Teaching and exploring in Cambodia

On Saturday 28th July, we flew from Heathrow, England to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We were to spend the next three weeks teaching and completing renovation work in a school; meeting guiding members from Australia, the USA and Cambodia; learning about the Khmer Rouge and the country’s road to recovery; visiting temples and generally exploring the culture.

Care - the teaching part

On the first day, we had a placement induction; we took the hour journey to Silk Island via boat and minibus. We met the headmaster and were told we would be teaching English for two hours every morning to grade 7 and 8 students (aged 11-16). The next stop for us was lunch, where we began planning our lessons for the following day. Being taught were subjects such as colours, clothing, jobs, sports and family. Over the next 4 days, we rotated around classes teaching these lessons and beginning to develop relationships with the children. Each class consists of up to 50 pupils and it was very refreshing to enter an atmosphere full of people who were all so enthusiastic to learn. We used repetition and fun games which we all enjoyed. In the second week, we decided to increase the complexity of language being taught; new lesson plans were devised in topics such as British culture, shopping, pronouns, grammar and greetings. On the final day of this week, we had our goodbye party, we attempted to teach lessons but after ten minutes we all ended up outside enjoying games such as Splat. The rest of the morning was spent signing books, arms and shirts, taking selfies and dancing with the children to British “tunes”. Our care activities were not only teaching but also involved encouraging the girls’ football dreams! We spent one-afternoon playing football and also learning traditional Khmer games.

Community - the construction part

During our induction, we discovered we were to lay a concrete path – by hand! - and to repaint two classrooms. The concrete path went from the main school courtyard to the toilet block, the first task was to clear the greenery and dig out a channel, and this was a lot harder than anticipated due to the humid conditions. We then broke up bricks and old pieces of concrete with hammers in order to form a base. After a few hours, we were all filthy and in desperate need of a shower! The bricks were then broken up more by a lump of wood screwed onto two sticks (a handmade tool). The next day we began to lay the concrete, this was challenging as we had to use limited tools to mix the concrete by hand. We would use 5 buckets of sand to one bag of concrete, then mix it by taking shovels from the bottom of the pile and placing them on top, next we would continue to mix it by moving the pile over, shovel by shovel, to close where it was to be laid. A dip was then created in the centre of the pile and it was filled with water, we again mixed the concrete by taking shovels from the bottom and placing them on top. The concrete was then put in buckets and put in the channel, and then was smoothed out with a piece of plastic.

The classrooms were first scrubbed down using wire brushes to remove all the dirt and dust, any lumps of tape or paint were removed using a paint scraper and any holes or graffiti were covered/filled in by wall plaster. Next paint rollers were tapped to long bamboo sticks so we could paint high up. After two layers of paint, both classrooms looked better!

Meeting other Girl Guides

After our first week of teaching, we spent the Sunday with Girl Guides from Cambodia, the USA and Australia. Firstly we met an Australian guide who was on a holiday in Cambodia and some important figures in Cambodian guiding at our hotel. We all got on a coach and spent the three hour journey across the paddy fields learning our names in Khmer, sharing snacks and learning more about guiding in other countries. In the small province, we introduced ourselves to the guides and played a few introductory games before lunch. After a traditional lunch, cooked by local people, we got into groups with the Cambodian guides and went on a scavenger hunt around the village. We went into some of the girls' houses and met their families and friends which was an amazing experience. The Cambodian Guides then taught us how to create a traditional dessert from sticky rice, palm sugar and coconut which was delicious. Standing in a circle, we shared all of our hopes and dreams for our future in and out of guiding. It was so good to hear that all the girls wanted to travel and become doctors or teachers. Finally, we shared English Girlguiding badges among the girls and said our goodbyes after having an incredible day with them.

In the afternoon of our final day at the school, we met some inspirational members of Girlguiding Cambodia, including survivors of the Khmer Rouge and a Princess of Cambodia who was the first Cambodian woman to fly a plane. Our day ended with a group meal involving many members of Girlguiding Cambodia, new and old. We communicated with them in various ways, sometimes with the help of a translator, and ended the meal by sharing why we joined Girlguiding and our fondest memories of our time in Girlguiding.

The Royal Palace and Wat Phnom

We visited the beautiful Royal Palace during our first weekend in Cambodia; we loved learning about the royal family’s residence and looking at the wonderful architecture. After the palace, we also visited the Wat Phnom temple.

The S-21 prison museum and the Killing Fields

Before our visit to the Royal Palace, we spent the morning at S-21, which is a museum and memorial site for the victims of the Khmer Rouge; we used an audio guide and learnt about the troubling events that once happened there, we also heard stories as we walked through the interrogation centre. We also made a visit to the Killing Fields, where a monument containing bones and skulls had been dedicated to all those murdered by the Khmer Rouge regime. This was a difficult, emotional experience for all of us but we are all very grateful that we had the opportunity to learn about the genocide and reflect upon it.

Food!

We mostly visited restaurants supporting good causes including daughters of Cambodia, a restaurant supporting girls affected by sex trafficking and aiding them to leave the sex industry; and Friends, a restaurant supporting the homeless and vulnerable by training them to be waiters or chefs in the restaurant and then moving them on sister restaurants to work. I tried many Cambodian dishes including, Fish Amok, Duck Spring Rolls, Chilli, Fried Vegetables and many more!

Angkor Wat

We began our visit to Angkor Wat by waking up at 4:30am, leaving at 5:00am, for a 6:00am sunrise! This was a beautiful and stunning experience, even if we were all half asleep by lunch! For breakfast, we all had American style pancakes with either LOTS of chocolate sauce or fruit. Many of us made our Ranger promises at Angkor Wat in an ancient library. We visited two other incredible temples, Bayon and Ta Prohm.

Our experience at Angkor Wat was very special and we all learnt a lot about the ancient Khmer religious history.

Market shopping

The first market we visited was Central Market in Phnom Penh; it had many souvenirs and is where many pairs of elephant pants were bought! We also visited the Russian Market where products with manufacturing defects from local factories are sold. In Siam Reap we went to two markets; the night market, which sold similar things to central market; and the Local Market, where locals buy everything from apples to skin whitening products!

The floating village, cultural village and wildlife centre

The floating village is what it sounds like; a village on water, there were houses, shops, schools and markets just floating in the water. It was such a different lifestyle than we are used to and was very interesting to discover. The cultural village showed us traditional Cambodian houses, along with scaled down models of key sights in Cambodia such as Central Market and the Royal Palace. The wildlife centre was where endangered animals that would have otherwise been killed for food were bred/rehabilitated and then released back into the wild; we saw lions, lots of monkeys, deer, bears and many, many more animals!