Day one - April 2, 2007

On the way to Phnom Penh now, yay. I’m watching How I Met Your Mother and Barney is just so delicious, utterly delicious.

We came in about 20kg overweight with nine bags full of toys, books and games on three trolleys, and so far everything is fine.

Landed in Phnom Penh and we had to figure out how to get everything plus us into town. One tuk-tuk and a very crammed car later, we dropped off most of the donations at the Family House.

It’s a four story terrace house down a quiet street just around the corner around - several turns, but still walking! from Bloom. Diana’s splitting the place with us which is great because there is so much space - and so cheap! We pay about US$175 for two floors. It’s been renovated recently and it’s painted bright yellows and oranges with great big windows, just right for sewing and handwork. Diana’s workshop is on the second floor, and it was lovely to walk in and see everyone chatting and working together. The very first two Riverkids Family House 1 trainees were there - Diana’s got some of her workers mentoring them for basic sewing skills while we confirm the other trainees. Teenage girls, dressed carefully and their heads bent over their work whispering to each other - really lovely.

Then we went to the Children’s House. It’s in a working class street across from the slum, so the road is very narrow and the house itself is half of a shophouse and frankly not more than a giant glorified box. It’ll take a fair bit of work to make it more useful and child-friendly, and it definitely can’t take more than 25 schoolkids and 15 kindergarteners. But oh - there were pictures up on the wall, all the kids in clean clothes and well-behaved and with their notebooks - i drew cats and dogs and what was to be a dragon for one little boy and he pointed and said very clearly in English “dinosaur”. Some of the stories are just bloody awful, but the kids all look so thrilled just to be in a classroom.

Then we checked into our hotel - the Pavilion which is amazing and so, so pretty. It’s the house of the Queen’s mother, restored with a pool and lots of flowering plants and little quiet details, and just tranquil. With the city right outside the gate!

While my mum and her friend had a nap, I had lunch with Sophon and his daughter who had very sweetly volunteered to drive us around that day. Ate two plates of noodles and went quickly over what we hope to get done this trip - too much!

Then we picked them up and went back to the Children’s House and walked across the road into the slum. It’s about 235 families, the local slum leader (I think he has an actual municipal title but I can’t pronounce it properly - basically, the slum mayor?) told us. He’s been really supportive of Riverkids which helps a lot. We walked around for a bit saying hi and talking, and then we found one of our families at home. The kids weren’t there and their mum turned and pointed with a laugh - a crowd of little kids in various stages of undress, all wet and grinning, racing down the narrow alleyway. They’d just gone for a swim in the river. It took a bit of sorting out which kids belonged to which mum, who was a friend or a nephew or an orphan and so on, but all the kids were duly proclaimed lovely and clever and please send them to school, they’re so nice.

Walking out, we saw one little boy who’d been out of school that day and found out his mum had gone to the doctor’s that morning and taken him along. His grandmother was sitting nearby. She looked to be in her late thirties, quite pretty and tall and when she saw me struggling with Khmer, she asked if Vous parlez-vous francais, madame? And we then had a conversation in my awful french about her lovely grandkids, with her correcting my mistakes politely. She learnt French as a little girl, probably in the 1960s.

Walked on a bit more to see if another family was in - oh, and the two boys with the single mum who are in severe financial problems, I mut remember to ask about them. Sophon tried to get them into a good shelter project, but they’re full-up. When the slum people reckon you’re in trouble, you really really are.

The other family were out, and nearby was a small knot of people talking and I casually pointed one out. It’s a snap judgement, but I’m pretty damn confident about it now. She was tall and slightly plump, well-dressed in a pretty matching set of Vietnamese PJs, with a glittery diamond pendant and sort of - authority in the way she spoke. Slick, and the young women around her and just the feeling that this was one of the traffickers. At the old house, it was the well-fed parents with skinny children who were almost always awful. Skinny parents with skinny kids, even odds.

Then we headed off across the Japanese Friendship Bridge to one mooring of boats near there. They’ve been told they’ll be cleared sometime soon, so no-one’s putting down roots. Just shacks and a lot of garbage. One had fallen over and no-one had bothered to rebuild it. The family we were looking for, with an eleven year old for part-time vocational training, had already moved in anticipation. We met two other families from the old house and had to explain that we couldn’t take them in immediately until things were sorted.

Oh, and two orphaned brothers that I’d like to keep an eye on as well. The younger boy’s head went up at the mention of school in conversation among the adults, and he looked pretty keen.

Much of this is simply walking around and talking to people. I can’t understand 95% of what people say, so I watch body language and wait. The days I’ve spent tagging after Lyna and Sophon visiting helped in that I know concretely that it’s a 2-4 hour trip for each family, what with the drinks and chatting with the neighbours, the checking on each kid - they have little money and plenty of time, after all!

The shoreside is pretty horrible what with the garbage and mud, but if you look up a little bit, it’s all clear blue sky, the setting sun golden and fierce, and down by the boats, green reeds and children splashing about.

Everyone was whacked out after that so we came back to the hotel for a nap and showers. Then we had dinner at Friends, the most awesome (dare I say Legendary?) restaurant run by the Friends NGO which rocks. They do some outreach work for the teenages in the Children’s House slum.

Dinner was fabulous and I got to meet Jolene again. She’s a Canadian artist working here for a year who volunteers at Riverkids and we talked about the children and developing more art and design skills. Plus, coconut cake, mmmmm.

Then back to the hotel to type this up and now to SLEEP. I need to work out the 3-month curriculum for vocational training at some point tomorrow, but I also have to be up bright-eyed and busy-tailed by 7 am.

LEGENDARY!