So this week I spent Sun 6th-Thurs 10th Dec in the province of Ratanakiri, attending a workshop on the issue of education of indigenous children.
This is a problem in several provinces around Cambodia, as in order to reach the UN Millennium Goals by the 2015 deadline, all children must be in education. However, there is a serious issue with indigenous peoples as they all speak their own languages but the teachers speak in K’mai, making it impossible for the children to follow. It is therefore necessary to train bi-lingual teachers who can also teach the children K’mai so that they can stay in education.
There are also issues surrounding teacher retention. The teachers are paid very badly, if at all, so there is a high rate of teacher absence as they usually have to work second jobs. Also, teachers are sent to these remote communities straight from teacher training college and frequently don’t settle as a result of a drastic change in lifestyle.
So, these are some of the issues we discussed during the two day workshop, with representatives from the government, UNESCO, UNICEF and CARE, who are all key NGO’s working in the region in education.
It was an interesting few days and we created some good recommendations for the government on how to increase school attendance amongst indigenous children, namely, recruiting good teachers from the community who are then given bi-lingual education training. Also it is vital that the government pay their teachers sufficiently and on time. However, this has been said many, many times before by lots of NGO’s and nothing is being done. The army on the other hand have been given a large pay rise...watch out Thailand!
Anyway, I’ll tell you a little bit about Ban Lung (capitol of RTK). Well, it is much larger than Sen Monorom, with proper shops and a massive market. It is also much flatter, now that I am used to be surrounded by hills it feels weird! It also has a beautiful volcanic crater lake not far from the town which is simply breathtaking. We went swimming the warm green water and it was just ACE! There is lots of mythology and religion surrounding the lake and it is a sacred place for the local communities who care for it. Sadly, Kirsty (the vso I was staying with), said that there are plans for the government to sell it to the Vietnamese who are going to build a casino right on the shore of the lake. I can’t think of anything worse than this happening and I really hope they come to their senses.
My journey back from RTK (and the bum breakage mentioned in the title) was certainly a little interesting. I managed to arrange to get a lift with the UNESCO people down to Snoul, which is an easy place to get a ride to Sen Monorom. However, the driver got confused and took me to Kratie instead, which meant I needed to get a ride to Snoul from there and then another up to SM. Anyway, to cut a long story short, after much bartering with drivers I managed to get the front seat of a pick up (with 5 people in the back seat, designed for 3 and someone sat with the driver!) to Snoul and the same driver then arranged for me to get in another pick up to SM. This pick-up was the most laden down vehicle I have ever seen! It had about 3 tons of stock on the back, about six people on top and 6 people in the cabin. It went ridiculously slowly as a result and the 2 hour journey took almost 4! Another day in Cambodia!
Anyway, after our stressful week, Jeltje and I decided that we needed to relax so yesterday we headed on over the Pu Long waterfall, about 30mins moto ride through the hills on dirt roads. You would not believe the dust now that the dry season is here. It hasn’t rained in about 5 weeks and the roads and just pure red dust, meaning that whenever you go out you inevitably get a ‘mondulkiri tan’. So, jumping into the cold water after the trek down to the waterfall was an amazing feeling, as was washing off the orange coating! We had a lovely time, swimming, pick-nicking, sun bathing and reading on the rocks at the fall. Then something really cool happened, an elephant trek arrived so they could take a bath in the waterfall. It was great seeing the elephants in such close proximity and watching them in the water. However, I felt a bit saddened by the way they were draped in chains and have decided that I don’t want to ride one. We are going to our friend Jack’s elephant project on Tuesday (after visiting a school to meet the community members!) and he doesn’t do rides but does do treks to see them in their natural habitat which I think will be better than going on a touristy ride.
I have put a couple of elephant pictures up but I need to get the photo’s from Kirsty of RTK as I had to leave my other camera in PP to be fixed, sadly.
I will update again soon with pictures from the elephant project and more news about how my work is going here.
C x
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