Orientation, Markets and Slums

Last night my fellow volunteers arrived, and they all seem great! Hurrah!

In this Photo left to Right are Kimlay, the organiser here, Oliver and Christine, Gemma, and Geraldine.

Kimlay took us around the city in a couple of tuk tuks so that we could gt the measure of the place as well as giving us a brief history of the country.

People here are so poor, most living in places that made me realise our, by our standards, very basic guesthouse are a luxury few can afford to stay in.

We looked round a shopping centre which was delightfully airconditioned, and everywhere sold jeans, watches or phone and simcards. Outside every shopping centre is a promotional stall for mobile phone service providers playing unbearably loud and terrible music. I can only think they do this so that you have to buy a card to call other people to tell them how dreadful the music is..

After stopping for lunch, whuch was huge, and which cost less than 2 dollars, the can of coke costing almost as much as the food, we went off to see the various project we will be working on as from tomorrow.

We visited the first orphanage, containing hot little shacks full of rickety bunk-beds where the children stay, with the attached school. The School consists of 4 tiny, hot rooms, two stacked on top of the other two, crammed with metal and wood bench desks where the children learn for a few hours a day. Their day starts at 5am when they get up, shower, clean their teeth and then their house, before they perhaps wash their clothes, or learn handicrafts and sewing so that they can make key fobs or purses to sell to tourists in order to support themselves, and make money for the orphanage also. They then have lessons with volunteers in the afternoon... this is the time when they learn English, and numbers.

Then we moved onwards out of town and the air became more and more pungent with we weren't sure what... until we realised why - we were heading for the dump site, the rubbish tips for the city. We stopped at a small concrete building, the library.

Inside was a bookshelf. Just the one. With a selection of about 20 different children's books, perhaps 3 copies of each for the children to use to learn. None of them were very good, and I could see that this was such a big deal for them, I could barely hold back the tears at the realisation that this was the only resources these children had but for volunteer teachers. I hope the others volunteers are better than me as these children deserve so much more. Upstairs was two hot, bare, rubbly floored concrete rooms which are the classrooms.

Then Kimlay took us a little further on to the slums where the children who use the library live.

It was horrific. I don't think that I can adequately describe it to you, and I couldn't bring myself to take pictures as it seemed so utterly disrespectful to photograph such misery. The shacks that people live in, little ones on stilts are made entirely from what they can scavenge from the tip. Just wood and perhaps sacking and canvas and polythene. and in between just mud and rubbish. In the rainy season which hasn't really started yet it becomes knee deep in black stinking water and effluent - much higher than knee high for the children, which they have to wade through barefoot. The children run around naked up to a certain age.

I saw a child being held still by three people and being rubbed with something. Kimlay explained that when children get sick, the only treatment they get is to have their skin scratched all over before they are rubbed with Tiger balm. As you can imagine with the child so distressed it was so hard not to try and intervene. But then I had nothing else to offer them as an alternative. Kimlay said that as a child he was given the same treatment. This is normal.

All anyone can really do to help is teach, and provide books. I don\t know if you know anyone who has any kids reading books that they no longer need, but if you do feel like you want to help you can send books to them here, and it could really do some good. I will post the address to which to send them tomorrow.

The life expectancy here in Cambodia is about 55. Some of the people living in these slums looked 80, but were probably in their 40s or 50s and lived through Pol pots regime. It's heartbreaking to think of the lives these people have led and how they will have to live out the rest of their years. The country is slowly rebuilding itself but the scars are still so evident.

Perhaps to lighten our spirits after the very sobering shock of what we had seen, we visited the "Russian market". not entirely sure why it was called that, but it was a low ceilinged warehouse crammed unfeasably full of stalls selling every thing from silk scarves, dresses to moped parts, silverware and jewellery to wood carvings and paintings. And of course CDs. each stall butted up agains the next, piled higher than most people stand, and with corridors of only about 2.5 ft wide between them, and it was unbelievably hot hot hot! We alll kind of burst out gasping for air after only 15 minutes inside.

After this I think we all needed to get back and gather our thoughts about the things we'd seen today. I will only see myproject tomorrow, so I still don't know what to expect!

Early night tonight, though with everything I saw today I am not sure sleep will come that easily.