Back from Cambodia and raring to share!!!

Dear all,

As you have read from the blog entries below, Team Project Waterloo has had an enriching, eye-opening and fun-filled two weeks in Cambodia! The lessons learnt can never really be summarised within a few points, and we have all had our individual learning journeys, but here's a few that I can say we all learnt:

- Learning to appreciate the things we have in Singapore

- Learning to be content with the simplest pleasures in life

- Learning that the Cambodians are truly warm and hospitable by nature

- Learning that Cambodian children really do enjoy school, and their enthusiasm and openness to learning is something that we hope our own education system can emulate

We definitely wish to share the plenty we have learnt with the children in Singapore, so that they too can experience what we have experienced, without having to buy a plane ticket to Cambodia.

Therefore, we are in the process of developing a program designed to bring children to action through activities that allow them to empathise with those less privileged than them. In the process, the children will also see that they have much in their own lives to be thankful for, and will learn to share the joy of giving with others!!

We also hope to have more participants who have gone on similar overseas expeditions to join us on this journey of developing our youths. If you are interested to join us, do email us at ntusife@gmail.com

More updates on our progress coming up!!

Day 10 (Royston & Evelyn)

DAY 10

Urbanisation just made everyone a little lazier. The huge soft beds were clearly the culprits. The entire balcony were fully utilised: Ledges, clothes line, tie new lines, areas not belonging to our rooms; we used every possible space to accommodate 3 days' worth of washed clothes for a team of 20 people. 

Hot milk from the breakfast menu wasn't the nice warm cup of milk prepared from milk powder, but rather, just condensed milk with hot water. Refreshing enough eh? 

Once again, we took Super Truck back to Croap to finish up the BSF that we've left half done! All of us 'level up' as we are now very much appreciative of the non bumpiness of the sandy roads on the way to Croap.

Upon arrival at CROAP, guess who we met? The NUS medical team! They were leaving to visit the floating village. Can't believe they have been staying at Croap for nearly 10 days while we were enjoying our aircon at our guest house. One of them, an environmental engineering graduate student, Jeremiah, was interested in our BSF project, stayed with us for the rest of the day.

The people at CROAP had prepared an elevated concrete platform behind the kitchen under instruction from father Hernan to stage our 6 BSFs. It provides level ground to support the BSFs. Unfortunately, it wasn't perfectly flat so we had to use sand and bricks under the BSFs as additional support. The patience-testing task took us almost an hour; it was difficult because the platform was rather narrow such that the 6 BSFs had to be put merely 2-3 cm apart from each other, consequently rendering invisible the designs we had drawn on the left and right sides of the BSFs =(.

We thus had had to delay our next activity by 1.5 hours as, finishing the BSFs took more time than expected. Leveling and measuring the gravels and sand levels in the BSFs took some time as we had only one measuring-plus-leveler stick for six BSFs. The BSFs were finished at 1 pm. They worked perfectly well; we could see the difference of the water colour before and after filtration. If somebody had put the filtered water into one of our mineral water bottles, we would probable accept it as potable water.

While waiting for the truck uncle to come, Minghui brought us behind CROAP to see a big pump by a stream which was installed for the villagers by one of the political parties prior to election. The pump has long stopped working due to poor maintenance and the villagers have resorted to manual means of collecting water-- with buckets.

SC Feedback

Mingzhou was not his usual chirpy self today. The prophecy has become true! Yiing Jye stayed back to accompany the non-chirpy boy. The rest of us went to SC after lunch.

The sewing students managed to complete 21 laptop bags; rather amazing considering they had only 3 days to finish all of them and they had never seen or done a laptop bag before!

Joyce, Eunice, Diana, and Denise interviewed Mr. Bong to clarify some doubts that were brought up during the meeting the night before. This included the manufacturing costs of the laptop bags, sales and demand for their products so far, and also to gauge SC’s response towards our idea. Mr. Yla, the head of the whole vocational training programme was there as well.

Feedback session with SC started at 4pm. Our idea on the laptop bags were well received by the SC. Both teams expressed each other's gratitude and thanked each other for being understanding and cooperative during our entire stay. Both sides agreed to pursue future joint projects. SC then invited us to watch a soccer match between the SC students and the state school students the next day.


After we had a photo taken together with SC, Minghui, Diana, Denise, Joyce, Eunice and Evelyn left to discuss the details of the microbusiness plans with Mr. Phalla (in charge of education) and Mr. Yla at the SC office upstairs. Issues brought up included the transport cost if the bags were to be sent to Singapore. Mr. Phlla referred us to an SC volunteer based in Phnom Penh, as sending the goods from the city would be cheaper compared to that from Pursat.

We were glad that SC was receptive to our ideas and was helpful in providing information. They agreed to provide us with necessary otherwise-confidential information regarding the sales of bags and pouches, consisting of inventory and incomes. They also confirmed that 80% of the profit from sales of bags goes to the SC students.

It was indeed a nice full stop to this 10 days YEP journey. However, this is just the beginning of a new chapter, waiting to be filled with even brighter colours and bolder and more creative ideas. We're sure our next project will be a blast.

Wait for us, Pursat, we will be back!

Day 9 (Yi Ting & Amu)

Day 9: 17/12/09
Today was our last day at Kravnah!. We would probably return to Pursat by afternoon. Today’s breakfast was also prepared by our host. I doubt it would be as tasty if we had prepared it.


After a scrumptious breakfast, we set off energetically on our last round of visits to the schools in the vicinity, giving the students the items that we had brought for them. The genuine smile that lit up on their precious little faces when we distributed food to them was priceless. A particular incident that touched us immensely was the sight of the children keeping the little portions of food that we gave them for their siblings without eating it first. It brought out a flurry of emotions in most of us. It was surprising that they showed that amount of concern towards their siblings even at that tender age.


Besides the preschool programme , SC is also involved in other aspects of education as listed in the picture below:


Via these programmes, SC reaches out and provides education to the kids and villagers in the rural areas where the majority do not have easy access to government schools and other educational facilities . Sadly, most often, even if they do, they lack the financial resources to attend school. Sometimes due to a lack of resources the lessons are conducted at “basement” of a villager’s house, with just basic resources, consisting of a whiteboard and chairs. The enthusiasm shown by the children, was infectious and we had a fun time interacting with them.


The road to the last school had surprises awaiting us, firstly there were many trees by the “roadside” which poked us mercilessly as we made our way through. We reached the last school and met with a pleasant surprise- there were young coconuts filled with cool refreshing juice. A boon, given the sweltering heat we were under.


We literally took the path less travelled to the next location, a plantation. The road was too narrow for the van and we had to get down and walk to the plantation that we were visiting. There were vast fields filled with neat rows of various vegetables and fruits. The lack of proper roads posed a major hindrance for the farmer, for he was unable to transport the tonnes of fresh produce out quickly. He thus has to rely on manual carrying or transportation via bicycle to the main road, quite a distance away before loading them onto a truck. It was inefficient. However, it was pleasing to note that he has benefitted substantially from the SC programmes, and now has many fields with a variety of produce and thus earns much more as compared to before. Seeing, for oneself, the actual benefit that the villagers get from SC programmes brings joy to the heart and adds meaning and voice to the aim of SC and their projects.

Before heading back to Pursat, we detoured to a mountain nearby to climb it,


On the way up to the mountain, our dear Royston Loo kicked his leg against a rock and suffered a deep gash on his left toe. Ironically, he beamed and said, “ Hey, I shed blood sweat and tears for the land of Kampuchea.”That marked the end of our rural escapade and everyone was glad to return to the guesthouse. I believe we really appreciate the running tap water and spotless toilet that we had at the guesthouse. (:

Day 8 (Eunice & Jack)

Day 8

After a ‘good’ night rest at the Agriculture Training Centre (ATC), we awoke by the sound of our beloved host geese. (Some of us ‘traumatised’ by the IMAGINARY GEESE in the night.)



Once we filled our tummies with ‘Cheng An Nah’ (Very delicious) porridge, banana and some local snacks we headed to a nearby Preschool somewhere near ATC.

The kids at the Preschool got to taste some of our Singaporean childhood favourites such as sugar coated biscuits. (RMB TO TALK ABT THE CHILDREN’S BIG HEART LATER!!!!)
Like fitting the glass slippers on Cinderella, we tried to find suitable Crocs that were donated from Blessings in a Bag (BIAB) to the little children. Although it may be called a preschool, the kids attending classes may be older than the 8 years old. In replacement of crocs for these ‘young’ kids, we gave them T-shirts!



After preschool, we headed back to ATC to plant peanuts! If all goes well, we might be able to return to ATC to see the harvest.



After sowing the seeds, we proceeded for the English Outreach class held under someone’s house, where we gave out the ‘magical’ flowers to the students and grannies. Mr. Chenda told us that it would be great if we could aid in providing more study materials and if possible build a school compound where there could be morning classes in the morning, English outreach classes in the afternoon and night classes or even village meetings. Looks like next year we might be putting on some safety boots and helmets. (CAN WE FIX IT? YES WE CAN!)



Then it was lunch time! We had our meal at a restaurant nearby Trivani School where there was really well furbished toilets. (YAY!) Following our meal, we took a walk to Trivani School. Unexpectedly, the conditions at Trivani were relatively better than majority of the schools at Kravanh as they received funds from the Trivani Foundation. Thus, we decided to donate the materials to the more rural areas in Cambodia where SC has just begun their community development projects. We got to discuss some future project ideas with Mr Chenda as well. The school teaches IT among other academic curriculum and some of us got to use the internet for a while. (Slack time)



Our beloved Pu Rah (Truck Uncle) then braved the bumpy ride with all of us to bring us to the place that we will stay for the night.
Before arriving at the host’s house, we had to get off the truck to pass the scary and unsteady bridge.
This bridge over the river was built during the Polpot Regime in Cambodia, made up purely of huge logs.
Little did we know that this very river that we were crossing, was where we would take our bath!!! Worst still, with the BUFFALOs. Nevertheless, I’m sure those who bathed in it had an enjoyable time!



While some of us were bathing in the river, some of us were enjoying jackfruit at the host house, with Mr Yla, Mr Chenda, Mr Sameth and the other uncles in the host family.

When everyone was all cleaned, we started to chop firewood and start a few stoves. A campfire was also ready for us to barbecue sweet potatoes with the young kids.



Tom yam soup, instant noodle, canned bamboo shoot, canned sardines, canned mushrooms, BBQ potatoes and tapioca = yummy self cooked dinner!



After dinner, the host set up the stereo and it was “rural clubbing” all night, with some dancing princes taking the centre stage! We were also taught some traditional Cambodian dance, although I dare admit that I still can’t figure out how the hands move. ( I guess I’m just a dimwit.)

Day 6 (Michell & Melissa)

Boomz, Sugar Cane, Pass-it-on, Stream, Village Living, Agricultural Training Centre

The day started especially early today at 5am, because we were supposed to head out for Angkrong village. For the city-dwellers amongst us who haven’t experienced rural living, there were plenty of uncertainties, ranging from sanitation to shelter and security.
Breakfast was more gratifying than yesterday since we knew what to order after having had yesterday’s breakfast. After breakfast, it was time for most of us to hit the toilets (aka shit) before we moved out into the rural areas where proper sanitation may be a problem.

Splendid view of the fields and mountains in the distance

Sepia shots just have this tinge of emo-ness

During the bumpy ride towards Angkrong, we heard a sudden ‘boom’ (not the kind you would expect from Ms Ris Low). So we had a punctured tyre and we started taking photos around the place while waiting for our ever-helpful-and-thoughtful truck driver to replace the tyre.

See our ever-helpful-and-thoughtful truck driver in tyre-replacing action

Imagine your vehicle breaks down in this kind of ‘ulu’ place, you don’t know how to fix it and you can’t find any help…

And we’re set to hit the road again!

Upon arrival at Angkrong, we participated in the pass-it-on ceremony, during which villagers who have benefited from the cattle rearing programme of Sustainable Cambodia become donors and pass on cattle to their neighbours after the cattle have successfully bred. Villagers were given an update on the statistics of the programme and we were told that the area surrounding Angkrong were heavily mined during the Khmer Rouge era.

Waiting expectantly for the ceremony to begin
After the pass-it-on ceremony, we were treated to an early lunch of Khmer noodles and sugar cane for dessert! By sugar cane, we don’t mean drinking the juice, but actually biting into the cane and then chewing the fibre =D There’s a first time for everything, and while almost all of us were having sugar cane in this manner for the first time, the tough sugar canes certainly were a challenge to our pearly whites.

Yummy lunch!

Yes, we bite!

Then we made our way to a stream to take a dip. We stayed there for a few hours and had a second round of lunch there. I guess most of us ended up overeating on this trip =(

I got peace by the river…

and pose by the river =)










The sugar cane chewing never stopped, hahaha






While the others played with water!







We then went on to take a look at some of the Sustainable Cambodia project sites in Kravanh village.

A half-completed SC well


Nature’s indicator of groundwater, according to a Cambodian elder who served in the military. The bigger the size of the mound, the greater the amount of groundwater in the proximity.



Having a look at the SC fish breeding pond



We settled at the Agricultural Training Centre for the night. Guys had to use an open shower, which was only a water pump on a concrete platform with no walls, but the girls didn’t have it too good either. Their shower room was a small wooden hut that had no light.
Dinner was awesome, especially the peanut chili sauce that came with the grilled fish. It was so good it could be eaten on its own. The soup was delicious, we loved the sweet pumpkins.



Dinner spread!

Day 5(Jeannifer & Guanyi)

Breakfast
floating village
lunch
move out
check in hotel
dinner

After a good night rest despite the falling insects, we were awakened by the usual morning broadcast reluctantly. After a quick breakfast (no Milo, no water today) we prepared to go to the floating village. While ten of the members travelled in Father’s van, nine others were squeezed into a tuk-tuk. It was travelling at only 30kmh – practically was slower than a passing butterfly – and therefore we could not feel our legs anymore after an hour’s ride. While we were sitting on the back of the speeding van, Michell, who was sitting cross-legged uncomfortably, suddenly asked: ‘Yiing Jye, do you mind if I open my legs so you can be in between my legs?’.Honestly, another SIFE moment made by Michell (after last night’s “Hey I’ve just seen a crab walking sideways!”).


We loaded onto a motor boat (which emitted black clouds from its side and therefore contributed to lung cancer) and there we went! Along the journey, we saw provision shops, a police station, churches, a clinic, and a police station. Simply put, the floating village was self-sufficient. We finally alighted at a local church and stayed there taking pictures, taking in the breathtaking scenery of the Tonle Sap, and wishing to be able to take the adorable kids back with us until around 11am. We finally had to make our way back to CROAP, as we need to prepare to leave the premise permanently and move to another guest house since CROAP’s guest house was booked by NUS students already. So, we went back to have our lunch at the by-now much-beloved al-fresco eateries. Today’s menu included pasta made by the equally beloved and very much revered middle-aged house keeper lady. We very much wished to hire her to follow us to the rural areas for three days (and obviously knew such miracle would not happen despite the many times we’ve got to wish upon the dozens (yes, plural) shooting stars we got to see every night here in Cambodia).


Not too long afterwards, we made our way to a new guest house which turned out to be a decent hotel (hotel!). We had to carry our belongings to the third level as there was no elevators but believe us, we did not fret a bit. Compared to the CROAP’s guest house, this new home of ours was a major improvement (HA! Jealous much?). Electricity will not be cut off at random timings, water is ever flowing, and there will be no funny creatures (which were so diverse that actually we have no idea what species they belong to)! We pretty much were in a good mood, and our mood was further escalated by the fact that we got to eat Cambodian delicacies! We guessed we were too hungry (or one table was, at least) that we practically finished the food, including the peanuts served as a free appetizer. By the way, the name of the restaurant we were eating at was New Than Sour, and the dishes we ordered included Fried Chicken Made Fly (do not ask what the name means but seriously, we shed tears eating it as it was too shockingly spicy).

So, here go pictures of the day for you to see and envy!

Floating Petrol Station

Jeannifer is well loved by the kids!

Leaving Tonle Sap

Leaving CROAP...

p.s. We left (on) a "SCARY" note.

Day 4 (Joyce + Yedi)

Today was a fun-filled day with the various activities.

In the morning, we were split into two separate groups with the first group who stayed on in CROAP to listen to the staff that came to explain more about the BSF while some of us went to a kindergarten nearby to interact with the children before the rest came to join us after listening to the staff from SC.

The 2 staff from SC came with the sample test result that showed the before and after result of using the BSF. The samples made use of water from the rain water as well as the pond water which is where the villagers get most of their water from. From the results, it was seen that the use of the BSF greatly reduced the amount of bacteria remaining in the water. This is important to explain to the villagers the importance of making use of the BSF to get clean water.

At the same time, the rest of us made our way to the kindergarten nearby and that was the highlight of the day. We met tons of energetic kids who had lots of smiles on their faces. We shared food from Singapore with them and then returned our gestures by singing 4 songs for us. Then came the exhausting portion where we played with the kids- ball games, frisbee, piggy-bagging etc. They were FULL OF ENERGY! Though we couldn’t really communicate with them except saying stuff like Choo—mo-ah (which means wat is your name), we could still play around with them and it was real fun especially upon seeing the joy on their face.

The kids were very independent and you will see kids as young as 4 years old who made their way home alone. Many of them were barefooted as they made their way home and you will really realize how tough for them to go to school. It was totally different experience which will remind ourselves and we believe many in our team why we even venture to such a place in the first place.