Day 29: One last day at Little Po

We made it back to Little Po for our last day at New Futures. I think both Andrew and I were a little more prepared for our heartstrings to be pulled, and we were prepared with a lesson plan of our own (we taught about different types of jobs), but we weren’t exactly prepared for the sad goodbyes, the hugs followed by “Teacher, Can I kiss you?” or the letters that were stuffed into our hands before we climbed into the tuk-tuk to head back to the volunteer center.

Andrew and I taught a class on our own today. I think the students knew I had brought pictures I had printed out from our Friday visit, so they were very enthusiastic about taking pictures with me and with their friends. (Which was super fun, but now I have to get them printed in our next town and send them back to Jake to take out for me!) The class was great. We began the class by asking what jobs they knew, and the most popular job was a “superstar!” When I asked what a superstar was, they shouted out “Michael Jackson!” They also surprised us by shouting out “undertaker!” I suppose it’s a pretty universal job, but still…

During the lesson, I was sitting down with a group of girls sharing their worksheets. We talked about how Andrew and I lived in Korea, and then about my iphone, and then about how white I am. Too white. (I mean seriously, if you want to be blinded, take a look at my legs above. Can you even believe I’ve been traveling around for a month now, and I’m still that white? It’s mostly because I’m terrified of getting 3rd degree sunburned. again. As I usually do at least once when my skin isn’t used to the sun, let alone the scorching sun in SE Asia!) They gently patted my thigh, completely amazed at the color of my skin. And then they were horrified (and perhaps equally amazed) when I said I was “too white” and I wanted to be like them with their beautiful, rich, darkly tanned skin. Oh how the grass is always greener…

During our coffee break time, I gave the friendly coffee lady a picture that I took of her at her coffee stand. She looked at it at first like I was giving her a random picture, then she realized it was her and her face broke into this huge smile, and then she realized I was giving it to her and it really made her day. She was ecstatic. It was amazing. On our way out, she motioned to her grandchild for me to take a picture of her before we left. I had our students explain it was our last day, but I would send the picture to her in a few days. She smiled and said many kind words to us in Khmer and broken English. It was touching.

We went back to the class, and listened to some more songs, and more thank you’s from the students, and said our goodbyes. Team, the teacher is a complete doll. He thanked us profusely for visiting, and teaching, and said that we were so generous (we were there for four hours) for visiting. It was really a lovely experience to feel so appreciated by not only the students, but also the teacher as well. I had Team write down his address for us, so I’m hoping if I send post-cards to him for his class of 190 students, they can follow along just like Johnson Elementary is following along. They don’t have a computer out at Little Po, but Jake said he might be able to set Team up with an email address soon if he starts going to the volunteer center before or after his English class in the center of Takeo.

“This is REAL Cambodia” Jake hollered over the motorbike engine. And yes, he’s right. It’s dirty. There are cows, pigs, sometimes trees growing in the middle of the dirt road. Tiny stores hold bananas, plastic flip-flops, and bags of chips all tied up in plastic bags hanging from the wooden rafters of the wooden hut. Men and women swing from hammocks in the shade during the hottest hours of the day, while naked children run out to wave and scream “hello.” It’s dirty and it’s beautiful, and I had to remind myself I had a year of beautiful (and probably dirty) experiences to go when I felt a wave of sadness that I was leaving this one experience behind.

Day 28: The Monks’ class

We promised the students of Little Po we would return on Monday. I reminded Andrew to wear his necklace that one of the girls gave him. We put images on a usb to get them printed in town, and then we found out the tuk-tuk was broken. I sighed at the lack of communication/general disorganization, and we made plans to join some other volunteers who were going to teach the monks at a pagoda close to the NFO volunteer center. There were five teachers, and eight students. We took turns teaching (ok, so maaaybe Andrew and I highjacked the adverb lesson) but it was nice, if not a bit excessive – especially considering how I’ve become used to teaching 40 students by myself in Korea while my co-teacher slept, checked her phone, or read a book in the back of the classroom. (I love you, Korea, but your co-teachers got me DOWN!)

After class, we biked to the orphanage, where again there was an overabundance of volunteers. Two new volunteers just arrived and were wandering around looking as lost and confused as I felt on our first day. Andrew assures me that we didn’t look that lost. He asked me what I was going to write about New Futures. And here goes: New Futures is a lovely organisation, but it is a little too lackadaisical for individual short term volunteers. It really needs an army of long term volunteers OR a shorter term army of volunteers with their own leader and specific project to work on while they are here. While New Futures gladly opens its doors to volunteers like Andrew and myself to come in for a week, both NFO and volunteers would benefit more from longer term volunteer stints or (as I have already stated) more. organization. If you’re interested in volunteering here, please do (for longer than a week, unlike our poor planning (or knowledge longer would be better), or with a group ready to rebuild classrooms, or lay down flooring, or cultivate a garden).

If you’re interested in sending toothbrushes, or pens (pencils, sharpeners, erasers or any additional school supplies) the children would benefit greatly. There are nearly 200 students at Little Po, and 50 kids currently living at the orphanage. If you’d like supplies to go to one or the other, specify “New Futures Orphanage” or “Little Po Village School C/o Teacher Teem.”

Supplies can be sent to:

New Futures Organisation
Road 110, Snor Village, Rokakhnong Commune, Daunkeo District
Takeo Town, Takeo Province, Cambodia

Day 27: another lazy afternoon in Takeo

Again, we slept in, we spent the afternoon drinking iced coffee and blogging, and we topped it all off with pizza and cards. (Andrew won.) Today was nothing spectacular (we were told not much goes on at the orphanage on the weekends), but it was nice and relaxing. And as dorky as I am with this blog, I may as well admit that I’m excited to be blogging in real time! As I’m typing this a pig is making terrible noises somewhere not so far away, yet I was cheered up when Andrew suggested “maybe it’s giving birth,” which is a much more optimistic idea than the one I was previously thinking. Anyway, I’m all caught up! Finally! On top of that,  my average spending per day is down to $45.92! Yay! (I guess being in the middle of nowhere will do that to a budget. But I’ll take it. I need to get it as low as possible before we go into more expensive countries and start flying again.)

(By the way, after taking this picture, I realized that my be is totally uneven. The foot of the bed is a solid 2 inches higher than the head of the bed. This may have been why my dreams were more vivid than usual last night…)

Day 26: Biking in the Rain

Some blog posts, reflect some of our days: they are boring. There’s not much to do in Takeo on the weekends, and we relished the downtime. We slept in, we watched movies, we sat at the only cafe in town and sipped iced coffee and worked on our blogs, and then we got caught in a torrential downpour. “Jake said to bike in the middle of the road at night,” Andrew warned me before we set off for the volunteer center after going out to get Cambodian take out for dinner. “Why?” I asked. “He said you never know what’s going to jump out at you when it’s dark. He said he has killed a bunch of snakes.”

Day 25: Little Po Village School

Other volunteers told us how well behaved the students were, how the teacher (Teem) managed the 200+ students in one classroom beautifully, even how they all would say hello in perfect unison. Despite them telling us all of this, we were totally unprepared for it. I mean, how prepared can you be after a 20 minute bumpy tuk-tuk ride on dirt roads, through rice fields, to a tiny village in the middle of the Cambodian countryside where you find yourself in front of 200 village students asking if you have a boyfriend in perfect English?

After the greetings, followed by some Q & A, and a lot of singing, we broke off into different groups. Andrew and I went with Jake and a group of about 50 students. The boys seemed to be on white board duty and carried white boards from their classroom to the area we would have class, while the girls grabbed our hands and asked us what our favorite subject, animal, color, etc. was. Our class mainly consisted of a worksheet revolving around what a “mistake” was. The students breezed through it rather quickly, and by the time they were finished, it was time for a break. It took awhile to get away from the students. They wanted pictures with me... then with Andrew... then with me AND Andrew... then of *only* me and Andrew...

They seemed super entertained we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and even made us give each other kisses. It was all very adorable and entertaining, and made me wish desperately I had my new Polaroid I ordered right before we left Korea. Fortunately, I found out there is a photo printer in town, where I can get pictures developed on the cheap to take back with us on Monday!

Our break consisted of an iced coffee from the sweetest coffee lady in all of Cambodia. She practiced her ABC’s while we sat and sipped our coffee.

Teem joined us and taught us how to play “Stop the bus!” with the students for the next class period. “Stop the bus!” Is a game where students work in groups of 5 and have to think of different words that begin with the assigned letter under our designated categories:

Country, Animals, Food, Body (part), Colors

So, for example: If we wrote “C” on the board (as we did at the beginning) The students will then write down:

Cambodia, Camel, Carrot, etc.

When they are finished, with a word for each category, their group will shout out, “Stop the bus!”

The game is a lot harder than we thought it would be. A color beginning with “C?” All I could think of was cerulean, which the students did not think of. So, often we would jump to a new letter if they were having too hard of a time getting a word for every category. They ate it up though. Loved it. Were captivated by it for the entire class period.

After class, all 200 students assembled back in their desks (shared tables and benches) and thanked us for coming, sang some more, and gave Sarah a big (very heartwarming) goodbye. Sarah has been volunteering mostly at Little Po for the past 6 weeks. She held it together pretty well, I know I would have cried my eyes out if so many students came up to give me cards and even sing a special song! Most of the students ran out as we left to wave goodbye and tell us they’d see us on Monday, which means, whether or not we planned on returning or not, now we have to go. Not that we mind at all, but it’s going to be a little difficult when we have to say we won’t be able to see them the next day.

Sarah decided she wanted to go out to one of the local karaoke (noraebang to me!) joints on her last night. When we arrived, we sat outside at a table for some drinks and snacks waiting for everyone to arrive. Jake asked us if we knew how karaoke rooms worked in Cambodia. We laughed, and I said, “Well, we know how they work in Korea…” At which point Jake filled us in that Karaoke establishments in Cambodia cater to men, and for the most part men only. Girls are sold to the business (by their families) and then work to pay off their rent and perhaps buy their way out of their position at the Karaoke place? It was unsettling. Even more unsettling was when we got a room and two girls went in with us, regardless if we wanted them there or not. In Cambodia, a private karaoke room comes with one or two girls. They are “in charge” of the remote, pouring drinks, and then walking around to cheers! each person (to get patrons to drink more).

Andrew and I were not happy with the two girls working the room (in more ways than one, even though no one was interested in anything they were doing). Not to mention the selection was terrible. No Madonna. No Queen. No Boyz II Men. And they cut Andrew off singing Mr. Big. We’re pretty well versed in karaoke. Korea tends to do that to you after one month, let alone the amount of years we have under our belts there. So when the girls kept stopping songs, then singing their own Cambodian jams, then turning on dance music as if to turn the noraebang into a club without singing… No. No. No.

We were able to squeeze in a super long rendition of Do Re Mi from The Sound of Music, and Uptown Girl, but I can safely say it was the creepiest and most weird noraebang experience I’ve ever had. When we got our bill, they tried to charge us for food we didn’t ask for, nor eat. And despite the girls drinking whatever they wanted and stealing the remote the whole time, they were obviously not required to participate in paying for the experience. Although just to be cheeky, I purposely counted everyone in the room and then looked at the bill and asked them for $2.00 each. They looked at me like I was crazy. I responded with a little pantomime of them holding the remote control, singing, dancing, and most importantly drinking, and asked for $2.00 again. They laughed, although I don’t think they were as happy as my new volunteer friends were with my charades. We biked back to the volunteer center swearing never to return to karaoke in Cambodia again. (Ok, so maybe only Andrew and I were the ones who vowed to never return, but if you’re reading this and find yourself in Cambodia itching to sing into the microphone… maybe it’s best to wait until you’re back in Korea.)

Day 24: New Futures Organisation

A friend of mine from South Korea informed me about New Futures Organisation. As taken from the NFO website:

NFO is a non-governmental organisation based in the town of Takeo, Cambodia. We run an orphanage which cares for local children who would otherwise be left homeless. NFO also operates a chain of rural schools in the villages surrounding Takeo town. These schools offer free education to children in remote villages who are unable to attend regular classes.

The beauty of NFO is that you do not have to pay hundreds of dollars for the opportunity to volunteer, nor do you have to commit to a specific period of time. Although, even after one day, I can see why it’s suggested to volunteer for a longer amount of time. What NFO really needs is an army of long-term volunteers, and more donations… But, I’m hoping we’ll be able to do some good in our 5 day (possibly longer) stay. 

We quickly learned that NFO is a rather laid back organization. Which is really great, but not what we were expecting. We were sort of expecting to show up and be immediately put to work, maybe in a classroom, maybe doing manual labor around the volunteer center, or the orphanage itself… Instead our welcome was more like… “So, what do you want to do here?” when we weren’t exactly sure what there was to do in the first place.

We decided to substitute teach a class for one of the other volunteers who was going to go out to the village school that afternoon instead of teaching at the orphanage. This may have been a better idea if the majority of the kids at the orphanage weren’t fishing that afternoon. We had three students in our “class” who immediately lost interest once others returned from their fishing trip.

Srey Nang did a few letters on her worksheet with me, attempted to practice some full sentences, and then promptly ran off. Andrew’s student was a little more studious than mine. Not knowing if Srey Nang was going to return, I pulled out my camera to take a few pictures. She returned, quickly took a liking to my camera, and began photographing every single worksheet she had completed.

Once she was finished, we played hangman. She would spy a word written on the wall behind me and have me guess letters until I lost. Then she giggled when I pointed out “I said G! I said Y!” as she filled in “angry birds” (copying it from the wall behind me) in the missing blanks.

(Who cares about English when you can open every app on an iphone instead?)

A: What are they listening to?
me: Fareed Zakaria.

After “class,” Andrew played chess (rather, Andrew got his butt kicked playing chess) while I kicked a ball around in the courtyard with one of the newest additions to the orphanage. He and his brother don’t speak any English yet, so kicking a ball around worked for both of us.

Close to 50 kids live at the orphanage, with only about 3 or 4 around the clock supervisors. It’s pretty bare, and could use an army of volunteers to come in and plant a garden (and educate the kids on how to maintain it), or put down a new floor for the dining room area, or clean out the pond, or re-do the various open aired rooms that used to be used for dance/exercise/play rooms. Other volunteers let on that the Khmer in general, don’t have the strongest work ethic, which can be seen not only at the volunteer center, but perhaps at the orphanage as well. There’s a general level of disorganization going on, and so while I feel a little badly I can’t stay longer, at least now I know what I can come back to, or perhaps convince my mom to form an army to come and work on some specific projects in a two week (or hopefully longer) time period. I’m also hoping (praying. crossing my fingers) that I can at least organize some friends and family back home to send some toothbrushes and pens this way.

me: I think my mom could do some damage here…  you know, in a good way…

Andrew: Yea, Give Mrs. G a month and she’ll get some things done.

(We figured out rather quickly, our warm room is less warm with the door open and the lights off.)

Day 23: Cambodia Post thinks outside the box

The rain stopped me from a walk to the post office the day before. I also needed a break from dragon shipping disappointment. Had I known I would LOVE the Cambodia Post so much, I would not have worried so much! We arrived, and after they eyed my box, informed me that it was too large, and they would re-pack its contents into a Cambodia Post box. All items had to be shipped in a Cambodia Post box. I sighed, opened my box, pulled out the dragon and let them see for themselves what I was dealing with. They tried – unsuccessfully – to put it into their regulation Cambodia Post box. And then, magically, they handed it back to me and said to put my dragon back in my box. They would cover my box with Cambodia Post boxes! I could have kissed them. All of them.

They got to work covering my box with another layer of Cambodian cardboard, and asked me where I got the dragon. We explained what happened, and they smiled when I repeatedly thanked them for their help. Shipping cost a little more than what the dragon cost in the first place, it has enough cardboard around it to hopefully survive the slow boat home, and should arrive in about 2-3 months. Yay!

me: Ohmigod, it’s like the weight of a dragon has been lifted off my shoulders!

Andrew: More like the bulk of one…

After the post office, we walked through the Central Market, got bus tickets to Takeo, lunch, and then waited for what felt like forever at the very crowded and busy station for our bus.

A fairly painless two hours later, we arrived in Takeo and were immediately bombarded by tuk-tuk drivers. Per our tuk-tuk rule, we never agree to a ride when someone hounds us. Usually we stroll around until we find one lounging in his ride and we ask him for a lift. Also, we thought it might be possible to walk to the Volunteer Center. Not only did the tuk-tuk drivers get on the bus before we got off, they asked us a couple of times while we got our backpacks, and then drove their tuk-tuks up to us four meters away from the bus to ask again. As Andrew laughed about later, I do admit, I kinda lost it.

me: Why you ask 5 times if we want tuk-tuk?

tuk-tuk driver: I want to know if you need tuk-tuk.

me: ONE time, you ask if I need tuk-tuk. I said NO. TWO times, you ask if I need tuk-tuk. I said NO. THREE times, you ask if I need tuk-tuk. I said NO. FOUR times you ask if I need tuk-tuk. And I SAID NO! NOW FIVE TIMES?!? FIVE TIMES YOU ASK IF I NEED TUK-TUK!?!? NOOO!!! (and maybe, ok, I did, pretend to physically pull my hair out of my head at this point)

The tuk-tuk driver laughs. I turn around to more laughter and it’s another tuk-tuk driver and I point to him and say “YOU TOO! NO TUK TUK!” and he laughs too, and they leave us alone.

And then we got lost walking.

But then the only foreign tuk-tuk driver passes us by, turns around and asks where we’re going. He’s from New Futures (where we were headed), and gives us a ride to what turned out to be a couple of kilometers to the center. Even if Jake hadn’t pulled up, you know I would have stubbornly walked 2 kilometers with the 50 pounds of backpack weight on my back instead of tracking them down for a ride.