NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2011

Hi Everyone,

This is supposed to be the quiet season, not many tourists, rain, everything slow and awaiting the arrival of the tourists in the middle of October/November. Not so at Kep Gardens!

The last week of August was the end-of-year exams for all the different levels at the school. Consequently, lots of work to set the exams, hold them, mark them and then of course, the end-of- year parties. For the Elementary and Beginner classes we all trouped off to the zoo in Kampot. Some didn't come thinking it would rain. This was exciting for the kids for two reasons. Firstly, none of them had been to the zoo but more importantly, most of them had never been to Kampot which is only 25 kms away. We hired a wagon and all piled in and off we went, singing the English songs along the way that we had learnt in class. Just like on a school bus excursion.

 The zoo was a bit of a let down. The last time I had been there was about 4 years ago and it wasn't too bad. Now, it has really gone downhill, not many animals, gardens not neat and tidy but they do have a playground where we had lunch and the children had great fun playing games and playing on the equipment.   Different to playgrounds I am used to but a playground nevertheless. A snake joined us to add to the excitement. We had cooked up pots of rice and grilled pork so no-one went hungry and we took bottled water.

                         The children push this themselves.

 One of the highlights was an orangutan that all the children fed with bananas and then he pinched one of the kids caps and tried to fit it on his head and kept it clutched in his hand and wouldn't give it up. The cap was bright green with sequins on it so I guess it appealed to him. So that added to the entertainment of the day.

Negotiating with a banana didn't help much as he wouldn't release his vice like grip!

 The Intermediate and Upper classes had snacks and drinks, played games and watched music videos. They are happy doing that with their friends.

                           Girls making up the boys blindfolded.

 Then we get to the administration work for Kep Gardens. Two years ago we put in a submission for approval to run the school with the Education Department. They gave us verbal permission but formal, written approval had to wait for the Association approval to come through. OK. But now they have changed the rules. English schools have to be approved by the Department of Labour and Vocational Education now, as does the hospitality school and trade school. This actually makes sense to me so we have been busy preparing a submission for all 3 schools to give to this new department. All finished, so now I have to get on my bike and go and get the 5 required signatures before I front the Provincial Governor for the final signature and approval in Kep and then it goes off to Phnom Penh. Let's hope it doesn't take 2 years like the Association papers!!

At the same time we have been chasing up the building approval. All the plans had been done and we had got all the signatures except for the Governor's. This was put with the Association papers and we were supposed to get both approvals at the same time. When we received Association approval I asked about the building approval but it seems they have lost the papers. So we got them all done again and now I have to go and collect all the signatures again. Some of the signatures are the same so hopefully I can get both lots of paperwork signed at the same time in one or two of the departments.

Then there is a problem with the hard title for the land. They are going through all the old hard titles and getting them right. This in itself is a good thing, getting the rules uniform etc. Many people have had trouble with the reclassification of their hard title eg building, farming etc and we may run into a few problems in this regard. So actually having to get the signatures again will bring this to light and it can all be sorted out at the same time. Because Sothea is not with us anymore, getting all these papers translated and typed in Khmer is a huge job. One of our staff can do it but he is very slow although this is great training for him. So add on more time to get this part of the process completed.

Then we have Chum Ben coming up in the middle of September. This is a 15 day religious time for Buddhists, a time when everyone travels back to their home province to be with their families. It is a very important time for Cambodians. There are 3 days public holidays set aside for this but most people take at least a week or more so forget trying to get any signatures until the beginning of October. Then school starts again and time becomes limited each day so I am guessing I may be lucky and have the submissions into the required departments by November. Then we sit and wait for approval.  Oh, the joys of living in Cambodia!

The funny thing about all this is that new laws will be coming in soon about NGOs and Associations so we have to go through all the process again to get approval. I hope we don't have to do all the school approvals again. Nothing is easy in this country but if we can finally get all this paperwork out of the way and approved that in itself will be an achievement. Meanwhile, we just quietly go about our business and concentrate on what we are actually here for, helping the children and youth in the village. Having approvals or not doesn't actually affect our everyday life at all.

Talking about Chum Ben. As I said, it runs for 15 days. People attend the pagodas taking food to the monks. This is a time when you think about family and relatives that have died. When you give the food to the monks and they say a prayer you are supposed to tell the spirit of your dearly departed to come and eat as they get the food through the monks. Some people go to the pagoda at 4.00 am and throw food over the boundary of the pagoda grounds. This is the one time of the year that the spirits that may have been bad or lost get to eat so people make sure they take food then just in case any of their relatives' spirits are in this category. You should always wear white so I have a special Chum Ben outfit that Sothea bought for me one year when we went to his village for Chum Ben a couple of years ago. The kids say I look just like the old people in their village going to the pagoda so they call me grandma. Except my hair is gray. Everyone here dyes their hair black, even the men. Very few people let the gray come through.

This monk has been coming to Kep Gardens every since I have been here. Lovely boy and he gets excited on the odd occasion I visit the pagoda. In fact, all the monks at this pagoda attend classes at Kep Gardens except for the head monk who is 75 years old. He sits and smokes all they way through the ceremonies. Quite a character.

A couple of little anecdotes to highlight the differences in our cultures. On the way to school early one morning, a couple of the Intermediate students saw some fish in a pond alongside the road. They came hurrying in and asked if they could be excused from school because they had to go back quickly to catch the fish before anyone else saw them and took them. These fish were then used for the families dinners that evening. This is one of the jobs that the children in the family do. If you see them wandering around you think they are just playing but actually they are checking out the trees, the puddles of water etc to see if there is any food to be taken home to supplement the food for that day. One of the boys in my group at the zoo kept pointing out to me the fruit on the different trees as we wandered around and his eyes lit up hoping he could climb the trees to collect it.

In the Upper class we were talking about banks and I asked why people put their money in a bank? One of the answers was "So that the mice or termites don't eat it." He was deadly serious and after seeing how the termites eat anything made of paper in my bedroom (including library books) that I leave out, I think it's a sensible answer.

Recently we were doing the topic "weather" and I was saying how we may say "It is a beautiful day". So I got the words for the song "Beautiful Sunday" from the net and I happened to have it on a CD I brought with me so played it on the computer. Everyone loved it and I often hear the students walking or riding their bikes up the driveway singing this song as they come to school. So an old 1972 song has been revived in a rural village in Cambodia.

Kimsy's (one of our hospitality students we sponsored to Siem Reap) mother died about a month ago. The poor kid has lost both her father and mother in a space of 6 months. There are 8 children in the family, 5 of them married, leaving Kimsy, her younger 17 year old brother and younger 11 year old sister left at home. Not an easy time for her as she works at Kep Gardens 6 days a week but without that there would be no money coming in at all.

Candles and incense that people put by the body. The family wear white scarves around their head.

Good thing is that 3 of the married siblings live very close (next door a couple of them) so they help with the babysitting of the 11 year old and prepare the food for the family so at least she doesn't have to do that when she gets home from work. The extended family situation here is great as everyone chips in to help so no one family is left to fend for themselves like so often happens in western countries.

All the animals are fine except for the rabbits. One of the geese is sitting on 2 eggs, kittens just keep on coming but fortunately we can find homes for them with the younger children and chicks keep being hatched so our chicken numbers are increasing. When we finished the goose house, they were locked in at night. Big mistake. Chicks went missing with no obvious sign so it was concluded that snakes took them. We now leave the door to the goose house open at night and have not had any more problems with snakes stealing the chicks. But the poor old rabbits were attacked by wild dogs called dohls. Locally they call them tiger fish as depending on their individual colouring they can look like small tigers and also they eat fish if there is nothing else to eat. Our neighbour who is a hunter came and looked at the disaster and said as he wanders around at night hunting he has seen them around our dam. They live in the mountains during the day and they have never worried us before but for some reason this particular night they paid us a visit. They can jump fairly high so we have put barbed wire in loops around the top of the chicken fence to make it even higher in the hope that they leave the chickens alone.

Saying all this, our two mother cats are not all that good. They both have one very bad eye that is obviously blind. It can't be contagious as the kittens' eyes are OK. Someone mentioned it may be that a snake spat at them. If cobras spit their poison in your eye, you go blind and we know we have cobras in the jungle around our area. This is the only explanation that makes sense for both of them within a couple of days of each other to end like this. Hopefully the snake has moved on although the cats don't go too far away now.

We have finished the potting shed covering it with shade cloth, just need to finish off some shelving and we will begin growing a lot of things from seeds and then replant them into the vegetable garden once the rain eases off a bit.   Also we can keep seedling trees and flowers that we have scattered around the place all in the same place so we actually know what we have got. Much more rain this rainy season than the last two seasons I have lived here. Very hard to keep Kep Gardens looking neat and tidy as the vegetation and grass grows so quickly. Finish cleaning up one area and it's time to start again. Come November we will have to hire a huge team of villagers and have one big clean up. During the dry season it is much easier to keep it under control with just our staff. Good time now though to be planting things so for the last couple of months we've planted more fruit trees and flowers around the place. Won't put in any vegetables yet though as they will get washed away.

The dam has been overflowing for weeks and is chock-a-block. We have a couple of Cambodian books given out to the villagers with instructions on how to farm fish so we are going to give that a try as well.

Our rice crop is nearly ready to harvest. The guys were only saying today that after Chum Ben we should cut it. All this rain is not good for the rice apparently as it gets in the grain and makes it mouldy. We need some sunshine to dry it out. So it remains to be seen whether the villagers have a good season or not this year. We will probably replant again straight away to take advantage of the rain remaining in the season as we have the dam to pump water from if needed.

Been invited to a couple more Child Labour meetings, one which is a local organization established by the head monk for Kep Province. He is actually going to attend English classes at Kep Gardens from October. We will become a member of his group and see what transpires, how we can help each other to support families whose children are at risk. Some of our students are already on their list so maybe we can help families from our local area that have been targeted. It will be interesting working with a Cambodian run group. I am sure we will learn a lot more about the Cambodian way of thinking which in turn will help us with our own project.

I have a month's holiday during September. Two weeks so far and even though I have been working at Kampot, getting food organized through a local orphanage charity to be supplied to the boat when it is in Kampot and lots of other little jobs to ensure we are ready for the season in November, it is nice not to have time restraints.

I went to Phnom Penh to renew our visas. Air conditioning, a comfortable bed and a hot shower was heaven!! Back to reality now.

Andrew has been working at Bokor Mountain Lodge in Kampot doing all sorts of maintenance jobs for them so they are prepared for the tourist season as well as a few maintenance jobs around Kep. All these jobs help to keep income trickling in as well as providing work for Mr Hutch, a local villager who is good at building and learning a lot from Andrew but has no work during the rainy season. Actually they have been learning a lot from each other.

I had a birthday awhile ago. I was at Kep Gardens all by myself. Andrew was in Phnom Penh helping a sock factory set up some machinery, Sunday is the staffs' day off and it was raining all day. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. About 7.00 pm the staff rolled up with some flowers from Andrew that he had organized and a birthday cake that they had all chipped in to buy. It was a lovely surprise. They couldn't come any earlier because the rain would have spoilt the cake as they walked to Kep Gardens!

Goodness knows where the roses came from!

Hope all is well with you and your families. Until next time,

Cheers, Janine and Andrew