After arriving home from the last assignment, it took a while to get used to lying in bed at night, and be enveloped in total silence - well: apart from listening to my artificial heart valve clanking open and closed. It was also a bit chilly after living in tropical areas. Then there was getting back into the mundane regime of cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, etc….
The relaxing at home was tempered by my daughter being in hospital (although, self-created: she was having some serious nipping and tucking following losing 50kg); the son of a dear friend near my residence died at her home and another dear friend (a fellow ABV volunteer) was diagnosed with an inoperable pancreatic tumour….later the daughter-in-law of another dear friend hanged herself.
It took a few days to get back into my 8km morning walk regime; some construction work had shortened the trek to around 6.5km (4 miles). I set off in the dark before dawn and watch some amazing and colourful sunrises; and (just occasionally) there is a huge full moon heading over the western horizon reflecting moonlight shimmering across the mirror-like Swan River and, at the same time, the sun is dominating the eastern horizon - amazing sight! I walk through the grounds of a casino near home, then along the Swan River with pelicans, ducks, ibis, spoonbills, kookaburras, assorted local birds, the ubiquitous local black swans and, just occasionally dolphins rounding up schools of fish in the river.
My passport was not due to expire until 2018, but it was very nearly full, so I had to replace it - the new one expires in 2021….I wonder if I will last that long? Then I noticed that my driver’s licence would expire while I was away next time - so had to go through the process of getting it renewed well before it was due! When I renew that licence next time, I’m obliged to take a driving test, because I’ll be 75 (good grief)!!!
SO - Checked into the international terminal in Perth for two flights (Perth to Singapore -overnight inside the terminal- Singapore to Siem Reap the next day) to be told that there was too long between the two flights to issue two boarding cards, or to ticket my luggage to Cambodia! Entreaties that I was ‘in transit’ in Singapore and could not collect my luggage elicited checking with the supervisor - but no change in the pronouncement.
Anyway, arrived in the massive terminal in Singapore and immediately hunted for the transfer desk, explained my luggage situation to be told ‘it’s no problem, sir, happens all the time’.
Lots more walking to the transit hotel in Terminal 1- to be told that there was ‘construction’ going on that night and they recommended that I go to another hotel inside Terminal 2.
Lots more walking to find the transfer train to Terminal 2 - it’s just slightly spooky zooming along in fully automated trains without a driver, but gee they are efficient!
Singapore airport (Changi) is a huge complex (753,300 sq. ft.); riddled with shops including every ‘quality’ brand you could think of - but very few customers. They handled over 42 million passengers in 2010 with an average of 5,400 flights per week.
Had a sleepless night picturing my luggage endlessly revolving around the luggage carousel downstairs and then some opportunist just picking it up and walking out with it!!
Checked in very early for the next flight and to ascertain what had happened to my luggage.
The gal sent a message ‘to my colleague downstairs’ to locate my luggage and ticket it to Siem Reap. When asked if I should check back and see if my luggage had been located; she said ‘it should be alright’ - most encouraging!
Then they noted that my return flight was three months after arrival, but their records showed that you could only get a visa for 30 days; that invoked a series of phone calls with me explaining that you could get a special ‘business visa’ and extend your stay. They asked if I’d been to Cambodia before. ‘Yes, several times’ - so they checked in my passport - which is, of course, brand new without a single stamp in it!!! I eventually convinced them and got a boarding card!!
Ultimately arrived in Siem Reap on a Sunday and endured the amazing array of a dozen officials at a semi-circular desk as they pass the passports hand to hand. Then I watched the luggage snaking around the carousel, but mine was not there. I waited until there were no more and went through a convoluted ritual to report the missing luggage.
SO - I was in a hot country with no spare clothing - but I had some medication in my ‘carry-on’ luggage!!!! Luckily it DID turn up the next day - involving a tuk tuk ride to the airport to collect.
On Monday, I followed a woman from the hotel to the client - she is also volunteering there (for the second time).... ON A VERY BASIC BICYCLE!!!
The last time I can recall riding a bicycle would be over 50 years ago....
It must be true what they say - you never forget "it's like riding a bicycle".
Endured an interesting experience dodging the morning insane traffic, weaving motorcycles, huge potholes after flooding, corrugations, and road-works with tip trucks trying to lob a load of gravel in your lap!!! About 25 minutes of solid pedalling each way.
Bicycling sure uses a different set of muscles to walking......!!!!
I told family about my bicycle ride and got responses varying from the fact that because my left side is weaker than my right (after the stroke), that I’d only ride around in circles; to a ‘report’ to the local manager of the volunteer organisation saying that I just should not be bicycling at all. I received a mild sort of reprimand from head office after that!!!
The client (Grace House - a school facility and support centre) had been closed for a week, waiting for some minor flooding to subside. Two days later the rain started again and the school was closed; then the Siem Reap River burst its banks and started pouring through the streets again. Water was over the front step of the guesthouse and the top step was a layer of sandbags - the town and most roads promptly became muddy, swiftly-flowing rivers. Some locals and press reports were saying that it was the worst local flooding that they had seen.
In the past, I’ve endured minor earth tremors and been near an erupting volcano on two occasions, but this has been the first experience of flooding.
The roads were deteriorating even further under all that water and you could not see obstacles as you walked the streets with thick brown water above the knees - you never knew if you were stepping into a pothole, or onto a rock or other impediment under the water. Plus, of course, there is no sewage system, so where was all of THAT going? Local people were making rafts out of planks of wood or doors and using plastic bottles for flotation. The most popular form of transport is small motorcycles and some of them had taped an extension hose to the exhaust pipe and attached to the rear, to keep the water out!
The media reported deaths of over 200 local people through the flooding, and an English guy working for an international school drowned - there were rumours that he had been mugged and it was made to look like he slipped and drowned, but who knows….
There were also rumours that several crocodile had escaped from the Crocodile Park - but, apparently, those rumours perpetuate at every flooding!
There were no meals at the guesthouse - so we needed to wade out into the street in water up to the thighs in places - to get food!! I was wading down the street one day and a local gal suggested that I take a detour as the water was up to her chest further on the same road.
Combined with the flooding, it was yet another holiday for a week for Pchum Ben. This Festival of the Ancestors is a Buddhist tradition when Cambodians visit many pagodas over two weeks. Food, flowers and gifts are given to the monks to convey to the afterlife so the dead do not haunt the living. So - for the first two weeks I’d been able to get to the client’s premises for two days. Just as well I could dream up input on my laptop from the besieged guesthouse.
The next week the water retreated to the road (which was still a brown, flowing river), next morning it was puddles in the road, and then it gradually dried up, but intermittent rain continued.
My room in the guesthouse was on the first floor (that’s the ‘second floor’ to Americans) overlooking a local house’s back yard. As usual there were many people residing in that domicile. Right under ‘my’ window there was an ancient iron water pump which made a very loud clanking sound as it was operated. That pump seemed to be the only water source in the residence and served as the bathroom, laundry and scullery - the loud clanking action could be heard from around 05.30 for half an hour as they pumped bucket after bucket-full and then spasmodically all day. People would take a ‘bath’ standing on a concrete pad by the pump, wash their hair, clean their teeth, wash laundry, crockery and cutlery and procure water in buckets to carry to a corrugated iron structure (the toilet) by the back fence for flushing! Interesting to watch someone anxious to get to a loo, but having to stop and pump a bucketful of water and carry it precariously along a plank to the backyard. They went through a phenomenal amount of water every day, so the resulting loud, metallic, clanking noise was virtually continuous!
One Sunday, just after the flood waters had receded, there was a funeral going on close by - the morning air was permeated with over-amplified, repetitive xylophone-type music and for hours in the afternoon equally over-amplified, monotonous, mono-tone chanting. I’ve never understood why everything has to be amplified via microphone/speakers and can be heard for a huge distance. Of course, the invasive shouting/chanting was punctuated by the loud pump next door clanking up and down, up and down…..
At first there were three other female volunteer teachers for Grace House at the guesthouse, next week, seven more arrived; they were from: English, Ireland Wales, Australia and Uruguay - all females. Then they came and went in relays. Just too much oestrogen - and little me! One was an older lady who had been there several times before; the others were mostly twenty-something who spent their free time glued to their mobile phones…it seems that if humans evolve further and mobile phone technology is similar, that the ‘hands’ of future human-beings will just consist of two thumbs with the fingers of one hand welded into a cup-shaped receptacle. The problem was that, with Grace House closed because of the flooding - they had little to do; one day, they worked with the local teachers from the guesthouse; I worked with some of the office staff on several occasions.
Then we went from an excess of water through flooding, to having no water at the guesthouse for two days because there was a fault with the bore water pump. A bunch of guys eventually fixed it by: running a cable through puddles from the lobby to the pump and sticking bare wires into a connection (it was rainy season!), hitting a valve repeatedly with a hammer as they primed the pump, slicing a bicycle tyre into strips and winding them around every joint to create a seal, and chopping the end off a broom handle and tapering it with a kitchen cleaver to hammer into the priming hole because the plug was missing….local ‘engineering’.
THEN - two days after the flooding had receded - the river rose and burst its banks yet again, sending water flooding through the town and the road outside our guesthouse was, once again, transformed into a muddy river. I could not help thinking that the flooding was the result of a truly phenomenal amount of water to cover such a wide area so deep in flowing water - surely, literally billions of litres? Apart from the knowledge that you were walking along a muddy river bed (that used to be a street) in an area devoid of any sewage system (!), another disconcerting aspect was that, while the water was cool-to-cold, every now and then you’d walk through an area where the water was warm - and you’d wonder just why? An industrious guy over the road from the guesthouse actually set up a fishing net on the verge - that had become a running river!
The guesthouse was basic but adequate - but WHY the hell do people have a compunction to SLAM doors, when turning the handle as you close results in a silent closure? And, why do people who you know are in a room by themselves: go to the bathroom in the middle of the night - and slam the bathroom door (in fact, why close it at all)?
One day, I was sitting on the balcony at the front of the guesthouse reading a book while the staff serviced my room (we could not get to ‘work’ because of the flooding). An adult guy splashed past on his little motorcycle, in his own little world, legs held out from the splashing water and loudly singing "twinkle, twinkle little star...." One of life's little incongruities that bring a smile to the dial….
A touch of déjà vu - one day, a tuk tuk drive I did not recognise shyly asked “Are you Mr Bevan?” He used to call in to one of the hotels I had advised a few years ago and recognised me.
With my primary client closed for several weeks due to the general flooding throughout Siem Reap, I was asked to do a quick scoping study for another prospective client in Phnom Penh. They provided computer training and related studies to poor people and were asking for six volunteers for various aspects of their operation. My local manager and the head office were requesting a study of their needs and expectations on which to base decisions to allocate and locate the various volunteers they were requesting.
The local ABV manager was going to Phnom Penh by ‘taxi’ and I tagged along - at least we got out of the flooding. Although the roads were dry, the countryside was significantly water-logged for much of the journey and many villages had built temporary shanties and had relocated their cattle to higher ground right by the side of the road - so there was people, cattle and their fodder everywhere; making the trip even more hazardous than usual.
During the trip the driver played dodgem with meandering motorists, malevolent motorcycles, belligerent buffalo and cantankerous cattle for around 315kms each way!
I interviewed all the key staff one day, wrote the report the next day and finished it from 4am the day after I got back and sent it off.
Got back to Siem Reap and the flooding had receded yet again - leaving the roads dry, but severely eroded and washed-away. We were back to going to the school again in the back of an open truck - bouncing around like riding a bucking bronco.
As with my previous assignment in Dili - staff were redressing a blatant need by imparting parenting skills and teaching mothers how to ‘play’ with their children. I was told that women have no idea of why they have their periods. Domestic violence is endemic and children are often beaten - when a mother was asked why she hit her children so hard, she responded: “Because I love them.”
A couple were getting a divorce and the village elder was consulted about what to do with the young children. It was accepted that, the father would invariably beat them and if they went with the mother she would be living with other family members and the girl’s uncles would probably rape them. Do we have the right, or responsibility, to change this prevalent behaviour, or should we just mind our own damn business?
For several weeks after the flooding receded the roads were so bad that we were conveyed from the guesthouse to the school in the back of an open truck - wildly bouncing around as we ricocheted from bump to crater. We would leave the guesthouse around 08.00 - pass the restaurant I’ve been helping and I would wave to the staff.
Start work – school begins at 09.00.
Lunch at 11.00 until 13.00 (for goodness sake) – classes run until 15.00 then they have some extra classes until 16.00. I used to finish around 15.30. I achieved more productive ‘work’ from the guesthouse, rather than at the community centre.
One day they received 30 bicycles in kit form that were to be assembled by the donor (a group of young ‘management consultants’ from around the world having a conference there).
SO – sixty of them duly turned up, and the manager’s husband and I spent the next two hours guiding them (in high heat / humidity) on how to assemble the bicycles.
Then we travelled back to the guesthouse crammed in the back of the truck and negotiating the unbelievably rough roads until, the truck’s steering gave out; he could not steer at all and we were stuck diagonally across the two lanes of a narrow bridge over the river with dozens of cars frantically blowing their horns - we all baled out, over the tailgate, left him to it and walked the rest of the way. My walk back was ‘enhanced’ by carrying an additional rucksack for another volunteer who had cycled back (in additional to my own weighty laptop and gear)! Got back exhausted in a lather of perspiration – had a cold shower and headed for a restaurant where I had a free beer (if you buy nine over any period – you get the tenth one free).
In early November, there was a holiday from Wednesday until Monday for the ‘Water Festival’ but the activities were cancelled because there had been too much water - ironic? The kids at the school all made boats from little polystyrene trays and we went to the Siem Reap River and they floated them off towards the Tonle Sap Lake (added to the pollution I guess?). Some of them had lit candles in their boats to add to the fun!
On the walk to the river a young girl (probably around 7-years old) took my hand, smiled up at me and we walked along the busy road holding hands. BUT – why did I feel so damn awkward – what’s the world coming to when a western man can’t walk along protectively holding the hand of a young girl he does not know and feel comfortable about it?
Most times on my evening walk to the local restaurants – two or three very young girls ran out of their homes giggling, to say ‘hello’ (probably their only English) and want to briefly hold hands with me - I got it down to a ‘high five’ (or in their case a ‘low-five’) as I walked past, but I wanted to yell at them – ‘don’t do that with strange men’!!!!
Marriage and funeral services last for three days with over-amplified, raucous, off-key ‘music’ belting out. There was a wedding right next door to Grace House for three days making it almost impossible for the students to hear the teachers - or for us in the office to concentrate. That one finished on Friday - then, the very next day, there was another wedding right next door to the guesthouse - right outside my room window actually!!
I’ve been called a range of names on these assignments - this one was to a ‘Community Centre’ which was also a school. The standard honorific if they were not sure of your name was ‘teacher’ - as in ‘good morning, teacher’ - so I was called ‘teacher’ by the kids.
The trip from the guesthouse to the school over the flood ravaged roads resulted in 20-25 minutes of, mostly, vigorous bouncing from bumps to corrugations to craters in a tuk tuk - hanging on like crazy; it was like riding a bucking bronco. The powers-that-be had cut ditches in the only road that had survived the flooding to help drain the flooding waters. Then they realised that people wanted to use the road and Bailey Bridges were installed - the entry and egress were rather steep up and down ramps which gradually parted from the bridge - leaving a bone-jarring gap, The ride was ‘enhanced’ by workers attempting to fix the damaged roads (paradoxically, the roads will have been on the way to repair as I leave) …
They were also laying some large pipes along the side of the road (to alleviate the next flood) so there was all that activity as well. Of course, there were no health and safety issues: huge holes in the road with no tape or signs, workers in flip flops and no safety gear…working graders, rollers and dump trucks unloading tonnes of rocks right in from of traversing vehicles that you had to dodge around, no signs, no barriers around gaping 2-meter deep holes….!!
I had not done any touristy endeavours on this trip, having seen most of the sites on previous visits; however, on my penultimate weekend in Cambodia (this time) I travelled some 60kms out of Siem Reap with Marilyn (a former Aussie who now lives in Calgary and was volunteering at Grace House for the second time). We visited the lesser-known area of Beng Mealea and Koh Ker. This area was the former capital for a few hundred years. Beng Mealea is an amazing tumbled-down ruin of a huge former structure that we clambered over for a few hours wondering at the skill and ingenuity of the ancient artisans. Then lunch of wild boar soup and deer in ginger (neither of which were on the menu). Then we drove on to Koh Ker which features a huge seven-tired Mayan-like ‘pyramid’, plus dozens of structures known as ‘linga’ sprinkled through the forest - mostly all in ruins after over 1,000 years. The primary religion at the time they were all built (between 928 and 944) was Hindu and you could still plainly see carved letters in Sanskrit in some walls. The entire area was formerly littered with hundreds of land mines and there were signs saying that the area had been cleared (we hoped). It was a wonderful day out (and a break from sitting in front of the computer) thanks, Marilyn.
SO - back to the humdrum - shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, repairing, and paying bills……!
Leave for Vietnam on January 31 for three months…..
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