"Another great day in Cambodia"

Around town
Our new pal Judy finishes everyday by with the declaration that we have just enjoyed "Another great day in Cambodia." We have not had a bad meal or a negative encounter. Cambodia is yet to get on top of the tourist thing, so there are few people hassling for money, no one following you or pawing at you to sell you something, people give you the correct change and tell you when you have offered them too much money, the streets are safe, the town is quiet. The price of an unrefined tourist economy is that it is hard to get a coffee and the expectation is that we have three hours for lunch, this means mind-bendingly slow service.

If you came to Battambang as a tourist, I imagine that you would be here for a day or two and then leave feeling that it has little to offer. Because we have a mission, we are really happy here. A few things about Battambang that I will not take on are: the piles of raw meat sitting on slabs at the market in the heat of the day, the numerous stalls selling roasted song birds and the fact that women mainly ride side-saddle when they are passengers on a motor bike.

Around the teachers' college
Our three trainees, who hopefully will do our job next year, are just swell. The scally-wag has proved himself a talented orator and natural communicator. We are giving them ideas for the lessons, they are delivering much of the content. We then sum up the teaching idea and they discuss how it could be implemented. This means that the damage from the long list of possible mistakes that we could make is minimised. And, yes, for the smart alecs out there, we have ticked off the full list of possible errors. (See back to January 4.) What our Cambodian teacher trainers are doing is letting us know what mistake we are making when. Adjusting on the spot is hard, usually I think that we just shift to a different mistake, but I think we are getting there.

Everything is NOT okay. Do not do this in Cambodia.


The unknown unknowns. Today I made a mistake that was not even on the list of possible mistakes. I said that one person had done good work and made the hand gesture for okay. It quickly became apparent that this hand gesture does not mean "okay" in Cambodia. In fact, it has quite another connotation. I over-acted great horror and embarrassment when I realised and apologised profusely. Possibly, by the end of the progam, I will have some idea what I am doing. That, of course remains to be seen. One of the lovely ladies, Sue, who has been coming here for more than four years says that she feels that she has less idea every year. The known unknowns.

Here are a few random facts about literacy teaching in Cambodia.

• Our class of experienced teachers worked all morning on one very short text about koalas taken from the grade 3 NAPLAN test. They thought it was appropriate for Year 7.
• They do not know what a paragraph is. The idea of paragraphs is not introduced at all til Year 11/12. The teachers in our class are middle years, so this is beyond them. (Still they have asked for us to explain this new idea more at a later date.)
• Weirdly and inexplicably, they are very good at oral presentations, even though they have NEVER done one or seen one as it is not part of the Cambodian curriculum.
• They can generate a lot of facts about Cambodia, but know precious little about the world.
• There is one book for each year level. But there is often only a teacher copy of the book and no copies for students.
• The teachers do not prepare materials for teaching, they open the book, do the task, deliver the questions and correct errors.

We have much to process. I am really pleased to be absorbed in this.