VSO Conference (Beach Beano!)

Last week VSO Cambodia held its annual conference at Sihanoukville, a beach resort. 85 VSO volunteers and staff attended and I had a great time catching up with everyone. The conference was really well organised and the schedule was fun and worthwhile. Unfortunately the weather was mostly terrible, with monsoon conditions, culminating in the road between PP and Sihanoukville being impassable for several days. However, as you can see, we did manage to get to the beach between storms, and I even managed to get sunburnt on our last day.

While I was in Sihanoukville, I gave blood for the first time in my life. One of the volunteers is a doctor there and she arranged a special blood giving session. I had a few problems (couldn't get enough blood out of one arm, so had to get some out of the other; spurting blood afterwards; felt faint; some bruising) but it wasn't too bad.

At the conference, I was elected on to the Volunteers Committee, which looks after the volunteers' interests and liaises with the VSO office. I was quite honoured to be chosen, as there was stiff competition. As a committee member, I will be travelling to Phnom Penh for meetings regularly, which will be good for my social life! The new committee will be responsible for organising next year’s conference. A very high standard was set this year, so I think we will have our work cut out.

"I love your nose...."

...... I have been told several times by market stall holders!!! Every day, my colleagues say to me "Alison sahaat", meaning "Alison is pretty"! I thought it was a joke at first, but no, they really do think I'm a bit of a bombshell!! Cambodian people have a very different idea of beauty. They love my white skin, portly shape, short blond hair and even my glasses!!! Richer Khmer women spend a lot of money on whitening creams and hair dye to try to look less Asian. By contrast, Western women prefer to be tanned and slim with pert noses and they like long glossy black hair. A clear case of the other side's grass being greener!

My birthday in Cambodia

Cambodians don’t usually celebrate birthdays. Many of them don’t know in what year, let alone on what day, they were born. Since I have been here, I have introduced my colleagues to a few western birthday traditions by buying some of them small presents, cakes and cards to mark their days. In return, they organised a birthday party for me this week! Kaknika’s grandmother made a huge bucket of Cambodian curry which was brought round by motorbike and eaten sitting on the floor. Everyone gave me gifts. Savann presented me with this rather fetching pair of pyjamas, while other presents included a nodding dog, a wind-up music box with ‘Don’t Forget Me’ engraved on it, and a miniature bird cage complete with tweeting birds! Hardly the most sophisticated presents, but all were well intended and I was very happy to receive them. There were sparklers and a cake with my name written in icing, and after I blew out the candles I was sprayed with plastic string! Certainly different from birthdays back home!

Conference and field visit

Last week I went to Siem Reap for a 4 day conference organised by ACR (Australian Catholic Relief), which funds one of CoDeC’s programmes. Attendees included representatives from each of the six Cambodian NGOs which ACR supports. CoDeC staff reviewed last year’s Community Credit / Savings Groups Project, and signed a contract for next year. As usual, although I listened intently to the discussions, I only managed to catch the odd word and I did not understand about 80% of what was said!
The Director of ACR, Sokhany, is an impressive woman, having previously been nominated for a Nobel Peace prize, and she sets high professional standards for the NGOs to achieve. For some reason she has taken me under her wing; in the group photo she is sitting on my lap!
On the final day of the conference, we went on a field visit to observe the work of one of the other NGOs. In this picture, all these healthy-looking people have been diagnosed as HIV-positive. We talked to them about how the NGO helps them to have medical care, counselling, support, training, money and food. We observed a World Food Programme lorry delivering food to the local monastery for distribution by the monks. Each person diagnosed with HIV or AIDS is given a card which entitles them to a weekly allocation of rice, cooking oil and salt. I found the visit quite disturbing, but I was very pleased to see that these vulnerable people are getting such good support and that the food aid is being honestly administered.