Pictures, pictures.

I think I may have posted too many pictures in the posts before this one.
But, I think there's no such thing as too many pictures. (Leave a comment after this post if you disagree.)

Anyway, I've taken lots of pictures during the trip, but here are the nicest few I have taken.

This is what most of the girls in the slums do: they pick up food scraps from restaurants to sell to farmers as fertilizers.



Cheerful pictures done by the children adorn the wooden walls of Steven House. (We are going to get that repainted soon.)





Some of the children in the slums run around with minimum clothes. He is just one of them.


So much to do, so little time.

Home again, home again!

Our last day in Phnom Penh is a blur for me. Lack of sleep and a cold turned me into a functional zombie - think Shaun of the Dead! I met up with several more people, Therese found an awesome little tailoring shop tucked around the corner from Java Cafe, so my daughters didn’t have to murder me for again forgetting to pick up clothes for them.

Bills were checked and receipts signed off. We bought cloth and some extra things on the shopping lists again. The new furniture looks great in the Family House, and the storeroom was neatly sorted out. I had a brief meeting at Chab Dai that went well. I also spoke with a friend of Sophon’s who is starting a proejct for rural poverty that’s quite different from ours but an interesting grassroots village approach.

And now we’re home with a very long to-do list and plans and so much work!

Photos to come in the very next post from Therese.

Shopping, Shopping.

That was one heck of a shopping trip.
Dale bought many many things for the Family and Stephen House today. We bought things like a cane sofa set, 6 sturdy children's bamboo stools, 6 bookshelves, many pieces of bamboo mats for sitting and many many other things which I cannot recall (I left the receipts upstairs in the room). Thank you everybody! =)


Sophon working behind his new laptop. The new printer is beside it.

It's all going to arrive at their respective places (either Stephen House or the Family House) tomorrow and I promise to take pictures of them before I go back to Singapore tomorrow.

After our shopping trip and on my way back to The Pavilion, I was suddenly blasted with a dusty gale. My face was completely covered with dust and my eyes were smarting from the sand despite the fact that I was wearing my pair of glasses. John, our tuk-tuk driver, says it's going to be the rainy season in Cambodia soon as the winds only come shortly before the rains. He says there will be a little rain but it will grow into big thunderstorms before long.

How interesting. We don't have adverse weather conditions in nice, safe Singapore with its clean streets. It would be quite an experience living in the middle of a city with frequent power cuts, limited internet access and terrible thunderstorms. Maybe a month or two here will make me appreciate Singapore more.

More later!

The Mosquitoes Love ME.

I get an average of 3 mosquito bites daily. Dale is worried that I might get dengue fever or some other mosquito-borne illness.

I went to the Stephen House (the name for Children's house #1) today.

Dale left me at the house (while she went ahead to the slums) to take pictures and videos of the children doing their lessons. The children learn their Khmer by repeating the words many, many times. We didn't understand each other and only communicated with gestures and facial expressions. I sat through their class and learnt a new Khmer word: bol-bol - which means 'rice soup'.



The children were distracted by my presence and my phone. I showed a fascinated girl her classmate's picture on my phone screen and she tried to point the phone's camera lens towards another person. Alas, we got the pay-attention-or-else stare from the Khmer tutor because it was in the middle of the class. It seems that teachers are the same all over the world. =)

But the kids soon settled down after I settled in at the back of the class. Some fidgeted and others fingered their new clothes (Dale gave out 2 sets of clothes to each child) but their chanting of the Khmer words could be clearly heard from a few houses away from Stephen House.

Here's a boy having a water break during class.


The people living in the slums have their pride. I see it in the way they try to dress their children the best they can, the way they are protective towards their children (Sophon spent 3 months - and counting - trying to gain their trust. There have been too many cases of children missing/sold in the slums where some births can go unrecorded) and the little things they do to make their homes more hospitable (I saw a little cactus plant - a little sprinkle of green in the grey jungle - hanging by the door of one of the houses in the slums).

Dale interviewed some girls for the new vocational training programme we have drawn up. They are all aged about 9-14, which is a good age to be sold into slavery or other undesirable activity. Some girls had absolutely no school, a few had education; the highest education level being Grade 6 in the nearby school. All are working as food scrap collectors - they collect food scraps from restaurants to sell to farmers as fertilizer. They can earn US$3 on a good day. One of the girls had her hair shaved short like a boy's to discourage unwanted attention from child traffickers.

They whisper to each other shyly, sip their soft drinks and point to my phone-camera.
(edit: here's one of Sophon talking to the girls)



We looked at new tiles for the bathroom and Dale's pretty excited about creating a rainbow-coloured bathroom. The bathroom is really in a bad state.



Thanks again for giving us money to renovate this place!

There's so much to do and I wonder if 4 days is enough to accomplish everything we need to do.

Wednesday!

I would point out the Pavillion (highly recommended - we're paying for our hotel ourselves, not RK to clarify) was the Queen's mother's house. And it wasn't traffic lights here but a NEW one I was so pleased with. I do admit stopping to marvel at the very first green-man-flashing light I ever saw here after racing across roads clutching a small child previously. Traffic lights are grrreat.

I'm up super early to get Singapore work done and answer some emails before we head off to Stephen House, the Children's House near the Japanese Bridge. We're interviewing five girls aged 12-14 who live there to see if we can enroll them in our vocational training project. We've had two girls apprenticeing for a month now, and we've got two more we hope will join if their families agree, so we're already over-full for the pilot.

We picked up a tower of reference materials from the Chab Dai library - quite amusing to flip through one report and see my own name there (international adoption trafficking) and the people at Chab Dai were so nice. Then it was running from place to place the rest of the day. I met a lovely American-British woman living here who is going to possibly be our embroidery trainer, and well, it's all sorted! Curriculum needs to be printed, but the outline has been okayed mostly.

Heading back last night, a guy on the back of a motorbike reached into my tuk-tuk and grabbed my mobile out of my hands. Very annoying as it's going to cost a bit to file a police report, and I have to figure out whether it's worth the hassle to get the insurance back. At least I had recently downloaded photos from it.

So much to do! We're off to do shopping for the two houses this afternoon - kids need shelves for the clothes and books donated, we need a first-aid kit box, slateboards, whiteboards, this and that - the list does go on.

You can read about it here: The What To Give for Riverkids Registry

Pick up a backpack and some cups for one of our kids - quick and easy, and very appreciated.

Photographs coming - Therese got some very funny ones of the big yellow tuk-tuk Kerri took us back in, and some lovely ones of the Family House.

First day in Cambodia!

There was an undergraduate who snored in the seat behind us as we were on our way to Phnom Penh this morning. Well, it couldn’t be helped; our flight was at 7am this morning and we had to be at the airport at 5.30am (at the very latest) to check in. I am quite lucky to survive till now with only 3 hours of sleep in my system.

Phnom Penh has the most undeveloped international airport I have ever seen. There were planes parked among the long wavy uncut grass and there seemed to be insufficient runway space because the plane made a U-turn on the runway after landing. There was construction going on at the airport as well.

And everywhere there was construction and more construction. Even the undergraduates on the plane with us were heading to Phnom Penh to help build a road.

We took a taxi from the airport to The Pavilion, as Dale was rather impressed with her last stay there and yes, it is an excellent place. The bed that I am sitting on to type this is bigger than my own bed at home! Dale says it used to be the late Queen’s residence. It can give Holland Village in Singapore a run for its money.

On our way to the Family House on St 320, Dale saw something which made her excited. She saw traffic lights. I haven’t been in Cambodia long enough to be excited about traffic lights, but Dale says she did not see that during her trip here last month. And she said it was amazing that everyone was following the traffic light signals.

I’m too much of a city girl. I need to appreciate things which come for granted in a big city like Singapore. Growing up with traffic lights has made me rather blind to them.

It was a rather interesting experience to be on a tuk-tuk. I felt like a local, but at the same time, not a local because everyone else was on motorcycles. There I was, sitting in a tuk-tuk big enough to accommodate 4 people and beside me were motorcycles carrying 3 people (and their things). I felt that I was being extravagant, but I could not imagine struggling with bags of donations (we brought up 45kg of donations) and balancing myself on the motorcycle taxi all at the same time. I had an experience with a motorcycle taxi when I was in Hainan Island (China) last month, but I was only carrying another extra bag in addition to my backpack.

After meeting Sophon, Dale finally gets her own name card. It’s swanky, and has English and Khmer written on both sides. She’s excited about it and gives it out when she can. =) Get one while you can!

I went to explore the Russian Market with Sophon’s daughter while Dale met up with more people and I’m sure I could find more affordable stuff elsewhere because the Russian Market is listed on the map they give to tourists and I’m sure they are touristy prices. Dale obviously does not agree with me. Anyway, the Russian Market gets the thumbs-up for having a great range of fabric.

We went for dinner with Kerri Evans, one of our close donors, and she has this fantastic tuk-tuk which she uses to ferry her 7 kids around.

She says it can easily hold 25 kids or 16 adults. It would be much easier to ferry our kids to and fro lessons and home.



WE WANT ONE! It’s so absolutely cool! ^_^

Internet connection is wonky (but still, better than nothing), so I better end off here.

Packing, packing and packing!

We're sorting out suitcases to bring tomorrow, and all the last minute panicking is rushing up. Therese has been packed off home to catch some sleep before our 4am wake-up calls.

Today we made and addressed fifty thank you cards. About twenty are done, another thirty to finish tonight. We've packed little ziplocs for every child at the Riverkids Children's House #1 (Shortly to be renamed for its main donor's cat - it's a long story!) with two sets of donated clothes, picked out for each kid in mind. We've got a massive shopping list that Therese is in charge of. Shop inventory has been done, orders taken - oh blast, the dummy text is still up. That'll have to wait to next week.

Today we did a second draft of the Work Skills (possibly named Get Ready! in Khmer) 6-month curriculum, finished the donors database (four hundred people!) and packed.

One of our donors emailed us when we were checking mailing addresses to say that she was wondering if we did actually exist. I really really apologise for being quiet. Updates at the website aren't as good as an email or letter. It's tough when we're in the thick of things to remember other people can't see what we're doing unless we tell them, and there always seems to be one more thing to get done first...

So this trip, we're going for frequent short posts!

The tax people gave us an extension once they were able to figure out exactly what category we belong in and which form to file. We're getting our 2006 financial papers done to be handed in next week - they have to be certified by two of the trustees, and then our annual report is ready to go, with just a placeholder for the financial numbers, and whew.

Right. I have a sleeping cat on my chest, thirty cards to write and three suitcases to pack. Wish us luck!