A few months after moving to Singapore Papa T and I had fascinating but also thought provoking trip to Cambodia when we visited both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.
The people of Cambodia are still struggling to recover from the devastating consequences of the Pol Pot era in the 1970's. During the 4 years when the Khmer Rouge attempted to implement an "agrarian state"- a supposed new order free of family ties, money, religion and education, at least 1.7million Cambodians ( about a quarter of the population) died. During the genocide the majority of the country's academics, politicians, teachers, doctors, artists and anyone of influence was killed or died of starvation.
There are many NGO's, aid projects and volunteer programs involved in Cambodia and I had spent time researching which one I might be able to join. By coincidence over the course of only a few weeks three separate recommendations led me to an organisation called Caring for Cambodia.
This organisation has been running since 2003 and now has over 4000 financial sponsors and over 400 volunteers who work hand in hand with local communities supporting education through training teachers, funding classroom supplies, maintaining and upgrading facilities, providing bicycles for students to get to school, and nutritious meals for all students and more recently basic health care.
I arranged to join the next "Health Trip" and in mid January flew to Siem Reap to join the health team. I was met at the airport by this friendly chap and whisked into to town.
The other volunteers were out shopping so I went for a walk and came across Wat Bo Temple
This pretty and very peaceful temple was built about 400 years ago and is the oldest known Buddhist monastery in Siem Reap
The internal walls were covered with murals
That evening I met up with the other team members, 4 staff from the International Medical Clinic in Singapore and BL-Chairperson for CFC's Health Committee and we were briefed on what we would be doing over the next few days.
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The next day we arrived at our first school to start work at 7.30 am and met the 4 local staff who work full time for CFC, 3 trained nurses and 1 student nurse. The first class of children were already lined up waiting for us
Within minutes we were at work. Each pupil was to have their height and weight measured and recorded
and then one by one they had their vision screened
Then all the measurements were inputted onto the computerised health programme which automatically worked out each child's BMI and Z score. This enables comparison against the World Health Organisation Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition, unsurprisingly many of the children are comparatively stunted and some malnourished.
We all took turns in doing the height and weight measuring, vision screening and the computing, the inputting was, for me, the worst option but interesting to see as the computer program calculated the children with Z scores of concern indicating they were malnourished. These children and those whom we had identified with vision defects would be followed up by the CFC nurses and referred to Ankor Hospital for Children.
Occasionally there were brief lulls and I had time to have a look around at our surroundings. There were several single storey buildings containing the classrooms, outside each classroom there were rows of shoes. The weather was currently dry and warm making everything dusty but during the rainy season the outside areas become wet and muddy and this dirt easily gets into the classrooms. CFC organises paving pathways to help combat this.
At each school CFC installs washing stations with soap in cloth 'socks' hanging by the taps. The water is pumped through a bio-sand filtration system (also installed by CFC ) cleansing it enough to be safe for the children and the local family's to drink. Access to clean water is a major issue in Cambodia with dirty water being the major cause of many illness and deaths particularly in the young and the elderly
The Health Team team in CFC orange
Cambodian children attend school for either the morning or afternoon so each classroom will see two sets of teachers and students each day.
During the first morning we screened 235 primary school children, from grade 1 to grade 5 and then after a lunch break a further 145 giving a days total of 384. I had never seen that many children in one day when working as a Health Visitor with the UK NHS! It was hot and dusty work, no air con of course, but the natural light and ventilation was good in the classroom and working with both the local staff and the children was a joy and the day passed really quickly
Our pupils in the afternoon were all in grade 1 so the youngest. They were all so well behaved, quietly waiting their turn to be screened
They also seemed very independent for their age and although shy of us obediently did exactly as they were asked
I noticed a few young children 'hanging around' outside and was told they were probably the teachers own children, although too young to join classes they spent the day in the school grounds whilst their mothers were teaching
A PE session took place outside the room we were using and it was lovely to watch the students play the activities. Here they were practising ball skills by taking turns to throw the ball into the cardboard box
The next activity involved some students laying down with their feet touching in the middle whilst their friends held them up by their arms. They then walked around as fast as possible until either the circle collapsed or someone had dropped the friends they were supporting. I was invited to join in and found out it was surprisingly hard, especially trying not to step on the long hair of the girl laying down!
Once we had finished screening all the children and packed up the scales, height measuring sticks, vision charts, computers and everything else we had brought, we were taken to visit one of the pupils homes. A group of the school children had been organised to show us their village
the village shop
We were shown a large frog that had been caught, I think it was destined for the cooking pot
and then to the back of some houses where we could see the rice paddies
and was introduced to the mother of one of our student guides, she was busy harvesting lemon grass
and then we climbed up on top of a brick wall to be shown the family's main source of income...
crocodiles!
There were literally hundreds of them, in different pens, the sizes ranging from quite small one year old crocs, to absolutely enormous adults
It was quite something to look down on these amazing but dangerous animals only a few feet below us. We were told that they get fed fortnightly, I tried to imagine the frenzy when food gets dropped into that pen!
Back at the school the children were keen to have their photos taken with us before we said goodbye
and then they picked up their bikes and cycled back to their homes
and we returned to our hotel for a shower and change before heading into town for dinner at a local restaurant serving delicious Khmer dishes.
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We all went to bed pretty early not only because we were tired but the following morning we had to be up at 5.30 am to go to Amelio Primary School to observe and help with the Food for Thought Programme.
Although early some students had already arrived at school and some were doing their 'jobs'. The pupils take turns in being responsible for sweeping and cleaning their classrooms each day
Soon after CFC was founded volunteers realised that many of the children were hungry and thus not able to focus or learn effectively. 42% of Cambodian children are stunted due to malnutrition so a daily programme to offer at least one meal a day commenced, this has now developed into the Food for Thought Programme that provides 240,000 meals a month across the CFC schools.
Inside the 'dining room' we met the cook who prepares the fortified rice and protein meal for several hundred students each day, twice a day, 6 days a week-what an amazing lady!
At the base of the wood fired stove a tiny puppy was curled up asleep in the ash, so sweet
The children were arriving in droves and we ladled up their breakfast
The room was soon packed with hungry students
Whilst we were serving we were watched by this young baby sitting on the counter top, no matter how I tried I could not get a smile from him but at least I didn't make him cry
We had brought crayons and colouring sheets with us and after eating several children enjoyed doing some colouring. They all shared the crayons and paper without any fuss or arguments
As the children drifted off to class cook tidied
and washed up in preparation for the afternoon session
I loved seeing the shoes outside a classroom
By 7am we had finished helping here and went into town for our breakfast and then it was on to Kong Much Primary School to start the day's heath screening
Some of the younger pupils were enjoying the playground
This school is very close to a busy and noisy main road. As well as vehicle fumes a huge log was slowly burning just behind the low wall of the open sided room we were using and after only a short while the wafts of smoke were making our eyes sore, I could only imagine what it must be like for the children who live with these conditions each day
The day before we had learned the Khmer words that we would need to be able to do the vision screening i.e. circle-rong vong, square-kare, house-phteah and apple-phle baom, sometimes the children said behdaung meaning heart which confused me at first. By day 2 we were all pretty word perfect with these and a few other words but still had to rely on miming and facial expression to explain the task. If we got really stuck then the local CFC staff happily translated for us
At break time a local ice cream seller turned up on the track behind the school, many of the children bought ice cream served in a bread bun, costing the equivalent of 20 pence
In a further effort to improve health and hygiene the schools supported by CFC now have better toilet facilities, still basic but I'm told considerably better than they were previously and nearby was a wash station with soap
After the morning session the school cook put out the huge cooking pot with the students rice meal, we nipped back to town for our lunch and returned an hour later for the afternoon session
That day we screened 534 children in total! We were tired but very satisfied with our day's work
After a good long shower and a rest we went into Siem Reap for supper, this time we went into the heart of the tourist area-Pub Street which is full of bars, restaurants and shops catering to the tourist market, it was fun but seemed strangely out of kilter with the sort of conditions that we had been experiencing over the last few days
Lights along the river
The night market
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The next day we had a slightly later start, 7am so still pretty early but even so when we arrived at Kravaan Primary School some of the children were already cleaning and sweeping the buildings
and others wee watering the plants. All the schools have small plots of garden in which they grow fruit and veg to be added to the rice meal and it's the children's responsibility to weed and water the plots, with the teachers help
As part of CFC's health programme each student is given a toothbrush and toothpaste and reminded to brush their teeth after breakfast at the school.
Myself and the other volunteers had all booked extra luggage allowance to bring supplies over for CFC and in my bag I had hundreds of tubes of toothpaste-20kg worth!
Classes had already started for some
it was lovely to see a well stocked library and the children enjoying the books
The room allocated to us was too dark inside to be able to do the vision screening and as the room had no electricity (apparently there was only electricity in a few rooms and only intermittently) we had to set up in the verandah area outside the library, not ideal as it was hot, noisy and there were a lot of distractions- we were next door to the play area. I doubt it would have met NHS standards but we made it work and it was certainly better than not screening the children
At the end of the vision test we gave each child a new tube of toothpaste (note the boxes of toothpaste beside Jo's chair)
Throughout the morning lots of students would come up and watch us whilst they had break time
many seemed as fascinated by us and what we were doing as we were fascinated by them
all such gorgeous children
This young lady in the queue for vision screening is wearing the "Star Pupil Crown" as she had been the top student last week
Late in the day we had time to play basketball with some students, they beat us easily of course
This school has recently opened up a pre school and at the end of the afternoon we watched as their teacher guided them through a game on the newly paved courtyard area outside their classroom. She was carrying her own young baby on her hip
That day was our busiest, we had screened 534 children bringing the total number of children screened over the 3 days to 1,298, a pretty impressive achievement.
I felt sad as we waved goodbye to the children but also very lucky that I had been able to part of this health team
That evening we met up with the local CFC staff and enjoyed a delicious Khmer meal together along with a few cocktails and lots of laughter. It had been a pleasure and a privilege to work with and get to know such a dedicated and caring group of people who are working hard to help the young reach their potential which is just what Cambodia needs
They all had their own scooters to get home and in true Cambodian way wearing a helmet seemed to be optional!
I had thoroughly enjoyed my experience volunteering with CFC but came home wanting to do and know more particularly about the health issues in Cambodia. The founder will be in Singapore soon and I've booked to attend an event to meet her so hopefully something may come from that
Caring hands
To find out more about the organisation Caring for Cambodia click on this link-
https://caringforcambodia.org.
