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.
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.
posted by Chris at 9:05 AM
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