Kitty!

We have a new friend - a kitten! Helen found him on the roof of her house a few days ago and we have adopted him. He is very young, can't be older than 2-3 weeks old. We think he was abandoned by his mother and had very little to eat for a while before he was found. So we've become parents! Feedings every two hours from a bottle, lots of cuddling, and we're so proud when he pees! We haven't settled on a name yet, but we're attached already. We're taking name suggestions :)

A lazy Saturday

Yesterday, our friend upstairs bought a "Christmas tree" and decorated it with lights and a few balls. It truly is a Charlie Brown tree, but sitting by it with the apartment lights turned off made it feel more like the holidays than we've felt until now and it was nice. We have decided the best way to not feel too homesick this Christmas is to tackle it head on. So we will bake cookies, get a small tree, stuff stockings for each other and listen to carols over and over again! Of course, on Christmas day itself, we will be at the Angkor temples, so will have things to distract us all day!

Today we're having a relaxed day of nothing. This morning we watched our weekly shows, The Office, Bones and HIMYM (I do have my woo moments). Then we went to a cafe near our house for hot chocolate (which, in Charlie's words, was "just as good as Starbuck's but $6 cheaper!") We were there for a while just reading and now we're hanging out in our apartment... um, doing nothing. It's nice.

Leaving a Legacy

At the beginning of November, Chab Dai had its bi-annual all member meeting. Over 100 people came to share what they've been doing, network, and learn together. The theme of the meeting was "Leaving a Legacy" and so what was most discussed was what we are leaving behind through our programs, organizations, and relationships. For many expats this is a very real issue as many, like us, are here for a definite period of time. For many Cambodians and long-term expats it is an important issue because there is limited time and funding for a lot of projects.

I was pretty busy during these two days, especially on the first. I was acting as note-taker for the whole meeting, but I also did a presentation on child protection and our upcoming training workshops and I led a focus-group discussion on the theme of the meeting as well. In the end it was a great day, I met a lot of new people and some people I'd been emailing with but had never met face to face, and really started to understand how important Chab Dai is as a coalition of committed workers.

It went really well, and Charlie and I were definitely ready for some R & R afterwards, so I guess it's a good thing we left for Vietnam the next morning! More on that soon, I promise!

Here we all are! Can anyone find Charlie?!?! Yeah not that difficult. Try to find me, though!

Here is one of our member organizations presenting on a new game developed by the Chab Dai Family Forum. It is played by families in the communities and gets them talking about all sorts of issues they wouldn't usually feel comfortable talking about. The pilot project went really well and now they will replicate it and distribute it to the other members!

Here are some members being presented with program grants after having completed, or are completing a Project Cycle Management training course.

Poipet

Last week we went on site visits in three provinces, in the cities of Poipet, Battambang and Siem Reap. It was four days filled to the brim with a lot of meetings, field visits, and travelling, travelling, travelling. Thankfully, many of the "highways" in Cambodia are pretty smooth and the only real scare we got was when we stopped to refill the taxi's propane (yes, propane) and the driver lit up a cigarette in the middle of a small sea of propane tanks. (We've also heard of a moto driver lighting a match for light to see how empty his gas tank was!)
Our first stop was Poipet, a city of the border of Thailand about 6 hours northeast of Phnom Penh. In the past 10 years, Poipet's population has grown 2000% and it's only attraction is the collection of casinos right at the border. Gambling and casinos are illegal in Thailand, so they just opened them up 10 feet from the border crossing into Poipet. The contrast between the glamorous mini Las Vegas and the actual town is striking. The main road through town isn't even paved. It's just mud.

Poipet's population grew way too fast and development and infrastructure just couldn't keep, as is the case in so many developing world cities. This particular bording crossing is infamous for smuggling, trading, and trafficking anything from drugs, clothes, food and even people. Also, when the Thai police round up illegal Cambodian workers in Bangkok and other cities, they drive them to this crossing in big trucks and literally drop them across the border (where many of them will cross back into Thailand the next day). Among these are many children who had been trafficked into Thailand and sold into labour or sexual exploitation. 

One of Chab Dai's partners is running a program up there to take in some of these children. The shelter can house up to 40 kids and most of them will stay in this facility until they grow up, for many different reasons. Some don't know where they came from in Cambodia, others can't go home because they are at high risk of being re-trafficked. So this organization kind of serves as a surrogate family for them. 

Another project this organization is running is a transitional living community for people with HIV/AIDS. Families with at least one HIV positive parent are referred to the project if they are extremely poor, cannot buy their ARVs, and the children are at risk of being orphaned. The project provides housing, ARVs, school fees for the children, primary health education and vocational training so the families can survive economically once they are reintegrated into the ommunity.

Additional training on HIV/AIDS is done to reduce the stigma these families face in their communities.

Although the situation in Poipet seems grim, there are some amazing initiatives here and everyone we met seemed very hopeful. We visited with other organizations there, but I'll have to write about those later. There's so much to share and I want to do them justice!

Udong

Two weekend ago we made a first of many day trips out of Phnom Penh - on motorbikes!! We travelled with 4 of our friends to the old capitol of Cambodia, Udong.  Famous people you may (but probably don't) know who were crowned here include king Norodom and king Sihanouk. The main attraction is two hills with several stupas on them. These hills jut surprisingly out of the Manitoba-style terrain (uh... flat). We climbed up over a hundred stairs to the top and got a spectacular view of Cambodian countryside.

It was an awesome day. After the short hike, we rode around the hills and stopped for lunch on hammock laden platforms. Though we were slightly overcharged, it was still worth it. Julia tried to order chicken fried rice for us all, but it came as a large bowl of rice, and an entire chicken. Including the giblets. And the head. And the feet.

One of the nicest parts of the day was getting to drive through Cambodian countryside, and not in a bus, which is not the best venue for admiring the view. It is really beautiful, and the driving is really fun. We passed all sorts of people including a group of 3 motos carrying double bed frames on the back of their seat! Also, we saw lots of cows. And rice fields.

Besides the wonderfulness of the drive, and the great company, the best part of the day was knowing that it is getting cooler back home, but we all 6 of us got sunburned. Suck it!