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Transitions...

Our final day at work was punctuated by our 'all volunteer/all NGO' lunch. We thought we might get away with one person speaking on behalf of the group of volunteers and one on behalf of the organizations. No such luck!! One speech lead to another until just about everyone had been given the floor at some time.

To soften our sadness about leaving, the next day, our very last in Cambodia, we decided to go to Cambodian Cooking School. We learned the secrets of making our favourite dish, Fish Amok, amongst others. In the afternoon, we treated ourselves to hot stone massages - 2 massage therapists for 90 minutes each for $35. Ah... we miss the Cambodian prices since we got home to Canada. (Sorry, no pictures of the massages!!)

Vietnam. We spent nearly two weeks easing the transition to home by touring in Vietnam. Our trip started in the south in Saigon (Ho Chi Min City) and ended in Hanoi and Halong Bay. Click here for a few highlight photos from that trip.

Now that we're full on in the swing of life in Canada, our adventures in Cambodia seem a bit like a fond dream. We have particularly been missing the lovely warm weather and Spring seems to be taking forever to show up.

We would both like to thank all of our friends and families who have faithfully followed, or dabbled in our blog. We've had a lot of fun doing it and hope you've enjoyed it. It was a wonderful adventure, we miss Cambodia, but we're also happy to be home.

Cambodian Wedding Extravaganza

We had a wonderful time at Veuk's wedding in Battambang. It was a 2-day affair with many different elements. Fortunately on day one, we only went to the 'orange ceremony' (so called by us because they wore their orange outfits).The most interesting part of that one was when the bride and groom presented their parents and in-laws with a gift of a drink of Coke.

Altogether they each had 2o costume changes over the 2 days. They had three changes at the reception alone- look for the pink, white and green outfits below. It was just was we expected, all very garish and noisy, but also lots of fun!!

Judi wore her designer Cambodian dress and Doris wore her Indian sari. Colin was relatively casual. We fit right in.

More monks. Good for you if you've got this far. During our time in SE Asia, I have loved taking photos of monks in their gorgeous orange robes. I was lucky enough to have a monk photo-taking bonanza on the streets of Battambang the day after the wedding. I've put a few up on my photo blog. Click here.

Things haven't been so peaceful at the 'Peaceful Children's Homes'

As with any organization, our NGOs have their ups and downs. Mine is no exception! Everything at the Foundation and their Peaceful Children’s Homes was progressing very smoothly until early January. We were moving ahead very encouragingly on plans to renew the board, and bring in more qualified staff, set up a website and a more organized donation system, and develop several income generation opportunities. The Foundation had recently hired an excellent Cambodian Executive Director (ex Peace Corps coordinator) who had agreed to lead the organization on a part-time basis, mentoring the less experienced General Manager.

Then, we encountered our first crisis. Out of the blue, the Executive Director told us that he no longer wanted to carry on in the position, because the job was much bigger than he had anticipated (probably my fault for introducing all sorts of ‘opportunities’!).

Next crisis. The following day, the Chair of the Board, a Dutchman, who has led a lot of positive change in the organization, was involved in a car accident in which a motorbike rider was killed. The accident doesn’t seem to have been his fault, but his local Insurance agent totally antagonized the police, and he has ended up with both a Civil suit and a Criminal suit. Understandably, this has totally pre-occupied him. At one point he was at the Vietnamese border ready to leave the country (after 7 years, with a business established here). The E.D. and the general manager have been acting as intermediaries to try and sort out the mess – which has distracted them from Foundation activities.

The biggest tragedy of all was that the on-site manager of Home One had a stroke, and died 3 days later. His funeral is tomorrow. It is terrible for his family and the children at the home. It’s also very difficult for the Home, because the rest of the staff are cooks, carers and handymen - no one with any supervisory capability. Temporarily, the Home is being run by the senior children (in their late teens), who are in fact pretty well-organized.

Unbelievably, there is a further complication (or bright spot, depending on how you view it), in that the General Manager is getting married next weekend - - so he is somewhat distracted! (Judi and I have been invited, along with 900 other guests. Perhaps that will be another blog post!)

This is not exactly fertile ground for cementing in place everything that I have been working on, but I am optimistically trying to push on. There is some good news, too. In the last 4 days, we have brought on 2 new board directors and hired a competent accountant, and a new Home 2 Manager. I’m really happy that the Executive Director has been persuaded to withdraw his resignation. He is a really competent guy and critically needed as a mentor, even if he can’t manage every part of the Foundation.

As you can see, life is definitely interesting!

Judi's Note: What Colin doesn't say in this post, is that he's been working incredibly hard to help provide some structure to the Foundation and it all depended on the presence of the on-again, off-again, on-again E.D. So he's hugely relieved to be leaving knowing that the Foundation is in good hands. As for me, my work hasn't been nearly as 'challenging' but steady and interesting. In the meantime, I've been putting up a few more of my favourite photos on my photo blog. Just click here if you're interested.

The Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot Era

We were back in Phnom Penh for New Year’s Eve, and celebrated a friend’s 70 th birthday in full style, with a delicious carrot birthday cake, baked in a rice cooker by another AJWS volunteer. We recommend that everyone try this experiment.

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New Year’s day saw us visiting the notorious Killing Field of Choeung Ek, outside Phnom Penh. Our visit made us realize how difficult it is for the human mind to deal with tragedies on this scale, and how hard it is to represent them adequately to future generations. The Jewish people have done a wonderful job of this at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, as well as with memorials in other cities, honouring and remembering people as individuals, while reminding people of the vigilance needed to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

In Cambodia, during the Khmer Rouge era ('75-'79), about 2 million people died, out of a population of under 8 million. A lot starved to death or died of disease, but many were killed, and their bodies (live or dead) dumped in mass graves. Choeung Ek is the symbol of these Killing Fields, but it is only one of hundreds of similar sites, now unmarked.

If you wonder how people can kill and betray their own family and colleagues, you have only to realize that many of the killers and jailers were 13/14 years old, were brainwashed into compliance, and painfully tortured to death as examples, if they showed any sign of resisting what they were supposed to do – one of the graves was found to be full of headless young soldiers who had been painfully flayed to death. In another location we saw a tree where babies were killed by smashing their heads into the trunk.

Despite the horrors, Choeung Ek does not seem to capture the emotions in the same way as the Holocaust memorials. The piles of skulls and clothing, the still buried bodies, and the teeth and bits of bone which surface after every rain, don’t seem to be enough, without the individual stories. It is only 30 years ago, but it seems like another world, and the abundance of butterflies somehow seems to give the place a sense of peace, which may be no bad thing.

[If you’d like to learn a bit more background about Choeung Ek and S21, the school in Phnom Penh that became a jail for over 20,000 people, visit this website.]

Singapore - could easily have been Vancouver

We've just returned from a few days break in Singapore. It is such a first world city that I not only got to replace my MAC cosmetics, but had a choice of 8 stores in which to do so.

We had forgotten how lovely it is to be in a city with no pollution, wide sidewalks, lots of green space and an eclectic mixture of old and new.. mostly very, very modern. Of course, these things do come with a price - and I don't just mean money. In SE Asia, it takes a lot of rules to create such a safe, modern, multicultural society and we saw signs everywhere for $500 fines for everything from littering to jaywalking.

Still, it was refreshing...

The bag that went missing

See the end of this post for a news flash on the bag!!

I was in Battambang for most of last week with my NGO. We visited a number of other organizations to learn about income-generation and microcredit programs. I had a good work visit plus I got to see the orphanage run by Colin’s NGO and to hang out with the three Canadian volunteers working there.

I decided to leave Battambang early because the conference I was also going to attend turned out to be all in Khmer and I didn't want to monopolize my counterpart by getting him to translate everything. (Also I wasn’t convinced that the content was relevant to me.)

Through the orphanage I arranged to get a taxi to Phnom Penh rather than take the 5-hour bus ride. The price was right at $10 and the driver was really good, got us there quickly and even spoke decent English. He had some other people in the back seat - a Cambodian family. He dropped them off first in Phnom Penh where they apparently were to take another taxi to their village (some 80 km away). Unfortunately, when he got to my apartment, my duffle bag had mysteriously disappeared from the trunk of the car. He drove back to try and catch the family but they were gone.

You will understand better how devastated I felt by the loss of the bag when I tell you that it had two camera lenses in it, about third of my clothes, my work notebooks, my wash kit and makeup, my new $50 swim goggles, a pair of shoes, my bathing suit, a bag of gifts etc. etc. However, I quickly began to rationalize that those people probably needed the things more than I did. The next day I did a little retail therapy- 3 pairs of used capris for $7, 3 new shirts for $12 and best or worst of all, new goggles and bathing cap for $11 and we went for a little R. and R. at the beach in Sihanoukville.

The taxi driver kept phoning me to reassure me that he was going to get in touch with the other taxi company and try and track down the village where the people lived and find my bag. I figured there was about a 10% chance of me ever seeing that bag again... BUT two days later he phoned me to say he had found it and the camera equipment and everything else I had identified as missing, was still inside. I know it sounds like a scam but I think this guy honestly regretted his mistake in not looking after my bag and was worried about his reputation with the orphanage people in Battambang. He had driven the 200 km from Battambang and the additional 80km to this village – so I guess you could say he was really motivated. Getting the back back cost us a little in ‘Lexus money’ including $10 to the family who had so kindly been ‘looking after’ my bag for me.

I wrote this when I hadn’t actually seen the bag itself. Now that it's in my hands, I’m not feeling so mellow because the family who stole it, took a bunch of personal stuff before returning it… mostly cosmetics and things that I can’t replace in Cambodia. I’m still glad to have the bag and camera gear back, but I must admit I’m not happy about the missing items…

Believe it or not… this story goes on. Now the driver is determined to get back the rest of my stuff and says he can do it the next time he is in Phnom Penh.. in a couple of days. I must admit I would be happy to see the rest of it... I go back and forth between thinking that I'm incredibly petty to let the driver keep trying to get things like makeup back, and feeling like he shouldn't have let someone steal it in the first place. When I tell this story to Cambodians, they look almost blank, as if NOTHING about this surprises them.... You'll get the rest of the story if I get the rest of my stuff!!

Today, December 20th, I got a few more bits and pieces back - none of them valuable, but all with value to me because they aren't replaceable in Cambodia. Whoo hoo!! What's more, we've decided to go to Singapore for a few days over Christmas so I'm sure I can replace the rest there. Good ending -- very appropriate to this happy season. Enjoy the holidays one and all... :)

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Photo Blog Update: And if you're at all interested, I have posted a few of my very favourite pictures from our travels on my photo blog. Click here.

Colin on the road again....

I seem to have spent half of the last week on the bus. In fact, I had 5 bus trips, of 6 hours each, in the space of 10 days. Fortunately, we are not talking about the cramped buses of most of Africa, but fairly modern (but imported 'used') buses, and very straight roads in reasonable condition. Not too bad for reading, or even working, if it weren't for the other 'modern element, the TV, at the front of the bus, which goes continuously. I am sure that the films are deliberately selected as the 'worst' in US, Korea and Cambodia respectively. They are so bad that they don't even need dialogue, being either slapstick, heavy violence or sci-fi.

We have 3 women from Vancouver Island who have very kindly come to help out with the vegetable garden at Home 2 for a few weeks. Their presence shamed me into actually doing some physical labour for a couple of hours, and contributing my 'gardening' knowledge, which is pretty much 'nil'. Fortunately, they knew enough to ignore me. One fascinating dilemma did arise. The home had recently installed a whole row of upright concrete drainage pipes to collect water in the rainy season to use for washing and the garden in the dry season. There were 12 pipes, 9 ft X 30 inches in diameter, all connected at the bottoms. Of course, with the rainy season just over, they were now each full to the brim.

Unfortunately, no-one had installed any outlet taps. So the question was how to install an outlet tap at the bottom of one of the tanks, with the weight of many tons of water pressing down, without draining the whole system, and waiting until next year to start again. I am almost tempted to only put the answer on the next page. Of course, none of us came up with it, but the kids didn't hesitate - they all competed to be the one who climbed in to the top of one of the tanks and swam down 8 feet, to jam a rag in one of the interconnecting pipes, so that only one tank had to be drained - what it is to be 'smart'!

For my pharmaceutical friends, I had an interesting experience of globalization in a local pharmacy. I was wandering round examining the shelf stock, for no apparent reason, except nostalgia. The stock came mostly from China or Vietnam, but there were some Aventis branded products. Aventis is of course a French - German company, but the products were manufacture in Kansas, USA, packaged in Indonesia, imported by a Vietnamese company, and sold in a Cambodian pharmacy!

Back home in Phnom Penh, we have been exploring the range of restaurants around us, and have almost

given up eating in, because the food is so good and inexpensive- having said that, Judi does have a little rice-fatigue.We have in fact almost gone 'native' with our tastes, and I was persuaded the other night to try a particular local delicacy - 'fried tarantula spiders'. Actually very tasty and crunchy if deep fried, rather like a larger version of fried grasshoppers. If you want to try them, just make sure that someone has extracted the poison beforehand!

Meanwhile, I have been digging deep into the situation of this orphan NGO that I am working with. They have been desperately short of funds for the last couple of years, having relied prior to that too heavily on the generosity of the Founder and his connections. In the last couple of years, they have cut any non-essential items, not only any care and maintenance of their buildings and equipment, but even food for the children beyond rice and a few vegetables that they grow themselves. I am back to my situation in Ghana, desperately looking around for any potential income-generating projects, and a more systematic approach to follow-up with their many foreign visitors. It is early days yet, but that is the trouble with a 3-month posting. Those 'early days' soon turn into 'not long to go', so I am going to have to make some progress soon. Fortunately, the people that I am working with are excellent, so I am hopeful.

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And in other unrelated news, Judi's niece, Rachel, gave birth to a baby boy, Noam Emile Bujold. Born December 2nd and weighing at 8 lbs 10 oz. Rachel and Steve, and my sister, Dorion and her husband, Bernie are over the moon with excitement! My Mom, Pat, is finally a great grandma - at 91 she had to wait a long time. We are pretty thrilled, too, even this far away. Thank goodness for Skype!!

World AIDS Day in Cambodia

As you probably know World AIDS Day is observed all over the world on December 1 as a way to continually call attention to the fact that HIV is still a very large problem, especially in Africa and much of the developing world.

In Cambodia, there is reason to celebrate the fact that the infection rate has dropped from a high of 2% in 1998 to 0.7% of the population. As well, 90% of adults living with HIV receive antiretroviral treatment. But the picture on the ground isn’t always this rosy and there is still a lot of stigma, mistreatment at the hands of so-called health professionals and severe poverty for those suffering from HIV.

Not surprisingly, I knew nothing about what my NGO planned for World AIDS Day until the day before. I was informed that I would be picked up at 6:30 am to attend the ceremonies. There was no parade or public awareness activity, but instead a very formalized ceremony of speech-making in a fancy auditorium (which by the way, didn’t begin until 8:30). The photo will give you some idea of what it looked like but I want to share a couple of things that happened during the formalities….

Many ‘big men and women’ (probably Lexus owners) and the Prime Minister’s wife (centre stage) gave formal self-congratulatory speeches in Khmer. After about an hour, someone handed me a set of earphones through which I could listen to an English translation of the speeches. About this time, a woman living with HIV was scheduled to speak. However, she wasn’t allowed on the stage and had to speak from a microphone on the floor. Once she had read her prepared speech, she launched out on her own and began to tell her sad story of how she (and her child) had been infected by her husband, now deceased. It was then that the translator completely lost it and started weeping uncontrollably. It took him quite a few minutes to regain his composure… surely the most touching moment in the long boring proceedings.

The final part of the ceremonies involved giving out about 25 awards (ribbons, medals and certificates) to bureaucrats who work in the offices of NAA (the National AIDS Authority). Most of them had probably never seen a PLHIV and I couldn’t see any reason why they should receive public recognition for doing their jobs. Colin, on the other hand, thought it meant that the NAA could pay them less if they got recognition… perhaps they have no access to Lexus money…

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My NGO had its World AIDS Day activity a few days later. They visited both the outpatient clinic and inpatient unit at the Khmer Soviet Friendship Hospital where they provided patients with gifts of food and blankets. I was invited to join them to act as official photographer. It was a nice idea and some of the patients were well enough to appreciate the gesture, but for most of the inpatients, they were just too sick to care. After a while, I couldn’t stomach it any more and told them I couldn’t take any more pictures.

Raindrops are falling on my head - and other stuff

As I sit here the rain is teaming down on the tin roof of my office so loudly that it’s impossible to hold a conversation. I’m only hoping there will be a short lull in the downpour when it’s time to leave in 10 minutes. Also dreaming that the tuk tuk driver from this morning who said he’d come back to get me, will actually show up. Otherwise, I will be trudging through a sea of mud in my sandals, will get soaked to the skin and my Thai shirt will likely bleed dye onto my capris. …..Whoopee!! A wonderful miracle happened and the tuk tuk driver showed up with his cabin all zipped into a water-proof tarp. He will now be my permanent driver!! I love him.

Angkor Wat

Since our last blog post, we went to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat which was much more interesting than we expected as we thought we’d seen some pretty impressive archeological sites. Clearly we hadn’t. We were especially taken with the carvings inside the Temples which are wonderfully-preserved. In this case, a picture is worth a thousand words, so just click on through to our Picasa photo gallery from Angkor Wat.

Post-Trauma

Things seem to have settled down from the excitement and sadness of the terrible accident that happened in Phnom Penh a week ago. No-one that we’ve met was personally connected to anyone who died, but the numbers of dead increased beyond initial estimates to well over 400 and they were pretty much all young people in from the provinces. For some reason many more young women than men perished. We really never got much more information about what happened other than people were crowding onto the bridge from both ends until they got completely jammed up for quite a long time… people started fainting and others just got crushed, many drowned. We were also told that during the Water Festival, the population of PP almost doubles to 3 million, so it's not surprising in some ways that they have crowd control problems. Still so incredibly sad and unnecessary.

Memorial Ceremony

All five of the AJWS volunteers were invited to a traditional memorial ceremony yesterday. The executive director of one of the NGO’s included all of us in the event to mark the three-year anniversary of his younger brother’s death. Sadly, the brother died in a motorcycle accident. We travelled 40 km out of PP to his family’s village – a small community where there was another memorial event and a wedding happening. There were about 150 people there - a big and expensive activity for the family, but apparently it has become the tradition. Some of the guests prayed diligently to the monks, but most, like us waited for the amazing food. We found people very welcoming and kind, and open to our constant photography. It didn’t feel at all depressing, rather more celebratory. A few more photos of the memorial ceremony, the food preparation and some lovely faces can be found if you click through here.

Vanity Rules

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I colour my hair. I have found a lovely young woman down the street from my apartment to help me with this task. She said it would cost me $5 and I think she expected that I would bargain to get the price down. Since I didn't, she decided to upsell me. She offered me a manicure and a pedicure, to which I agreed. Then she pushed me to allow her to blow dry and straighten my very curly hair. I guess I'm a pushover, but I fully expected to pay at least $20 for all these services, but in the end it all cost only $10. I may never come home.

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This little character and his snake paddled his basin over to Colin early one morning when we were on a sunrise boat ride from Siem Reap. I must admit I took off in the other direction once I saw the size of the snake, but Colin took the picture, and of course had to pay for it (which doesn't happen very often). Very enterprising, I say.