Day 4: New Hope Community Centre, Siem Reap

Today began with a call from my Real Estate agent. I’m throwing in the auction of my Sydney apartment into this crazy mix and today had to set my opening and reserve prices. As if I have the headspace for that right now.

The humidity and then torrential rain resulted in the little ones being absolutely hyper today. We had the most amazing greeting, practically mown down with affection before we could even make it into the gates of New Hope.

There were so many of the toddlers in our colouring class (more than 40) that we ran out of copies. It took them less than a minute to cotton onto the fact that I was producing more from the big machine in the ‘office’ and before I knew what was going on, there were 20+ of the monkeys surrounding me, hands up in the air, shouting (something like) “Moi, moi” which clearly means “one for me”. Half of them had their other hand behind their back with a copy already. The are so cunning, stashing whatever they can into their bags, pockets, whatever, including photocopied coloring in pictures to box loads of pastels and pens.

Today’s theme for my Level 4 class (the most advanced) was ‘Pen Pals’. To cut a very long story short, my poor little eight year old nephew in Melbourne is now going to receive some 15 or so letters from Chaniha, Danet, Ngim, Srey Sros, Ton Han, Srey Neat, and others. Fortunately my sister-in-law, Michelle, is really interested in my experience and I’m really hoping her enthusiasm rub off on Sam (or that Michelle will forge letters to them from Sam!).

Day 3: New Hope Community Centre, Siem Reap

Well, the mud squelching of previous days was nothing compared to today. We arrived at school with completely caked feet.

Today brought uncontrollable sobbing for a few minutes. Before class, through a translator, I talked to a woman who was there with her daughter to visit the doctor. Both had shaved heads due to the loss of their husband / father two weeks ago. The woman showed me a hideous rash on the child’s back, the result of stress / grief from her father’s death, from what I could understand. The woman then explained how she had lost her husband and that she had five children which she now had to look after by herself. She has no other family to help her. No income. Nothing. It’s devastating. Just as I teared up, the doctor called them. I had to run around the corner and have a good old cry before the bell sounded.

I also spoke to Kerry, the Director of New Hope. She is an amazing woman - a true angel with the most incredible sense of humor. What she has to deal with on a day-to-day basis would be unimaginable to most. One of the things she does is oversee the “Outreach program” which involves interviewing and assessing families who have applied for support from New Hope. They assess the level of support and for the most desperate cases, they attempt to raise sponsorship of families (check the website: www.newhopecambodia.com if you’re interested). Surely the widow described above will qualify. There’s an opportunity for me to visit some of these families in their villages at some point but I think I need to toughen up a bit before I get to that stage.

The other volunteers are great and all really helpful and keen to share their experience. Only a couple are actually teachers, and those, secondary teachers. So, it’s a true case of jump in the deep end and swim … really quickly!

Day 2: New Hope Community Centre, Siem Reap

Today was much better in terms of the teaching experience - I'd at least had time to prepare for the classes. I know I'm going to love this. As tough as the experience is, I can laugh - and I / we do constantly.

To get to New Hope today we had to pick our way through the stickiest mud, worse than the first, due to a huge downpour just prior to our arrival. Foul! When we at New Hope we washed our feet in a huge urn of rainwater. Later I discovered the little ones drinking from this and splashing each other.

The little monkeys were on fire today, literally jumping on me, crawling all over me, but there were some lovely cuddles. A most confronting case is however a little girl who apparently has HIV. She is so unbelievably out of control, sometimes violent, hitting other children and Donna, another volunteer. But most confronting of all was a tiny little baby, maybe 9 months old. He was badly deformed with legs finishing in stumps around the knees and a club arm. OMG, he's going to have a very, very difficult life, but so is his truly beautiful eight or so year-old sister who’s obviously been tasked with looking after him while their parents work. I’ve since learned that they are part of a family of five or so who basically have to raise themselves during the week while their parents live elsewhere, working – purely for food, no money – during the week. The family is completely dependant on handouts from New Hope; food, clothes, everything.

My older classes learned a multitude of adjectives to replace their standard, wrote learned "I'm fine thank you". At the beginning of each class I'm welcomed with "Hello Teacher, How are you today?” I reply "I'm wonderful / fantastic / sensational thank you, how are you". We had great fun playing with the options and it was gorgeous listening to them practice "sensational" / "fantastic", etc. I can't wait to see the results after two months. I'm going to give them the most colorful vocabulary! Feel free to send suggestions please!

Day 1: New Hope Community Centre, Siem Reap

Shell shocked! There’s no other description for it.

Today I inherited a class room and three hour-long classes with children ranging in age from six to 20, supervised by an eight month old Cambodian woman with limited teaching ability and not much enthusiasm, understandable when you’ve been on your feet all day, lugging an almost-cooked fetus around in 30+ degree heat with 99% humidity.

But before I even begin with the teaching, I need to paint the picture of my arrival at New Hope. We were forced to dismount from our tuk tuks 500 metres beyond the entrance, to tread warily along a make-shift path of partially dried but still squelching mud, the fall out from the recent floods, apparently only this bad once every 30 years. All was forgotten however when we arrived at the gate and were literally bombarded by the cutest little kids wanting to hold hands, legs, whatever they could.

I had a whirlwind tour of the centre which was so much smaller than I imagined – four classrooms to cater for the different grades, which are not necessarily determined by their age. (I had a 35 year old in one class with others around 12. She is delightful). Already the main room has generously been assigned to me!

My first class was to assist Donna, an English girl who has been here for a full week, to play time with her group of toddlers. This ‘class’ was held on mats outside the beauty salon and the medical centre. We had to move a few metres up the corridor to distance the children, not to mention ourselves, from the clearly very sick children and their mothers. We coloured in photocopied images with dreary pastels and inappropriate pencils. Both pastels and pencils miraculously disappeared, swiped by the little monkeys in a matter of half an hour. These kids were truly gorgeous. Though we couldn’t communicate a word, we managed. Some of them apparently have HIV; one had a shaved head, a Cambodian custom when a close family member (her father) died. She was three. Others were filthy, had hacking coughs or runny noses. I am so glad I had all those vaccinations.

I was then scheduled to observe classes for the rest of the afternoon which just didn’t happen. Instead, I was handballed a “Let’s Go Level 1” manual and a list of words for a spelling test, and was basically left to it. Lia, my pregnant Cambodian assistant was more than happy to hand things over to me, despite my pleading looks. Nick, the Globalteer supervisor, who was supposed to teach and set the example for me, was apparently comfortable with my “ability” (?) and left after about half an hour. I actually did love this class and felt good about it but that feeling soon went with the next two classes of older kids, ranging from 12 to 35. Clearly they were bored by the wrote-learned teaching style and the fact that they had already done Workbook #3 before. (The answers were already written in their books from round one), not to mention the flirting between some of the cockier students.

So, I tap danced as best I could and returned ‘home’ armed with the teaching manuals to prepare for tomorrow’s classes, which I’ll clearly be leading if Lia has anything to do with it!

At 6pm, as we left the front gates, one of the ‘Playboys’ had a ruckus with another, knocking him off his motorbike at our feet. It was a one off apparently, according to two of the girls who have been here for five months. That’s comforting. But the walk back to our tuk tuk, waiting on the other side of the muddy quagmire was an eye opener. The street was lined with make-shift karaoke bars with ‘Karaoke Girls’, most definitely prostitutes, already soliciting business while the children worked home saying “Bye bye teacher” to us all.

So, tomorrow is another day and one that will at least allow me to plan my classes and take back a little control, I hope. Feel free to send any suggestions for lessons and I’m definitely on the hunt for children’s clothing, story books, whatever. They are beyond desperate.

For now, I’m about to fall asleep as I type. Until tomorrow …