VSO celebrates 55 years

I found this blog in the draft section - I wrote it in May, just before I was heading home for the summer for three months…


This week, VSO celebrates its 55th birthday. In that time 43,000 volunteers have gone to 90 countries to help fight poverty. My mum and I are two of those 43,000 volunteers.

As part of my placement as a communications adviser, I'm a member of the internal communications network for VSO International. The network aims to improve two way communications and basically get people talking throughout the (VSO) world. A month or so ago, network members from the UK, Ireland, Uganda, India and Malawi had one of our regular online, multi-country phone calls (which I think are exciting just by the sheer fact I'm chit chatting with people in so many countries all at once). We were asked to think of ways to celebrate these 55 years for VSO's staff intranet. I suggested that there must be volunteer 'families', like my mum and I, where someone volunteered 55 years ago and someone else is volunteering now. A few weeks later I had an email asking if mum and I would mind being that 'family'. I guess 40 years apart is enough of a time difference!

We had to answer some questions for an article and they also asked if we had photos of me in my placement and mum in hers. Queue my parents raking through old slide photographs and dad having to do some kind of jiggery-pokery to get those slide photos email-able to me (how fortuitous that  a few years ago sis and I gave dad a slide converter thing for his computer!) They were so good though that I had to share them here. Plus some of the chat from mum of course...

I love these two pics. They're basically the same motorbike, 40 years apart. Mum's is a Honda 90 which, I was told when doing the moto training, is the predecessor to the Honda Dream that I'm riding.

Mum went to Papua New Guinea in September 1971 to be a teacher in Orokolo Primary School. That's Orokolo marked on the map in red. It's seven seaplane stops from Port Moresby, the capital. That is one of the things I remember most about mum's VSO experience. Seaplanes!

Seaplane - mum on the right

One of the obvious questions I was asked was what made me decide to volunteer. Mum's experience must have had something to do with it although she's never spoken about it a lot. But considering that  I've wanted to do VSO as long as I can remember, it must be down to her. Here's what she answered in response to the VSO questions:

After a long flight to Sydney there was a flight to Port Moresby. There were six volunteers at this point. Some flew north to New Guinea and a few of us boarded a small plane. There were, I think, four or five ups and downs with volunteers getting off. Eventually there was just me. My stop was Ihu airstrip. I was met by a tractor to take me the remaining miles along the coast to Orokolo.

The school was in the bush with buildings made from local materials. The classrooms were on stilts to keep snakes, pigs and various other creatures out - also it kept the water out in the rainy season.

Mum's class and classroom

I took over from an Australian teacher. I taught standard 3 till the year end and then standard 6 for the next academic year. It was disconcerting since the pupils did not necessarily know their age and if you had not completed a year at school, or had moved, you had to start that year again. As a result I had pupils whose ages ranged from 10 to 14. I was given the pupils who would sit the High School exam at the end of the year. Only a third went on to High School and if you were a girl you were only allowed to go if your father agreed. In my spare time I helped the other teachers with their correspondence courses in English and Maths.

Initially I lived with an English minister and his wife and children in a rambling huge house on stilts. Underneath the house was where I did my laundry, bedding included, in buckets.

the big house

After they returned home I spent one year living at a leprosy/general clinic. There were two European nurses who dealt with anything from a machete wound to toothache to breach births. Their only backup was a doctor at the end of a radio and a float plane if they were lucky. We had no mains electricity using kerosene both for our fridge and for lamps. The shower was a pulley system with a bucket which had a watering can rose for the shower.

United Church Hospital

Living at the hospital was never dull. I was always keen to go on patrol in the float plane with them to visit villages up river. It was fascinating to help weigh babies in bags hanging from a scale. Living there and going on patrol gave you a feeling of what it is like to be the only white face. I am sure volunteers now still have that feeling in many parts of the world.

weighing a baby on patrol

That's my mum in the middle

The biggest difference today in a volunteer's life is in communications. I can speak to Claire by the magic of Skype. I was an only daughter and my only contact with home was snail mail. I did not speak to or see anyone from home for 15 months. Think; no internet, no phone, no iPod to listen to music. I think I had a tape player but that needed batteries which were expensive and rats liked to munch on the tape. I also remember having to keep my camera and film in a plastic box because of the humidity. One of the nurses had a record player and she introduced me to The Emperor Concerto and many other pieces of music.

I think the fact that you were on your own made you very resilient. However my source of encouragement if I felt low or that I was not perhaps being as good a teacher as I might have been were the unlikely Swiss priest and the two Australian nuns who looked after the neighbouring station school. Many a Sunday afternoon they would feed me and lighten my spirits.

When I left it was with a heavy heart. The nurses at the hospital and my pupils had become my 'family'. Returning home was strange since in some ways I had lost over a years worth of events. It was difficult trying to explain to people how I had been living because in some ways it sounded awful. No electricity, no running water, rats eating soap, collecting food from the freezer boat as a treat. The list goes on.

I would not have missed my time as a volunteer for anything. It shaped lots of my ideas and beliefs of how we can work alongside countries who request assistance.

Visiting Claire in Cambodia reminded me of my time in Papua particularly when we went Kampot - the basic showers, the huge spiders and the rats in the roof. Happy days!!

Cambodia defies Gladwell's outliers

My eldest nephew was born in February so he could have started school either aged 4 and a half or five and a half. My sister, intuitively knowing what Malcolm Gladwell explained his in book 'Outliers', decide that he would start when he was 5 and a half.

Gladwell explained that in Canada people born at the start of the year are more likely to become professional ice hockey players than people born at the end of the year. When children are young, say 8 years old, the 11 month difference between being born in January and in December can create large physical advantages. The older kids are bigger and stronger and catch the eye of the coaches, who in turn provide more and better coaching. This makes the kids born at the start of the year, bigger, stronger and more skilled and makes them much more likely to be come professional ice hockey players. 

The NGO that I'm working with recently tested 1000 children in each grade 4, 5 and 6 in language and maths. As part of this, we also collected data on children's ages. In grade 4, children should be age 9, possibly 10 depending on what month they were born in; in grade 5, age 10, possibly 11; and in grade 6, age 11, possibly 12. However, off all 3000 children, only 30% were in the grade that corresponds to their age - and that includes all of the children who could be a year older because of the month that they were born in.

A school in Kampot province

In Cambodia, there are large problems with children enrolling in grade 1 already older than age 6 which is the age at which they should enrol. In 2011/12, 31.5% of all children starting grade 1 were older than 6. It is also common for many children to repeat grades which leads to so many children being overage.

In contrast to ice hockey, where older children enjoy physical benefits that assist them, children enrolling late experience mental deficiencies which harm their education. Our tests showed that overage children did worse than children of the "correct" age, and that the older you were, the worse you did on the tests. Starting school late leads to poorer educational attainment. 

She was laughing at my Khmer language skills

The overnight guard who works 6pm until 6am at the apartments across from us plucked up the courage to speak English to me the other day. He told me that during the day he went to school and that he was in grade 10. He is 24, which is one year older than the woman my research colleague met last week, who dropped out of grade 7 to get married. In Cambodia, these two probably aren't even outliers. 

Gordon

Where are the Khmer Rouge now?

The forest was burning right up to the other side of the road just a few metres from where we were sitting drinking beer with former Khmer Rouge soldiers. The licks of fire were slightly transfixing, aided by beer in the afternoon and a conversation in a language which I don't fully understand. But then my head snapped around as I heard the Khmer words for Khmer Rouge and realised that this conversation might get interesting.

When I first arrived, I was intrigued to find out what happened to all of the Khmer Rouge soldiers. Were they able to live normal lives, or did they have to hide their pasts, or was that impossible and they were outcasts of society? Drinking beer beneath Preah Vihear temple, I was beginning to find some answers.

We were introduced to these former Khmer Rouge soldiers by a lady who has trained and supported hundreds of mid-wives over the years, but before that, as a young girl, she was running around with a machine gun fighting for the Khmer Rouge. The men that we were drinking with also appeared to have left their past behind them as they were now soldiers in the Cambodian army, and one of them was a celebrated artillery gunner.

Part of me finds it strange to think of former Khmer rouge soldiers going back to normal lives,  bringing up families and doing every day jobs, but maybe there should be some distinguishing between those who were involved because they may have grown up in Khmer Rouge areas and those who led the regime and took the decisions.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal is currently considering what will happen to those who led the regime, and whether they are responsible for decisions that meant 2 million died. The Tribunal was set up to try five people: Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Kaing Guek Eav (Duch). Duch was the head of the S-21 prison (Toul Sleng) and has already been convicted and put in jail. The case of Khieu Samphan (Head of State) and Nuon Chea (Dep Secretary of the Communist Party) finished last Wednesday with a judgement expected next year.

We went to the Tribunal and heard part of Khieu Samphan's defence, which went something like this:

• He only joined the Khmer Rouge because he was scared that the then King would kill him and he didn't really believe in it all
• He didn't have any power over the "zone" commanders therefore he has no responsibility for the deaths of nearly 2 million people
• When the Khmer Rouge came into power, the country was already starving meaning mass forced migration to rural areas was a sensible policy
• He didn't actually really know how bad everything had got
• He never lost his temper at home (witness statement from his wife)

There are unlikely to be any more trials because the current Government does not want them and there are parts of Cambodian society that do not see the usefulness of spending millions of dollars on it. Part of this feeling is because the country has so many other needs, and also partly because those on trial are old.

However, there is a third reason; a desire to stop talking about it because of the emotions it can stir, especially given that some former Khmer Rouge middle to top leaders are now prominent in the Government. The Prime Minister, Chair of the Senate and President of the National Assembly were all Khmer Rouge commanders before defecting in the late 1970s and helping to overthrow them.

But the view itself has some legitimacy as Cambodian society must find a way for Khmer Rouge soldiers and Khmer Rouge victims to co-exist, and this requirement for co-existence between perpetrators and victims was a question in my mind before I came.

Perhaps surprisingly, it should not be assumed that the Khmer Rouge is universally hated, although they certainly are by many. When Ieng Sary died, he was accorded a hero's funeral and had lived for many years in opulence and freedom. The Khmer Rouge retained support even after 1979 and controlled parts of Cambodia until 1998. It seems that the notion of co-existence may not be right, as it implies that there are two separate sides living in the same space, when actually as the Khmer Rouge came from Cambodian society, it returns to it as well.

Gordon

International development? You can bank on it.

One of my less appealing characteristics is my ability to appear smug. One such time was during the banking crisis in 2008 when my mortgage with the Cooperative Bank, chosen because of their social contributions, fell along with interest rates to be the cheapest on the market.

Smugness was soon replaced by disappointment as despite everybody hating banks, they continued to give them all of their money. I couldn't understand this when there were banks like the Co-op or Triodos (invest in social, environmental and cultural organisations) offering a different banking model. My smugness fell even further when in Cambodia, I found myself promoting greater use of banks.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in a country without money, banks aren't that common in Cambodia. This means that Government sends budgets to schools and wages to civil servants by cash in cars, and school directors keep cash in their home. As money passes through the hands of the provincial office of education, to the district office of education, to school directors and then to teachers, the money gets lighter every time.

Before the election, a primary teacher had a starting salary of $75.50 p/m. Less than a garment factory worker. If some of that goes missing, then teachers are even more likely to need a second job meaning they miss classes. After the election, the government announced a rise to $102 but the details are unclear.

Looking into using the banking system, I found that one bank, ACLEDA, has greatly expanded in recent years and now has branches in approximately 80% of districts, covering the vast majority of schools and teachers. Understandably, ACLEDA were enthusiastic about the prospect of Government increasing its use of the banking system, and transaction costs would certainly be much lower than delivering by car.

International development agencies (EU, World Bank, UNICEF etc) are enthusiastic about this but the Government less so. In fairness, it would be a mammoth task to set up bank accounts and systems, but restricting the pilot to 1500 senior civil servants in Phnom Penh doesn't show a huge desire to change. However, they have just agreed with the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) that all schools will have a bank account within three years (the cynic questions whether they will be used...).

Children are meant to start grade 1 aged 6, but about one-third start later than that. Despite this, the malnourishment causes the children to be tiny and look really young.

 When meeting with ACLEDA, they began to talk about their ethos. It started as a not-for-profit and is still largely owned by its employees and then my smugness returned as I began reading that one of their largest investors who also provide advice was...ME! Well not exactly me, but Triodos, where my savings reside. I even felt proud to bank with Triodos - not a feeling many people have about their bank.

Understand this; your money is making a difference with whichever bank it is in. It can be used to invest in oil, defence or low-wage garment factories or it can be used to help some of the poorest communities wherever they are. You don't have to come to Cambodia to make a difference, in fact the biggest difference that we could make can be done by anyone, anywhere.

Giving it some high 5s in a school in Pursat, where our tuk tuk driver friend (Mr. Seng) is from.

 It's time to put your money where your mouth is.
Gordon

Cambodian hopes and Western shame

The guy I go to get my haircut beside my work once asked me if Australia was close to England. He thought France, America, England and Australia were all beside each other. In fact, he said that for him, they were all the same country. When you think about it, this isn't as strange as you first think. The people he would have met from these countries would mostly have been white, dressed similarly and spoke with him in English.

Other people, such as those that I work with, have more international knowledge and indeed aspire to be like other countries. In a previous blog I wrote about the allure of Obama and America that exists  in Cambodia, but the more I speak to people, the more I realise that it is only an idealised knowledge of America and other countries that many have.

Before the Cambodian election, Cambodians would discuss how the playing field for the election might not be level, because the ruling party controlled the media, had garnered huge finances and generally had the apparatus of the state at their disposal. I would be asked how fair campaign finance, an objective, independent media or judicial independence was organised in other countries, with the clear belief that they existed in America or the UK. I felt slightly ashamed.

Currently, the election disputes continue. The ruling party released their results on the day of the election on state TV saying they won 68 seats and the opposition 55. The opposition has rejected these saying there has been widespread manipulation. The National Election Committee (NEC) has, as expected, rejected these claims after a quick investigation. The NEC has not announced official results for each seat yet but have released total votes by province which supports the Government's version of results. The denouement is approaching.

The opposition is now lobbying the UN to get involved, and friends are asking me about whether the UN would get involved if potential protests were met with armed police and soldiers. When we talk about this, you can see people staring into the distance, or more accurately the future, as they contemplate what may happen. The Government has made sure they don't have to look too far to notice the extra soldiers around Phnom Penh.

Cambodians have a good experience of the UN, having been governed by the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia in 1992-93 which ended with the King returning, an elected government and much greater peace. This feeds the belief amongst some that the UN must intervene, because the UN is on the side of justice and right and opposing electoral fraud and corruption are surely these.

Unfortunately, their lack of international knowledge means that there is little realisation that the UN cannot act without the consent of the Security Council, which takes us back to individual countries like America, the UK and China. They ask me about Egypt, the 650 deaths and why the UN has not intervened. The implication is a fear that if 650 Cambodians die, nobody will come to help.

I am about to leave to go back to the UK for a week, with a greater understanding that what we do over there serves as an example to people who believe that their country should enjoy honest politicians, a free and objective media, independent courts and freedom of speech. We weaken their cause when we set a different example.

Gordon
PS, by different example, I mean arresting a man because his partner wrote articles about a man who exposed the truth that democratic Governments were spying on their own citizens to a huge extent.

trains, tuk tuks and folding-up bikes

When I lived in London, I considered getting a fold up bike so that I could cycle to the underground train, fold it up, carry it on before unfolding it at the other end and cycling to work. For many commuters, being able to cut down those precious minutes of walking to the station, or even better, being able to cycle to work after getting a train into London, the fold-up bike was a piece of magic. However, the magic does not come cheap and good ones were £400-£600.

In Cambodia, there is a famous bamboo train in Battambang. Its fame comes from being the only passenger train service in the country and how the trains manage to navigate past each other on a single track line. As two trains approach the other, the one with the lightest load stops and everybody get's off and stands at the side as the driver literally picks up the train and moves it off the tracks.

There really isn't a problem with having to give your seat to disabled and elderly passengers.

Life up the bamboo and steel carriage and your left with some axes and wheels. Add a petrol motor and that's all you need for a train. 

As you can imagine the train really isn't used by a lot of commuters. In fact, the train will carry you 15 minutes in one direction and then after a drink and a purchase of some touristy stuff at a stall, it will turn around and take you back to where you started. The only people it could be useful for is my colleague's  family whose house is right beside the tracks, and even then, only if they want to buy touristy stuff at a stall 15 minutes away.

As well as not having a passenger train service, no city or town has a public bus system. It was tried in Phnom Penh but the narrowness of many roads, the absence of traffic control and the love of motos meant that it didn't last very long.

Now, most people in Cambodia are also very poor, so considering this and the absence of mass public transport, there is no reason to think that Cambodia is an untapped market waiting to grab as many folding-up bikes as they can. Plus, in a country where the bike is the mode of transport for many, many people, you would think the shortcomings of the little-wheeled bike would be very apparent. However, regardless of all of these things, the folding-up bike is here, there and everywhere.

A lonely fold-up bike in Siem Reap

Phnom Penh is pretty wealthy and there are even some trendy sorts, so you could nearly see why come people might have them here but we didn't expect to see a girl cycling on one in an extremely remote village right on the border with Laos. I just stood there scratching my head thinking, how can she afford one of those and how the heck did it get here? It certainly didn't arrive on a train.

A girl on a fold-up bike in a tiny village in remote Preah Vihear province

I have a feeling that the global sale of fold-up bikes did not meet expectations, and that a market for cheaper fold-up bikes was never established. This could have meant that mass produced fold-up bikes, probably from nearby China, remained unsold and were shipped to anywhere that would take them. It seems that many people in Cambodia put their hands up. 

It could actually be that in Cambodia, there is a use for them. Some witty tuk tuk drivers will see you on your bike and tell you it would be much easier to put the bike in the tuk tuk, sit back and relax. And when there is torrential rain, they may have a point. The problem is that the bike sticks out from either side of the tuk tuk and you have to pray that your driver remembers his vehicle is now a little bit wider. But if you could fold up your bike when putting it in a tuk tuk...

The tuk tuk and the fold-up bike. Facing away from each other, this couple don't seem to have realised their future together.

Gordon

Angkor Wat explains a lost love in election

Since 2003, the Cambodian GDP has grown at an average of 7% per year. Life expectancy has risen from 59 to 63 over the same period and more people have access to clean water. But when the official results are announced in a couple of weeks, you will find that the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) has lost 22 or 23 of its 90 seats. It has enough to retain a majority, but the opposition party will have won about 56 seats, whilst believing that it actually won more if not most.

For a few days over the election, I was in Siem Reap, and parts of it encapsulates why some people have fallen out of love with the CPP.

Who could say no?

Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat, has some of the most luxurious hotels I have ever seen and restaurants which would be expensive in London. And like Phnom Penh, you will see large 4x4 Lexus and Range Rovers dominating the roads in amongst people on motos. For a province in which the Tonle Sap floods annually, the trickle down of these riches remain dry; Siem Reap is the second poorest province in Cambodia. It is a place where 2 million internationals come to visit but in which local people leave for Thailand in order to find work.

This juxtaposition of garish wealth and enduring poverty does not go unnoticed. During the election campaign in Phnom Penh, it was noticeable how many expensive cars also had CPP stickers or flags on them. The symbolism of who would benefit from a CPP victory stark. For some, the distaste runs deeper than a gap in wealth, being borne from a sense that Cambodia itself is being sold for others to profit from.

People queueing up to vote in a polling station (a school). You could vote from 7am - 3pm. At 4pm, it started raining - impeccable timing. 

Sokimex is a company ubiquitous because of the number of petrol stations that it has dotted on the highways. It has also managed to secure a 99-year lease on managing, and taking large revenues from, the Angkor Wat Archaeological Park. People find it strange that the building that appears on their flag can be leased to a private company to make huge profits from. 

In my area of work here, education, one statistic stood out for me. Between 2009 and 2012, there was only 1 province of 24 in which primary net enrolment fell (% of children aged 6-11 enrolled in primary school). That province was Siem Reap. When local people look around at all of the wealth, they do not feel that they or pubic services are benefiting. (Plus, they complain about the price of petrol. Clinton's mantra could actually have been "It's the price of petrol, stupid"). 

Just voted and got the ink to prove it. My tuk tuk driver friend was able to wash the ink off quite easily, which caused some to joke that he wasn't actually Khmer (because he hadn't been able to vote). Others found it a more serious issue because of potential double voting, which has been alleged.

When in the Angkor Wat Park, my bicycle got a flat tyre. A tuk tuk driver offered to put my bike and me in his tuk tuk and drive me to the nearest bicycle repair shop, which are not common in an archaeological park. After deflecting his questions about who I thought would win or which leader I liked more, I asked him who he voted for. He told me that before he "loved" the CPP, but now, he voted for the opposition. He was not happy, he wanted change. 

The man was speaking Khmer to me, so he knew the word that he was using, and he deliberately used the word love. The jilted lover that is the CPP now has to decide whether to go it alone or change its ways, and the new mistress (Cambodian National Rescue Party) will have to decide whether to push for a full-blown messy divorce based on a belief that they won the election or be content to wait for five years. 

Make love, not war. Supporters from Funcinpec and Cambodian National Rescue Party shake hands during a parade before the election. Funcinpec used to be a coalition partner of the CPP, has royalist links and lost all of its seats in this year's election. 

I think most are hoping that both sides choose their latter options. 

Lots of love folks

Gordon

Postscript added 31.07.13
My last sentence should have read:
I think some are hoping that both sides choose their latter options, whilst for others, it's not just a case of whether the CNRP accepts a CPP government or not, but whether the people will accept a CPP government or not.

Speaking to some more people today, admittedly in CNRP hotbed country (Phnom Penh), they say that everybody now knows that the CNRP won the election, so if the people have asked for change, change is what should happen. The CNRP has taken the first step to rejecting the CPP's unofficial results by releasing their own provisional results showing they won at least  63 of the 123 seats. Enough to form a government.

The more support shown for the CNRP, the bolder more people are becoming. Weeks ago people would have been frightened of speaking out, but now they feel that they are the ones in the majority and cannot be silenced. When asked about possible violent repercussions if the CNRP demands CPP hands over power, they said that the CNRP must not back down.