life in Kratie... continued!

Hello again everyone

Am having a relaxing weekend (lie in! 7am!!), so have time to do the 2nd part of this thing (and then send it to you all, which I've just realised I haven't done yet!!).

So I've mentioned my expat friends, so how about my Khmer friends. These are mostly my colleagues, plus a couple of people around town. At work there are 2 women, and the rest are guys. Thida is 27, and absolutely beautiful, her main role is to run community awareness sessions in the communities about how people with disabilities have equal rights - this is soo not the school of thought in rural areas here, so I don't think it's an easy task! Thida speaks hardly any English, so we laugh a lot and she teaches me Khmer words. Phalla ('palla'- it's a type of traditional dance) is older, and has noooo English, she's the cleaner, and she totally runs the place... she knows where everything is, she's the one who gives dirty children new clothes, tells their mothers why they shouldn't let them chew on bits of stuff they find on the ground, gives them milk, cleans them up etc! Then there's my boss, Sarom, whó's quite the joker, and who is the easiest to chat to - his English is v good, and he's well educated and has travelled to America, and understands westerners better! He's heard of Disney / MacDonalds and all that... AND asked me the other day if I knew the song 'tell Laura I love her...' errr Do I know that song!?!? bom bom bom bom... There's Ban, a young shy-ish guy who does admin and finance with a girlfriend everyone's scared of and thinks is a gangster (there's a huge problem with gangs in PP but not really out here - although all the guys at work were warning me of their perils when I told them I'd be living in a house on my own. Single Khmer girls living by themselves is a huge no no ... but honestly I'm fine, it's totally safe, bars on the windows, people who sleep outside next door etc etc! The only intruders are the cats and the rats, but they keep out of my way!). It was funny though, the first time I met Andrew (the owner of this house) he invited me along to a dinner party of sorts he was holding the next day (Sundays Joe’s is closed. People are generally at a loss as to what to do.), and literally in the next sentence he was telling me about how that morning a live rat foetus had fallen from the rafters. And I was like... what?!?! I just accepted an invitation to EAT in this place?!!? No repeat incidents though, I am happy to report. There are two physiotherapists, Sokny and Sit, whose English is quite good, and who are both really friendly (Sit spends half the time on a course in PP though, which means that for half the month Sokny has to stay at the centre and can’t do any community follow up visits to rural patients who can’t travel to the centre... so what happens to them during these 2 weeks I don’t know); Mao, who's second in command, and has v good English and is always really curious about everything, and whose daughter got married last week and I didn't get an invite to the wedding!!! WTF?? Khmer weddings are HUGE, and you tend to invite everyone you've ever met, especially foreigners (every guest has to bring money). Anyway. There's also Sai, a physio who also makes the prostheses, whose English is pretty basic, but he's sweet and makes me laugh (at or with him I don't know). Plus their are 2 more technicians who I don't teach, and 2 security guards. The teaching is getting easier but there are many sticking points! Pronounciation - in Khmer p and b are the same, there's no th / v / f sound, Khmer has no tenses, and also people are used to a totally rigid style of learning. In schools everything is by rote - you know that 2 times 2 equals four because you have memorised it, and not cos you see the logic behind it, and that sort of thing keeps catching me out - for example Sit has no idea what the concepts of North / S / E and West are, and he's a highly educated doctor! In schools here people don't learn about the Khmer Rouge either, as it's only on the curriculum for the final grade of high school, which not everyone reaches exactly, so there are children who don't know it ever happened, couldn't tell you anything about Tuol Sleng or Pol Pot. Also Khmer literature doesn't really exist. The only books in Khmer are old legends, and recent autobiographies of life under the Khmer Rouge. English is usually learnt from Khmer teachers, so even though someone studies it at university that doesn't necessarily mean you can understand what they're saying!! I've heard that a volunteer here once took on some extra teaching duties at the 'university' here, and got a whole set of certificates saying he was a professor of Kratie Wanlan University, with an honourary degree and all from there too - it's something I may look into, so I might be a professor before I've even graduated... that would be strange. It's getting busier and busier at work now though - when I started there were like maximum 2 patients a day, as it's a busy farming time and people can't afford to leave home to come for treatment. I've been reading some of the patients' files, and they are really interesting – mostly older amputees, and children with CP / polio / clubfoot. It’s typical to read how so many amputees lost limbs to landmines whilst farming in the 80s and 90s, and then had traditional healing methods which didn’t help, they got gangrene, and then had to have a surgical amputation, left the hospital straight away with no follow up advice, the leg gets gangrene again, more of it is amputated etc etc etc. Traditional healing methods are really common here, especially coining, which involves scratching the shit out of someone’s arms in long straight lines, using a hot metal disc; it’s used as a cure for various ailments, especially faintness, and Phalla at work does it for the doctors there. It leave huge red marks and hurts a long time afterwards, but it works by stimulating the blood flow – and causing you so much pain in your arms you forget what else was wrong with you! Another cure I’ve seen is for a cold – having a pretty diamond pattern painted on your forehead in what I think is henna. I still think that if I get seriously ill at any point I will leg it back to PP as soon as I can... Kratie referral hospital is absolutely dire. In Cambodia there is state healthcare, but it is mostly private (in a totally unregulated industry with more phoney doctors than real ones, and with fake pills made up of just anything), as anyone who can afford to pay even the slightest bit more will do so, as teh state system is so appalling. Although the VI centre is quite nice, the rest of the hospital buildings are really depressing, and dirty, and there are chickens scrabbling around the area (it’s lots of separate buildings with paths between them) – despite bird flu plans that look wonderful on paper detailing the confinement and control of chickens nationwide. You only go there if you are really desperate, as most of the treatment on offer is little better than what local healers or traditional midwifes can do. Therefore the people in the hospital are the poorest of the poor, and often come with all their relatives too, as they’ll get a daily food and accommodation allowance. Some of the kids come up to me ostensibly to play, but they soon start asking me for money! Barbara, the expat who works in the provincial health dept opposite despairs – she’s there with VSO, but only in an advisory capacity, and her initiatives and suggestions are rarely listened to... or the message doesn’t quite get through. E.g. workshops on the ways diseases can be spread interrupted every few minutes by doctors getting up and spitting on the floor, and just picking their noses generally.

Last weekend I had a friend staying from PP, so have explored the local area a bit, and had loads of fun. The main reason tourists come to Kratie is that there are rare Irrawaddy dolphins in the Mekong that can be seen about an hour’s drive upstream in Kampi. These are endangered animals, of which probably about 50 exist between here and the Lao border, there are 6 in Thailand, a few in the Irrawaddy in Burma, and limited numbers in coastal regions between here and Malaysia. It’s a unique species, as they can live in both marine and freshwater environments, and relatively little is known about them. The ones here also have a unique behaviour – they spit water out of their mouths, possibly to stun or herd fish. Anyway, so on the Saturday morning we went to see the dolphins! You can go out in little boats to see them, they must (should.... sometimes...) turn off their motors when dolphins are nearby, and it’s in a really beautiful part of the river with hundreds of little islands and sand banks (we played around on one for a bit when the dolphins were far away...). It’s so peaceful out on the water, watching the dolphins, but on land there’s a huge political storm surrounding their every move, which affects a lot of people here.

After seeing the dolphins Helen helped me move out of the hotel to the house I’m now sitting for the next month, which was a huge task – it’s this giant empty dusty wooden house, a bachelor pad, and we spent the whole morning cleaning everything – something long overdue!! It’s got running water of sorts – no taps, but a tank, so washing is a bucket affair (only possible at midday – cold water plus freezing mornings is not fun!). The only things this guy owns are... a few things for cooking, a bed, a shelf, a couple of chairs and a broken DVD player, so it feels so empty and cavernous! Still, it’s nice to have my own place as opposed t being in a hotel, plus it’s cheaper as I only have to pay $20 for the month’s electricity! In my hotel there was a huge group of American military people on a mission in the area – not that they’re not lovely people, it’s just we didn’t have thaaat much in common, and it’s good not to bump into them the whole time! They’re only staying for the next few weeks though. Every year they send a mission out here and up to Lao, to look for bits of old helicopters in the Mekong and remnants of US soldiers missing in action in the war. This way they can confirm people as dead as opposed to just missing, a) bringing closure to their families and b) so the US government no longer has to continue paying the salaries to the families of these soldiers. It sounds pretty tricky though... I mean looking for teeth and bones and stuff, 30 years on, with only vague locations of battles etc. Some of them are big hench types who mainly dig and come back all muddy, but there are also scientists who analyse the bits they’ve found to identify whose they are. They've been doing it for the past like 10 years and I don’t know how successful it is (nothing’s been found so far in the past 3 weeks since they arrived). Also, they’re based here in Kratie but the nearest site is an hour’s drive away, and so they take a helicopter there and back every day.... surely this is more expensive than continuing to pay some soldiers’ salaries? Anyway. Whenever the helicopter goes overhead all the kids in the centre stop and look up and say ‘Ameri chkuut,’- ‘kerazy Americans.’ I think the only thing that's been brought up actaully from the Mekong was not helicopter parts, but a UXO, and the guy had to stay there bobbing with it in on the surface as they diffused it in his hand. To sum up: I was reading a book in Joe's the other day, and one of them (Bucket) comes up to me and goes ‘are you really into that?' So I'm like, what, this book? And he goes no, no just that book, so I say, oh, García Márquez? And he's like, No, I mean reading. Books. You like that thing? End of. They’re ok, really! I’m a little concerned though that the landlord will turn up one day demanding the past few months’ rent – this was part of the reason Andrew’s gone back to Australia, to actually get the money for the overdue rent – he has no bank account! Oh and the landlord speaks no English, and when he does turn up I’m supposed to get him to fix the plumbing and install a pump shower... to aide me with this I have a line diagram on the back of some food packaging, with the Khmer word for ballcock on it. That is so going to happen.

Anyway, once we’d moved in... event of the weekend... I met PHALY for lunch!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 years ago I came to Vietnam and Cambodia on holiday with my family and Spanish family friends, and Phaly was our tour guide. On Thursday Mum sent me a text saying she’d found Phaly’s number, so I texted her asking if she remembered me and telling her I was living in Kratie for 3 months. And I got a text back straight away – not only did she remember me, she was coming to Kratie the following day!!! Phaly is the most interesting woman ever, she knows absolutely everything there is to know about this country, and is so friendly too. She was only here for a couple of days, with a tour group, but managed to meet me for lunch, and we spend the whole time chatting... laughing about PEGS, Silvia clapping the cook, all the children in Wat Hanchey (the books DID arrive, and she gave them to the kids two weeks after she got them, and they were delighted!), the jogging Americans etc etc etc. And Pati and Ro, I was asked if you were still as beautiful as before (yeah not you Kate)! It was such a total coincidence, and wonderful to see her again!

On the Sunday we planned to spend the morning cycling around the island opposite, and it was one of the best times I’ve had since I’ve been here. We arrived on the island (Koh Trung) at 9am, and had only gone about a kilometer by 10 O clock, as everyone would stop to come and talk to us and look at us!! It was really surreal, just across the river from Kratie, a relatively modern town, is this completely rural, untouched sleepy farming backwater, not a single ‘facility’ on the whole island (it’s a few Ks long and about 1k wide) – no shops, nothing, as everyone grows the food they need. Around the edge of the island were all the houses, and the middle was just farmland, no clusters of houses in villages or anything. We went really slowly and stopped every time we saw something interesting going on, or when our path was obstructed by fallen trees (there is one path going all the way round the island, and two linking the two sides)! Kids would get on their bicycles and follow us, and old people would come out of their houses to look at us! Because it’s the dry season the Mekong is seriously low, and all around the island is a huge beach, about 500m wide, with lagoons in some parts, which we went and splashed in for a bit. There’s also a really beautiful seemingly abandoned pagoda, and some Vietnamese floating villages on the other side (there are many Vietnamese in Cambodia – which aggravates the already deep tensions between these two countries, and as they aren’t allowed to own land here, many live on entirely self sufficient floating villages – pigs and everything are kept on their rafts)! Wierdly, at the far tip of the island we bumped into Aleema and Joey (two other volunteers working in the region) – we’d tried to arrange to go over there together but it had fallen through, so continued walking on with them. At noon we stopped to sit in the shade by the path, and this ancient Khmer man popped up and we w