Postscript

For three months this year I had the privilege of leading Writing Through workshops in Cambodia, teaching children sponsored by Enfants du Mekong (EDM) how to write poems and stories in English.

Fifty lessons, hundreds of poems and stories and six “big events” later, almost 200 children have received a ‘magic pencil’ and with it the new experience of writing creatively in English.

The workshop represented a lot of firsts. It marked one of the first large-scale projects funded by Children of the Mekong – the UK division of EDM. It was Writing Through’s, largest roll-out so far, and one of the first times founder Sue Guiney handed over the reins to her carefully devised workshops. As for me, it was my first formal experience of teaching, and my first time in south-east Asia. 

The biggest first of all was for the students. Answering a questionnaire before the workshop started, almost half of them said they had never written a story before, whether in Khmer or a foreign language. Just 28 per cent said they felt they “had something important to say” and only 17 per cent said they “felt confident” before the workshop started.

Their reservations were understandable. The workshop, which includes group work, speaking in front of the class, creativity and spontaneity, differs from the typical Cambodian education style, which relies on rote learning and places a high importance on respecting the teacher, rather than freedom of expression.

Added to this, reading for pleasure is not common in Cambodia. The national literacy rate is around 73 per cent, and even lower in the poorer, rural areas where EDM’s sponsored children come from. On bumpy bus rides between EDM centres in Bantaey Chhmar, Sisophon, Samrong and Preah Vihear, I did not once see someone reading a book, or even a 

newspaper.

This context can make teaching a challenge. Tell a group of English, French or American seven year olds to write a story about anything they want, and most of them will start scribbling away. Asking a group of 12, 15 or 21-year olds they are about to do the same, and I was met with many blank, or plain terrified, faces. 

Here is where the careful structure of Writing Through comes into its own. Through brainstorms, group discussions and visual prompts, the students are gently nudged towards writing for themselves. As in any classroom, confidence, ability and enthusiasm varied across the children, but by writing first as a class and then individually or in small groups, students were able to learn at their own pace.

Teaching face, Prear Vihear

The theme of each workshop was “Taking Risks”. Before each session, I showed the class photographs. Some showed physical risks: a woman climbing a mountain; a girl who had fallen off her bicycle; a man smoking a cigarette.

Some were emotional or intellectual; and harder for some of the students to identify as ‘risks’. In many cases, these inspired the most interesting work – an image of a boy crying on his friend’s shoulder led to discussions about emotional risk and how the students dealt with their problems. A picture of a Khmer couple on their wedding day prompted initial exclamations of “Sah Aht Na!” or “Beautiful!”, but often produced discussions about arguments, poverty and even alcoholism and violence.

The students I taught ranged both in their ages and their abilities. So did what they wrote about. For younger children, talking animals and ghosts in the forests were perennial favourites. University students in Battambang wrote an impressive anti-smoking poem, including the catchy line: “When we smoke, we choke”.  Traffic accidents, remained a constant, and quite understandable, theme across groups.

The capacity for conceptual thought also varied. In Preah Vihear, EDM’s newest centre, the Grade 11 and 12 students were shy about speaking out in class and tended to base their stories and poems resolutely within their own province, often in their high school. In Sisophon, EDM’s longest-standing Cambodian centre, the confidence and ability of the students was more developed. My final groups wrote sophisticated, Bollywood-inspired stories featuring poison, disguise, revenge and romance across enemy lines. For them, several years learning in EDM had made an obvious difference, as had regular film screenings and a well-stocked library. I am confident that within a few years the students of Prear Vihear could be at the same level.

Small group story in Prear Vihear centre

One of my youngest students, Battambang

In every centre I was particularly touched by the student’s enthusiasm for learning English and their apparently boundless curiosity about England and my life there. They were surprised that I did not live with my parents, concerned that I did not usually eat rice every day (or even every week), and were shocked that, unlike them, I did not consider 6am to be a lie in, and in fact would have happily slept until 1pm when I was their age.

In turn, they told me about their siblings, families, ambitions, favourite foods. The boys sang mournful warbling Khmer songs after dinner, hand on heart, while their friends sat with their heads bowed. I mastered my own interpretations of both Let it Go and My Heart will Go On, and came dangerously close to believing that my singing was as “Sat Aht Na!” as they claimed it was.

One girl, Sali, a Grade 10 student in Sisophon, told me that she was one of seven brothers and sisters. Her youngest brother was “too lazy” to go to school, she told me, with the classic distain of the older sibling. Her oldest siblings were working in factories or at home with babies. Her 17-year-old brother wanted to continue to learn but had no bicycle with which to travel the 20 km to the nearest High School.

As the only one in school, her working siblings sent money to help with her education. She laughed as she told me that that is why she was the first to go to bed in her dorm, and why she always missed the centre’s film screening on Sunday so she could study. She brought out library books she was reading in English to show me and we talked about our favourite characters in Harry Potter. She told me her aim was to learn “all the languages”.

In some ways, Sali’s knack with languages (she is also doing well at French) and her willingness for swapping Bollywood for biology make an exceptional student. But, time and time again, I was struck by how seriously the students took their education, how welcoming they were of me and how receptive they were to learning. It frustrates me that there are those like Sali, living in villages in Cambodia, that could be bursting with the same creativity, academic potential and willingness to study, but are not given the same chance.

I am terrible at selfies. Sali is pretty good. The guy at the back definitely has the best idea. 

At the end of each Writing Through workshop, the children read out their work to an audience. This often took on a party atmosphere; in Samrong we had a traditional Khmer band, in Preah Vihear we spent the afternoon making decorations and there was singing and dancing afterwards. In every centre, there was an abundance of quite disgusting durian-flavoured biscuits. Each child received a magazine with the work produced during the workshop, complete with illustrations drawn by the children and some photographs of our time together.

Big event celebrations, Prear Vihear

Asked to evaluate the workshop afterwards, 89 per cent said they planned to write stories and poems by themselves and 88 per cent said they would now feel more confident going to their English lessons. Nearly every child said they would like to participate in the workshop next year. Asked if they had anything else to add, one student in Preah Vihear wrote: “The workshop helps us to have self-confidence. We learn to be brave, to persevere and to write. We think that things are difficult but after we realise that we can do it.”

There is a certain Khmer art to telling the listener what he or she wants to hear. In the space 

of a week, I saw each child progress in confidence and ability, whether by a small or large amount. For some, I think our week together will be the start of them using writing to express their thoughts and ideas. For others, I hope the workshop has opened up new ways of thinking about the world and has taught them that learning English can be inventive and fun.  

As the workshop drew to a close, it was clear that Sue’s theme of “Taking Risks” was a very pertinent one. It is a risk for an NGO to prioritise a programme that teaches poetry and stories; whose focuses on confidence and conceptual thought are subtle and difficult to measure. It is a risk for these children to express themselves in a language that is foreign and in a style that is unfamiliar. To think in new ways; to stand up and share their work; to write.

I believe it is a risk that has, and will continue to, pay off.

I thought it would be fitting to end with a short poem, written by Sompha, Hom, In Chhorm and Sith, Grade 10 students in Samrong centre. (The poem's original title was actually the less charming "Workshop with A Foreigner", but I suggested they might want to use my name instead).

Workshop with Katy

Today we are very happy
Because we study with
Teacher Katy about poems
And short stories
The first time we feel afraid and
Have difficulties with this
Now we don’t feel afraid about learning

Because we have no problem
We can write
A short story and poem
And then we can read
For our friends
And each other
And everybody
Listens to us

We hope that
We can be successful!

Peace out, arkoen chraen, and thanks for reading! 

Buddhas and Bibles

If religion in Cambodia was a soup, it would be a pretty simple one. Very tomatoey - 96% of a very specific type of tomatoes, and a teensy bit of celery and a teensier bit of red pepper. In case you hadn’t gathered, tomatoes = Theravada Buddhists, red pepper = Muslims and celery = Christians. (I always find these well-worn analogies are the best.) Also, just as it would be baffling for a chef to list one of the soup ingredients as “Nothing!”, so too is this a strange way to describe your faith over here, as I have discovered many times now. And Judiasm, well that’s a rare, or altogether unheard of vegetable indeed.

***

Apart from the bending and omming, the yoga retreat (see last entry) also offered us the chance to be blessed by some Buddhist monks. We knelt in rows as three orange-robed monks chanted low, mesmerising blessings, periodically dipping a branch into a bowl of water and thwacking drops of holy water onto us. After this, three of us crawled forward to offer them cartons of chocolate milk (seems kind of infantalising, but they aren’t allowed to eat after 12) and they tied red blessing bracelets, soaked in the holy water, around our wrists. (I am still wearing mine as I type, three weeks later – it is a remarkably sturdy little thread).

While this felt pretty special, I was distracted by wondering what the monks really thought of these rent-a-blessings of Westerners who based their “connection” with Buddhism on having got really into The Power of Now after a breakup. (I might be speaking from experience here.) But what was really excellent, was that after the blessing we had the opportunity to ask the monks, who were keen to practise their English, free questions. (I actually misheard this as “three questions”, and was mortified when someone wasted one precious question with “What type of flower is in the bowl with the water?” when I had burning metaphysical and societal issues to address.) Luckily we were in fact free to probe the monks to our hearts content, which I did. (Metaphorically of course - you can’t even pat these guys on the shoulder without seriously breaching religious code.)

The very nice monks

Some dorky and off-centre posing with said monks

What I found really interesting from their answers is that each of the three monks had chosen to pursue monkhood not because of a spiritual calling, but because of a wish to continue their education. For a sizable part of Cambodia’s population, schooling post-primary school is simply impossible to access. For the academically-bent child, one of the only ways to continue to learn is being becoming a monk. As one does not vow to stay in the Buddhist monkhood permanently (my lycra-wearing Angkor Wat tour guide was a former monk), this perhaps softens the decision to swap classroom for Pagoda. 

Cambodian monks are a highly visible part of society. You see them often, walking in height order on the side of the road under orange umbrellas, or going from shop keeper to shop keeper collecting alms in their cloth pouches. Monks are theoretically forbidden from being involved in politics but in reality have both shaped, and been deeply affected by, the political world. Monks led the “Umbrella Revolution” against the French in the 1940s. Three decades later, the Khmer Rouge expelled from the wats and forced them into manual labour – leading to the death of around half a million. And in 2013’s historic pro-democracy protest marches in Phomn Pehn, many of the vanguard wore orange.

It took me by surprise at how prepared one particularly monk was to talk about politics and Cambodia’s history. He condemned what he saw as the politicians’ efforts to disenfranchise the monks and marginalise Buddhism. He spoke candidly about the Khmer Rouge regime, and said the government relied on people’s poverty and low education levels to avoid confronting their own role in the atrocities and to continue to dodge real democracy. (Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been Prime Minister for 30 years, was part of the Khmer Rouge regime before defecting to Vietnam).

For this monk, and others like him, an advanced education and the ability to read and speak English, had given him access to uncensored information that the rest of the population lacks. It is therefore little wonder that they are so often the forefront of movement for change. And judging by cool anger and quiet resolution of this monk, I would not be surprised if they are sharpening their umbrellas again soon.

***

I went immediately from the yoga retreat to live for a week on the grounds of a Catholic Church in the province of Kompang Cham, which lies on the banks of the Mekong. Here, I spent a week working with children who were sponsored by the English division of Enfants du Mekong; visiting their houses with a translator to ask questions about their lives so I could write letters to each child’s sponsor on their wellbeing, and a help put together a report on the project as a whole. It was a really lovely project, getting an insight into the children's lives and meeting their families and seeing the type of places the children I teach actually come from. Here's a couple of photos, courtesy of Ravy Heng, who is a has a much better camera (and ability to use said camera) than me. 

I also briefly became part of a Cambodian girl gang. We hung around by the bridge while they waved to “handsome boys” on motorbikes as I tried to impress them with the range of songs on my phone. On the last day I spent two hours at one of their stilt-erected houses “doing makeovers” for the village “party” which comprised a really bad speaker system and a bunch of women and children crouching around a basket of eggs in the dark. Literally no handsome boys to be seen. 

Me and the Crew 

The church was presided over by Father Gerard, a warm and jocular French priest who had lived in Cambodia for 20 years and had a really nice beard. I  immediately warmed to Father Gerald when he asked what religion I was. “Nothing,” I said. “But no,” he said, with a big smile. “You are not nothing - you are human!” I take my compliments where I can. 

The church in Koroka is more than a place of worship. It’s the only public place where the community can gather. Children come here to take dance lessons, celebrate national holidays and just hang out with their friends. There are lively youth services, all in Khmer, every evening, and nearly all of the children I interviewed around the village cited "cleaning the church" as one of their favourite free time activities. I hope for everyone's sake that Candy Crush and snogging never catch on here. 

As established, I am not a Christian, and I came to the church feeling very attached to the moral principles, and basic gentleness, of Buddhism. I also think it’s healthy to be skeptical of cultural imperialism in all forms, and evangelism has often been the worst example of this. But I think Koroka is very lucky to have, in Father Gerald, a man who is unusually sensitive to these issues and has taken great pains both to learn both Khmer and as much as possible about Buddhism.   

I arrived at the church during a retreat, organised for the elders of the surrounding villages, the vast majority of whom were women. Women in the area have really embraced the Catholic Church, Father Gerard told me. Religion is typically a female domain anyway, but the priest argued that women often gain a sense of empowerment from Christianity that they do not from traditional Buddhism. In Buddhism us women have no chance of attaining enlightenment. In fact, women cannot even reach be a bodhisattva, which someone on their way to enlightenment. A bodhisattva can be human, animal, serpent (the evilest of animals under Buddhism so much so that it is not even classed as an animal) or a god, but is never a woman. 

The person who stayed in the church longest on each day, sitting by herself in prayer at the corner of the room, was a lady in a wheelchair. Father Gerard told me that this woman had been refused to visit monks in the Pagoda as she was incapable of sitting lower than them. Being disabled itself is seen by many Buddhists as a punishment for sins in a previous life, an even greater punishment than than being a woman. 

Me, probably impressing Father Gerard with my theological insight

I had dinner with a yoga-teaching Buddhist nun the other day (I know, the circles I move in). She was the model of serenity and elegance, immaculately dressed in white robes. But when I told her I was attempting to write a blog about the position of women in Buddhist, the vehemence of her response took me aback: “A nun?! You might as well be a prostitute in their eyes.”  Nuns had sit lower than the monks, eat after the monks, bow to the monks, she said. Even a nun of 75 must bow to a monk of five. As far as it is possible for a yoga-teaching Buddhist nun to get vexed, she was pretty vexed. 

This is not my personal attempt to find out once and for all, which religion is really the best. It is worth noting that with his forward-thinking, tolerant views, (this is a man who believes women should be ordained) Father Gerald stands apart from most of the Catholic clergy. Try as he might to integrate into Khmer society, his position is ultimately influenced by his modern French upbringing, just as the monks, however highly educated, are influenced by their own rural Cambodian upbringing in their views of gender and disability. 

Nevertheless, there is, I think, a tendency to romanticise Buddhism in the West – to buy a Buddha head statue, get a lotus flower tattoo and start lecturing everyone about the benefits of mindfulness without grappling with any of the finer, and potentially less attractive points of what is a vastly complicated and diverse religion. It is a phenomoum the Dalai Lama has called the “fashionable corruption” of Buddhism in the West, and which he has gently condemned.

I have really benefited from learning about and practicing mindfulness meditation, but am left cold when a yoga teacher starts talking about chakras, and feel only aesthetic, rather than spiritual, pleasure when I enter a Buddhist temple. In lieu of a miracle, I will never be a religious person. However, something I appreciate both about Father Gerald’s brand of Christianity, and the general practice of Buddhism in Cambodia, is that there seems to be a wide acceptance of differences 

between faiths and of combining different religions within one family or even within an individual. 

For many the children I interviewed in Koroka, the highlight of the holiday being a huge water fight, organised by Father Gerald, as a sort of of mish-mash of the Buddhist water festival and Catholic baptism ceremony. "And what did you do afterwards?," I asked. "We went to the Pagoda," came the reply. 

And long may the richness and blendyness of the soup continue.  

On hols with my Chakras

A couple of weeks ago week was Khmer New Year – hence no school for the children and none for me either! As I mentioned in a previous post, the anti-malarials I have been taking – Mefloquine – temporarily ruined my brain. (Don't take this stuff.) I was feeling quite anxious and  paranoid, and being in a country where you don’t speak much of the language and look so different, just heightens the problem. It’s easy to imagine everyone is talking about you the whole time, when to be fair, they very well might be. They're almost definitely looking at you. For a few, agoraphobic days, it was tempting to stay indoors with just my ceiling fan and Parks and Recreation for company. Which is kind of a travesty when you’re in such a new, and remarkable country. 

Anyway, this is the mental background to me choosing to book into a Buddhist-inspired yoga and meditation retreat in Siem Reap for my holidays.

I arrived, grumpy and tired after an 8-hour bus journey with a strangers' child on my lap, with some reservations. I feared the other people on the retreat would to be couples, or people obsessed with yoga, or the worst possible scenario - couples obsessed with yoga. People who bandied around words like “chakra” and “zen”, described themselves as “spiritual” without a cringe and stayed behind after class to ask serious questions about "deepening their self-practice”. I can’t say these fears were entirely allayed when after our first dinner (lentil stew) , the retreat manager asked us to read aloud the Buddhist-inspired mantras and saying on our placemat, and “share with the group” how this message reflected our own point in our own life journey. Mine was something about tough trials leading to high mountains. I could hear my mother’s snorts all the way from Streatham. 

But it was difficult to remain cynical; the retreat managers – Margo and Steve – an Australian couple in their 50s - were so unflappably upbeat, overwhelmingly positive and seemed so genuinely keen for us to enjoy ourselves, it was contagious. I found myself laughing more than I have done in years, loudly, and for no reason. I got really into "Yogi Tea", whatever that was. I knew I had reached the point of no return when on the second day we were discussing plans for the afternoon and I suggested we could just “be”. It was too late to think of another verb to folow – I had meant "be”, as a verb complete in itself, content to stand (or sit crossed-legged) alone. 

The retreat involved some meditation, sitting half-lotus while the fan ticked and the dogs barked outside and pins and needles climbed up my left calf. I have never very good at meditation. My mind is like a fly at a barbeque, buzzing from one anxious or banal thought to the other, however many times it is swatted away.

I’m not much of a natural at yoga either, I can’t touch my toes and tended to laugh like a loon when the pair stretches got all sexual/child birth like (one involved your partner standing between your open legs and stretching them apart while you told him how hard to go and whether you were ready for another contraction). I really enjoyed the yoga though – and not purely for these intimate moments. The classes were incredibly varied – one teacher used golf and tennis balls which we rolled around our feet and hands, another smashed gongs above our heads in the period usually set aside for quiet reflection – a technique that actually brought me closer to a meditative state than any other.

Like this guy (sleeping Buddha, Siem Reap province)

And most importantly, the people I shared the retreat with were really awesome. I mean, I have admired the passion and debating skills of the French with whom I have worked so far, and the Khmer have been almost without exception, wonderful, warm and engaging people, but it was nice to be with people who I felt an instant, and genuine connection with, and shared a mother tongue. It soon became clear that every one of us had visited the retreat for some personal emotional reason, and also became clear that we were also pretty willing to discuss and analyse these emotional reasons, and listen to each other, in great detail, intimacy and length. And as everyone who I have forced to play 90s board game Therapy will know (SHOUT OUT!) , I am a great fan of all that stuff. By the end, after every single one of us had delayed our departure date to spend more time at the retreat and were referring to each other as a family, I began to be slightly suspicious that our hosts had been slipping something funny into our Yogi Tea, and we'd end up staying there forever, locked in an endless cycle of downward dogs and empahsising with each other's love traumas. Although, even this thought makes me feel kind of whistful...

Anyway, after all that yoga malarky had finished what we really needed was a night of heavy drinking to really relax. Luckily, it was New Year's Eve, or rather day three of the New Year's holiday. (They like holidays here). We left the warm maternal embrace of the retreat and ventured into Pub Street - the hub of Siem Reap. Actually we had paid a brief visit the evening before, but found everything quite calm, albeit for a few very camp pop bands on a stage, but it turned out that the third night was the night everyone turned up to party. The streets were packed with people dancing to the thud of massive speakers, most of whom were armed with a bottle of talcum powder which they spiralled in the air or threw and smeared on everybody's faces. Of course, being three of the only foreigners there we the talcum powder targets of choice, and the some parts of the night felt like we had inadvertantly joined in a game called "How much whiter can we get the Barang". (Although we did eventually though purchase our own bottle of talcum powder and exact some revenge...) 

Here's me, Alison and Hollie with a new Khmer pal 

Somebody told me that talcum powder had some sort of historic or spiritual significance, but I haven't been able to find anything to correborate this. 

Attempting to work the ghost look

In the lead up to Khmer New Year, I'd been warned so many times about crime going up - "Be careful of your bags"; "It's Khmer New Year - everybody's trying to get money to go back home to see their family." I have to say though, despite the obvious annoyance of having talcum powder constantly shoved in my mouth, nose, eyes and all over my clothes (my bag still has traces two weeks later), I never felt in the least bit threatened. In fact, people always grinned in a very friendly way before they shoved a fistful of white powder in my face and wished me "Sur Sdei Chham Thami". Apart from among the Barang, there didn't even seem to be much drinking, everyone just seemed super excited to be out, dancing on the streets, and having an excuse to touch strangers' faces. It was a kind of crazy atmosphere, but also a completely unthreatening one, where not a single person, or Khmer person at least, was abrasive or rude or needed to be avoided or told to fuck off, and no possessions were lost or stolen in the process. I don't want to draw any comparisons with Trafalgar Square on 31st December, but, you know, all I want to say is that we live in a closed and materialistic culture where people just don't share their white powder which such abundant genorosity. 

 

Some revellers

Anyway, the retreat was called Angkor Bodhi Tree and here's the link in case you're ever in that neck of the woods and in need of some spiritual uplift. 

My next blog will be about something very important. Possibly religion or politics.

Namaste! 

Village temple decked out for New Year (I wonder who gets to sit on that chair) 

Teaching solo

Earlier this month I had my first week flying solo as a genuine pretend teacher. Up to now I've been acting as Sue's sweaty assistant, mostly useful for my ability to reach the very top of the white board.

Returning to the Enfants du Mekong centre in Sisophon, I taught two classes made up of Grades 7, 8 and 9. By this time I was well versed on the Writing Through structure (two days of poetry, two of story writing and one reserved for rehearsals before the showcase performance on the final evening) and its pedagogy.

Sue's Rules thus became Katy's Rules

1."Don't Think" (don't think in a conventional and mechanical way)
2. "Use the back of your brain" (because this is where your best ideas live. Katy Says Relax)
3. "Write with your ears" (words have sounds and rhythm)
4. "You can't make mistakes" (If it comes from your head and your heart, it's eh ok).

Rule 4 can only work because I teach alongside a Khmer teacher who can translate for the kids. For this workshop I was helped by a rather rotund Mr Podge [sic?], who introduced himself and then added rather sadly: "I know is a funny name in England".

Despite preparation I was of course nervous about teaching alone. Luckily, Cambodia is not like England, where even the biggest neeks (i.e. me) would join forces to destroy the morale of a new or temporary teacher.This sort of thing is unlikely to an dilemma they're grappling with.

But however starched the school uniforms and attentive the faces, I was quickly reminded that teaching is a tough job. You need to be on form all the time. Especially if you are unfamiliar, pasty-faced teacher and are communicating something that's intended to be "fun" and "new" and not simply the silent board-based copying they are used to. You must rely on the class to humour your attempts to educate and engage them - no matter if it's 38 degrees outside, and they've been studying since 5am, and they haven't seen their family in two months, and they have no idea what the sweaty-foreheaded white woman is going on about.

I love writing stories and poems and I hope my enthusiasm passed on as the children gradually relaxed into the new style of teaching and became more confident about speaking. But I am also aware that you can't force someone to share your interests; if someone was trying to engage me with rock formations or equations, and in a foreign language, I'd feel quite bored and mystified, and sometimes I was met with blank faces.

I suppose what I've come to appreciate in the short time here, is that in the West we have the luxury of being apathetic about school. Especially as native English speakers, with a pretty supportive state, we have so much of the battle already fought for us, and a reasonable safety net below us. Most of school, I half did my homework, half turned up, and still did well through just being conscientious enough and (having just about enough middle class privilege to tide me over). But over here, knowing decent English will likely be the difference between 40 cents a day and staying in your village and earning 10 times as much in town. You can't really afford to be apathetic - and most of these kids - getting up before dawn to study and carrying on until near midnight - know it.

The theme, as I mentioned before is "Taking Risks". At the beginning of each day, I show them photos which are intended to spark their imaginations and develop vocabulary. A man balancing on a tightrope, a woman playing with fire, someone smoking, a child going to school, etc. So we have spectrum of risk - physical, emotional, mental, etc. But for these students, traffic accidents were the flavour of the day. Of every day. Each poem or story, whether it featured a trip to the beach, a day in Angkor Wat, or an day at school, ended with a traffic accident. In our group story, featuring a union in marriage between the Tom and Jerry's son and Harry Potter's daughter, the romance blossomed following a horrific car crash and rekindled after Tom and Jerry's son was diagnosed with a seemingly fatal disease.

Concerned that our final magazine was going to read like a rubber neckers porno I gently banned any mention of traffic accidents from individual stories on the final day. I hope this small breach of Rule 4 was forgivable as it produced a lot of imaginative and interesting stories, including one where I and my friends Jonny, Lisa and Andy get lost in the Amazon jungle and dinosaurs ate Jony and Lisa. Reunited with the traumatised Andy, I told him to "just not think about" the deaths of our pals and we got married. So a proverbial, but not literal car crash.

Each workshop ends with a showcase of the work, and we spent the final day practising again and again until even the shyest and least linguistic of students were able to wrap their mouths around words like "unconscious", "bleeding" and "emergency surgery".

Fatal road collisions aside, there were some really upbeat and lovely poems and stories that emerged. Here's one:

My problems and my solutions

I am sad

Because I have a problem

I fell down

I am crying

I am hurt

I am scared

I was riding my bike

Feeling alone

When no one is near my

My family is busy

So I read a book

Then I am happy

It’s important to read

It’s special for me

Or I listen to music

Khmer music

English music

Chinese music

All music!

I get better

I don’t feel alone

Happiness! 

While I am now slightly more nervous about navigating the streets of Sisophon, I've remembered this poem a few times as I've battled the brain-shriveling effects of Mefloquine.

What I most enjoyed about the week was living within the EDM center grounds and eating with the older girls in their boarding house twice a day. Every bowl of rice brought with it another interesting conversation with these 17 and 18 year olds. They were hungry to learn so much about the world - how many countries had been to? Is India like Bollywood? Are there many gangsters in Mexico? Hardly any had left Cambodia - despite living an hour from the Thai border. It sounds trite, but I don't feel as lucky as I should to have gone to all the places I've been. That week I was repeating it like a mantra: "34 countries". "I know, I'm lucky, I'm really lucky". These girls are dreaming really big - they want to be lawyers, doctors, diplomats, and to see the world. A few weeks after Michelle Obama came to Siem Reap to promote girls' education, I really hope they can make it. 

On another note, they also gave me a tragic Khmer-style makeover, and we had fun with the stickers on my phone. 

Angkor WHAT

Last Saturday I went to visit Cambodia's main tourist attraction - the temples of Angkor Wat. Despite always being ambivalent about sunrises and a pretty awful cyclist to was persuaded to choose the Sunrise Bicycle Tour. Ten hour of cycling through villages and forest paths to see just some of the temples in what used to be a giant, ancient city.

Angkor Wat is just one of the temple complexes - the largest, and the one you'll see on the front of tourist brochures and in alongside the "I Heart Cambodia" T-shirts. And it's in front of here that all the tourists gather, huddled on rocks in the pitch dark, waiting for the sun to shed some light on the icon.

On the day we went, it was also the backdrop for a wedding shoot (Chinese I think, rather than Khmer).

Wedding stilettos/12th century Khmer sculpture

My favourite temple was the  at Angkor Thom - famous for the huge Buddha faces made out of puzzle blocks of stone. Climbing up and walking among the wise faces of the buddhas was a pretty special experience. I wouldn't go as far as to say I felt enlightened, but certainly very awed and very lucky.

Of course these temples were very swarming with tour groups but some others were completely deserted apart from us. 

Queen goofball 

And as for the cycling... well it was a challenge. The paths were very narrow and bumpy and parts were sandy. I have never cycled through sand and never plan to again. It seems to just stop the wheels dead unless you peddle incredibly fast, which when you're going quickly down and then uphill was too much for me to handle. I fell off my bike twice, which was embarrassing but luckily I was with a very nice Australian couple who were very accommodating to my dyspraxic ways.,,,

Me and a fellow tour participant Jess on one of my rare upright moments

Our tour guide, Sam, was amazing. His mother had sent him to be a monk at the age of 11 and he had lived as one until 21. Having learnt about the histories of the temples, he decided to be a tour guide. He was immensely knowledgeable and had a jokey, kind and open demeanor which is shared by a lot of the Khmer people I have met. He also persuaded me to pull an extremely goofy pose in front of the "Tomb Raider" temple...

Here's a plug in case you want to have this delightful, sandy experience of Angkor Wat.

http://grasshopperadventures.com/

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Teaching the teachers

The main point of going to Sisophon this week was to lead a training session for teachers and social workers on "Writing Through", to help them support the workshop in the future. While they may be 30 or 40 years old with university degrees, the techniques of interactive learning, thinking creatively and simply answering back to a teacher were as foreign to them as they will be to the kids. 

Being instructed to write and perform poetry would make a lot of British adults' blood run cold, but for these Khmer teachers it's an extra mental leap. Not only because their English is good but, even for the high school English teachers, far from fluent, but because Khmer poetry is such a technical challenge. Khmer poetry is governed by a strict set of rules that dictate meter and verse. A special vocabulary is even necessary. It's a practiced art, and certainly not friendly to the half hour bursts of imagination we allowed in this case.

Also essential to Khmer poetry and stories is a firm moral lesson. All around the Enfants du Mekong centre in Sisophon you can read Khmer to English translations of "NO PAIN NO GAIN" and "ESY WAY NOT RIGT WAY" which the teachers cover their classrooms with. The teachers' first efforts were full of these mantras, sometimes just a long list of morality catchphrases. Sue needed to explain that by making by "showing not telling" a poem's message, this moral lesson could be conveyed in a more entertaining and memorable way. 

And who better really convey this than Miley Cyrus. 

In "Writing Through", we get the children thinking about the theme by showing them a series of prompts. All of Sue's prompts are pictures - somebody leaping over a cavenous space (physical risk) a young woman crying on another's shoulder (emotional risk). I thought it would be nice to have a musical prompt too. At first I was set on "Climb Every Mountain", the ultimate song about taking worthwhile risks, and one of my all time faves. Of course I had visions of this song becoming a beloved classic for my students, me leading troops of adorable marching Cambodian children - springing down the pagoda, getting jollily soaked in the Mekong river, etc. Then of course I realised it's not Julie who sings that song at all, but the head nun. I've heard Cambodian teenagers are polite and enjoy sentimental music, but still, even I got a bit embarrassed listened to her warbly, closed-throated rendition.  

So I've decided to be more down with the kids and go with Miley Cyrus, in her golden, pre-twerk Hannah Montana era. Here it is. If you can't bear to watch it once, think of me, who will be playing it twice a day for the next three months. Or think of the Cambodian children, who until now have been blissfully unaware of Miley Cyrus. 

Of course I have a secret love for this song. It features on my "HMR" (Hear Me Roar) Spotify playlist. I remember listening to it on a night bus between Tooting and Wimbledon last month and feeling empowered and inspired about going to Cambodia. Anyway, the intense personal connection aside, the lyrics are pretty appropriate to the theme, and sticks to the "Taking Risks is Good" motto that I aim to wholeheartedly brainwash/inspire children with. (As all music aficionados will be wondering, I did consider going with Joe McElderey's cover. I might mix it up a bit. Goodness knows he needs the exposure.)  

During a lunch break Sue and I were very kindly invited to the house of one of the teachers, a 27-year-old woman who lives with her husband in a room behind their stationary shop, just across from the centre. We ate delicious food, prepared by her mother who had come especially from her village to cook lunch, and stayed in the kitchen as we ate. (Model mothers, these Cambodians). After lunch, they brought out their wedding album for us to admire. Most of the huge album was devoted to bride and groom posing in a succession of different outfits (they change up to 20 times over a two day wedding!) against different studio-generated technicoloured backgrounds of jungle and forest scenes which Sue was astonished to learn were not real. It was great. 

Traditional Khmer wedding photography

As you can tell from these photos Khmer bride makeup is not understated. It's hard to be completely sure that you're speaking to the same woman before you compliment her on how beautiful she looks.

Dina and her husband posing with albums

Anyway, the workshop was a success. In the last session, the teachers had to write individual stories and there was an air of complete concentration as they scribbled. Some really interesting and arresting stories came out of it. It was interesting to note that, rather than bungee jumping or swimming with sharks, most dealt with the "risk" of studying rather than working when you're from a poor family. 

One of the students/teachers, interrupted mid creative flow. 

                                  

Afterwards all the teachers wanted photographs of the group, and a group of students gathered nearby were recruited for the task. Cute.

Hopefully next time they feature I will know their names, as I will be returning to Sisophon to lead a workshop for children, all by myself, on 23rd March. 

 

Arriving in Sisophon

Yesterday we arrived in Sisophon, which is also catchily known as Svay, Svay Sisophon, Srei Sophon or Banteay Meanchey, and on Google maps it comes under Serie Saophoan.... It's north west of the country, about an hour from the Thai border. Most Cambodians have spent some dead time here changing buses, as it sits on the main junction between motorways. So maybe it's a bit like the Preston of Cambodia. (Which I have recently discovered has the second largest bus station in Western Europe! Who would have thought??!)

Anyway, a big change from Phomn Pehn - for starters you can cross the road easily, without relying on the blind faith that a million tuktuks, motos and SUVs will part for you. In fact there seem to be only two tuktuk drivers in town, both of whom we have now met. One has the most pimped out tuktuk seen to date, with neon lights, a speaker and even a TV. Wowz.

Another different is we didn't we didn't see a single barang (white person) in a two hour walk. So we probably made quite a sight for the locals - too sweaty white people of drastically different heights wandering the dusty, shadeless roads under the very strong heat.

(I should explain here to say that by 'we', I mean me and Sue Guiney, who started up the Writing Through Cambodia programme that I'll be working on here.)

We passed a quite eerie deserted fairground

which was surrounded by dozens of these beautiful guys in a godly tug-of-war

In the evening we went to an amazing Cambodian barbeque restaurant. You barbequed your own meat (pork in our case) on the top of the grill and then in the rim below you cooked noodles, green beans, lemon grass and spinach in a stock. It was DELICIOUS.

Here's Sue giving it a stir:

So, overall my first impressions of Sisophon is that it's slightly run down, but quite peaceful and compact. I think I could grow to like it - or at least I will try to do as I'll be returning three times! It's as close to a home as I'll have here.

Next time, they'll be more teaching, less Trip Advisor, promise. Now off for some noodles.

Introduction

So, my first blog entry comes ten days after I arrived in Cambodia. Although I'd told a few people I'd write a blog, for the first few days it felt that my experiences weren't noteworthy enough, and that it would be presumptuous to start writing down my analysis of a country I had barely scratched the surface of (or even the packaging around the surface). And, you know, people who write travel blogs are kind of annoying. 

Plus I suffered a number of minor and banal disasters in the first week. My rucksack didn't follow me off the plane (it turned up four days later, a bit dirty and mysteriously wet but complete with all the inappropriately short skirts and nice dresses I will never ever where); I had $60 stolen from my guest house room by the cleaner, and my stomach immediately broke. 

Well my stomach is still pretty broken, and I'm very far from knowing Cambodia. But I feel more settled, that 'just got here' unease is lifting, and I think I would regret not writing.

So, for the next two months and three weeks I'll be travelling around north west Cambodia running writing workshops for teenagers sponsored by NGO Enfants du Mekong. It's a new country, a new skill and a pretty all-round new experience for me. I'd like to capture what I observe and what I learn and all the possessions I misplace as I make the journey.