I left the house the next morning for my 1st day at the school where I will be teaching computer classes. I got to the school at around 9.30am and was told that John, the guy in charge here was at one of their other sites this morning and wouldn’t be back here until 12 noon so I needed to wait for him. I was wishing I had brought a book with me! I sat waiting, and one of the ladies asked if I wanted to take a look around while I was waiting and I happily accepted. She took me to see the older students, and the computer room. They have 12 laptops there which were donated to the school. We went back to the main building and she took me up to see the various classes. We went into the grade 1 class, and she then said that the children there have no teacher today so can I please just teach them some English?! Err…what?? I wasn’t prepared for that at all! Inside, I was screaming ‘no no no’! But somehow, I found myself saying ‘yes sure, if that’s what you need’! The children were lovely though! Just so incredibly cute! They were all hugging me asking my name and where I’m from and 1 girl kept making heart shapes with her hands to me. So adorable! I had no idea what level they were at so I started writing some letters of the alphabet on the board and asking them what letters they were. I did the same with numbers, and pointed to colours around the room to see if they knew the names. I started teaching them how to write capital letters and lowercase letters, and how to write the names of colours. I was just running out of ideas of what else to do when the bell rang. It was 11am and the children explained that it was time for their lunch break! I was happy the class was over! And also so grateful that I had done some volunteering teaching before I got here, otherwise I would have been completely lost!
I went back down to the staff room and met the other volunteers who are all here teaching English. There are a few from China, some from Taiwan, and others from Austria, France, Poland, Denmark, Holland, and the US. I chatted to them a bit while having lunch. I then met John after lunch and he apologised for his absence that morning. He said he had passed a message to someone telling me to come at 12 but the message didn’t get to me. We chatted a bit about our backgrounds. He seems nice, he’s from New Zealand and was a teacher there. He came here as a volunteer for 5 months and decided to stay here longer so accepted a job here. He told me a bit about the school. The school is called PIO school, PIO stands for People Improvement Organization. Please take a few minutes to read about it at http://www.peopleimprovement.org and you can see lots of pictures on their Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/pio.cambodia. The school is in the slum area here and was started on what used to be the city rubbish dump. The children here would spend their day digging through the rubbish trying to find food for their family so the school was started to try and provide a better future for the children here. In addition to the school, they have a shelter here which John showed me. The shelter houses 70 of the local children who have no one to look after them. They have a room for the girls and a room for the boys which consists of just lines of wooden planks where the children sleep, and then a communal area where they eat and study and a small kitchen area. There is just 1 lady who lives on site here and cooks for the children and looks after them. Imagine that, it must be like being a mother to 70 children! And then they have another lady who comes for a few hours after school and helps provide some pastoral care. The organisation are really doing a lot for this community. They provide bags of rice for the families whose children attend the school to encourage them to keep sending their children to school because often, the families see the children as an extra worker for the home who could be out trying to help them find some food instead of spending the day in school. I was then shown around the various classrooms. One of the boys in the class I taught in the morning saw me and ran to me and grabbed my hand shouting teacher Anne! He dragged me to the classroom and all the other kids started shouting and hugging me! We carried on the tour, I saw the other classes and then the lunch area and the kitchen area where the children get a free lunch cooked for them. The money to build the various floors in the school have been donated by various organisations and you can just see how much it is worth it, just seeing the big smiles on the children’s faces and seeing how happy they are to be here learning.
We went back down to the office to have a chat about the work I can do here. John mentioned that they have some computers that were donated to the school which have just been sitting around so they need help to check what state they are in and help set them up. If any of the computers are good enough, then they want me to help use 1 to build a server which can be used for saving files across the school. Students can currently only save files locally which means that they have to use the same computer to work each time and if the computer is not available, then they can’t access their work so they need somewhere central where they can save their work and access it from anywhere. Also they need to be able to share the printer across all the computers in the school as currently they only have printing facilities on 1 computer in the staff office which makes it difficult for them. And then the main computer they have in the office has all of the important documents for the school saved on it and the computer has been in and out of repair for years and is dying and they are worried about losing all of the important data on it so they would like to move all of the data to one of the new computers and create some sort of backup system. They then wanted some web pages built which they can use to input data and store it in a database so that they can generate reports from the data easily to save some of the manual work they have to do. And then they want me to teach the older children how to use Photoshop. There was quite a lot of stuff they needed but I was happy as it means I will be busy here. I was a bit apprehensive about a couple of the things, I’ve never set up a server before and he wanted to use a Unix based system as they can’t afford the Windows software so it was all completely new to me but I was sure I would be able to figure it out over the 4 weeks I am here for. And it will be good experience! And then I have no idea how to use Photoshop myself so need to learn quick! Before its time for me to teach the children! Overall I was very happy that I will be able to use my IT skills to help them.

It started raining when we were having our welcome dinner and it was so heavy that the restaurant was flooded! This place doesn’t seem to be designed to cope with the heavy rain! In Goa, it would rain very heavily but you wouldn’t see the roads flooded like they are here. Here are some pictures from driving through the rain. We’re practically swimming!

After the city tour, we were taken for a welcome dinner. The food served was delicious! They just kept bringing out bowls of different foods for us to try. At the end of the dinner though, they brought out some local delicacies which consisted of frogs legs, crickets, beetles, snake, and other disgusting looking things! I did try a frogs leg and a cricket though! It actually wasn’t bad!

We left at 10am for a City Tour. We started at the Olympic stadium where the swimming pool was nice, but the rest just looked a bit unkept. From there they took us to see some of the temples around the city and the Palace.

We had lunch at Central Market, and then headed to the killing fields in the afternoon which was quite an intense experience! Over 1 million people were killed there during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and it was horrifying reading about what took place there. It’s crazy to think that so many of the people I meet here lived through this period!

We were picked up from the house at 8.30am and taken to the company office for our orientation. There were around 20 of us new volunteers there. We started by doing introductions and a warm up game, and then we were taught about the history of Cambodia and about the organisation. It was really interesting learning about the history of Cambodia. I knew a bit about the genocides that had taken place here, but not to the extent that they told us. They explained that when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, they forced everyone to leave the city and forced them to become farmers. All of the hospitals, schools, and banks were closed and all of the educated people – doctors, teachers etc were killed. Over 25% of the population were murdered and a lot of people died as a result of being forced to work long hours in the farm with very little food – just a bit of rice and water. And there were no doctors to help when they got sick as the doctors had all been killed. All religions were banned and anyone seen practising their religion was killed. It sounds horrible! And it was so recent! Its hard to imagine.
They then taught us some basic words and phrases in Khmer which is the language spoken here. We went for lunch in a place called Russian Market which was really cool. I think I need a day back there just to shop! After lunch, we went through some role play exercises showing some of the scenarios we might experience while volunteering. We were also taught about the culture here and the dos and don’ts, some of which were quite interesting! For example, don’t touch a Cambodian on the head as the head is considered to be sacred, don’t point your feet at anyone when sitting on the ground, and always give or receive something with both hands. We were also taught about the widespread corruption here, from the police to the judges to the school teachers. We were told that the teachers salaries are very low here so they demand extra money from students for attending classes, and for good grades in exams! So even the public schools that are technically free, are not really free! After our orientation, we went back to the house and I went for a walk along the river with a couple of the other volunteers. Its really nice there. You see people out exercising in the outdoor gym and doing outdoor aerobics!

My flight left Delhi airport at 11pm. The flight was 5.5 hours to Kuala Lumpur, then a 3 hour stopover, then 1.5 hours to Phnom Penh. I arrived in Phnom Penh at 10am. I got the visa on arrival at the airport, collected my bags, and left. I saw a lady at the exit holding a sign with my name on it and she took me on a tuk tuk to the volunteer house. It was such a change coming from India to here! It feels so relaxed here in comparison. And the streets look so clean! And its so much quieter! In India, you could pretty much always hear car horns blaring. It was a 30 minute journey to the volunteer house. It was a Guest House called Tattoo. I sat downstairs waiting for my room to be ready. There is a covered section outside which is the dining/communal area, and there is a kitchen at the end where a couple of ladies cook the meals. It took a few hours for my room to be ready which was annoying. After the flight, I just wanted to get into my room and shower and get changed and relax a bit. I ordered a drink and was somewhat baffled by the currency system here. They use Cambodian Riel, but also US Dollars. There are 4000 Riel to every US Dollar. The drink I bought cost 2000 Riel, I paid with a $10 note, and was given $9 and 2000 Riel change. It must be confusing for them using 2 currencies!
While waiting for my room, a girl came and joined me at the table where I was sitting and we got chatting. She was from Indonesia but was studying at LSE in London so we had quite a lot to talk about. She had arrived just a day before me and mentioned that she had just got back from church that morning so I was asking her more about it as I’ve missed church while I’ve been away. It turned out that she actually goes to my church back in London which was really cool. I finally got into my room after a few hours and it was quite nice! Below is a picture. It’s nice having a queen size bed all to myself compared to bunk beds at the last 2 places!

I settled in and then went to the evening service at the church the girl I met went to here. It was really cool, very different. A lot quieter than I’m used to, but I still liked it. A lot of the people there were volunteers or worked for NGOs so it was interesting to chat to people and see what they do. I headed back to the house afterwards and had dinner and met some more of the volunteers at the house including my 2 roommates who seem really nice. One is from Denmark and the other is from Albania but lives in Italy. I went to sleep early as I was pretty exhausted and we had to be up early for our orientation the next morning.