Phnom Penh, Cambodia - a Day in the Life...

I really haven't settled down to a routine yet. I don't know if I ever will in this crazy country. In the morning I went over the NFC and spent some time with the kids working on the computers.

Later in the day Omry, a part time volunteer at NFC who is leaving Cambodia after living here for three years, had a going away party at his place. It was a fun event with good food, music and an ecclectic group of guests.

Sunday I was at NFC in the morning working on my computer lessons for the next week. The other volunteers, the director and I had a meeting with a couple of members of the NFC board of directors at noon, we had a short meeting of volunteers after that meeting to talk about coordinating our efforts in teaching. I spent the rest of the day working on computer stuff, teaching some of the kids one-on-one and practicing shooting hoops (basketball).

Monday I arrived at NFC and taught the first computer class for the week until the power went out. I then spendf the remaining class time showing and explaining the components of a computer to the kids. I had to skip the second class since the power was still out. I shot some more hoops. I definitely can use the practice!

A little later on a group of Cambodian student volunteers arrived. They are planning on helping out teaching the younger kids subjects that would be hard for them to understand from foreigners, such as science, mathematics and the like.

Then Gabe, a NFC volunteer from New Hampshire arrived with his friend Michael. Michael had been very successful raising funds in the USA for an medical organization he is working with in Cambodia. He toured the place with Gabe and I showed him the computer lab and asked himn questions about fund raising.

A short while later the heavans opened up and it rained cats and dogs! The concrete recreation/eating area became a large pond with about 6-7 inches of water. The younger kids go nuts playing in the water and having a good time. A few of the older kids and I moved all the computers onto the desks, as the room was in danger of being flooded. When it rains that hard everything is affected and there's not a lot you can do but wait it out.

We had lunch sitting in plastic chairs in 7"of water. I was not able to teach a computer class until 3:00 p.m. After class I made a trip to get a hammer, nails and a 8-foot by 4-foot board to act as a screen for projecting computer screens, images and videos on a large scale using the DLP projector I donated. We took a motorbike to do the shopping. I ended up carrying the 8' x 4' panel while riding on the back of the motorbike. Amazingly we made it back to NFC intact.

Sovanlay took to nailing and painting the panel while I worked with some of the kids on disassembling one staffs laptop PCs that had sustained water damage and was no longer working. Without a manual we managed to successfully disassemble the laptop and we think we discovered that the power switch had gone bad. I had a multimeter that I bought for $3.50 to check it out. We'll see if we're able to put it back together again, but not a big loss. It was very old and underpowered and undersized. If we couldn't get it working for next to nothing it wouldn't be worth investing in trying to fix it.

The kids helped me get a motorcycle taxi back to my place by the lakeside and here I am at the Internet cafe writing up a day in the life...

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I made it through my first week of teaching computer skills to the kids. The kids are great! Power outages, schedule conflicts and still working on getting all the kinks worked out of the PCs has been challenging. We now have five networked PCs. Four are for the students, the other for the teacher (me). I have the DLP computer projector set up to display what is on the teacher's screen and it works well. I've come to find that it would really help to have another person to help teach computer skills. At present, I am the only one and with the current student load each student gets only one hour of class a week. They would like more class time per week, which I totally understand, but I need an additional person to make that possible. A few of the kids have been great in helping me get the computer fixed and set up.

I've been negligent in blogging for two reasons. One is that I got an intestinal thing that most newcomers who eat the local food get after a couple of weeks here. That slowed me down quite a bit. The other is that I have been spending time fulfilling dual roles. I'm was working to get the computer lab and building ready and also helping the director with a number of projects he needed my help on.

Backtracking a bit, I met a guy, Andrew, on the 4-hour bus ride back from the beach. After talking to him about what I was doing he asked if he could come by the ophanage with me the following day. It worked out great! He brought his guitar and played while some of the kids sang songs they had written. He ended up giving his guitar to one of the kids. The kid was thrilled, and later, when I was speaking to a volunteer who gives the kid guitar lessons, he said the kid was very talented and having a decent guitar would really help him.

I visited an organization called "New Hope for Cambodia Children" that deals with the needs of children who have AIDs. They have a home for the children in Phnom Penh called the "Happy House", a clinic/hospital for treating children with AIDs, both inpatient and outpatient, and a new village that is being built in another province for the children to live in. Visiting the hospital was difficult. One girl of 16 looked about 10-years old. She had been unfortunate enough to have caught AIDs from open sores while caring for her AIDs infected sister. She also had severe malnutrition and was lactose intolerant. Most of the other children were in much better condition and were coming in on an outpatient basis.

I visited the new village and it was wonderful. The kids seemed very happy and they had a caring staff. The buildings were well designed and pleasant. At the moment I was there, it would be hard to tell that these kids had AIDs. By the way, Bill Clinton's charity organization provided free AIDs medication for the children and there were several photos of him with the kids and staff when he visited them in Cambodia last year. It's nice to see that some of the money gets to where it should be going to!

By the way, it is hard to explain how crazy some things are here. The driving is like they gave 5-year olds licenses but these 5-year olds have the reflexes and coordination of an adult. You see, sometimes from the back seat of a motorbike, motorbike taxis drive on absolutely any part of the street or sidewalk in any direction. Cambodia is a "right hand side" of the road driving country, but it is more the rule than the exception to drive on the left hand side of the road after making a left hand turn until you have a chance to wander over to the right hand side of the road. I bought a helmet the second day I was here as a rider.

I got over my illness adjusting to the food and hope I am good for a while. I am eating two interesting meals a day at the orphanage. Rice is the basis of EVERY meal. In fact when they ask me to join them eating they say, "Eat rice with us?" as a general way of saying "eat lunch with us?". Today I watched the small children beating small fish to death that we later ate for lunch (the fish that is!). Hard to get the tiny bones out of them. We had some curry with bits of chicken chopped with a meat cleaver so the bones are rather fractured and dangerous. I've gotten quite used to the food and have lost most of my squeamishness. I had eel the other day. Not bad, but lots of bones...

I'm going to a going away party for Omry and his girlfriend Aereilla, tomorrow. They have been part time volunteers at NFC for over a year and they have done a lot for NFC. Sunday I have NFC related events in the morning and early afternoon.

I am very happy to be here doing what I am doing in spite of a lot of inconveniences. The kids make it all worthwhile.

Sihanoukville , Cambodia - by the ocean

Since NFC observes the King's birthday clebration school closures on Monday and Tuesday, I've taken the opportunity to visit the coast of Cambodia. It was a four hour bus ride here for $4. We stopped once on the way for lunch. There was a helpful France person who knew Cambodian (he lives here) who helped me order at the small, local roadside cafeteria we stopped at. The food was good, a ginger/chicken dish, green peppers and beef and rice. It came to $1.25. I've booked a room with a TV and a fan for $4.

The beach is quite nice, but also quite crowded. I think it is busier than normal with the people being off for the celebration. The water temperature is perfect. There are simple restaurants lining the beach. I a good swim in the afternoon. Later in the evening I had the fish barbeque featuring barricuda, a small salad and rice. I ended up sharing it, and another order I bought, with three local kids who were selling bracelets and keychains. They were amazingly bright, spoke English well and one could even sing the lyrics to an American song quite well.

I haven't decided whether to head back tomorrow or Wednesday.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I did a shopping trip in downtown Phnom Penh today. I spoiled myself and took a tuk-tuk instead of a motorcycle taxi. It was $3 instead of $2 and found it offered a more relaxed view of the city, I wasn't worried about crashing every second of the trip.

I did some bargaining while shopping but I realize I'm not the shrewdest bargainer in the world, nor do I want to be. If they get a little extra from me, I'm not going to sweat it, but I do try. I picked up some "Ray Ban" sunglasses and a case for $12, they started at $18. I checked on battery chargers and found a small one that would be good for traveling but the girl wanted $12 for the off-brand charger alone. I found another place that sold a Sony brand charger for $10 and included 4-NiMH batteries with it. I bought a second Sony charger to use at the orphanage for $7, they just took the batteries, which I didn't need, out of the package. I bought a new motorcycle helmet for $19 (they have them for as little as $10). I also bought a rain jacket with a hood for $7. It's been raining a lot around here.

Later in the afternoon I went over to NFC and I am glad I did. The office staff isn't there on weekends (the regular staff is) and with the King's Birthday celebration they probably won't be there until Thursday. The computer area, next to the office, was like a disaster zone, papers and wrappers and food and VCD's strewn all over the place. One of the brand new mice had been broken. I decided if I wanted any computers to be useable at the end of the week I needed to lock the mice and keyboards in the office, which I did. Not being a total scrooge, I did stay around until evening and set up the DLP projector and speakers and showed a movie to the kids, "Princess Bride". Earlier in the afternoon I helped one of the children come back up to speed with Photoshop.

I bought a ticket to go to the coast tomorrow by bus. It's a four hour ride that costs $4. I still haven't decided for sure if I'm going to go. My backpack is locked up in the NFC office so I'll either have to buy one or use my heavy piece of luggage, which I really do not want to do.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I went over the NFC on this Saturday. About 15-kids are huddled around the 4-computers. I have password protected the one I use for teaching, but somehow they always manage to get in. I showed them some features of Photoshop and worked on a presentation for funding for NFC.

I spent some time with the kids of all different ages and played a catch ball game with some of the staff and kids. I had lunch and dinner there, as I have for the last several days. We ate some of the fish that the older kids caught last night. They caught the fish at the new orphanage location that they stay at during the evening.

I did the technology thing tonight with the DLP projector and 3-speakers (that I bought in Bangkok). It worked out well. I think about 60-70 kids were watching the movie. Of course if anyone touched any of the open metal on the projector they'd get a shock. Things are not well grounded around here.

I brought over a number of DVDs for kids, like Happy Feet, Finding Nemo, the Incredibles and Lion King and they had already seen them all. The spread of technology and DVDs is amazing! I ending up showing an animated movie called "Titan A.E.". They seemed to enjoy it.

The King of Cambodia's Birthday celebration is Monday through Wednesday and schools are closed. The volunteer programs generally do not run during this time. I may take a trip to the coast of Cambodia during this time.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - end of first week

In the morning I lent my camera to one of the kids to take photos of "normal", everyday life at NFC. He did a great job! He took over 190 photos and many of they turned out very well. We transferred them over to one of NFC's PCs. The kids and I picked some out and inserted them into a Powerpoint presentation for NFC.

Today was one of the volunteers birthdays and he had kicked in some money for special food during lunch, so we had duck, fish and clams as well as rice, the stable food with every meal. Lunch was quite good!

I took a ride with the director out to the new area for NFC where 24 of the 80 children stay during the evening. It has become typical that nothing works out normally. The motorcycle we were riding quit three or four times during the ride and we were skirting thunderbolts near the end of the journey. We made it under cover just as the sky opened up and dumped a load of rain. The facility looked pretty nice. They're still finishing construction. It's supposed to be finished in July. I took photos as best I could in the pouring rain.

I stayed later in the evening both to finish up some work and because it was pouring rain. One of the kids takes it as his responsibility to make sure I eat with them. I really appreciate that! This evening dinner was interesting as the yard and area where we ate was covered with about 4" of water from the rain. The chairs are plastic, so I guess they've been through this a number of times before. The kids didn't seem to mind very much.

Later on I saw one of the kids with a flourescent light tube using it as a "light sabre". I guess I should have taken it as my responsibility to confiscate it from him, if for nothing else than my own safety. Sure enough, about 5-minutes later he hit something solid and it broke into a millions pieces. Some of the shards landed next to my feet. They quickly cleaned it up before anyone stepped on the pieces. Boys will be boys and I'll know better next time.

I'm still getting used to the fact that I can't just leave anything I working with around. There are kids at NFC from 2 and up and they just like to play with things, like CDs and memory sticks. I'm not worried about them taking anything other than to play with it.

The kids of all ages love the computers. It amazes me how much the younger ones know and how fast the older ones learn. I have one PC for me, the teacher, and I think kids 6-8 have watched my fingers and figured out the password.

At about 6:30 I sloshed out to the street through water as deep as 6" to take a motorcycle taxi back to where I'm staying. It costs a dollar for the 15-minute ride back there.

When I got back I went to a restaurant showing Spiderman III. I was lucky, the power only went out once while they were showing the DVD. Gee, it's amazing how fast things come out on DVD nowadays!

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I feel like I was pushing the edge today, I had four separate motorcycle journeys. Usually two is more than enough. It's really hard to express how insane these rides are. Every traffic rule you'd know in the USA is merely a suggestion in Cambodia. If you going a short distance, or you plan at some time to cross to the correct side of the road, it is perfectly normal to ride into opposing traffic while waiting for your moment to cross. The "safe" distance between vehicles while driving, whether front or side, is measured in inches, not feet. I've gotten really up close and personal to too many bigs trucks for me to remember, and I've only been here 5-days!

In the morning I went shopping with the NFC driver for computer keyboards and mice. I bought 3-keyboards, three optical mice and 4-mousepads for less than $40. The keyboards have both Khmer and English characters.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - So much going on!

So far I love it here! My motorcycle taxi always offers some excitement both in the ride getting there as well as whether the driver actually knows where NFC is. We eventually find it... The kids are great as usual. I asked them to move a CD ROM from one PC to another and they figured it all out on there own. They are all over the computers, writing stuff and making pictures and I haven't even started teaching yet. I played basketball with them yesterday during a break. I've been eating what they eat, which is mostly rice and soups with vegetables and a little bit of chicken or fish. Today was special, we had barbequed pork for dinner (with rice, of course) and it was really delicious! Not that you have whole heaps of it or anything.

(For geeks...) I think I have most of the computer stuff done. I have four PCs working most of the time. They are networked and I have set up a student folder for each child on the teacher's PC and gotten the user ID permissions worked out. I plan to use Powerpoint to create the lesson plans as I go along. Some of the kids have three months of computer training and I'm hoping that they can help out some too. They seem to be very bright! I'm hoping one or two of them can continue on teaching basic computing skills while I am in the USA.

The embassador from the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok visited the orphanage today and asked what we needed. I got to personally deliver a small list to him at the 59th aniversary of Israels independance at the Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom Penh. The children performed traditional Khmer dancing at the anniversary. They had an excellent performance! I was backstage with them before the performance and they were having so much fun. The girls were doing the makeup on the guys, eyeliner, rouge and styling there hair different ways as well as doing their own makeup. They have fun, but are also very well behaved. They never seem to get really out of hand.

I took pictures and video of their performance and then started taking pictures of the kids. That may have been a slight mistake. I really can't count how many photos they asked me to take shortly after I started. It was all fun, though.

I also went to the bank with the director to see what options there are for getting funds from foreign countries, like Canada, the USA and Australia, to an NFC account in Cambodia for people that want to donate money either once or on an ongoing basis.

I'm thinking about buying a motorcycle helmet as a rider. It's hard to explain how insane the driving is here. The only saving grace is that generally nobody's going very fast. But they pay little attention to traffic lanes, including doing things like turning around to the opposing direction to traffic on a physically divided road if they miss a turn. To make a left turn you wait to amass enough vehicles to intimidate the straight ahead traffic and block them off when the slightest amount of space appears. In a 1-miles drive you play traffic "chicken" about 10-15 times!

So far the people have been great. The more I get to know the director of NFC the more I get to like him and the others on the staff, and of course, the kids.

I have a Cambodian cell phone number now, I just have to prepay for some air time. When I do that I'll send my number.

Last night I met a Malaysia guy who lived in Canada for 12-years and spoke perfect English. He is now working as a freelance photographer and doing programming on the side (his former profession) to help make ends meet as he develops his new career. It was fascinating talking to him. He said when he returned to Malaysia after ten years, he could hardly beleive. Many of the middle class parents had SUVs and drove there children to school because it was considered "lower class" to take the bus. The parents would also drive to school during recess and have their child sit with them in the A/C'd SUV so they didn't have suffer outside at recess with the heat. Eek! That's worse than the USA!

Well, back to my room before another day of Cambodian chaos!

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - First day at New Future for Children (NFC) Orphanage

I had my first day at the orphanage today. It was good. The kids are great and I think the director of the orphanage is very good. I pleased that I recognized several of the kids from my visit 10-months earlier and they recognized me.

I will be teaching 4-classes a day with 3-kids in each class. I will also be helping out the staff with varous administrative tasks and playing with the kids in my free time. The work day is from 8:30 to 5:00 p.m.

Tomorrow I will be inspecting the computer equipment that has been donated to them and evaluating what can be used. I hope to be able to set up a simple network tomorrow as well.

It was pretty warm this morning but we had a huge thundershower in the afternoon that cooled things down. The kids played in a 3" deep "lake" generated by the downpours, as kids a prone to do!

The children are very well-behaved. They really take care of each other, the older ones taking care of the younger ones. They seem to have a lot of fun too.

I have found a good place to stay with A/C, a private bath and a hot shower for $9/night. It is about 20-minutes from the orphanage in the backpacker/Beong Kok Lake district. I can take a motorcycle taxi to and from the orphanage for about a $1 each way. Food is about $6-7 per day. Not too expensive to be here.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

At check-in in Bangkok for Air Asia the ticket agent was kind and charged me only $90 instead of the $150 I had expected for excess weight for my luggage. On the flight I sat next to a British man who has lived in Thailand for over 10-years and learned a lot of about living there as a foreigner. It was a good flight. Coming into Phnom Penh from the air it looks more like a large town than the capital of a country. I obtained a visa on arrival and was pleased that all my luggage made it intact.

The traffic is as crazy as I remembered. A motorcycle driver confided to me that it scared him driving here, so many accidents. I accepted the help of an employee of the Green Lake Inn to roll my luggage to their place and decided to stay there for the night. It was expensive by lake front standards, $10/night. But is was one of the few rooms that had good sunlight with two windows and was clean and kept up. Many of the cheaper rooms were like caves, almost no outside light coming in and not very well kept.

I wasn't able to really get hold of the director of the orphanage until in the evening, so I decided to wait until today to make the trip over. It turned out well anyway. I saw a group of people having a traditional meal on the floor of one of the nearby houses, one whole side of the room was completely open to the street, and I asked if I could take a picture. They immediately said "yes" and invited me to join them. They were very friendly and constantly encouraged me to follow their custom and chug the glass of beer they gave me when it was down to half full. I obliged a few times, but couldn't keep up with them by any means! I also tried a lot of the food, which was very good. There were curries, beef with spicy sauces, pickled vegetables, cashews, noodles and various other vegetables.

I am excited about heading over to the orphanage in a little while. Wish me luck!

Bangkok, Thailand - Set to leave for Cambodia

I leave tomorrow morning for Cambodia. I have a lot of excess baggage and am hoping to plea for mercy and have some of the fees waived, otherwise I will be paying about $150 in excess baggage charges, more than my plane ticket! A lot of the extra weight is from things for the orphanage and from the weight of the luggage itself. Note that I had no excess luggage charges in the flights from the USA to Bangkok. The short haul/low cost carriers are a lot stricter on luggage.

I'm looking forward to meeting with the director of the orphanage, Sovanlay, in person. We have been conversing via email and we had one phone call over a very bad connection. It'll be nice to talk face to face. I also really looking forward to seeing the kids again! It's been about 10-months since my last visit.

I expect that my Internet access will be less frequent and, on my end, much slower. If you don't hear from me as often, that is very likely why. Your very important to me and I love hearing from you, so please do keep in touch and I will email back as soon as I can!

Most of my time in Bangkok has been spent helping Korn with the visa process, preparing for Cambodia and communicating with friends back in the USA. There's been a lot of rain here! The food has been great. I can find something to eat anytime of the day or night. Most of the time I eat food from street vendors, omelette on rice, pad thai, barbequed chicken, corn cut freshly off the cob, mango with sticky rice and freshly squeezed tangerine juice to drink. It'll be interesting to see what it's like in Cambodia.