet.

Somewhere 30,000 ft over Burma.

Stepping onto this plane felt like stepping into oblivion with a smile on my face, fully looking forward to plummeting to who knows where and God knows what.

The first time I went abroad on my own to an unknown country was Peru where I was too naïve to hold any expectations of the country or worry too much about being alone, a white, perceivably relatively wealthy, female in a developing country with no idea of the cultural norms or way of getting things done. In fact, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I didn’t even know until a month before I went that Spanish, a language I now love and frequently find myself expressing myself in, was the main tongue there. Naivety is maybe a little too kind; ignorance would be more accurate.

So, following that, my expectations of Ecuador were based on my previous Andean adventures and I was much more aware of the quandaries facing volunteers in Latin America. Later, my Nicaraguan expectations were based on tropical Amazonian experiences (although Ecuador proved a better cultural comparison) but at least I had a vague idea of what to expect and I had a good grasp of the language by then.

Now, on my way to Cambodia, I have nothing. I don’t know where I’ll be living - Kompong Speu may as well be none existent for all the information about it available on the internet and in guide books. My work is uncertain besides the title of ‘Ecotourism and Income Generation Advisor’. Neither do I have any idea about the culture – all my good intentions of learning about Buddhism went down the glass washer when I started doing 49 hour weeks at the Angel. Most worrying for me, I’m completely lost with the language. It might not be as bad if I at least had a dictionary or some way of translating but there’s nothing reliable available for those who don’t read Khmer script.

So, off I step into the utter unknown. ‘Oblivion’ is hyperbolic but where this journey will end or for how long I’ll fall before it starts to make sense is anyone’s guess. Maybe like Alice down the rabbit hole would be a better analogy.

Updated: On a more practical note, we just flew over a huge delta while I was writing this and I’m wondering if it was the mythical Ganges Delta of all those Year 9 geography lessons.