Two friends of mine, Ming and Andy, keep a blog about their experiences working and living here in Cambodia. They collaborate closely with several high schools throughout the country on technology issues, and they have a thorough understanding of just how the "system" works.
One of my favorite entries details the school calendar for the 2007-2008 school year. (Each year is slightly different, as at least half of the Khmer holidays are based on the lunar calendar rather than the solar one. But the gist remains the same.) Officially, of course, for a list of school holidays one should consult the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport. But for a realistic picture of what happens in a real-live school, the unofficial calendar is more accurate.
So why am I not in a classroom on a Monday morning? Because we are welcoming in the Chinese year of the ox today. Happy Chinese New Year!
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Garden
Towards the end of the rainy season, I decided to take a tour of my host family's garden to see what all was growing in it. There are actually a lot more kinds of plants growing out behind our house than I had originally thought, although I'm not sure if we eat all the fruits and vegetables we grow or not.
We have a growing number of papaya trees. The fruits start out green, like they are here, just where the branches begin to stem from the tree, and slowly turn yellow and then orange as they ripen. Sometimes, because the trees are slender, they become so overladen with fruit that they simply fall over. Luckily this tree is still upright and producing more papayas.
We also have an eggplant, um, plant. Cambodians eat small eggplants, usually just raw with prahoc (fish paste---delicious!).
There are a couple of thin young sugarcane stalks too. My host mom used to sell sugarcane juice in her store in front of the house, but then she broke her wrist. Because selling sugarcane juice is physically a lot of work (you have to shave the stalk; then start the press by pulling a cord, like starting a lawnmower; then put the stalks through the press), she stopped doing that while her wrist heals. In any case, we could never grow enough sugarcane out back to supply the store, so I don't know why we have these plants. Back at the end of rainy season when there was very heavy rainfall, a couple of the stalks (on the right side of the picture) fell over because the ground was too saturated to support them.
We also have a banana tree or two. Bananas are so beautiful!
And we have some pretty flowers that seem to grow on a plant that has no fruit.
Finally, we have a couple of mystery trees. I have no idea what those strange round fruits are. I wonder if they are delicious.
My tour of the garden yielded so many interesting discoveries. My only regret is that we have no mango tree. Guess it'll be fresh papayas for dessert this season instead of mangoes.
We have a growing number of papaya trees. The fruits start out green, like they are here, just where the branches begin to stem from the tree, and slowly turn yellow and then orange as they ripen. Sometimes, because the trees are slender, they become so overladen with fruit that they simply fall over. Luckily this tree is still upright and producing more papayas.
We also have an eggplant, um, plant. Cambodians eat small eggplants, usually just raw with prahoc (fish paste---delicious!).
There are a couple of thin young sugarcane stalks too. My host mom used to sell sugarcane juice in her store in front of the house, but then she broke her wrist. Because selling sugarcane juice is physically a lot of work (you have to shave the stalk; then start the press by pulling a cord, like starting a lawnmower; then put the stalks through the press), she stopped doing that while her wrist heals. In any case, we could never grow enough sugarcane out back to supply the store, so I don't know why we have these plants. Back at the end of rainy season when there was very heavy rainfall, a couple of the stalks (on the right side of the picture) fell over because the ground was too saturated to support them.
We also have a banana tree or two. Bananas are so beautiful!And we have some pretty flowers that seem to grow on a plant that has no fruit.Finally, we have a couple of mystery trees. I have no idea what those strange round fruits are. I wonder if they are delicious.
My tour of the garden yielded so many interesting discoveries. My only regret is that we have no mango tree. Guess it'll be fresh papayas for dessert this season instead of mangoes.
We Heart Art
Jumping around a bit chronologically, I want to talk about one of the projects I had way back in July: an art workshop.
Cambodian students seem to get pretty bored during the summer, with neither school nor organized sports to keep them busy and very little farming to be done. I wanted to give some local students something fun and productive to do and also encourage them to think creatively. So I put out an announcement that I would teach a month-long art workshop, and every day for an hour in July 10 to 25 students showed up at the otherwise deserted high school, eager to learn and do. I taught the basics of various art forms, taking about a week for each different subject. We started with visual arts: origami, cartooning, and collage using old magazines. The second week we talked about music and singing, including the Western musical staff and notation (was this concept extremely foreign to the students? Yes. Was it useful? Probably not. But that doesn't stop math teachers from teaching the formula for the volume of a cone so why should it keep me from teaching musical notation?). In the third week, we went on to poetry and rhyme, and the students tried their hand at writing a couple of short poems. The last week was all about Khmer dancing, including dances called the Madison and Cambodian cha-cha-cha. I'm no expert in Khmer dancing, but the school's PE teacher had taught me some basic moves that were easy to pass on to the students. We borrowed the PE teacher's car-battery-powered stereo and cassette tapes with Khmer music so we could all dance in sync. (If only we had had a tape with the Electric Slide!) Unsurprisingly, dance was probably the most popular unit.
The workshop was great fun overall, and I was struck by the talent a lot of the students displayed, especially during the collage portion. So I took pictures of a few of their collages. (My apologies for being an amateur and not cropping the photos. Technology is hard!) This first one is called The Green World and Beautiful of Life by a girl who gave herself the English name Lizzie. I thought she used an interesting combination of paper scraps and meaningful pictures to make a striking landscape. And she used the whole page!
Cambodian students seem to get pretty bored during the summer, with neither school nor organized sports to keep them busy and very little farming to be done. I wanted to give some local students something fun and productive to do and also encourage them to think creatively. So I put out an announcement that I would teach a month-long art workshop, and every day for an hour in July 10 to 25 students showed up at the otherwise deserted high school, eager to learn and do. I taught the basics of various art forms, taking about a week for each different subject. We started with visual arts: origami, cartooning, and collage using old magazines. The second week we talked about music and singing, including the Western musical staff and notation (was this concept extremely foreign to the students? Yes. Was it useful? Probably not. But that doesn't stop math teachers from teaching the formula for the volume of a cone so why should it keep me from teaching musical notation?). In the third week, we went on to poetry and rhyme, and the students tried their hand at writing a couple of short poems. The last week was all about Khmer dancing, including dances called the Madison and Cambodian cha-cha-cha. I'm no expert in Khmer dancing, but the school's PE teacher had taught me some basic moves that were easy to pass on to the students. We borrowed the PE teacher's car-battery-powered stereo and cassette tapes with Khmer music so we could all dance in sync. (If only we had had a tape with the Electric Slide!) Unsurprisingly, dance was probably the most popular unit.
The workshop was great fun overall, and I was struck by the talent a lot of the students displayed, especially during the collage portion. So I took pictures of a few of their collages. (My apologies for being an amateur and not cropping the photos. Technology is hard!) This first one is called The Green World and Beautiful of Life by a girl who gave herself the English name Lizzie. I thought she used an interesting combination of paper scraps and meaningful pictures to make a striking landscape. And she used the whole page!
This next one is called Advertise of Watch (no, I didn't correct students' grammar in titling their art. What kind of pedant do you think I am?). This one could be seen as a commentary on the large number of prominent watch ads in Newsweeks, our primary source magazine for these collages. Or maybe this girl really liked telling time. Either way, for some reason I was really impressed with it.
This last one is by a boy who gave himself the English name Peter. He created several distinctive collages using bright colors and basic shapes: this one of a fruit basket, a flower and a fairy, and a grinning pig's face (it's cuter than it sounds).
Hooray for art!
This last one is by a boy who gave himself the English name Peter. He created several distinctive collages using bright colors and basic shapes: this one of a fruit basket, a flower and a fairy, and a grinning pig's face (it's cuter than it sounds).Hooray for art!Saturday, December 13, 2008
Go West! Er, South. Well, Go Somewhere, I Guess
Another PCV found an interesting article recently about higher education in Cambodia, something that naturally interests a group of people who teach high schoolers. The article is a pretty stark indictment of the whole situation. Its key points are that educational quality is low in Cambodian universities, and most (as in 9 out of 10) university graduates don't get jobs. That's a striking number. Imagine graduating from a U.S. university with a 1-in-10 chance of getting a job. Here are some important bits:
A few Cambodian students have asked me, their local American and one of the few teachers at their high school with a 4-year degree, for university advice. It's easy to tell an American high-schooler that going to university or even a community college usually makes financial sense, because of the increased earning power at the end of four(ish) years. But in Cambodia I honestly don't know if that's true. Here, the students who pass the national grade-12 exam and pass a subject exam can train to become public-school teachers at free public institutions for 2 years, at the end of which time they will earn a monthly salary of around $50 with modest yearly raises. That salary isn't quite enough to feed 1 person, much less a family; but it's almost a guaranteed job, since there just aren't enough teachers to go around. (For example, my high school has over 2,000 students and around 40 teachers, which averages out to 50+ students per classroom, a number that any teacher will tell you is ridiculous.) And a job as a public-school teacher is a good entree into the field of teaching private classes, which can bring in somewhere between $150 and $250 a month. That kind of money will definitely feed a family of 4.
The math gets a little more complicated for university. Yearly university fees range from $200 to $600 (cheap!), on top of which students often forget to factor in living expenses and books. Salaries upon leaving university, though, are often $100-250 per month. That's if you can get a job, which apparently 90% of graduates do not do. Goodness only knows where they go, but sometimes it's back to their parents' house to help farm rice or sell bicycles or noodles or cell phones.
I can't, in good conscience, tell students to "do what they love, and the money will follow" because that's just not how it works in Cambodia. What things does money follow here? It follows farming huge plots of land, working in the tourism industry centered around the Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap, retailing goods from a stall in the market, etc.
Here's my favorite part of the article:
Um, the professors are complaining about cheating and students not doing their homework? Has it ever occurred to them to fail a student? I think low or failing grades might be discouraged by university officials, as they could cause students to enroll at different institutions which will give them a similar degree for less effort.
As we speak, my host sister is studying toward a four-year degree in accounting at a Cambodian university, and her little brother is studying rural development at another one. I haven't had the courage to show them this article. I'm hoping that they will be among the lucky 10% to secure employment when the time comes. And I'm hoping that someday, the Cambodian universities will be able to offer something better to young people hungry for education.
A growing number of eager young Cambodians are finding themselves duped into a higher education system that suffers from weak management and teaching because it is geared more toward profit than learning.
As a result only one in ten recent graduates are finding work, a worrying figure in a country trying to rebuild after decades of civil war.
A few Cambodian students have asked me, their local American and one of the few teachers at their high school with a 4-year degree, for university advice. It's easy to tell an American high-schooler that going to university or even a community college usually makes financial sense, because of the increased earning power at the end of four(ish) years. But in Cambodia I honestly don't know if that's true. Here, the students who pass the national grade-12 exam and pass a subject exam can train to become public-school teachers at free public institutions for 2 years, at the end of which time they will earn a monthly salary of around $50 with modest yearly raises. That salary isn't quite enough to feed 1 person, much less a family; but it's almost a guaranteed job, since there just aren't enough teachers to go around. (For example, my high school has over 2,000 students and around 40 teachers, which averages out to 50+ students per classroom, a number that any teacher will tell you is ridiculous.) And a job as a public-school teacher is a good entree into the field of teaching private classes, which can bring in somewhere between $150 and $250 a month. That kind of money will definitely feed a family of 4.
The math gets a little more complicated for university. Yearly university fees range from $200 to $600 (cheap!), on top of which students often forget to factor in living expenses and books. Salaries upon leaving university, though, are often $100-250 per month. That's if you can get a job, which apparently 90% of graduates do not do. Goodness only knows where they go, but sometimes it's back to their parents' house to help farm rice or sell bicycles or noodles or cell phones.
I can't, in good conscience, tell students to "do what they love, and the money will follow" because that's just not how it works in Cambodia. What things does money follow here? It follows farming huge plots of land, working in the tourism industry centered around the Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap, retailing goods from a stall in the market, etc.
Here's my favorite part of the article:
Qualified university professors complain that many students rarely do their work and cheating is rampant.
Um, the professors are complaining about cheating and students not doing their homework? Has it ever occurred to them to fail a student? I think low or failing grades might be discouraged by university officials, as they could cause students to enroll at different institutions which will give them a similar degree for less effort.
As we speak, my host sister is studying toward a four-year degree in accounting at a Cambodian university, and her little brother is studying rural development at another one. I haven't had the courage to show them this article. I'm hoping that they will be among the lucky 10% to secure employment when the time comes. And I'm hoping that someday, the Cambodian universities will be able to offer something better to young people hungry for education.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Take a Bite Out of Crime
Now that the Angkor bike race is less than a week away (there's still time to donate!), I can reveal a secret: my bike helmet was stolen recently. Riding a bike without a helmet is a big Peace Corps no-no, so if anybody had known I was riding around without it, something bad could have ensued. Here's the story.
When I first arrived in my town, I locked up helmet and bike in the schoolyard every day during the hours when I taught. Then, people started asking me why I locked them up. "Gom aui kay luich," I replied, which roughly means "So no one will steal it." Well, people laughed at that. No one's going to steal your ridiculous foreign bike, they implied, nor your ridiculous helmet. Seeing as how barangs (and specifically Peace Corps volunteers and Mormons) are pretty much the only people in Cambodia who wear bike helmets, it would be silly for someone to steal such a distinctive helmet. I took this to heart, and pretty quickly stopped locking my bike up in the schoolyard.
Fast forward 18 months. One afternoon early in November, I proctored an admission exam for my computer class. As usual, I left my bike and helmet unlocked in the schoolyard, and didn't lay eyes on them for about 4 hours. When I came out of the exam, I found that my helmet, which had been hanging from the bike by its strap, was gone. I approached the only teacher left at the school, you might call him the disciplinarian/caretaker, and reported the loss. "I bet the little kids took it," I told him. There's a gaggle of small children who play around the high school, since it's such a stimulating environment (people! cows! a pond!). They like to ring the bell on my bike, and I figured they might've gotten curious about the helmet and taken it off to play somewhere else.
The caretaker reported to me the next day that he had asked all the kids about it, and they had said they hadn't seen it. "That's what they would say," I thought, but didn't say anything. I started asking other teachers about it. The strange thing is that their first response, when I said it was gone, was "Is your organization going to buy you a new one?" They have had so much experience with wealthy NGOs with money to spend that they assumed any loss would be quickly remedied by my "wealthy" NGO. I explained to them that no, since I had not locked the helmet, Peace Corps most certainly would not replace it, and further that I was pretty SOL, since you can't buy bike helmets anywhere in this country (as far as I know) and I would henceforth be breaking a big Peace Corps rule.
Once they realized I really did need the helmet back, it came out that some teachers had seen a student wearing the helmet around the schoolyard. At one point, a teacher saw him wearing it as he rode away on a moto. What a ridiculous picture that must have made. At any rate, no one thought to stop the student and ask why he had the helmet, though everyone knew that it belonged to me. And no one knew the student's name. The school's vice principal made an announcement to the whole school that whoever had taken the helmet should return it. This, sadly, produced no results.
By pure chance, shortly after that I went to visit a favorite student of mine who lives about 7 km down the road. I wanted to make sure he hadn't dropped out of school, since I hadn't seen him at all this year. Luckily, it turned out he'd been in school the whole time. I told him my story about the helmet, and he said he knew the student who took it. "But Teacher," he informed me gravely, "he is a gangster." Helpfully, he added, "It's OK, because he is also my friend."
I enlisted this student's help in getting the helmet back. Only a couple weeks later (I was on vacation for part of this), my student brought his friend the gangster to my house, where he handed me back the helmet. I silently rejoiced. I could once again conform to Peace Corps rules and simultaneously keep my head from being squashed like a watermelon by trucks carrying sand/pigs/tractors down the highway at reckless speeds.
When I first arrived in my town, I locked up helmet and bike in the schoolyard every day during the hours when I taught. Then, people started asking me why I locked them up. "Gom aui kay luich," I replied, which roughly means "So no one will steal it." Well, people laughed at that. No one's going to steal your ridiculous foreign bike, they implied, nor your ridiculous helmet. Seeing as how barangs (and specifically Peace Corps volunteers and Mormons) are pretty much the only people in Cambodia who wear bike helmets, it would be silly for someone to steal such a distinctive helmet. I took this to heart, and pretty quickly stopped locking my bike up in the schoolyard.
Fast forward 18 months. One afternoon early in November, I proctored an admission exam for my computer class. As usual, I left my bike and helmet unlocked in the schoolyard, and didn't lay eyes on them for about 4 hours. When I came out of the exam, I found that my helmet, which had been hanging from the bike by its strap, was gone. I approached the only teacher left at the school, you might call him the disciplinarian/caretaker, and reported the loss. "I bet the little kids took it," I told him. There's a gaggle of small children who play around the high school, since it's such a stimulating environment (people! cows! a pond!). They like to ring the bell on my bike, and I figured they might've gotten curious about the helmet and taken it off to play somewhere else.
The caretaker reported to me the next day that he had asked all the kids about it, and they had said they hadn't seen it. "That's what they would say," I thought, but didn't say anything. I started asking other teachers about it. The strange thing is that their first response, when I said it was gone, was "Is your organization going to buy you a new one?" They have had so much experience with wealthy NGOs with money to spend that they assumed any loss would be quickly remedied by my "wealthy" NGO. I explained to them that no, since I had not locked the helmet, Peace Corps most certainly would not replace it, and further that I was pretty SOL, since you can't buy bike helmets anywhere in this country (as far as I know) and I would henceforth be breaking a big Peace Corps rule.
Once they realized I really did need the helmet back, it came out that some teachers had seen a student wearing the helmet around the schoolyard. At one point, a teacher saw him wearing it as he rode away on a moto. What a ridiculous picture that must have made. At any rate, no one thought to stop the student and ask why he had the helmet, though everyone knew that it belonged to me. And no one knew the student's name. The school's vice principal made an announcement to the whole school that whoever had taken the helmet should return it. This, sadly, produced no results.
By pure chance, shortly after that I went to visit a favorite student of mine who lives about 7 km down the road. I wanted to make sure he hadn't dropped out of school, since I hadn't seen him at all this year. Luckily, it turned out he'd been in school the whole time. I told him my story about the helmet, and he said he knew the student who took it. "But Teacher," he informed me gravely, "he is a gangster." Helpfully, he added, "It's OK, because he is also my friend."
I enlisted this student's help in getting the helmet back. Only a couple weeks later (I was on vacation for part of this), my student brought his friend the gangster to my house, where he handed me back the helmet. I silently rejoiced. I could once again conform to Peace Corps rules and simultaneously keep my head from being squashed like a watermelon by trucks carrying sand/pigs/tractors down the highway at reckless speeds.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Do It for the Orphans
Dear Friends and Readers,
Well, it's that time of year: the Angkor International Half-Marathon (and Bike Race!) is upon us. December 6, to be exact. I've signed up for the 30-kilometer bike race (something like 18 miles), and pretty soon I'm going to stash my mountain bike under a 45-passenger bus to get it over the harrowing road to Siem Reap so that I can test my athletic prowess against people from many nations.
The purpose of the race is to fundraise for Village Focus, an NGO that works with vulnerable communities in Cambodia. Village Focus has kindly waived registration fees for Peace Corps Volunteers. The least I can do in return is appeal to you for a donation, in any amount. You can make the donation online. Just go to http://www.villagefocus.org/angkor_marathon/sponsor.htm, look down the registrant list (I'm under "Elizabeth," not "Liz"), and click on my name. This will take you to a site where you can make a credit card donation. This would really help me look like less of a deadbeat on the registrant list.
I know this is awesomely timed, considering the current economic situation and the upcoming holiday demands on everyone's budget. My appeal is that you do it for the children! Don't you see, the children are our future...
Also, I will throw in a bonus blog post (with pictures!) if even 1 person donates. Isn't that special? Surely.
Well, it's that time of year: the Angkor International Half-Marathon (and Bike Race!) is upon us. December 6, to be exact. I've signed up for the 30-kilometer bike race (something like 18 miles), and pretty soon I'm going to stash my mountain bike under a 45-passenger bus to get it over the harrowing road to Siem Reap so that I can test my athletic prowess against people from many nations.
The purpose of the race is to fundraise for Village Focus, an NGO that works with vulnerable communities in Cambodia. Village Focus has kindly waived registration fees for Peace Corps Volunteers. The least I can do in return is appeal to you for a donation, in any amount. You can make the donation online. Just go to http://www.villagefocus.org/angkor_marathon/sponsor.htm, look down the registrant list (I'm under "Elizabeth," not "Liz"), and click on my name. This will take you to a site where you can make a credit card donation. This would really help me look like less of a deadbeat on the registrant list.
I know this is awesomely timed, considering the current economic situation and the upcoming holiday demands on everyone's budget. My appeal is that you do it for the children! Don't you see, the children are our future...
Also, I will throw in a bonus blog post (with pictures!) if even 1 person donates. Isn't that special? Surely.
Friday, November 7, 2008
A Scientific Approach to Desire
I love rainy season in Cambodia, really I do. But lately I've been finding myself wondering idly when it will end. I ask Cambodians, and they say "Soon." But that word, here, means, "sometime between now and then" so I've stopped asking about it. When I get this equivocal answer, I start wondering if I'm going to regret wishing for dry season once it arrives. I guess a good, scientific way to find out what I really want is to make a list of likes and dislikes about rainy season, and see what comes out on top.
Like: I can fall asleep at night to the gentle sound of rain on the roof.
Dislike: I am often woken in the middle of the night by a storm that is trying to come in through my window to shake my hand.
Like: all the plants are a beautiful, lush green.
Dislike: every surface in my town with an elevation lower than 100 m is now a pond, including my school and parts of my front yard.
Like: the rain washes away the accumulated afternoon heat.
Dislike: the rain re-washes clothes that I have left out on the line to dry.
Like: rambutans, papayas, oranges, dragonfruit, and pomelos are ripe during rainy season.
Dislike: Durians, longans, jackfruit, mangoes, manogsteens, and milkfruit are not ripe during rainy season.
Like: rice needs lots of rain to grow.
Dislike: rice needs lots of rain to grow.
Like: getting stuck in a random place by a heavy rainstorm, making conversation with an interesting new person.
Dislike: that little fountain of mud that bike tires kick up when driving over particularly muddy ground.
Eh, it comes out about even. I don't really have much say in the matter anyway, so I guess I'll wish for the world to keep on turning and be satisfied with what outcome that produces.
Like: I can fall asleep at night to the gentle sound of rain on the roof.
Dislike: I am often woken in the middle of the night by a storm that is trying to come in through my window to shake my hand.
Like: all the plants are a beautiful, lush green.
Dislike: every surface in my town with an elevation lower than 100 m is now a pond, including my school and parts of my front yard.
Like: the rain washes away the accumulated afternoon heat.
Dislike: the rain re-washes clothes that I have left out on the line to dry.
Like: rambutans, papayas, oranges, dragonfruit, and pomelos are ripe during rainy season.
Dislike: Durians, longans, jackfruit, mangoes, manogsteens, and milkfruit are not ripe during rainy season.
Like: rice needs lots of rain to grow.
Dislike: rice needs lots of rain to grow.
Like: getting stuck in a random place by a heavy rainstorm, making conversation with an interesting new person.
Dislike: that little fountain of mud that bike tires kick up when driving over particularly muddy ground.
Eh, it comes out about even. I don't really have much say in the matter anyway, so I guess I'll wish for the world to keep on turning and be satisfied with what outcome that produces.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)