Saturday, February 18, 2012

Domestic Violence Workshop COMPLETE!

Well just want to update you on the important news that 17 months of hard work has paid off the dv workshop is complete! I will post up pictures soon so you can see what all your donations got you once again thank you for anything you were able to contribute. Leading up to the conference I had to go all around Phnom Penh getting books and am soo grateful for the UNFPA and un human rights women’s etc and of course GADC all these people provided so many resource to the workshop of information in Khmer and Eng.  Well nothing I do can be with out a story so its 9 at night me and makara who is part of Peace Corps staff she is one of r counter parts on this project anyways we are sitting to finally get dinner when Hannah rides her bike over to us and its like there is a huge problem the school director said he did not have some sheet of paper that he needed and that we could not have the rooms for the workshop if we did not get it to him be4 tom well its 9 at night so wtf do we do. Soo there is all these different gov branches in Cambodia the one that is in charge of edu is the POE who we gave all this paper work to their director but it got lost. I should also mention to get said paper work we had to pay 20 dollars lets just say that fee is not a real fee but a fee you feel in heart to pay when you want something done in Cambodia call it whatever you like. Poor Hannah ran all over the place a week be4 our workshop bc we found out about said paper work then. I should also mention there was a bad falling out between the school and peace corps bc Hannah went to teach else where and by Cambodian standards I guess this is face losing and peace corps did not fix it by talking to the right people so basically any chance said school director got he just screwed with us bc he could. Anyways back to 9 at night Makara saves the day makes a million phone calls get this POE directors cell number or something we get the okay after 30 mins thinking this is it 17 month of our work down the drain. After all of this we have a talk about how if we did not have a Khmer person with us their would have been nothing we could have done and how there is just some scope as a volunteer you can not fix and this is something I think the staff can forget so Makara was like I think ill bring this up at next staff meeting. The next morning we show up early to set up but the ministry did not show up until 30 mins later but hey they did show up on time so that was a step in the right direction! In typical khmer style the opening ceremony has to last way to long because we had to have every important person their give a speech o yea I guess I did not mention that the deputy governor of kampong chhnang showed up apparently this is sort of a big deal. I help Makara write up her speech the night before and I think it was pretty short and sweet got the point across of thanking people for coming give us money etc and then talking about violence being a community issues. I have to say though the director of the ministry of women’s affairs though it was really long and I understood only some of her speech was BAD ASS!  What I mean by this is she called the police out in her speech and the chief of police was attending our event she was just like the police are to slow in responding to the crises in Cambodia they ignore violence in the family and it is only breaking our society apart. Its rare for me to see any one call out the Cambodian gov for fear of what would happen to them I mean some ngos will but not usually people working for the gov bc I am told their has to be favoritism to get into some positions and if you speak to much against the party you will be disfavored. After this we separated the groups to make them into 2 diff classrooms to make it easier for them to ask question and learn. I have to say the sessions were really well done the women working with the ngo they partnered with worked well  and I think a lot more people understood aspects of violence gender and culture. In fact my gauge for how much people were liking this workshop was that they showed up early and even when it rained in Cambodia this NEVER HAPPENS LIKE EVER I ALMOST DIED. The only thing I sort of struggle with in all of this is the notion of evolution of people understanding gender and violence etc like we in the states have gone though many stages and realized our mistake in the feminist movement etc to make it not only one dimensional however when this is a newer concept to people such as in Cambodia its like you have to re see the same mistake being made. EX okay so I really do like this ngo GADC they have a lot of really good materials in Khmer etc and they train men to not be violent towards women that it’s the mans job not to hit the women vs the women’s job not to get hit. While its all well it good that they are trying to take away from victim blaming it’s a paradime shift in my option because they are trying to say this is what a real man is he takes care of the family helps his wife doesn’t hit his wife etc but its only re enforcing the idea that there is such thing as masculinity which is exactly why they are trying to fight. Despite this observation from my self most people better understood why not to victim blame etc so I guess I can not totally knock this method of teaching. So at the end of the day we set up to give out money and this was going to be a shit show bc Saeed who was going to be in charge of this got sick and we did not have names but only like health person one this village village chife so on and so forth on top of this we did not take into account how many Cambodians can not read in khmer even people that are leaders in the community so their were people singing in the wrong area etc it did not get solved until the ministry actually read out the list which ended getting things back in order. Then we had these random ladies show up and we were like who are you and they are like o we are the victims and we are like wait what how did you find out about this because it was on advertised we had to hand out invitations anyways lucky for them we did in fact have enough money to pay them as well. Then the next outrageous thing happened so after these women who were basically the last people left there is this guy behind them and I joking around turn to Hannah and am like great this is the abuser but Maraka over hears us and thinks we are serous so doing the Khmer thing she just turns and ask him and he just openly admitted yes he did beat his wife but has changed his behavior once again on idea where this guy came from. At the end of the second day I just felt relived to know we did it and made it though working with the ministry like we did is not very typical in fact I don’t think anyone in peace corps Cambodia has worked on the level we did with them which as you have seen from other blogs has not been always easy. The chief of police ended coming up to talk to me after words he spoke a little eng and I was able to speak some Khmer so we had a pretty good conversation about the legal system and crime against the state like it should not be up to a victims family etc to releases an abuser from prison and he was telling me how he wants to work harder to help victim weather this is true not sure but he seemed like he ment it and he was telling me most times when he has learned about this stuff is been though foreign ngos and its not taught in Khmer so he only understood a little but this workshop being in Khmer helped him a lot and he wants to go back and share what he learned with other police and I thought that was really cool capacity building at work! We also had Cambodian news coverage so if I figure out how I can upload it to my blog I will try and I will add pictures soon promises until next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!!

My life thus far…25


 So I guess its office my youthful innocents is over now when I ride Cambodian taxis I get asked where my 3 kids are o well. So its been 5 years since I turned 20 and left those teenage years behind me what I can now reflect upon. Most of you many not know this about me but at 20 I took hard look in and realized how big my ego was and really started to get into Ram Dass and other sort of life philosophers in order to these writers and books etc really helped me recognize my behavior and egotism in ways I cant always admit to my self even today. I will say I have come along way and what better way to truly celebrate a milestone like 25 then with a trip to india to see the Dali Lama speak! So for my actual birthday I kept it pretty low key as I had my conference in a 2 days and most of my ideas about being 25 lay in the northern Indian mts =)  my host family had a taxi go all the way into the city to get me a cake for my bday which was really nice I feel bad when they do things like that because I know they have no money and would not take the money for the cake. Some other people came over and just hung out for an hour or so like I said no bar hopping this bday. Since being in Cambodia I can say I feel my life path changing I just wonder where it will take me I can say 25 right now feels less of a choice of action and more of a flow that seems to be just taking me along for those of you who actually read this blog vs just looking at my pictures feel free to explain to me ur memories of being 25. Well valentines day just so happens to be my bday yea I know I am just a regular cupid however this yea instead of worrying about all the love stuff I have decied to take the feminesting challenge you should check out the blog http://feministing.com/ to take the chance to talk about reproductive rights. However I did this for Cambodians because thanks to Susan G Komen I now know how serious American women are taking their reproductive rights =) anyways just so you know I did not come up with this activity alone this 19 year old girl who is a first year med student came to my house one night to ask me to train her in out reach public health sort of stuff could she work with me this was the best news ever! So I gave her some books and materials I had and just asked her to pick what she wanted to teach and we could lesson plan etc after words.  She came back and said she wanted to sexual education at the school this meant permission from the school director who I had no idea who they were. Lucky for me the sub school director who I thought was just some eng teacher knew me bc I played soccer etc with him so I just was like can I teach health and got a yes. I taught 6 classes but they combined two each so not so many hours anyways thanks to my host sister I knew where to start explain the menstrual cycle yea my sister cant understand why you cant get pregnant in 2 weeks so I figured a bunch of 14 year olds would be on par with this belief. Next I had them draw the human male and female anatomy just to see what their understanding of it was before teaching it to them and guess what no one knew the female anatomy only the external male atomy can we say penis culture proof. Had them talk about pressures on both boys and girls in Cambodia to have sex get married have babies etc and overwhelming of them stated that girls are in lots of pain and will die while having a baby if you get married to early. I should also mention Cambodia lack education for even adults is provided on family planning and birth control so abortion is more common for whatever reason it would bring less shame on the family according to the students and also when I did the womens group to have the teenage girl who gets knocked up to have an abortion vs giving them birth control. However more of the students in the room also told me they knew where they could get birth control with out their parents knowing. Despite this though they had a lot of questions about abortion which is ironic because if I was in an American school omg would my ass be grass if I actually answered said questions but in Cambodia no big deal but they asked me where they can get one procedure side effect really detailed stuff. I then tried to change the topic back to using birth control and explain to them about plan b as well as I don’t want any person first choice of birth control be an abortion. Apparently their was also a big myth behind keeping condoms past the expiration date by freezing them this might explain why Cambodians have 5 kids jk. I also took the time to explain that you should never force someone to have sex with you which is a huge deal in Cambodia I am not sure if this was understood because pretty much the way they define boyfriend girl friend means you must have sex with that person even if you don’t want to. All and all it was an awesome time because pretty much I was told in Cambodian culture they would be to shy to talk about this etc and that most time the girls just opt out of the class. I think the reason I had such a large participation is one I gave out bubilicious gum sent from America lol but it was two girls vs a male which im pretty sure is how sex edu is taught and I am also an American and since im pretty sure every culture over sexualize Americans its okay to talk about anything sexual to an American we are just gurus on the subject. Since this blog is getting long ill save my needs assessments survey for another blog entrey. Just like to thank the world for my existence and thank all of you who have wished me happy birthday for the existence I have because seriously without all of you my life would be really boring and not worth living. Unit next time peace out from the other side of the world!!!!!!