Pictures From The Kep Trip

View from the porch of my bungalow as the sun sets on the Gulf of Thailand

I show off my mad farming skills at the demonstration farm in the village

Some of the kids in the kindergarten English class that I helped teach for a couple of days

One of the classrooms at the village school. The two teachers are 2 girls from Ireland teaching in the village for the summer. The class was for kids around 7-8 years old.

My bungalow in Kep...pretty sweet huh?

Looking down the beach on Rabbit Island

The Rural Trip

In case any of you are wondering why there have been no updates in about 10 days, the reason is that I have been out of Phnom Penh for the last week on an outreach trip to see some of Bridges Across Borders' other projects in the Kampot province.

A group of about 12 interns left last Monday morning to take a bus ride to Kep, a beautiful sea-side town in Kampot province where we stayed for the week. However, the purpose of our trip was to spend time working in a small village about 45 minutes away from Kep. I would love to tell you what this village is called, and I asked several times, but I seemed to get a different name every time I asked. In any case, it was a very small village in an area that had formerly controlled by the Khmer Rouge, and the whole area is very close to the Vietnam border.

Bridges Across Borders runs a number of Community Development Programs, including one in this particular village. In the village there is a school building with 2 classrooms and a plot of farmland behind the school. This is the base of the BAB program in this town. The program focuses on 3 areas: education, agriculture and health. The school runs several English classes for children and apparently some health education classes for adults too. Behind the school, the program is setting up a demonstration farm, and I believe they are planning to start a co-operative farm there and sell crops for the villagers and to support the development programs.

During our week, we helped out with the farming and education. Several of us had the chance to teach English classes to kindergarten-aged children in the mornings. The kids are unbelievably cute but very rambunctious, so the teaching was exhausting, but obviously very rewarding too. I will post some pictures of the kids soon.

We were asked to help out with some farming as well, but we only did this in the mornings as it got too hot to work by mid-day. Our normal routine was to wake up around 5:30 AM at our beautiful bungalows in Kep and take the 45 minute moto ride into the village as the sun was rising. We would generally get to the school at about 7 and do some farming and/or teach an English class. Sometimes another group would stay back in the morning and then come in the afternoon to teach English classes in the afternoon and evening, but I enjoyed waking up early, working in the morning, and then spending the afternoons reading and relaxing. The farming was actually really enjoyable...it can be nice to do some manual labour once in a while and it certainly made me appreciate a little bit the life of a farmer.

The whole week was a great chance to get out of Phnom Penh to some clearer, cooler air and to see a very grassroots development project. The first few days in the village were a little bit frustrating as they didn't seem to have much work for us to do, the language barrier was evident, and the whole experience seemed unorganized. But, I soon figured out that the trick was to let go a little bit and go with the flow. The project is still in the early stages so I understand that there will be some bumps in the road early on. As well, I realized more and more that development work is a slow process and the village cannot be transformed overnight and certainly not just because a few law students come into town for a few days. Of course, as usually is the case with these types of things, I took more out of the experience than I was able to contribute, but I think that was the whole point in going in the first place. They certainly didn't need us to plant the corn and there were several English teachers working there for the summer already, but it was a very educational and enlightening experience.

Not to mention that we were staying in a beautiful guesthouse overlooking the ocean, got to eat fresh crab, squid, and shrimp every night, and had the chance to stay Friday night on a virtually deserted island called Rabbit Island, about 30 minutes away by boat from Kep. We finally returned on a hellish bus ride (no A/C) Saturday afternoon, exhausted but also recharged by the change of scenery. It was a great week and I am ready to get back to work, finish up our HIV manual and hopefully move on to some more tasks, including perhaps teaching some of the lessons we have written.

I will post some pictures from our week shortly.

Update and Travel Plans

In the last few days I have been able to get a better sense of how I will be spending the last month or so of the internship, specifically in terms of travel plans.

First, I found out a couple of days ago that I will be spending next week working in the Cambodian village of Kep. My NGO, Bridges Across Borders, has several outreach programs in Kep, including a school, so we will be working on various projects in the community. I'm pretty excited because it is a nice chance to get out of the city for a while, do some different work, and also see what life is like in a Cambodian village. We're actually going to be staying in the provincial capital, called Kampot. After our week of work there we will have the chance to spend the weekend on a small island called Rabbit Island, which apparently has some nice beaches, so all in all it should be a really fun week.

I will definitely write a lot about this experience when I get back on the 24th and share pictures as well.

I also made some travel plans for July today. Several interns were making plans to go to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, for a long weekend in July. The flights were pretty cheap and we found a promotion through Malaysia Airlines, so I decided to join the group and go! I also found out that Singapore is only about a 2 hour bus ride away from KL, so we might go there for a day and have Charis, who was ending her internship just as we arrived, show us around her hometown.

Better yet, I checked online today and found out that there will be an Asia Cup football (soccer) match played in KL while we are there. The Asia Cup is the big soccer tournament for Asian countries that happens every 4 years, similar to the European Championships. Malaysia is playing Uzbekistan while we are there at the National Stadium, which was built for the Commonwealth Games a few years ago and seats 100,000 people!! Now, Malaysia v. Uzbekistan is not exactly a clash of the titans, but I found tickets for the game online for only $6, so I think we are going to buy a Malaysian t-shirt and a big Malaysian flag and go to the game!!

I don't have a definite date on when my internship will be wrapping up, but I suspect it will be around the 24th or so of July. My plans are tentative so far, but I am pretty sure I am going to be travelling in Thailand for most of the time after the internship. I would like to make it to Laos as well, but apparently flights are pretty expensive, although I might be able to take a bus from Bangkok.

So, that is what is in the works for me in the next few weeks! I will try to update some more this weekend before leaving for Kep, and then will definitely write more when we get back the following weeks about my adventures in a Cambodian village!!

Which Way To The Beach?

I definitely did not expect to wind up this summer lazing around a beach on the south coast of Cambodia, but I guess that just shows you never know where you are going to end up. This past weekend most of the interns got out of the heat, noise, and smell of Phnom Penh for the small town of Sihanoukville. We took a cheap but decent 4-hour bus ride and had a great weekend doing nothing but hanging out on the beach, swimming, reading, and relaxing.

Grace, Jenny, Carlton and I were lucky enough to snag rooms at a great little bungalow guesthouse literally about 10 metres from the beach. The first picture is essentially the view from our rooms. And, better still, the rooms were dirt cheap, which is kind of the theme of things in Cambodia.

Anyway, it was great to get out of town, recharge our batteries, and have some fun. The last two pics are continuing the ridiculous trend Ariel, Carlton and I started of the mustaches, but also with very silly Hawaiian shirts and shorts we picked up at the market before we left Phnom Penh. As you might expect, we got a lot of strange looks on the beach, but it really wasn't that far from what a lot of other people were wearing...

View from our guesthous on Serendiptiy Beach

Looking up the beach at sunset

The boys...

And another one of many ridiculous pictures we took this weekend

Korsang Pt. 2, More Visits, and Cambodia Chic

So, I need to make a quick correction to a previous post. I found out today that Korsang actually means "to rebuild" in Khmer, although "using the old to make the new" is a good description as well. Grace, Brad and I went back to Korsang today for another outreach. This time we visited two sites, both also slums, in order to hand out more hygeine kits. We got to hear more of Big Head's story and thoughts on Cambodia, NGOs, drug users, the NBA playoffs, and pretty much everything else under the sun.

As we were driving around with the outreach team, I kept thinking what a great documentary the story of Korsang would make, perhaps for a show like The Passionate Eye or 60 Minutes. Well, when we got back to the Korsang headquarters and spoke with Holly, Korsang's director, we also met David, a filmmaker from Boston who, it turns out, is making a documentary about Korsang! We got to see a preview of the movie, and it looks amazing, although really intense. Apparently he already has 50 hours of footage filmed and is planning to film more in order to get a feature-length movie made, partially funded by the World Health Organization. Hopefully we will be able to see it in North America pretty soon.

A bunch of us also took a trip to a drop-in center and school for kids who live close to the Phnom Penh dump. Horrifically, there are a large number of people, including little kids, who live out at the dump and spend all day picking through the garbage looking for stuff to use or sell. We walked through the dump to see these people and I can honestly say I have never smelled anything as bad in my life, but to see people living out there was even harder to handle. I can't imagine getting up every morning knowing you will just be picking through trash all day, and knowing your kids are running around barefoot through the dump as well.

Luckily there are a number of NGOs who run schools and centers for the kids there. The kids are absolutely beautiful (I can see why Angelina Jolie adopted a child from here) and just begging for some attention and physical contact. We played with them for a little while yesterday and let them climb all over us, but it was pretty heartbreaking to leave them and to know there is only so much attention we can give each kid. Hopefully we will get the chance to go back there a few more times this summer.

Outside of work, we are headed to the beach this weekend! Tomorrow most of the interns are hopping on a bus to go to the little town of Sihanoukville, which apparently has some pretty nice beaches around it. Pictures and stories to come after the weekend.

Finally, we've got this going on....

Yep, apparently mustaches and aviator sunglasses are Cambodia Chic this summer...but don't worry Mom and Carly, the mustache will be gone by August.

"Using The Old To Make The New"

If you had told me at the beginning of law school that I would be spending one day during the summer after my first year hanging out in Phnom Penh with a bunch of Cambodian ex-gang members and ex-cons, I would have thought you were crazy.

But, that's exactly what I was doing today, and hanging out with them to pass out hygeine kits in a Phnom Penh slum no less...

Let me start from the beginning. I spent today doing an outreach with my group partners, Grace and Brad, at an organization called Korsang. The organization was started by a woman named Holly, who I mentioned once before. Holly is an ex-drug user from Boston who moved to Cambodia a few years ago. While here she met up with a group of Cambodians who had been deported from the U.S. under new immigration rules brought in after 9/11. Basically, most of these guys had been in gangs in the U.S. and caught up in drug use. They were all convicted of felonies, most spent some time in jail, and they were deported back to Cambodia, although many of them had spent almost their whole lives in the U.S.

Here in Phnom Penh they started Korsang, which loosely translates to "using the old to make the new." The organization's main goal is harm reduction, especially for intravenous drug users. The main "harm" they are seeking to reduce is HIV and AIDS. The group does needle exchanges with heroin users, distributes condoms to sex workers, does general HIV awareness and training, and operates a drop-in center for at-risk youth.

Today we hung out with our new friend "Big Head" and his group on an outreach to a slum in Phnom Penh. Big Head moved to California from Cambodia when he was very young and lived there for about 27 years, but was in jail for almost half of that time. However, he wasn't bitter at all about his deportation, and actually said that he thought it was a blessing rather than a curse, because he had the opportunity to get a second chance and give back to try and help others.

At the slum Big Head and his outreach group handed out hygeine kits with toothbrushes, toothpaste, condoms, and other items to the slum's residents. The slum was one of the most desperately poor places I have ever seen. Apparently the residents were evicted from their home to make way for a high-rise apartment complex and now they live in awful conditions. Trash lay everywhere, and the homes were shabbily constructed huts covered in tarps.

There were many many children around the site, and they followed us around the whole time we were there. The kids were beautiful (I can see now why Angelina Jolie came here to adopt) but almost all of them were barefoot and there was tons of broken glass and I'm sure many other dangerous objects poking out of the garbage. I can't imagine the disease that infests this place.

This was our first exposure to the work of Korsang, but by no means the last. Because Grace, Brad and I are going to be working on developing an HIV/AIDS manual, we will be doing a lot of work with Korsang and other agencies working on HIV education and harm reduction.

The whole experience was almost a little difficult to process, but hopefully more of it will sink in when we go back on Wednesday for another outreach. What I do know, though, is that this was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life, and Korsang is one of the most incredible organizations I have ever seen.

Our House (In The Middle Of The Street)

Wherever I live, whether it is my college dorm room, Casa Bart in Phoenix, or my apartment in Ottawa, my parents always inevitably ask me to send pictures so they can see the place where I am living. This time, I thought I would pre-emptively strike and post some pictures of the volunteer house and office where I am living and working in Phnom Penh.



View from outside the volunteer house/Bridges Across Borders office. The main office is on the first floor, the balcony on the second floor is outside our conference room, and the third floor is our rooftop balcony.

My lovely room, my bed is on the right. I normally have both the A/C and the fan blasting at night...that's how hot it is here.

The conference room, also known as the "social justice sweatshop." This is where we do most of our work, where the best wireless signal is, and where I am writing this post. It can get a little cramped sometimes, though, so interns will often escape to the roof to do work or to stealthily watch episodes of The Office as "team building breaks."

The volunteer house kitchen

The rooftop, which is the best place in the house to hang out, day or night. A great place to have a beer, watch the lightning, read, listen to music, sit in a hammock, complain about the inefficiencies of Bridges Across Borders,.....

....or play a game of chess, as Abi and Stanley demonstrate, with Brian looking on.