"mouthkissing"

tiptoeing through the day with hungover fragility... colours are bright and beautiful and sore and i keep being struck in the stomach by poetic revelations in the stunned, openpinkmouthed lizard i stepped on in the kitchen or the cups i watched fall out of my unclasping hands and crash. and i come to the internet to see pictures of frost on oxford leaves and read that kosovo's gone to vote on its future.

lots to say, much of which i just deleted, so cant really be bothered again. nice note though:

apparently (i was informed over a beer), elderly cambodians 'havent heard' about mouth-kissing. they instead kiss cheeks and NOSES.. and occasionally foreheads and the backs of necks.. young people have started mouth kissing becauyse theyve seen it on tv. (but my friend said 'but you dont touch tongues do you?')

i thought this was quality information (since been verified by further ...discussions(no, really)). partly because you never see anyone kissing here so youd never otherwise know. and partly bc its a case of apparently natural behaviour being cultural. again.

other nice notes - these are shoes from a workshop a school had to get community support for its initiatives. there was a total buzz in the room, albeit from almost entirely male villagers, as they virtually competed on how much they would support the school environment with seeds and labour and fundraising activities.. it was great. and i did nothing, just turned up basically (and, er, made a speech). all thanks to really motivated deputy school director. nice nice.

Also had nice visits this morn as i rested after party cleanup from TWO poodles!! kam kayoo our regular cutie is on left and 'bupee', or 'puppy', HER LITTLE GIRL as well!! bupee shared her taste for licking people and they were SO HAPPY playing together. made me think all i need is someone to roll around with and lick. so theyll have to do for the minute anyway. going home for cuddles now...

rocking and rolling

rocking
Yes indeed.

Work stuff...whoo...how to say...due to the recurrent sickness of his mother, my designated assistant Chaay has been granted 2 months compassionate leave from the job, and im to work on my own (which doesnt allow a whole lot of information gathering as far as khmer goes) and with other vols' assistants until he comes back. In practice this has meant a pretty nice combination so far of reading things at the office and visiting schools and district offices of education with other volunteers and their assistants, or, a couple of times, with an assistant and me. There's so so much to ask - getting friendly with them, do they like their job? what are the busiest parts of it? what has most satisfied them since they started?, and then asking about community involvement in school decision-making, contact with parents, the making of maps of school catchment areas and the analysis of the reasons they encountered in doing the mapping that some kids dont go to school...about disability and the school's support systems for kids and for teachers, about school councils, health and sanitation, gender differences in the student body, rates of dropout and repetition.... too much for a short meeting, but the longer meetings have brought some great moments. ..One school director talked through most of his 3 hour lunch break about political machinations in the system of school support from the ministry but told us that althoguh he'd only finished primary school and not gone to secondary, he knew that the true inspectors of the school are the kids and their parents, and that by instilling this ethos in his staff his school is one of the most dynamic and high-achieving in Battambang... another who said a big worry for the village is emmigration, and when I asked about what skills there were in the village that were worth passing to the students, he said basketry and fishing tools had long been a strong enterprise and, in a really satisfying unfolding dialogue, we worked out a way of local tradespeople training teachers to train kids in a way that nobody loses money (from lost hours working - includes even teachers who all need several other jobs) in a way we (VSO) can probably fund and support. And some proud kids showing us their work. And ideas flowing all around.

there was a meeting of the new volunteers in which we wrote down our concerns and screwed them up and threw them around and read them out and discussed them. it felt GOOD. issues like
?why are we often focussing on the ministry's chosen 'show schools' which are already doing really well when there are so many neglected schools and no working systems of sharing skills between 'model' and 'satellite' schools?
?when an ngo gave kids in (an area by the thai border) SHOES, the attendance in school rose by 100% because they could walk further.... a school (in the same place) has got a water pump but no filter, and when kids got to school they often became sick and had to go home again, their parents unwilling to send them back.... can someone in the centre (ie me or jean) look into getting us shoes and water filters?

?whose capacity are we meant to be building, that of teachers and school directors or that of their managers (and entitled capacity builders) at the district level?

it complicated and confused as much as it clarified, but it was definitely good to share experiences and ideas and know what opportunities of funding, possible partner ngos etc we can look out for. Present were three brand new VAs for three other new vols who are out in the (4 1/2 hour drive from BTB) sticks. One of them had only got the job 10 minutes before the meeting, and the other two are a school director of a primary and deputy of a secondary in the most remote districts of the province. Their concerns were things like having walls in the school, having a teacher, so it's clear that needs are pretty different in different places. Where I am I think the difficulty at the start might be more about getting bureaucratic access to the more remote schools, those off the main roads that get inspected. But starting learning about it, and the kind of buzzing, critical, sharing vibe in the meeting of our pick'n'mix team, has made me feel really empassioned to support the horribly difficult work of these teachers, support their schools becoming more energising, positive places to grow up and spend time, and made me so glad to have the opportunity to be a part of it.

other rocking things have been meeting SALEE, who is one of my favourite things about Cambodia so far. He is a total leader in the best sense, sharp minded and gentle and clearly spoken, strongly opinionated and dry and cynical but keen and energetic and one of the most eager learners i can remember meeting. He wants books books and Im starting a list for ma and pa to bring out in February on international political economy and radical education!!! He is married with a kid so I am transforming falling madly in love-energy to big-appreciation-energy. I had the pleasure of working with him for two days last week and bouncing ideas around, also on the back of his moto as a group of us went to visit a beautiful pre-Angkor wat. He was a facilitator of a group here called 'Youth for Peace' which sounds like Venture Scotland and Venture Trust with the added extra of a critical political conscientisation that I always felt was missing in those organisations (hey, excluded youth of scotland! why have you survived so badly in society? lets give you skills to change...yourSELF!!... -and stopping there) and was also a monk for ten years, from the age of 12, so lots of nourishment there that keeps him focused and peaceful which i want to learn from (and a good source of questioning about monks and the pressures of materialism!). People people people people, what crazy things we are. How nice to be inspired by other ones and grow.

Also rocking, in a funny catch-myself-here-how-random kind of way, was the massive massive party to raise money for a wat which my merit-rich landlady hosted, totally unexpected by me, for about 200 of her... i think relatives... first i came home to giant pickups unloading multicoloured tents and scaffolding-dresses...then they transformed my front garden and street (pic from my balcony) into a buddhist grotto with altars adorned with wrapped up offerings of essentials like washing powder, cigarettes, perfume and fanta.

i felt quite the random, "matter-out-of-place" as some anthropologist said. I hung out with the kids most of the morning, enjoying catapults and bubbles (oh no i just deleted picture..still getting this sorted) but feeling acutely aware of the burning shyness I instilled in all of them who had learned some English and were being encouraged by their parents to use it on me.

There were lengthy discussions with old men where i found that if i repeated occasionally the last word of long statements it gave the impression i understood, despite my apologies to the contrary. There was lots of smily quiet sittings-with as well throughout the day and into the evening, like with an elderly nun after dinner as she stuffed her red mouth with first betel nut and then a large pinch of tobacco against her gum. nice. It made me vow to get on with intensive language learning though, and have sorted lessons for tomorrow.

Best of all was the musicians, though, who's circular and unending bells and strange pipes and xylophones (?the wooden ones, here in a dragon-boat shape :) ) i found initially annoying, and then strangely entrancing. I ended up bringing down my guitar, which they found quite funny, and towards the end of the night they got my playing the blues (pretty loudly actually, i forgot how much less shy to play and sing when noone understands!!)

rolling

refers to me today, however. the same circular bells from the hands of the same musicians began at exactly five, some way before dawn, and the giant drums (out of picture) with their added electric amplification made my bed shake. I returned to them like a lover who slipped away the night before (I took quite hasty lead when the faithful remaining got pissed and slurringly insistent i try to understand what they were saying) and there were smiles all around before i apologised for not taking the journey to the wat (on four pickup trucks, adorned with the same carpets and yellow umbrellas as our garden had been) to carry the gifts of the faithful.

My head felt gentle and awake but a bit tender for being kind of blown out by one of the volunteers Id been working with in a way that was a bit unexpected, felt a bit winded, and a general flatness after the highs, the energy, the rain. A sense feeling strongly but needing to carry that feeling openly to the people i work with and really shift and expand and listen and respond. The wanderingness of the early evening, however, has led to an internet fest galore which has excited me again (especially realised all the things i HAVENT put in), and now i go to dine with nice beth who is cooking me "tiny potatoes" that she brought back from phnom penh, and the roll rises again. much love feeling anyway, and lots of it sent across waters to home.

my house

bye bye phnom penical, hello houses of battambang (tr: town of the disappearing stick)

...and a few days later:

i am dusty, of the ricefield not the springfield, of the drying-end-of-rainy-season, moto proficient to ride an hour each way through choppy gravel and collapsy soil roads to a school today, tired and dirty, hungry and happy.
i have been in the downstairs of my new house, soon (when i leave the internet now) to move upstairs to my future abode. the family:

lovely chilled older lady whose name ive embarrassingly not remembered so call by the polite term who talks away at me in incomprehensible khmer but we occasionally understand each other. she folds back my shutters at eight when she thinks i should probably have been up for three hours like everyone else and lays her elbows on the sill and talks away. she shuffles in a walk that i can recognise from far away, so we wave at each other in town when i pass her on my bike as she goes visiting the wat and other older ladies for tea (or equivilent). Her seemingly vast family seem to be always dropping in and take some interest in this latest in a long line of tenants - the first being landmine clearance ngo workers in 1996.

two wee girls of said extended family. they LOVE the guitar and although cant play chords have wicked rhythm. may form a family band....the one on the left has a beautiful low singing voice but is too shy at moment to sing around me. nice thing about wooden walls.

her dad, a silent deaf man who is apparently 96, is tall and slow and has a small white beard on his chin. he spends the day in bed or in a hammock and doesnt really respond to much around him i think. he sometimes seems a bit worried and confused if i greet him, but other times smiles a bit, so i generally greet him gently all the same.

savant. savant. last night she told me she had several names, including 'sray kmao' (dark girl -did i say before that every cream and soap in the country is full of bleach?) and 'kom sot', 'sad one', which she said they called her after her mum died when she was five. she's now sixteen, though she's small and quiet and home-based enough to make me think she's about twelve. she does all the cleaning and the cooking for the family, and she sleeps on a mat on the floor outside each night with the poodle. im not sure if she's paid or if she just earns her keep. i found out she comes from a village near to where i was working on friday, about a 40minute moto ride away, and she said she hasnt been back for two years.
she is so practical and capable, constantly managing with ease and grace to open difficult locks or wash with her hands stains that im struggling to clean with a brush. and she is endlessly curious, a face at the window, a finger on my guitar, an extra tool brought to me while im cooking. she seems to pay attention to small things and enjoys my quiet company in the evenings as i try to ask her about what kind of flight she has in dreams, or whether four legs would be better than two, and she plays with expert novice exploration the strings and drum of my guitar. its as if we're both stoned. and its tender and quiet. and i like her a lot.
the poodle is called kam kaioo, which i think means 'bites glass', which althouh ive asked about has yet to be clearer. she is as enduringly loveable as id anticipated. i cant see it waning at all.
moggins is the unexpected name of the cat. he's a weird one, spirited and determined but addicted to human company. i am unpleasantly allergic to him, and he keeps literally throwing himself, claws out, three feet high against the mosquito screens on my doors. i also suspect him of having made all my shoes smell of cat piss.

work has begun, in hesitant earnest and hearty interest. but ill save it for another time. now off home on the moto after 12 hours out and about to clean cat-fur from my new home and move myself in.

love to all xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxox