Shaken not stirred

The Bamboo Railway
Wow, a train made out of bamboo!. It is true. Sounds exciting huh? And, you can all see it coming I am sure, there is a catch. The bamboo railway is not so much a train as a motorised bamboo platform on wheels. Now, some of you will remember the advertisements in the 1970s for weight loss vibration machines. A person stood on the machine and attached the belt around the "problem areas" and the fat was shaken loose. Well, the train experience was about the same as I imagine that to be, with the added pleasure of little thistles whipping you every few metres and the comfort of sitting on broken bamboo slats. Just to make sure the experience is complete, there are great jumps where one piece of track ends and the next starts. So every few metres there is a sharp bone-shaking jolt. Some people were air-bound. Never have I been so happy for my rear-end padding. Genevieve worried that some of her fillings would be shaken loose, others were slightly awakened by the shaking in their nether regions.

The bamboo train takes 11 hours to get from Battambang to Phnom Penh. This is just slightly longer than the amount of time it would take if you walked. Here is the curious thing: people take their motor bikes on the bamboo train. Now, if I had a motor bike and I wanted to get from Phnom Penh to Battambang, I would put on my helmet and spend three hours on the road. There has to be a reason for the carting of one very efficient and cheap means of transport on a very slow and uncomfortable means of transport, I just don't know what it is.

Curiouser and curiouser, the bamboo train track is a single line and the real train, known by the Fat Controller (who in Cambodia is actually probably pretty slim) as "The Big Train" also uses the same line. The Big Train takes 24 hours to do the same trip, hence the popularity of the bamboo train, I suppose. Here is the problem: when one bamboo train meets another coming in the opposite direction, or when it meets The Big Train, they cannot pass. Here is the solution: the platform of the bamboo train is simply lifted up by the driver and the passengers, and the wheels are removed from the tracks. The train is disassembled then re-assembled. This happened.

Mr Magoo and Fearless Fly
My friends are expecting me to report on the latest stupid thing that I did. Since there was an audience of three and they will corroborate, I shall get in first and confess. For the second time in a week, I have dived into a swimming pool with my glasses on. This time instead of a nice little hotel pool, it was a 25 metre public swimming pool, and it was deep. The pool had dark blue tiles, it was late and getting dark. Twenty minutes of duck diving and searching the bottom of the pool and my glasses were back on my face. So, it seems I am indeed a slow learner.

The devil is in the detail

Happy Birthday to Charles from 27 assorted Cambodian teachers, Genevieve, and one mother who is sorry not to be going out to dinner with you.

Education Cambodian style
Below is a list of the principles of Cambodian education, as far as I can tell, based on at least two days experience.

• The better the student the more details they remember. The more details they remember the better the student.
• All questions should be answered in as much detail as possible all the time.
• There is no such thing as synthesising information and discussing the idea, because the information itself is the important thing.
• Penmanship is a matter of national pride.
• The reasons/motivations/or connections between the actions are not important, what is important is the order of the events.
• Everything needs to be a process. A three step process is good. All lesson plans have five steps.

So, they understand things like "Think, Pair, Share" or "read, discuss, write" etc. They cope really well when we enumerate our pedagogy in some sort of systematic way. When we refer back to whatever system we have taught earlier they like it. They like it even more when we revise what we have learnt in terms of the system we just made up. We are learning.

Today, three young Cambodian teachers joined us to work as teacher trainers. We were told that they are Cambodia's best and brightest. One was a bit laid back, they other two were brilliant. We showed them our plan, they understood the worksheets and, in one very brief conversation could see the concepts we were trying to teach. They jumped up and helped. They wrote on the board in Khmer while we were teaching, they helped the translator, they gave us useful feedback. After about an hour, we just handed over to one of them. Not only did he take over our idea, he did it better than we would have. He had the students laughing, reading, writing, talking doing real productive group work, sticking their writing up around the room. It was as if we had slipped into an educational paradise where all the theory works. I had crossed into another dimension; some sort of fantasy teacher training film perhaps.

Off to University
We had lunch with our translator, then went and taught his ESL class at university. His students were bright, funny, open and interesting. They all asked us questions. Here are a few.
1. What sports do Australians like?
2. When is the Australian government going to do something to stop racism?
3. What sort of jobs do people do after university?
4. How did the Australian economy fare in the GFC?
5. What do you think of Battambang?
6. What is your opinion of the Cambodian democracy?

We answered carefully, sometimes just by giving observations. Step lightly, think quickly. (By the way, if any one has an answer to question 2, let me know.)

Same, Same ...but Different

Same,
The opening ceremony was speeches by important people saying important things. The hundreds of Cambodian teachers and us few Aussies had the same look on our face. It spelt "endurance". I have little idea what was literally said because it was in Khmer, but I could write the script because it was a universal language.

Same,
In our class (which was supposed have 20 students and blew up to 27), one middle aged man sat in the front, told all within earshot how important he was, what position he held, who he was in charge of etc. He then proceeded to answer all questions in English even though at least half the people in the room have no English and the class was meant to be conducted in Khmer. He misunderstood every question that we asked, but nevertheless answered at great length. When we asked about how they teach writing, he told us a never-ending story about Cambodian New Year. It involved a very long conversation between two eagles. He was absolutely determined to tell the whole story replete with actions.

Now, for any of you who think that I might be the tough nut and Genevieve the sweet-heart; please note: it was Gen who cut him off. She very politely told him that we only wanted a short answers and our focus was on teaching, not on displaying the knowledge that we may have. Like everywhere in the world, the whole class broke into the sort of slightly submerged laughter that students exhibit when a real show off has been put in his place.

Same,
The teachers, who, like all teachers everywhere when put in the position of being students, behaved a little bit like Year 9s. They took phone calls (this includes the translator), they asked to get out early, they talked among themselves every time they had a chance, they laughed at how stupid I was, and walked out to do go the toilet at will.

...But Different
The whole time the opening ceremony was on, there was Mr Whippy ice-cream truck sound: tinny music being blared out of a loud speaker. Then the whole time we were teaching, we were subject to a recorded speech on a loop accompanied by drumming coming in from the road, where a bunch of teachers' college students stood collecting money for the building of a pagoda.

The students do not read and cannot afford newspapers, books are for the rich, only one student has a computer, three have an email, two have a Facebook. Teaching text is pretty hard when you a have not got text. Some of them have learned English from Australian television and radio. This, it seems is the easiest and cheapest way to learn English.

Out of Phnom Penh

The bus ride out of Phnom Penh to Battambang served as a an educational orientation to Cambodia. We saw thousands of "houses" made of a sheet of corrugated iron, some hessian bags, and some palm fronds. There are small shopfront businesses everywhere. Foundries, mechanics, all sorts of manufacturing, clothing, ornate shrines and lots of food and drink. I have not seen any of the big industrial sites that I saw in Vietnam. Perhaps the giant shoe factories are not to be found in Cambodia.

Battambang, like Phnom Penh is one dusty city. Roads are being built, housing is under construction, everything is a work in progress. This year, according to those who have been before, Cambodia, for the first time, decided to do Christmas. There were gaudy decorations, lights, fake snow, tinsel, a few Santas etc. Apparently, every year there is some new western thing that Cambodia hooks onto.

The Teachers' College

Our teaching room has a wooden platform at the front for the teacher to stand on. It has gaps in it and I plan on entertaining the class by either falling off it or through it. Tell me which one you think would be the most hilarious and I will do it. There are wooden desks for two students to share, two electric lights (but no power point) a very old blackboard, a teacher's desk at the front and decorations. The decorations are quite lovely. They are polystyrene bricks carefully cut into shapes of images, arrows, Khmer writing etc. They are all painted in the favourite colours of Cambodia which are sunflower yellow, lollypop pink, and fresh mint green. It must take ages to put together. Our translator told us that the students at the teachers' college decorate the room at the beginning of the year. While we were there the students at the teachers' college did yard duty; they cleaned all the grounds, the street out the front, picked up dead leaves and out of the dusty gardens.

Now for the interactive part of the blog

Our translator is a university lecturer in ESL. We have implored him to tell us if he thinks what we are teaching is

a) too hard

b) too easy

c) irrelevant

d) impossible for the teachers to implement

e) impossible for the teachers to understand

Now you can vote and tell us what you think it our most likely first error.

No smart alecs who say "all of the above".

I can't really tell you

Today was the museum and history tour. We started early and pretty soon were struck dumb. I wont say too much, because it is something that you have to really want to know about, and be prepared for.

We went to the one jail and torture centre that is a museum; there were hundreds of them. The torture is explained, there are photographs and artefacts. If you want to know more ask me when I get back.

We also went to the most famous of the hundreds of killing fields. It is a memorial park but still organic. The glass tower, so famous in photographs (one floor of clothes, nine floors of human skulls and seven floors of assorted bones) is here. The acres of land around are mass graves. Thousands of people were killed here in the most brutal and barbaric ways. The ground continually coughs up items of clothing that belonged to the people who were executed. Tiny pairs of shorts that only a toddler could have worn, bits of shoes, shirts and unidentifiable stretches of faded fabric litter the ground. There are too many to pick up. So, every month the guards and guides have a day where they go around and collect all the personal items and bones that the earth has offered up. This includes tiny baby teeth, jaw bones and the rest. We walked on pathways made of human remains covered in a thin scraping of dust. There is more, much more, but in the end we just sat in the shade and had a drink.

The one thing that is apparent is the enduring hostility to Vietnam. The defeat of Pol Pot is often explained without any reference to Vietnam at all. According to our guide, the signs, the books, the official history; the Vietnamese did defeat Pol Pot, but only so they could have Cambodia for themselves. I think our guide through the killing fields said more bad things about Vietnam than he did about the Khmer Rouge. The fear of Vietnamese annexation, which was one of the keys to the success of the KR is still palpable. I tried not to worry about it too much, but it is bugging me. I am really glad that I have read a few books about it and that I have some political history under my belt to help me understand it all.

Today is a group dinner, then we travel to Battambang by mini-bus tomorrow.

Phnom Penh

It is a city rebuilt in a hurry with no money after Pol Pot was defeated. Shabby, dirty, poor. It is a city with just a few multi-storey glass-fronted department stores selling lovely colourful clothes for children. Commercial, clean, shiny. It is a city with women in markets with no real face left after a napalm blast, with beggars missing limbs, with teachers who earn $50 per month. And here we are. Four of us went out for lunch it was under $40 dollars including cocktails, delicious food, lovely place. We thought it was cheap. The driver who took us there could never afford to eat there.

Most of this is just true of the third world. But here are some things about Cambodia that may not be true in lots of other places. We did things to make ourselves understand where we are. We ate a tarantula, big black and hairy and in keeping with my blog: DEEP FRIED. It was crunchy and okay. We ate red tree ants. The were little and semi-dissolved in a sauce.

Then we fed some fish. Now pay attention! After we finished eating animals, we let animals eat us. We paid $3 to put our feet in tanks of Angkor fish. In the first tank, the fish were about the size of two large workman's fingers. In the second tank, they were just little fish in a not so big fish pond. What these fish do is nibble at your feet. They only eat the deep skin, it tickles and your feet come out all soft. Disgusting, hilarious, weird.

The evening was happy hour cocktails at the Foreign Correspondants' Club. This is featured in the film The Killing Fields and is the site where war reporters sat and drank and made up stories about the war rather than going out and seeing any of it. You can't really blame them, I suppose, but it was a pretty woeful thing to do.

My sore arm

This trip, I decided to have all of the immunisations, and take all of the precautionary measures. I am now a vessel for typhus, hepatitis, cholera, tetanus and more. I found out that the drugs referred to as "anti-malarials" are really just broad spectrum anti-bionics, so I am also on those and Inner Health pro-biotics. (a balanced diet I'd say.) Of course, the one thing I am bound to get is food poisoning, so I will just have to deal with that when it happens. I had not realised how often people poke and pat at the left arm until it became an inflated breeding ground for micro-organisms.

I intend following all the advice on the poster and be assured that I will take "Ardent Spirits" in far smaller amounts than usual.