In Phnom Penh

Unfortunately as readers will be aware our camera gear was all stolen so we' ll do our best to paint a picture with our prose.

We are currently in Phnom Penh, out networking with two wonderful groups doing some amazing work.  COLT,  who are working with Orphaned Children in urban Phnom Penh and CHOICE doing an equally great job with the poorest of the poor on the rural fringes of Phnom Penh.  Long term blog followers may remember that both these great organizations had been visited before.

We have also spent time at the Russian Market, so named as the market Russian ex-pats visited back in time when they were the quasi colonial power in the '80s. This market (or Phsar in Khmer) is a little different to the main market (Phsar Thmey) in Phnom Penh, full of food stuffs & tourist t-shirts but has some exquisite crafts & art work from local Cambodian artisans as well as the more ubiquitous food stuffs, t-shirts & bootlegged movies & software.

COLT

COLT work with orphans from Phnom Penh, unfortunately many orphanages in Cambodia have an unsavory reputation and are simply there as a money making concern,  complete with "rent-an-orphan", where unsuspecting barang (Khmer word for western foreigners) are milked for donations.  One of the great things about being on the ground is being able to do some due diligence on organisations and we are happy to say from everything we've seen, both these organisations are the real deal.

Photo of poster on the back of the door at the toilet of our guesthouse (taken with phone camera)

COLT have a large solar install underway, so I was keen to see that. The money raised for the project was from generous donors, mostly from Holland. Part of that is having electric scooters (or moto's as they're called locally) that can be charged from the solar system. When the install is complete it will provide them with an energy self sufficiency  that will be empowering and provide free power to the school and orphanage. We gave them a donation of $100 toward the Hand in Hand project.

CHOICE

It's hard to find the superlatives that describe the wonderful work these guys do.  They provide essential needs for five villages one hour from Phnom Penh. If you can picture the poorest & dispossessed who live under pieces of tin and old tarpaulins, no fresh water. These are the people they help with the simplest of necessities.  Choice provide fresh water every day, food drops once a week and clothing once a month. We purchased some rice, tinned fish for 200 people and gave them a small donation of $50.

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Food drop and chicken in a pot

Food Parcel Drop

We did another food drop to the very poor on the outskirts of the village the other day. We'll let the photos speaks for themselves.  Some of you who receive this via email may need to come to the blog site to view the photo slideshow. Each month we spend $60 approx to purchase rice, sauces and tinned fish (good source of Niacin, Calcium, Protein and Vitamin D)

Food for us

Speaking of food we had a Khmer friend come over and show us how to cook something local.  The minimalism of the cooking facilities is offset by the ingenuity of using what they do have.  By this I mean they have no ovens etc and as this simplicity appeals we were interested to see how they cooked a chicken.  A pot of course !

Chicken in a pot

He laid some lemon grass at the bottom, put the entire chicken in the pot, some congealed chicken blood, the liquid from a freshly opened coconut (no need to get it out of a can here)

Fresh Coconut - they're full of juice

and in a nod to modernity sprinkled in some chicken stock.  Then put it on a high heat and boiled it for a couple hours. The chicken was superb I must say and interesting to see how it was cooked.

There is such a variety of foods to be tried here in Cambodia. Two that piqued my interest were BBQ frog and BBQ snake, you can get just about anything on a stick here including a snake.

Snake on a stick and BBQ frog

  

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Romdual School update and Uni

Romdual School Update

The desks have been installed and we have a couple of photos showing them at the school, they look great.

School Desks in place

with kids !

We have also purchased a white board and suitable pens to use in the school room and they will be delivered to the school in the next few days.   You can read more about the happenings at the school here

University for Sok Mong

After Mong did so well at his final Year 12 school exams, we  have decided to commit to sponsoring his first year at a local Sihanoukville University, LIFE University.  It's a $150 commitment for the first year and we've let him know further commitments will require hard work and good grades.  Toni went up to Uni to complete the forms and pay the fees.

Completing University Entrance Forms

Enrolled and ready to go, the rest is up to him

He will be studying for a Languages and Tourism degree.  We have committed to the fees from the donations account, he has to find the money for books etc

Waiting for the rain to stop before going back to soccer

He's also taken on the Coach position for the new Goodwill Center Soccer team, so I purchased him some new soccer boots from our own money. We wish him all the best in both endeavours !

Street Vendors

One of the things we love about Cambodia are the street vendors.  These people travel around on scooters, pushbike and on foot and you can just grab a snack.  One of the tasty treats we have become addicted to are these eggs.

Bporng Moa-un Ang (BBQ Egg)

 The eggs have a small hole in one end, the egg is sucked out with a syringe and mixed with pepper, garlic and various spices, depending on the vendor and then injected back into the egg with the syringe and boiled. They then heat them over coals as they drive around on their motos.

Bporng Moa-un Ang with supplied  lime and S&P mix

Very tasty and we're a sucker for them ! 

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School Supplies and Finances

School Supplies

One of the projects we have been working towards for a few weeks is getting more of the poorest children to go to school.  Toni has been working with Kolab, one of the Staff at the Goodwill Centre to help identify some of the poorest children.  These are often the ones who have everything against them, losing one or both parents is typically the major contributor.

While the Goodwill Centre does a great job of providing care for children in the community and access to materials and facilities they would never see elsewhere and access to free English language and Computer classes for anyone in the village who wants to improve themselves, the children still have to go to Khmer public school.  One of the requirements to go to school is they must wear a school uniform.  Some have no chance of affording that, so we identified six at risk children who have stopped going because of that and went on a small shopping trip to provide them with two uniforms, a backpack and minor supplies like pencils, books etc.

Kolab with the kids at the local Phsar (market)

In the "change room". measuring up

Everyone into the Tuk Tuk to go back to the Goodwill Center

Back at the Goodwill Center for the obligatory group shot

All up we spent $126 and look at their smiles.

This is one of the things about being here on the ground and forming relationships in the community, you are actually able to help and by maintaining those relationships, continue helping and monitoring into the future. We  don't have to go through a variety of middleman, all taking their legal cut, you don't have to deal with bureaucracy, you just get things done, immensely satisfying but impossible if we had not had the help of all you guys back in Australia, giving donations, thank you so very much.

Changing the Finances

Knowing we were eventually coming back to Australia, we have been struggling for some time to come up with a solution on how best to enable the continual use of the funds.  Transferring money from Aus to Cambodia is expensive, often the fees involved are more than the money itself. The donation money going to Bankers seems a poor use of funds, as does us paying for it personally.

Canadia Bank Account: Cambodian Donations Account

The solution we have come up with is to open a bank account here in Cambodia and transfer the majority of the remaining funds. We then attached an ATM card ($6 fee over here as most don't use them) and leave that with a trusted local,  Jen Hoggett.   Jen is a long term English expat. We met Jen when we first came here and taught English with her at the school in Wat Otres. Jen has been volunteering at the Goodwill Center for over a month and is well respected in the community. We have complete faith in Jen.  We have contacted all the local groups we have dealt with and advised them that if they have projects etc they want funded they are to contact us via email. If we think their project is worthy, we will advise Jen of the amount via email and Skype, she will then withdraw the money from the ATM and they will give her receipts/invoices etc that will be copied electronically and sent to us.

We decided to do this, as from the outset, the money is supposed to be there to help the peoples of Cambodian.  The Cambodian banking system is still quite "old school", yes they have Passbooks and electronic banking is a far away dream, it's probably akin to the Australian banking system in the 1980's. The bank we used is Canadia. We hope everyone agrees this is the best solution ?

In that respect we added the details of the new bank account to the Financials Page, go there if you want more info.

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updates

Financial Updates

Well that time of the month sees the financials having been balanced for the end of the month.  Go to the link on the financials page at the top of the blog if you want to review any of it

Update on Mong's Dad (Keo Sok)

Some of you may remember that Mong's Dad fell from the roof and did himself some real damage, his legs did not move etc  Anyway, he is up and about and thanks to the kind donation of Trevor's family, half of the medical bills were paid for and they didn't have to sell their scooter to pay their neighbor back. The scooter is how Mong makes money as a moto driver to help his family and save for university so it would be a real setback if that had happened.

Mong's Dad  (Keo Sok) on his crutch

It was mentioned that this was an indication about how the plethora of OH&S rules help people in the West but this is not quite true.

OHS catastrophe waiting to happen  

I know two people from Townsville, Australia (my old home town) that fell off the roof of their house while doing work up there. It's more a reflection of a terrible health system here.  Here, Mongs father was put onto the back of a scooter and sandwiched between passenger and driver, driven over a bumpy road and taken to the nearby clinic while unconscious, (no hospital here in Sihanoukville) they stabilised him and then a private taxi was hired by the family and he was transported to Phnomn Penh for five hours in the back of that taxi... in Australia an Ambulance would have been called and transported to the nearest hospital... but enough of that, the great thing is he is getting better every day !

Another wedding

Mongs elder Sister invited Toni to her wedding, the new kitchen was put to good use to prepare the celebratory feast .

Wedding feast preparations

Ducks being killed and prepared !

Theft update

As per the last blog post all our camera gear and computers have been stolen, so we will only be able to post very sporadically when we can get access to loaner equipment. None of the equipment has been recovered and it is very doubtful it ever will and yes we were drugged, apparently the modus operandi is they send in a small child to hold a cloth with a knockout chemical under you nose, you breath it in, knock you out and they then go about robbing you, stuff was scattered everywhere, which was why we had no idea how we could not have been woken up.  The tell tale sign being the horrendous headache the next day we both suffered, to all those out there that though my snoring must have been the reason ! 

I had just got the okay from an art Gallery back in NSW to do a portrait exhibition when I returned back to Australia and I had everything organised to start the shoot here, so not being able to do that is very disappointing as well.

Interestingly, I was trying to justify the theft as "they are really poor so I can kind if understand it" to a Khmer friend.  He said "I am very poor and I never steal, they are bastards !"  I guess he was right... and yes he is very poor, we have been to his house, it is not much better than our chicken house at home.  

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