One of the things I do at work is teach English to the orphans at REDA it is usually a fairly small group that comes along between 11.30 and 12.30 every day, they are really make some good progress, we have been right through the what, where, when, who, how etc etc. This is me playing hangman with them, although as soon as I draw up the number of letters on the board they flick flick through their books to find any word with 7 etc letters not quite the idea but it’s much fun all the same! – actually this photo went missing so sorry!
The other thing I have taken on is running these Sabuy Sabuy Programmes where we travel into the field and have a morning with the orphan children in the rural villages, we teach them about children’s rights and health and hygiene then have a question & answer session and usually a game or singing and dancing followed by food. One of my aims was to make these programmes a little less like a lecture and more interactive so you can see I have incorporated a poster session into each of the programmes which the kids love, however doing it on a budget of around $3 per programme, and petrol is $2, makes life difficult!
This photo is a game that the children are teaching Rachael and I, it is a clapping game for some reason they kept changing the rules, couldn’t work it out, maybe it’s a Khmer thing?!?
So this is me going out into the field, wanted to show you around Cambodia a little especially after it’s been raining, and all the rice planting is well underway in the villages, the countryside is just so amazingly beautiful, the brightest greens you’ve ever seen and occasionally when you zoom past some people planting and transplanting the rice they just look up and give you the best smiles ever!
This is a typical mud Cambodian house, they work with the mud for weeks and weeks on end smooching it and squeezing it to turn it into like a concrete paste so even when it rains the house won’t wash away! Others are made from the banana type leaves, and then some wooden ones, and if you are rich brick and concrete.
This photo shows the road travelled, it is long around 40kms and its rough, potholes large enough to hid a small moto in, and you clunk and jump all over the showby the end of maybe a 1 and half hour trip your butt is so sore you’d give nearly anything for a soft mattress! I can’t wear my helmet on these trips because it’s so hot and jumpy that it jars my neck so bad I could hardly move it, and gives me such a headache it’s just not worth it for the speed you go.
This is one of the other Sabuy Sabuy Programmes (Happy Happy) I ran, this was after my long journey out there, which had put in a decidedly unhappy mood but pulled myself together and dealt with potentially the hardest situation I’ve had to deal with in Cambodia, as follows…
So I arrive at the programme and there is this girl called Srey Vart sitting in the corner, a few people warn me not to ‘go there’ because she’s jaa-kuit ‘mentally crazy’ is the literal translation, I ask the problem and basically she is a 14 year old girl who had polio as a child and is physically disabled, and developmentally very behind, as well as 6 months pregnant after being raped numerous times.
However unwilling to discuss this with all the other children present and eagerly listening in plus numerous amounts of language being lost in translation and Khmer people laughing at the awkwardness of the situation, I carry on with the Sabuy Sabuy Programme discussing children’s right to protection and participation, nearly made me sick feeling like the world’s largest hypocrite, but finished and then got a chance to have a chat with two of the children Srey Vart and one other who had been left out.
Deciding whether or not to share this story on my blog was hard, but I feel necessary because things need to change and it’s about recognising that there are shit situations and frustrating times but it’s about recognising these and dealing with it. It is hard to deal with and hard to read about but the only thing constant about life is change and here’s a change…
So I had a chat with Srey Vart and her caregiver her 78 year old granddad who has no idea what is happening and how to help to her. I discovered that there have been two men in the village that live close to her that have been raping her continually for many months/years? Because no one knows who the father of the child is no one will help out with any money towards it, the complaint that was given to the police the men and their wives paid of the police to ‘sweep it under the rug’.
Meanwhile this 14 year old is scared out of her mind and everyone is calling her crazy and a slut. The 15 members of the family including other ‘at risk’ children, live of 30kgs of rice a month only, no vegetables, no meat, no fruit. And there was absolutely nothing that day that I could do, except to give her my ring and show her a little compassion that no one around her had shown her in her life.
It was such an emotionally trying day but once back in Svay Rieng I contacted a children’s shelter who agreed to look into her case and now am just in the process of securing her a place in a women and children’s shelter in Phnom Penh, as well as meeting with the police officials to try and break the corruption chain to give these men the punishment they deserve… however this breaks up two other families, that rely on the man’s income, justice is such a double edged sword.
Another story that about life and making the most of what you’ve got is these two, she is 25 and him 14 plus one other 12 year old sister, all three of who are orphaned and blind, all have stopped school to work for any money they can possibly make, and live in a terrible run down house, they live of around $3 a month for the three of them, and there is no support for them, no social welfare systems, nothing. This is what makes work so damn hard. Unfortunately for these three there is not a lot that can be done. It’s hard.
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