A final word and some pictures from PP

OK. So only another few days until the end of my assignment here at Meakea. I’ve been going through the records with a fine tooth comb and will write my report with recommendations for what I think they could do to improve the way in which their financial activities are organised. Most things are here, it’s just all a bit confusing. Or as they only own one filing cabinet, records don’t exist for much of the past and are slightly incomplete. Still with a bit of organisation things could be made to be a lot easier, and I think considering the language difference one of the people I am training has improved massively on Excel. Hopefully that’ll be remembered when I am gone. Because of the size of the organisation, they do not need to produce annual accounts for the authorities, so I guess that makes things more simple. And I’m always being asked how to do things differently and better. Hopefully I’ll get some of the answers right and things will continue to improve.

Here's my typical healthy breakfast, pork and rice. I do miss my cornflakes every now and then.

I’ve spent most of the last week or two in the central office in PP. It didn’t rain for about four or five days which made the temperature noticeably higher, but it has certainly made up for it on the rain front since. I got caught for the first time the other day, and even though I was in a tuk-tuk, I was soaked to the skin. As an aside, the market near to where I live contains loads of weird and wonderful things to see, eat and drink, and I’m slowly getting through some of them. I still haven’t got ‘round to the insects yet though. The fruit and veg. are probably the highlight, and dragon fruit, mangos, lychees and rambutans abound, as well as the usual bananas.

All this tastes as good as it looks. I've managed to cut out the traffic chaos. The driving has to be seen to be believed.

As you can imagine, it all tastes great and costs very little, even if you are paying a bit too much as I’m sure I am. Sadly you can’t get the smells from these pictures, but I manage to find something different everyday, even though I don’t know what most of it is.

I know what these are. They're fish!! For those of a nervous disposition, I haven't included any pictures of the 'meat section'. Let's just say as someone with an interest in Biology, they're pretty educational.....


Anyway, next week I am off to Battambang, Cambodia’s second city to start a new placement. This NGO is bigger than Meakea, and I guess more complicated. I’ll keep you posted. Later on though, I'll go here for my tea.

I've worked my way across the back two rows, and so far so good. I normally manage to establish whether it is 'pig', fish, chicken or 'cow' before I tuck in. Not bad for $1

Teaching in the countryside

So as I have an English teaching qualification (not particularly well used, but never mind), I said yes when I was asked to do some teaching at the school supported by Meakea, and Monday was the day. I did some planning, but that soon went out of the window as I eventually ended up teaching a group with a completely different standard of English to what I was told and became more and more curious as the class numbers grew further and further past what I expected. So the first class ended up being a question and answer session (Are you married? How do you pay to be here? What’s the difference between school here and England?) where the standard of English was surprisingly high.

Here I am imparting my pearls of wisdom. Surprisingly they listened very patiently. I don't think you can tell from this quite how much I am sweating, but my T-shirt shouldn't be as dark as this. It was very very humid!

After that were two more classes of even more kids, and then I noticed that some had different books from each other. So what had happened is that everyone wanted to be taught by a foreigner, and just came and sat in the class, so all of them were entirely of mixed abilities! It was all highly enjoyable, and although I am not sure how much anyone learned (the flat Northern vowels are confusing), they all asked when I would go back and really got stuck in with unbelievable enthusiasm. I also got to see what few resources the teachers and students have to work with and how it would really change how you would teach – no electricity and text books that have been recycled for years for example. It was a fantastic eye-opening experience.

There were 4 kids in here who decided that they wanted to learn English the day I got there. I hope I didn't put them off. It's difficult to describe quite how enthusiastic everyone was, but I guess it's seen as a way of getting on. I hope they're not disappointed.

After this I went out to look at some of the houses that are being built for poor families in the area. This poverty is of course relative, as no-one out there could be described as anything other than poor, but again it gives an insight into the homes that the kids at the school come from. A big problem is keeping the kids in the school as it places a big burden on the families who want them to either help in the fields or work in the factories in the city. A number of them drop out every year because of this. And the position people find themselves in certainly isn’t lost on them. When I asked one student what he knew about England, he said all he knew was he would never be able to visit. There’s not much you can say to that.

As you can see, the whole family have to help out in the housebuilding process. I think this particular one will house five people, although in another location the same size will provide shelter to a family of ten.

Other than this I continue to work on the financial side of things in PP and I am continuing to get to grips with the different issues you face here. There are loads of ex-pats here who all have a take on things, but obviously losing a generation of the population has really had an impact – those people would have been the leaders now. There is a massive willingness to learn amongst people I have encountered and I am constantly asked ‘how are things done in your country’, but the lack of resources are obviously a handicap. Still, it’s fun trying to get things done. It just takes longer. Much longer.

My first picture (hopefully I'll work out how to edit it next time)

This is me and the Meakea team at the school where their work is centred outside PP

and here are some of the kids playing

                                      and waiting to have their health checked (eye tests, weight etc.)

Settling in

Hello from Phnom Penh and my first proper blog!

I flew in here from Thailand on Sunday, and the main change since I visited seven years ago is the volume of traffic. This is really obvious in the remork (a kind of carriage pulled by a motorbike) that I caught in from the airport. You can really smell the difference! I am staying in the Riverside area, a place of bars and restaurants where you can sit out and gaze at the river, traffic chaos and hawkers going about their trade. I must admit to finding it quite relaxing.

I have been working for a few days now, and it has been really interesting. I am working for a tiny charity called Meakea, who try and support very poor families in an area of villages outside PP. They do this by providing English language teaching, basic health education as well as other services like house building for very poor families and a small amount of micro-lending. My roles is to help them with the financial side of things such as how they prepare the budget, watch what they spend, and report this to the people who provide the finance. The main problem not surprisingly is a lack of money! My office is based in PP quite close to S21, the school where thousands of people were tortured during Pol Pot’s era before being sent off to the Killing Fields at Choeng Ek to be slaughtered. This very recent history makes PP a fascinating and somewhat poignant place to visit. There’s loads of other things to see and do here, but the lack of old people is very noticeable.

So far at work, it has been a case of getting used to the differences, the main one of which is working in extremely warm conditions. I also lost a couple of hours the other day because of a power cut caused by one of the fairly regular violent rainstorms. Apparently this doesn’t happen very often – I certainly hope not.

I have also been out to the school where most of Meakea’s work is based to meet the team and see what they did. Everyone was extremely friendly and seemed pleased to have the chance to speak English with a native speaker – they want me to go back and take some classes, so it will be interesting to see how that goes. I just hope they can understand my flat Northern vowels. Until next time, when I should have some pictures......