The weather in June was really sunny and hot. Then July started and so did the rain. When I say rain I mean RAIN. As a Brit you know the experience behind the comment but it has rained persistently hard for day after day, and night, without respite. I suppose we should have been suspicious when we passed a white haired man with a long beard on top of one of the local hills. He seemed to be building what appeared to be a large boat which was attracting large numbers of animals.
The month started off well with one of our VAs getting married in Phnom Penh. Sopheak. We were fortuitously in PNH for our annual performance review (APR). This is where all education volunteers and their partners meet and present an overview of the years’ progress. The build up to this was interesting. VSO PNH produced a ridiculously designed format which was as much use as using a matchstick to stir an Xmas pudding! The process was meant to have full dialogue with our POE colleagues to discuss and ‘jointly’ produce a consensus which would accurately represent the current picture.
We did our best to initiate discussions by suggesting various meeting times well in advance. However, despite …….things fell into the usual pattern of “can’t meet ….too busy” but no alternative was proffered. So we produced our stuff (as usual) and left it with them to peruse at their leisure. We did eventually meet but it was clear that no preparatory work had been done at all on the part of our erstwhile POE colleagues. Consequently, the day it was due at VSO in PNH we sat around a table for three hours going through every point we had made. The major alterations centered on semantics of changing English to Khmer to ensure accurate meaning. At the end all smiles and best mates!
The actual APR meeting went far better than we anticipated and we actually felt that meaningful dialogue had transpired. We learned a lot about VSO documentation. This is to do what you like and not stick to any prescribed format – you learn, don’t you? We had been given a series of questions so in our Mondulkiri team we answered them – simple – NO. The general rule seems to be given documents, read or not, make your own assessment and do what you feel is appropriate. This of course leads to a generalised potpourri of presentations which may, or may not, provide answers to the questions. Thus any consistency tends to be limited to individual corruption of the initial tenant.
Following the meeting, we decided to stay in PNH rather than travel back to MDK and return for the wedding. The week went well and we sorted out various bits of personal and VSO business which is otherwise very difficult back in placement. Jan braved 3 visits to the dentist and we were able to pursue VSO with a vengeance to get a replacement volunteer for Sandra. This proved more straightforward than we had anticipated, so come November we have a Dutch primary school teacher joining the team together with Meg’s replacement.
Dressed up to the nines (Jan very proud of the matching silk shoes and dress bought in a sale – most spent on clothes in a year!), on 4t
h July, we tuk tukked to Logos International School with Veasna and Vorthara (our Volunteer Assistants or VAs) to attend the wedding of Sopheak and Sopal. Sopheak was another VA who worked for us in our first few months but had returned to work for her old school in PNH. We were seated on the playground / basketball court awaiting the Bride and Groom. We had already attended a few Buddhist weddings back in Sen Monorom but this one was to be different, particularly as both are practicing Christians. This in itself had provided a few interesting obstacles on the way to the wedding. The ceremony turne
d out to be a fusion occasion, part Buddhist but predominantly Christian. The bride was traditionally slapped up so much so that we (and apparently, the groom also) didn’t recognize her immediately………………
The ceremony over, the catering detail moved into full swing. The chairs moved aside and tables for eight assembled at double
quick time ready for the nosh! The food was really good and better than other weddings we had attended. The strange thing is that people come and go at all sorts of times. Some missed the wedding and turn up for the nosh, others miss the nosh! The food comes in various courses and is served by a team of busy staff but only when a table is full, not before. People eat then go – 
no disco or embarrassingly long speeches made by the inarticulate, slightly inebriated relations.
Our return back to MDK went very well, in fact a record 6.5.hrs. The remaining days saw the tracks worsen due to increasing rain, schools slowing down, if that’s possible, exams closing the local secondary school which apparently will not reopen really until next October. During exam weeks teachers mark the exams, no lessons take place so children have no school at all!
However, I did manage to meet with the School Director of the secondary school to look at a room we can use to convert to a science laboratory. This has caused such excitement at the school and in the community and a project we can look at supporting on our return from the UK.
The final week of July saw us in PNH doing some collaborative work for another NGO called Open Institute. This organisation was set up by a Spaniard called Javier whose principle focus is ICT. After some considerable capacity building of VSO personnel we managed to get this temporary ‘free transfer’ to work with them in PNH writing practical experiments matching the Khmer science curriculum grades 7-9. These are then to be videoed by Open Institute and used for teacher training purposes. The experiments all use the simplest of accessible apparatus and caused great excitement with the office staff when we got them to try out the practicals; they had never before even measured out a volume of water using a syringe. Jan had them spitting into rice water (rich in starch) and showing digestion through the disappearance of the starch. (Yes, we acquired iodine from a pharmacy). They were thrilled at the result! In context, we do know a Khmer chemistry graduate who has never done an experiment!!!!
The month started off well with one of our VAs getting married in Phnom Penh. Sopheak. We were fortuitously in PNH for our annual performance review (APR). This is where all education volunteers and their partners meet and present an overview of the years’ progress. The build up to this was interesting. VSO PNH produced a ridiculously designed format which was as much use as using a matchstick to stir an Xmas pudding! The process was meant to have full dialogue with our POE colleagues to discuss and ‘jointly’ produce a consensus which would accurately represent the current picture.
We did our best to initiate discussions by suggesting various meeting times well in advance. However, despite …….things fell into the usual pattern of “can’t meet ….too busy” but no alternative was proffered. So we produced our stuff (as usual) and left it with them to peruse at their leisure. We did eventually meet but it was clear that no preparatory work had been done at all on the part of our erstwhile POE colleagues. Consequently, the day it was due at VSO in PNH we sat around a table for three hours going through every point we had made. The major alterations centered on semantics of changing English to Khmer to ensure accurate meaning. At the end all smiles and best mates!
The actual APR meeting went far better than we anticipated and we actually felt that meaningful dialogue had transpired. We learned a lot about VSO documentation. This is to do what you like and not stick to any prescribed format – you learn, don’t you? We had been given a series of questions so in our Mondulkiri team we answered them – simple – NO. The general rule seems to be given documents, read or not, make your own assessment and do what you feel is appropriate. This of course leads to a generalised potpourri of presentations which may, or may not, provide answers to the questions. Thus any consistency tends to be limited to individual corruption of the initial tenant.
Following the meeting, we decided to stay in PNH rather than travel back to MDK and return for the wedding. The week went well and we sorted out various bits of personal and VSO business which is otherwise very difficult back in placement. Jan braved 3 visits to the dentist and we were able to pursue VSO with a vengeance to get a replacement volunteer for Sandra. This proved more straightforward than we had anticipated, so come November we have a Dutch primary school teacher joining the team together with Meg’s replacement.
Dressed up to the nines (Jan very proud of the matching silk shoes and dress bought in a sale – most spent on clothes in a year!), on 4t
h July, we tuk tukked to Logos International School with Veasna and Vorthara (our Volunteer Assistants or VAs) to attend the wedding of Sopheak and Sopal. Sopheak was another VA who worked for us in our first few months but had returned to work for her old school in PNH. We were seated on the playground / basketball court awaiting the Bride and Groom. We had already attended a few Buddhist weddings back in Sen Monorom but this one was to be different, particularly as both are practicing Christians. This in itself had provided a few interesting obstacles on the way to the wedding. The ceremony turne
d out to be a fusion occasion, part Buddhist but predominantly Christian. The bride was traditionally slapped up so much so that we (and apparently, the groom also) didn’t recognize her immediately………………The ceremony over, the catering detail moved into full swing. The chairs moved aside and tables for eight assembled at double
quick time ready for the nosh! The food was really good and better than other weddings we had attended. The strange thing is that people come and go at all sorts of times. Some missed the wedding and turn up for the nosh, others miss the nosh! The food comes in various courses and is served by a team of busy staff but only when a table is full, not before. People eat then go – 
no disco or embarrassingly long speeches made by the inarticulate, slightly inebriated relations.Our return back to MDK went very well, in fact a record 6.5.hrs. The remaining days saw the tracks worsen due to increasing rain, schools slowing down, if that’s possible, exams closing the local secondary school which apparently will not reopen really until next October. During exam weeks teachers mark the exams, no lessons take place so children have no school at all!
However, I did manage to meet with the School Director of the secondary school to look at a room we can use to convert to a science laboratory. This has caused such excitement at the school and in the community and a project we can look at supporting on our return from the UK.
The final week of July saw us in PNH doing some collaborative work for another NGO called Open Institute. This organisation was set up by a Spaniard called Javier whose principle focus is ICT. After some considerable capacity building of VSO personnel we managed to get this temporary ‘free transfer’ to work with them in PNH writing practical experiments matching the Khmer science curriculum grades 7-9. These are then to be videoed by Open Institute and used for teacher training purposes. The experiments all use the simplest of accessible apparatus and caused great excitement with the office staff when we got them to try out the practicals; they had never before even measured out a volume of water using a syringe. Jan had them spitting into rice water (rich in starch) and showing digestion through the disappearance of the starch. (Yes, we acquired iodine from a pharmacy). They were thrilled at the result! In context, we do know a Khmer chemistry graduate who has never done an experiment!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment