Carnival Time

It's been three weeks since I blogged!
We just had our open house yesterday, a big scale carnival with 100+ children, ran completely by volunteers with no professional carnival running experience.
So everything was somewhat self made.
Decor was self done, games were made up of tin cans, boxes, rings, ping pong balls and stuff, prizes were self wrapped stuffed toys, and music was blasted from the speakers that were already in the school. On car batteries since the electricity blacked out. (Plan B if the batteries didn't work were to blast music from the car stereo by maxing the volume and opening all the doors).

I think the villagers were somewhat amused by us,
as we went out in teams to distribute flyers for the carnival the week before.
Villagers being villagers are always kampong friendly,
i enjoyed the walk around, smiling and playing with the children.

Planning the carnival was hard hard work.
For the last week at least,
we have 12 hour days of getting things done outside and after dinner and shower back home,
it's meetings until we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore past midnight.

Sok son and I were at the bank watching the bankers chit chat during office hours the other day and he commented on how cambodians seem quite free.

"everyone is free except us," i quipped. "We keep working until we fall asleep! i'm even busier than when i was in singapore!"

The carnival was somewhat a success. We only had 5 people, each manning one booth, to entertain 100+ children, with another 3 helpers roaming around to resuscitate any drowning volunteer.

Halfway through the carnival it started raining and we had to stop the games and carry all the tables, props and queue stands (which are really rafia strings tied to chairs) indoors to the 2nd floor.

What an experience it was making 100+ children queue up and wait while some of us hurriedly carried stuff indoors and set up everything in there.

"Who runs carnivals like this?" I was smiling to myself while lugging chairs upstairs.

If you thought that was bad, then what came next is much worse.
Pack 100+ children indoors in a little room with no electricity (and hence no fans), with bad ventilation and what you get is a refugee zone with a lot of noise, very stale air, very humid heat, and an interesting smell of everyone combined.

I literally got a headache upon stepping into the room for the first time.
My hats off to the volunteers who stayed in there the entire time till the end of the carnival.
It was backbreaking work with all the picking of the balls, and under those conditions, i wouldn't blame them for thinking it was torture.
But they did it all with much gung ho-ness and joy.

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Our school is now finally up and ready to run.
New paints are up, decorations up, furniture and toys have moved in, the road is done, the playground is touched up.
It has definitely come a long way from the beginning.

But more than that it's the new lease of life we've brought to the place.
The building has always been there, donated by a team from australia years back.
But it was an empty shell of a place.
now you often hear the squeals of little children, their smiles, and the team of locals who hang around a lot more.

The local that we'll be eventually handing the school over to loves children.
you can see his enthusiasm when he teaches in class,
in fact some of the children he knows well calls him Papa.

The carnival was an announcement of sorts to the villagers that we were ready to start classes.
A marketing event somewhat.
Tomorrow we're running an official registration day for the parents, where we thought we had to try hard for them to sign up.
Our target is 70 children, and already today we've hit 49.
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The faces of the children when they play the toys we brought over is precious and priceless.
These are toys the singaporean children may not even want to play with anymore,
like the fishing game and the big lego and drawing board stuff.

but when you see how the cambodian children play with these toys,
you'll understand now why there is so much we can do to share what we have with those who don't.

It's not just the toys.
From a bigger picture, we can share a lot more of our expertise and experiences with these pple who don't have these things through no fault of theirs.
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the children of the village are truly cute.
cute, simple and shy.
Simply precious.
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Other interesting things that happened:

1) I just found a higher-than-high beam in the car the other day.
And then i realise my higher-than-high beam is actually the high beam.
which means what i thought was "high beam" is actually my normal lights.
which means what i thought was "normal light" is actually dashboard light = no headlights.

So i've been driving at night with no headlights!
no wonder pple seem so unfriendly and aggressive at night,
they don't give way and they keep staring.
now i know why.
they can't see me!

2) blogspot was supposedly blocked by my internet provider.
so i access my blog using a proxy server by going to another website.
suddenly that website is now blocked.
and before i could go "alamak now i can't read my blog", i found that blogspot is no longer blocked!

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alrightee, time to sleep.

God Bless The Teachers and the Little Ones

We sat through a local kindergarten class today.
The kids here are generally a lot more manageable than singaporean kids in general.
Definitely some playfulness here and there but they are not as, well, obnoxious (for lack of a better word) than some of the local kids.

Perhaps it's a country thing, or a villlage thing.
where things are not taken for granted as much.

Some of the small kids are so precious and funny.
I'm so entertained just watching some of them.
They can sit on the chairs and somehow by themselves tilt the chairs till they get harmlessly stuck.
The little ones, abt 3 years of age bless their souls, they look so lost in class and completely in their own world.
one cute little girl has the periennial "i'm sleepy" lost look,
and another boy is always chewing on something, from his trouser strings to his mini chalk board to the chalk itself.

the local teachers who taught them are equally precious.
Equally precious.
it kills me that we most likely can only afford to hire one person.
Pray.
Pray.
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Pastor Savun, a local pastor in the town we live in,
has been an incredible blessing.
simply for being the person he is.
Simple, unassuming, always helping and always sincere.

He has helped us so much in very concrete ways,
like finding the house we're currently renting for example.

But even more than that,
his life is nothing less than an inspiration.
he started his church in the capital of Phnom Penh but his heart has always been for the villagers.
To date he has 10 over village churches,
and many more village schools.

We visited the one he started in a village nearest to us.
He started a school there simply because he had a burden for the children there,
that they had no school to attend.

It's a simple structure,
a small little wooden hut of leaves, nothing fancy,
with flies everywhere and children packed on benches exceeding max capacity,
but they learn, and they sing.
"Children are like arrows. Teach them right and they will shoot out to bless one day."

A true blue missionary.

He has 2 sons and 4 adopted children.
One of which is our language teacher.

Today we had a little chat,
and even his adopted son is an incredible inspiration.

He's teaching us now on a "friendly" basis,
meaning he isn't expecting any pay at all,
but the way he teaches, you wouldn't be able to tell.

he's always so chirpy and full of energy even on days we're half dead.
and at times he's even more enthusiastic than we are on having lessons.

He studies in university now, and in his spare time he teaches English to foreigners in a language school, he has his own private students, and he is taking chinese lessons (he can already speak Khmer, Thai and English).

I asked him how he copes with his heavy workload.
And he says he sleeps at 9pm and wakes up at 1am to finish his school assignments and work stuff.
He then naps at 4am and wakes at 6am for prayers with his family.

An amazing and talented teenager with such an incredible attitude.

Today he shared with us that he prayed to God that he wants to be rich, but he promised that his riches will go into blessings for the poor.
And God has opened plenty of doors for him,
including his university scholarship and potentially a job offer overseas.

Many of his private students, including us, are missionaries.
And I couldn't help but think how God has really used him greatly.
He has a natural gift for languages and is a great teacher,
and he has helped so many missionaries to pick up Khmer for their work here.

He is so passionate abt teaching i'm so inspired.
that joy, that passion, that "i'm going to do this even if there's no pay".

Pastor Savun and his family are just simply an incredible family.

God bless those who are in You that You have blessed with so much talent and passion.
May You always protect their fire, and use them ever so mightily.

Amen.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Our big ass car finally arrived last night.
Sau phea's dad's cambodian office has very kindly and generously loaned us the car for our use until we're done with it.

So we were all prepared this morning to bring it out for a test drive.
"Do you have the keys to the big gate?" Sau Phea asked me.
"er...no?" i replied.
"You DON'T HAVE THE KEYS?"
"nope. i only have keys to the small gate. the rest are with Sok Klang. who is out and his room is locked."
"who has the spare keys to his room?"
"Sok son."
"where are his keys?"
"he brought it back to singapore."

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we've finally figured out how to stop blacking out the whole village.
Only one person can bathe at one time, and the earlier the better.
We figured that 7pm is probably the time pple in the village turn on the lights, which is why the light flickers when we shower. there's not enough electricity to go round everyone's use.
the safest time to bathe is either when there's still light or when everyone in the village has slept, which is abt 10 plus.

it hasn't blacked out for quite a while since we did the one time one pax bathe thing.

Still, sometimes the rain short circuits the generator and it blacks out yet again.

We had a mother blackout of 16 hours the other night.
the half hour blackouts are chicken feed now.
in fact, our prayers nowadays are no longer abt NO blackouts, but please Lord may this blackout be only half hour long.

It isn't just lights that we miss when it blacks out,
we have to do without fans too.
and in this heat, and with the mosquitos waiting in perenial ambush,
it can get tough esp when it's time to sleep.
blanket -> blardy hot. no blanket -> mosquito attack.

and it's not just the fans.
our water pump runs by electricity.
so no electricity = no water.
no water to bathe, wash face, brush teeth.
no water to flush toilet also.
thank God we still have drinking water.

Bottled drinking water is cheap here, so that's what we drink.
Especially since we sent our well water source for testing and found that while it's arsenic and poison free (thank God!), it's coliform bacteria count is "too many to be counted".

With Sok son's filter system which he brought over from SG, we managed to reduce the "too many to be counted" to "55".
A quick check online shows that the bacteria is mostly harmless, causing diarrhoea at most, and the bacteria mainly comes from human or animal faeces.

So yes, our water is full of shit.

All of us got some form of diarrhoea, mostly not serious, for abt a week or so.
except possibly Sok son, who had a serious bout of diarrhoea probably because he drank a cup of unboiled water from his filter to demonstrate that his filter is good enough.

Back to blackouts.
the 16 hr ordeal with no light, no fan, no water is interesting.
like i said, we no longer find 30 min blackouts inconvenient.
We were on our laptops waiting for the electricity to come back,
and one by one we ran out of battery,
and we went to sleep.

We tried to sleep by fanning ourselves with handheld fans,
and then you fall asleep and obviously the hand stops fanning,
and then you have to wake up because it's too hot and you start fanning yourself to sleep again,
and the cycle goes on.

When we woke up in the morning the electricity was still out.
And sau phea and I were lying on our beds just fanning ourselves and understanding now why we sometimes see aunties outside just lying down and fanning themselves.

The other night there was yet another thunderstorm and we were on our way back from the other village (where the village school we are working on is at).
On the way back we saw that there were no street lights and every house was having candlelight dinner.
So we headed to the town cetnre for dinner and even the town centre has no lights!
Major blackout!
We ate at a place with backup generator and on our way back the town light came back to life.
we were praising the Lord then sekali when we got home our village still no light.
nevertheless, we continued with our meeting and yes the lights did come back on again.

Pok mentioned yesterday that she'd rather be without internet but with electricity rather than the other way round.
Last night our internet connection died.
Be careful what you pray for.
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That night was also the night we waded through mud in the village school village.
the paths are dirt roads, not proper roads, so when it rans your foot basically sinks in like walking on snow.
the tuk tuk got stuck along the way and we all got down to push it out of the mud.

it's all very interesting.

they don't carry umbrellas here,
most pple do ponchos.

i love it.

walking in the heavy rain without getting very wet.

the children here obviously love it.
they were playing and bathing in the rain,
probably wondering why we are so scared of rain and dirt.
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It really isn't very difficult to adjust to life here.
Everything above has been incredibly fun and interesting.
but sometimes we get into big boo-boos like leaving the gas on for the whole night.

in the morning we found the gas tank empty and the stove on.

we didn't smell anything,
but yes it could have been fatal.

I can only really thank God for his protection over us.

Not just over the gas, but there are so many insects around here with crazy big spiders that it must be God's protection that we haven't gotten into any serious stuff.

Pok pok found a big and poisonsous (according to them) spider in the bathroom after the blackout and it was a good thing the spider didn't appear during the blackout while Sau Phea was bathing.

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it's not all that rosy.
it can get quite tiring at times when you're never alone.
every single minute of the day is spent being with the same group of pple.
it can get quite stifling.
especially when things seem so impromptu here.
suddenly things will crop up or pple will come and time is always so tight.

and that's where my guitar gently weeps...

i was never really quite interested in the guitar,
despite my bro's feeble efforts to teach me heavy metal rock guitaring.
before we came it was decided that I will backup sau phea in the guitar.
I still wasn't particularly interested,
but i thought the guitar will be a good companion for some chicken soup for the soul.

With God's grace i really do love the guitar now.
Back at SG, i was still quite sian strumming useless notes under my bro's feeble (again!) guidance and his guitar book,
but after Henry spent 2 hours with me to get me started,
the guitar suddenly became quite alive.
And it has remained alive.

Whenever i need some chicken soup now I just pick up the guitar and play.
Simple tunes but moments when i can tune out and just be with me and my guitar.

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Had a rare alone moment the other day when the rest were busy cooking and i offered to go out and buy some stuff for them.

Just me in the tuk tuk.
(or like i told Pok before i left, I'm going on a date with the tuk tuk driver!)

It was then i realised i have forgotten how beautiful Cambodia really is.
Riding in the tuk tuk down a dirt road with wind in face and watching the fields and skyline,
it is a beautiful scenery and the sense of peace you cannot buy.

As we continued down,
i saw all these pple.
we've always been looking out for shops and things to buy that I've never seen as in honestly "see" these pple along the roads.

They all look like they have so much stories to tell.

And yet i feel so handicapped because we haven't completely picked up the language.

we've always known it in our heads that we can't connect to them due to language,
but that was a moment i felt it.
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"These are your war stories," Richard said, "and no one can take them away from you."

Richard is from our church who's been to many countries on holiday to visit and bless our missionaries.
He is on his way to becoming a missionary himself, with his wife and two kids in tow.

It was a great dinner we had with them.
for one thing we ate at their hotel restaurant (which they generously treated us) and
even though our individual noodle dishes only cost about $7 each,
it was astronomical by Cambodian standards,
and we all got mild diarrhoea after that.

we have truly grown accustomed to cheap food.

I've grown used to being with so few pple in the village that even PP seemed a little crowded and rowdy to me,
which means i'll be dead once i step into SG.
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Work in the village school is beginning.
there is land to fill, fresh coats of paint to paint, broken doors to fix, electricity to install.
much work to be done.

while we wade in the mud and rain and push tuk tuks out of the mud.

men ai tey. (no problem).
All in day's work.
Prang Lang (Jia you!)