A month full of love

February. It is almost the end and what a month it has been. It is the month of love and love is definitely something I have felt. It started out with a bang as Maryam and I met up with all the Project Trust volunteers in Kampot which is a two hour drive away from Sihanoukville. It is what I can only describe is a town that is completely not Khmer infact we could have been walking round and smallish French town smoking cigars and chucking back expresso shots. Instead the ten of us drank … modestly… at a river side party. Although I went with the intension to have a dance and a sing with the group I classically (me being me) spent the majority of the night led on bamboo decking having a conversation about Camboida’s political future with an actual Camboidan! (Due to Cambodia’s devastating political history and the struggles it is facing now, politics is not something I would dare to bring up in a public area with a Cambodian, however, this man the owner of the place brought it up with me). I was hooked this conversation is like being given the opportunity to have a conversation with the Queen of England in her Bedroom in Buckingham palace. No way was I going to pass this up. 1) Love for Politics. He told me all about his political views and how he has dreams and idea’s about how Cambodia’s future could be a good one. Me being ignorant told him he should hold onto those dreams because it is thought processes like that that cause change. With which he replied, “I can not continue to have dreams like this and nor will I ever share them with others because I do not want to be killed and I do not want to kill.” This slapped me right back into place. It is very easy when you are living as a volunteer in a different country, enjoying your time with your students, travelling with your friends, eating new and exciting foods and seeing such happiness all the time to forget that actually living in Cambodia is really really hard and there is still so much oppression. So after that conversation I try to remind myself to not become ignorant.

After a fun first night in Kampot we all crashed out in a lovely hostel with huge double beds. Luxury. Waking up was hard, but my stomach was beckoning me to the restaurant on the roof for breakfast. Katie, Kaylen, Maryam and I headed up and grabbed a table with a lovely view. We all had pancakes (I think, I can’t actually remember only that it was very very good). Then the volunteers from Siem Reap joined us and we chilled out for a while listening to some music soothing ourselves into the day. After that, we were joined by Joe and Tom and we headed off down a bumpy road to a kayaking place. Doubling up we made our way down the river. It was stunning! Palm trees, flowers, fields and little villages on the side of the river. An hour and a half later we came back for lunch – I had pasta pesto .. I know not very Khmer of me but it was on the menu I could not resist. So, all of us sat on wooden benches our feet dangling over the river and looking out towards a beautiful mountain. I almost couldn’t believe that this was my life. 2) Love for Cambodia’s countryside

After showering back at the youth hostel we headed back into Kampot to watch a movie. Maryam found this place where can chose out of hundreds of films to watch, once you have chosen you get a private room with a massive bed and loads of pillow to watch it on. It was so cute!

The next day everyone else headed back to their projects but Maryam and I were going on all the way to Phnom Penh. Back ground information - I have been working for the Phnom Penh Children fund which means I collect information about every student in provinces around the capital. I collect information on the students and make profiles which has a photo of them, their school and their story which I then send to sponsors and sponsor coordinators. The Phnom Penh file was deleted a while ago which means a huge amount of information on students was lost which meant that many sponsors stopped sponsoring children so these children’s families have not been given money which means they have been struggling to send their children to school. SO, I have recently spent hours finding out which children in which area of the country do not have photos on their profiles. Having no photo means sponsors feel less connected with the children they are sponsoring and it often causes them to stop sponsoring after a while so moral of the story - getting photos of the children is very important. After finding this out Brother Roberto asked me whether I wanted to go with Chanmey, another secretary working for the Sihanoukville Children fund, to all the provinces to take photos of the children. I was very grateful to have this opportunity! Of course I said yes! I also manged to get Maryam invited aswell. We arrived at Don Bosco technical school after a very long journey. Don Bosco technical school is huge and we were warmly welcomed by the community. Given food to eat and a bed to sleep I was extremely grateful to them. Throughout the next 5 days we spent driving to extremely rural schools taking photos of all the children and gathering information about the teachers. The schools themselves were often in Buddhist temples and were absolutely beautiful so obviously me being the tourist I am took as many photos as I could. 3) Love for Cambodian Buddhist architecture. My biggest challenge during the week was actually getting the children to smile for the camera. Cambodian’s are the most smiley people I have ever met but when it comes to photographs smiling definitely does not come naturally. I found out later on from Fr Albeiro (head of Kep Don Bosco), that the reason for this was because they believe that once their photo is taken their soul is also taken away from them with it. Fascinating. I also spent a large amount of time posing for photos myself as many of the students had never seen a western person before.

When we arrived back in Sihanoukville Maryam and I were absolutely shattered and spent much of the weekend dozing and reading. Then it was back to admin work and back to teaching. Unfortunately… my computer had a mental breakdown and my three most important programmes: excel, outlook and Lotus decided to stop working. This meant I could do absolutely nothing which was very frustrating because I had absolutely loads to do! So instead I worked with Mercedes a Spanish volunteer here. She is teaching me how to use a website that she has created that I will soon be transferring all of the information about the children fund onto. Teaching was a little here and there this week as some classes were cancelled and others I had never taught before.

Valentine’s day. I had a wonderful Valentine’s day. Luckily for me I had my all girl class in the morning and they showered me with sweets and biscuits all giving me their love. 4) Love for my students.

We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with a community of Salasians which is made up of catholic Brothers, Catholic priests known as Father’s and volunteers. I like our community and I like eating with everyone. However, this week everyone was, for some reason or another, away I didn’t really like it wasn’t as fun at dinner, too quiet. Then I found out that Brother Luis (Colombian) was also going away this weekend. Brother Luis is one of my favourite so I was almost upset that he was going too. So…. he invited me and Marayam to go to Kep with him. Simple as that. So Maryam and I joined Brother Luis where we stayed in Don Bosco Kep. This was a really fun weekend. Although I love our Sihnoukville Salasian community the Kep Salasian community is a nice break. It is much more relaxed and I got the idea that Br Luis went there for a chilled out time. It was great for Maryam and I because all the other Project Trust Volunteers work in Kep, the boys in Don Bosco and the girls not too far away. So on the Friday we all met up for a drink. The next day Maryam and I sat outside in the morning having a DMC about the world and religion – classic – and then we decided to go for a walk to the national park. Kep is so green its full of trees and hardly any houses so a very nice change from Sihnoukville so we were excited to get some green in our lives… but unfortunately we didn’t make it to the national park and actually ended up walking all the way to Kep beach which is apparently really far. So we decided to book our bus ticket back to Sihnoukville for Sunday and then called the girls to come and join us. We met for a drink before deciding to call Martin our country rep who lives in Kep to ask him whether we could use his house to cook a meal together. He accepted, so we headed off to the market to grab some veg and rice. We decided we would cook Thai chicken curry. Yum. Once at Martins Katie and I (who are very similar when it comes to doing things) got on to cook. Maryam helped with the chicken and then Martin taught me how to use a rice cooker. BAM dinner was served and my oh my even if I do say so myself – it was delicious. As I have said before Martin’s house is the nicest house I have been in and it always leaves me feeling so happy and calm. After dinner and a good old natter with Martin he drove us all to Kep Gardens which is a little school next to the girls school. They were showing a nature programme about Cambodia. It was very fascinating and I felt really at home because this was exactly the kind of evening I would have with my mum at home chilling out. Straight away after that Martin drove Maryam and I back to Don Bosco and we said our goodbyes. BUT the night was not over for us yet! Oh no when we were arrived our eyes were struck with hundreds of little fairy lights and music was coming from the bottom of the school. So we went to take a look and sure enough Father Charles from Phnom Penh was setting up music for the dance with his students. He had just been running a self love work shop with them so the moral was very high up in the air. One look at each other and Maryam and I jumped straight in there with all the students to have a dance. They taught us the traditional Khmer footwork and hands and the rest of the dances to particular songs. It was a huge laugh. 5) Love for Khmer dancing.

Then Sunday it was back to Sihnoukville however, this week has bee nmore relaxed teaching wise because the students have exams. I also needed to go the Phnom Penh on Tuesday to get my second Hep B jab as there was a global shortage in the U.K. at the time. I got up at 6.20am and got back at 12.30am. What a day but I was pretty proud of myself for doing it alone. I also haven’t been that well because of lack of sleep but Maryam has been completely lovely and wonderful to me so finalyl 6) Love for my project trust partner in crime Maryam.

A love filled month.