love the life you live Peace Corps Cambodia ☮: Booked Solid

Sometimes there is just not enough time in a day the last 6 months are looming upon me as far as being a peace corps volunteer in my village the irony of all this is finally all my project are panning out with a few bumps along the road of course because it is Cambodia. So I know its been a year running me talking about the ministry of women affairs while I have had some major growth with working for them I have also had to really do a lot of counting to 10 as to hold my tongue. How to explain this in a polite way but it is commonplace in Cambodia to make excuses for almost any organization because they are paid to little, my thinking is everyone is paid the same money then its not more or less then the next organization so it should not be the right of that organization to either work as little as possible or take bribes. By the way the bribes are from cops not the women’s affairs but never the less people take this as an okay behavior and buy into the poor them mentality which gets old real fast because the sellers etc who make even less don’t get to bribe people or just lay around bc they feel the prices they sell for are not fair. Why am I venting about this type of work ethic is because time and time again not just me but other volunteers cow down to this cultural mentality and for the most part you can stop working with whoever your working for in a few months but I have had the privilege of spending almost my entire peace corps service working with women’s affairs and I might have reached my limit to what I will excuses. When we first met with them it was we understand so much blah blah however soon it became we don’t know that much to teach about these things can you teach us. Okay so me and the other volunteers I am working with re did the whole budget because we never planned for this we did not have the money so we took out some people from the big workshop just for them to have a 3-day training to be ready to teach. This past week we implemented this training I even prepared a lesson on gender for the guy who speaks Khmer and Eng. Before said workshop we meet with them re go over what will happen they then ask about 20 dollars we have to explain for all of this they can not be paid its their workshop and part of the PCPP agreement which was translated in Khmer and not sure they read or kept but requires them to give in kind donation for us to get the money we did. After going back and forth for a while they finally get that they can not be paid which left them a bit bitter I think but at the workshop they seemed to have gotten over it. However a few people who were going to come did not because their was no money when we told the ngos who we are working on for this project they were pretty pissed bc they are the ones making lesson providing materials to them for free but they cant show up for free. So after much talk the NGO’s said it’s a waste of time and resources to only train 6 people to get other people which we did a bunch of students at the local university and some other ngo staff. With out fail the ministry was late to every meeting at least 30 min to an hour while the students etc showed up on time keep in mind they asked us for this not the other way around. After the 3 days we had to plan a time schedule for the big workshop which then they spring on us they want to change it up acting like they had no idea that the small workshop was what we planned for the big workshop which was said like 1000 times in meetings so frustrating. Well in between that I had to run to Phnom Penh for a meeting about tom shoes which the lady wrote me an email extremely late to tell me she could not make when I have explained about how much effort it takes me and other volunteers to get into the city but it was not a total wash because things were figured out with Khana which by the way the head guy who was helping us from their just left and never said anything so now we have a new counter part. This new person was on it though and we figured out how we were going to better work with Peace Corps volunteers that matched more of what TOMS wanted. The next thing on my list was to deal with books for the big workshop so we forgot to put photo copies into our budget so now we have to hope that some big organizations like U.N etc. have enough copies of various books we need copies of which took the whole afternoon me going around talking to them I still have to go back in and talk to GADC. Once again this would be much eaiser for the ministry to just call there head office to get us the books we need but seeing as they don’t take responsibility it makes it so difficult to count on them. The only other two things we asked of them was to make the invitations and hand them out which they told us they no longer wanted to do and talked to the school director for the classes rooms which they also told us they don’t want to do. Having them call in for books just seemed like just as much work as me asking for them my self which should tell you how pathetic their work ethic is. I had one day be4 I had to head back to kampong Chhnnang for a workshop in between that time it was Chinese new years and lots of parties to go to. My host family was really sad that I had to leave Sunday they kept trying to steal my phone bag and computer so I could not leave but I made a commitment a while ago to attend the workshop so I could not back out as much as I wanted to. The next week I spent time with a counter part from world vision on a program called PD Hearth which stands for positive deviance behavior training the major purpose is to use people in small villages and have them learn from one another to help malnourished children. It was pretty cool going and doing out teach for it ill post pictures but you should know weighing kids is like torture to them almost everyone freaks out. The purpose of bring a counter part from world vision is that I want to do it however it takes money and time etc which my counter part will have once his boss approves it. Anyways some stories to tell you about some convos I had during said training first step is to do a measuring and weighing to determine families that are model family’s and those who need help. After this we went to do interviews to see if they particles overall good health who takes care of the child etc anyways at this point I meet this lady who has a son who is only 1 kilo more then from the day he was born and is severally malnourished and she informs me he has constant diarrhea so there is nothing she can do to help him gain weight. This leads to me ask her a few simple questions like have you given him ORS taken him to the hospital. She just looks at tells me no because there is nothing a hospital can do he is possessed by a ghost humm okay how can I culturally be sensitive about this okay well then did you take him to a krew-ka-maie natural medicine healer yes did he/she help no. Okay well maybe now you can try the hospital since your tried to rid the ghost that way maybe some medicines will help your son. She just told me she would think about it I guess its better then nothing but I have a feeling that will end up being a no. Another good story was some little girl was really intrigued by my piercings so she kept asking me if I was from India how a 4-year old associates that with India does interest me. The last night all of us volunteers and counter parts were going to be together the counter parts requested we did something all together I was thinking sure why not we can go for a walk get ice cream or something nothing crazy but not what they had in mind. So after dinner we meaning all the volunteers go to meet up with them when low and behold there is this big truck waiting for us that IRD owns that’s an ngo anyways they are like we will go to the club I was like wait there is a club in kampong chhanag? Well it cost 3 dollar to get in o I forgot to talk about how poor I have been this last week so because I have been on constant going back and forth I spent so much money on transportation etc this month that I didt have enough money to buy food this week =( it was quite said to just eat plain white rice or bread but good news got paid today yay. Anyways so this 3 dollars I did not have so my counter part ended up paying for me because he wanted me to go so bad which I felt bad about because I don’t want someone like him paying for me. Anyways we go in and its hilarious so I am thinking we just paid 3 dollars to stand by are selves but nope there was people ages 10-50 I wish I could have you picture what this club looks like but think about some video arcade from the 80s with a club twist. I could only stay 30 mins because I had to get back to where I was staying another volunteers house Khmer people pad lock things pretty early which I think my counter part was sad about. Before leaving I did dance which good thing about this country you can never look to retarded dancing bc Khmer people are always worse and seeing them dance American style is pretty crazy. Till next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!!!!