Sometimes, there are no words
A very sad day today. A boy at school had obviously been beaten up by his father. He is normally a perky little thing and very animated. Today he was very subdued and had red marks and bruising in his face. I spoke to him after class and he said that it just happened in the night. There was no way he was going to tell me the truth. I guess that he had just had a very sharp belt across his face. He didn't seem to hurt anywhere else.. He was trying not to cry the whole time I was talking to him. It is very hard to know what to do. The answer really is there is nothing you can do. Just to try to reassure him that it was not his fault and that he is safe at school. When I spoke tabout it to Rithy, one of the teachers with good English, he just shrugged, it's normal here. Many parent's beat their children viciously here.. There is sexual abuse too. It will take a long time to change. There are NGO's working in child protection but they are mainly concerned with the trafficking of children and child prostitution.. You can buy - buy - not just rent a child here for $60.
At the weekend I went with Lori and Karen, an American who is involved with a Buddhist charity at Wat Damnak in Siem Reap, to an orphanage that they provide for. It is in the countryside a fair old drive along dirt roads. About 40 children live there. Many have HIV. It is a very joyful place. The children are well looked after and go to school. They are fairly well fed and the HIV kids get their drugs and hey are kept properly. We aririved in the middle of a giant water fight. We have had some students at the house from NYC who have been here with their Professor. They have been having seminars, helping at a school and also have been helping at this orphanage.
They were all having such fun. Laughter everywhere and much pumping of the well to get water for the fighting. Although life is simple for them they are some of the lucky ones. Their life is much better than it is for most Cambodian children.
My teaching is going well. The kids are great and quick to pick things up. They all sit rapt and are very well behaved. I am trying to get them to think creatively, something that they are not used to. They just sit in rows and chant pat answers. I have been singing songs with them and generally being a bit silly in order to get some energy into the lessons and make it fun. We are doing shapes and time this week. I finish class by getting them all to sing 'If you're happy and you know it' They are getting into it now and really love coming up with new things to do. I have got them to end up with a very loud say bye bye Barbara, it took a few goes before they stopped calling me teacher, the standard address here. Even the teachers call me teacher!
After my class the Khmer teachers want me to help them with their English.. Most of them are taking English classes of some description and they all want help with their homework. English is hard to learn. In Khmer there are no tenses, for instance, and they write without spaces between the words.
I keep learning new horrors about the KR regime. I got back in the dark the other n ght and Ponheary was outside. We were chatting when a frog jumped between us. She said to me 'that reminds of the boy and the frog, did I tell you about that?' You just know something appalling is going to be revealed.
In her camp there were about three hundred people. They had maybe a kilo of rice a day between them. They were starving and you could only ever think about yourself . One night a young boy saw a frog and chased after it. without realising he crossed the border into another camp and the guards caught him. They asked him what he was doing and he said he was trying to catch the frog. When he was asked what he would do with the frog he said he was going to eat it. So instead they cooked him on the fire in front of everyone. Ponheary said ' I did nothing, but I wanted to live' She said she used to like frogs to eat but now she always thinks of the boy and cannot eat them any more. She said she saw soldiers playing handball with babies on bayonets. Sometimes there are no words.
At the weekend I went with Lori and Karen, an American who is involved with a Buddhist charity at Wat Damnak in Siem Reap, to an orphanage that they provide for. It is in the countryside a fair old drive along dirt roads. About 40 children live there. Many have HIV. It is a very joyful place. The children are well looked after and go to school. They are fairly well fed and the HIV kids get their drugs and hey are kept properly. We aririved in the middle of a giant water fight. We have had some students at the house from NYC who have been here with their Professor. They have been having seminars, helping at a school and also have been helping at this orphanage.
They were all having such fun. Laughter everywhere and much pumping of the well to get water for the fighting. Although life is simple for them they are some of the lucky ones. Their life is much better than it is for most Cambodian children.
My teaching is going well. The kids are great and quick to pick things up. They all sit rapt and are very well behaved. I am trying to get them to think creatively, something that they are not used to. They just sit in rows and chant pat answers. I have been singing songs with them and generally being a bit silly in order to get some energy into the lessons and make it fun. We are doing shapes and time this week. I finish class by getting them all to sing 'If you're happy and you know it' They are getting into it now and really love coming up with new things to do. I have got them to end up with a very loud say bye bye Barbara, it took a few goes before they stopped calling me teacher, the standard address here. Even the teachers call me teacher!
After my class the Khmer teachers want me to help them with their English.. Most of them are taking English classes of some description and they all want help with their homework. English is hard to learn. In Khmer there are no tenses, for instance, and they write without spaces between the words.
I keep learning new horrors about the KR regime. I got back in the dark the other n ght and Ponheary was outside. We were chatting when a frog jumped between us. She said to me 'that reminds of the boy and the frog, did I tell you about that?' You just know something appalling is going to be revealed.
In her camp there were about three hundred people. They had maybe a kilo of rice a day between them. They were starving and you could only ever think about yourself . One night a young boy saw a frog and chased after it. without realising he crossed the border into another camp and the guards caught him. They asked him what he was doing and he said he was trying to catch the frog. When he was asked what he would do with the frog he said he was going to eat it. So instead they cooked him on the fire in front of everyone. Ponheary said ' I did nothing, but I wanted to live' She said she used to like frogs to eat but now she always thinks of the boy and cannot eat them any more. She said she saw soldiers playing handball with babies on bayonets. Sometimes there are no words.
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