Day Three - April 5th

Woke up late and the rest of the day has been running around a little bit late for everything! The worst was missing a lunch with a Singapore couple working here full-time - there’re just so many people doing interesting things. I wish I lived here fulltime, but when the power cuts out and I’m slowly melting into sweat and missing my kids, Singapore gets the edge.

We went to an NGO on the outskirts of PP - sprawling old building with a big yard. They took us around their computer, sewing and metal welding workshops and Maggie, a Singaporean working for them, had lots of advice about vocational training, encouraging young teenagers and what kind of real work skills are needed. The metal welding workshop was very cool - it has a dormitory attached and all these wicked machines and sparks all over the place.


After that, I was running late and missed an appointment at Chab Dai, but caught up over the phone. I can’t begin to say how helpful Chab Dai have been as a resource of information, research and other groups.

Diana and I grabbed a coffee at Sisters, this tiny little cafe near the Russian Market that serves the strongest french press coffee and divine brownies. The woman who runs it is smart and capable and a skilled crocheter, and she’s agreed tentatively to teach our vocational training girls once a week. It’s not the practical skills, we’re coming to see from talking to other people, but the life skills, the sort of level-headedness and time sense and manners and - well, you know at work, the person who actually gets stuff done and is pleasant. These girls need role models, other young women and men who’ve built solid lives and struggled and understand and can inspire them.


Then it was more running about and I ended up on the wrong side of town and had to grab a moto back, all sweaty and windblown, to pick up my mum and her friend to go to a church where we had a simple yummy lunch with the vicar’s wife. She had done several vocational training projects too, and had materials and possibly three sewing machines we can have. I’m hoping an embroider she knows will be able to do one afternoon a week as well, another strong role model.

Then it was more coffee at another place, then back to the Family House to meet up with some people. A friend living here with lots of children was there with my secret favourite - we have the same birthday - and I got to carry her for a half hour and show her the doggies and swing her round and realise how much I miss my son being a toddler all over again.


Then the children arrived! 13 of them, all dressed in their best clothes - which meant raggedy school uniform and broken flip-flops for one to a tiny suit jacket and baseball cap for another - hair tidied and faces scrubbed. They came with the housemother and were perfectly behaved. We broke out donations from Florida Condo in Singapore - lots of small toys like little cars and wee teddy bears, and the children were each given two, plus a pile to exchange and allowed to sort through and swap until they each had one toy they really liked. Then, back into two tuk-tuks (two of them sitting on the little metal bit at the front until we managed to squish them more safely in the middle.



The Reading Room on St 240 is a shopspace given over to books, books and more books, with cushions and mats and tables and completely free to browse. They have a storytelling - going on right now as I type this up - hour on Thursdays. Lots of their books have been translated by volunteers into Khmer, and they’re just - there’s about thirty kids, ours plus another NGO, sitting quietly and taking turns to draw elephants and cats on a whiteboard while stories are read to them.

This evening, we’re going to the North Korean restaurant for dinner, and I need to finish all our financials and answer a bunch of emails and ahhhhh.

Bu for now, I’m going to watch the little kid in his only set of clothes with the biggest grin ever skip back down from the whiteboard having drawn a beautiful cat.