Volunteering 101

It is really raining hard right now because there is a tropical cyclone hitting Bangladesh and Myanmar and a band is making its way through Siem Reap.  I had been planning to head to the grocery superstore (and looking forward to seeing this superstore in this dusty town) but after walking outside for a couple of minutes, I recognized that combination of high winds and dark skies, turned around, and came back.  This is not something I want to get caught in.  So I have taken advantage of the downtime to download an English Khmer app on my mobile phone.

On Thursday morning, I was picked up at my hotel and driven out to the high school which is situated outside of the range of my GPS along the highway towards Phnom Penh.

The schools are simple buildings and the rooms are swept out by the students every day.  Kids here only attend school either the first half of the day or the second half of the day and during the hottest times of the day, they break for what I guess I can call a siesta.  Diane, the volunteer coordinator here, and Savy, the indispensible Cambodian superintendent coordinator and problem-solver, introduced me to Chanda who is the science coordinator for their schools.  I was then brought to the lab which is really just like all of the other large rooms in the school with high tables by which the students can stand to perform their experiments.  They have a couple of cabinets with an hodge podge of lab equipment and chemicals.  I snapped some photos of the cabinets as well as some close-ups of the kits that have already been assembled to some degree.  Some of the material was brought over by the Singapore team of teachers not that long ago and those teachers had demonstrated some experiments to the local teachers.  The local teachers are now keen to try to use what they have learned but the actual kits are not assembled, the handouts are not made, some of the experiments didn't work, and none of the local staff, including Chanda, Diane, and Savy, have the expertise to do it.  The inventory seems almost arbitrary.  We spent quite a bit of time talking about retort stands; they have thirty  stands, but only five bases for the stands.  Savy is confident that the local people can create stands made out of cement and fix they rods in.  He is also confident that they can create things like ring clamps, of which they only have one.  They have several air thermometers but the liquid thermometers are stored somewhere else and frankly those would be much more useful.

After sizing up the situation, I suggested that we can first complete the kits that are almost ready to go, and create them in triplicate since there are three schools.  As we do that, we can make a list of materials we need to find or make in order to make kits for the other experiments that were shown to the local teachers.  Another science teacher arrives Monday and he and I can design other experiments that are small modifications on the ones they already have but more appropriate for older grades, and we can make a list of supplies for those as well.  And then, we can hire a car or tuk tuk for the day and go to one of the sprawling, cluttered, and daunting local markets where we can find all kinds of household items and hardware. 

After seeing what they have to work with, how remote and small the schools are, and how old and dry the textbooks are, I now understand how much help they need.  If this was Canada, the government would provide some science coordinator expert to fly out to these remote schools and the teachers would probably be university graduates still wet behind the ears but would have the knowledge and lab experience to pull off the lessons.  Here, I found myself trying to answer all sorts of questions because Chandra, in anticipation of my arrival, had folded down the corners of pages in her textbooks so that she could ask me to help her understand something.  I couldn't read the Khmer language but the diagrams were enough for me to at least try to help.  I explained the right-hand rule, and tried to get at the root of why her home-made foil electroscopes and electrochemical cells weren't working,  I suggested that she spray the insects that she captures with hairspray to help preserve them longer, and when I got stuck on a circuit question, I photographed it and send it to Mark back at home asking for help.  Mark got back to me and sent me one of the little video tutorials he has made.  Apparently the lesson is about tranformers.  At the end of the little meeting I promised to show them how to make ice cream using the salt and ice method. 

Yesterday, I was picked up by the tuk tuk driver Mr. Ouhok and he drove me out to the first of the three elementary schools along the river just south of Siem Reap.  I was met at the first school by Susopia and he toured me around all the schools.  We walked through the corridors and poked our heads into the various classrooms.  He introduced me to all the teachers and I mostly just smiled and nodded enthusiastically.  Even the principals barely speak English.  The children are so cute and in the kindergarten classes where there can be over 40 little kids in uniforms, they all sit around and recite the alphabet and sing little songs.

Caring for Cambodia has done an excellent job transforming the schools and making them look very much like classrooms back at home with decorations and work stations.  One significant difference is the hygiene station where there are toothbrushes for all of the little kids because it is part of their daily school routine.  In the cafeteria area there is a giant cauldron full of fish porridge because many of the kids are from poor families and don't always get good food. 

Despite this the schoolyard at playtime is full of happy screaming little kids making the most of their precious free time.

In the afternoon I returned to one of the schools to join up with Diane and laminated 120 pages of actvitity cards designed to teach the water cycle, and then I managed to cut about half of them.  There was a little girl hanging around the staff lounge (and I am not sure what class she was supposed to be in but nobody seemed too concerned) and she decided that she was going to be my helper.   She looked around 5 years old to me but was probably a bit older because the people here are so small and it is difficult for me to make good judgements of age here.  I chopped up the first of the set of cards and she watched me stack them and attach them with a paper clip before dropping them into a plastic ziploc bag.  From then I handed her the cards and the paper clip and she dutifully collated them for me and dropped then into the bag.  We did this on and off for a couple of hours.  There was one point where she decided to categorize the cards differently and it took me a few minutes to figure out what she did and fix all the ones she did wrong.  It was funny though because she would stick a couple of them together, show them to me, and ask me for confirmation in Khmer, and I would answer her in English.  I learned that she can count to 8.

In the evening Kate (an Australian nurse here teaching English) and I walked into town for dinner and one of those wonderful cheap streetside foot massages.  We shared a Khmer tasting plattern which had some delicious fresh spring rolls, the classic fish amok, a chicken curry, some spare ribs, and fried morning glory.  It was all so delicious but there was so much food that we couldn't finish it.  We asked the staff if they would make use of the food and they said yes they would.  I think that for a people who have been to hell and back within a generation, they are not wasteful of anything.

It is now Saturday morning and the sky is cloudy and it was so windy at breakfast that one of the trees by the pool blew over!  We watched the staff assess the situation, hack it up, and carry it off.  It is not a good day to be out exploring distant temples or villages, so perhaps we will spend a quiet day getting a massage and reading.

That's all for now.  Thanks for reading.

Leslie