Merry Belated Christmas!

Well, we've given up on trying to upload our Christmas video, it just won't work! Suffice it to say that we missed our family and friends over the holidays.
We spent Christmas in Ratanakiri, the northeast remote corner of Cambodia and had a fantastic time. It is really beautiful there and we did some hiking, saw amazing waterfalls and spent quite a bit of time at a gorgeous volcanic lake. We got there by dirt bike, which was such a fun, though a little soar after a while, way to travel around the country. We saw a lot of it!
On Christmas day we relaxed and reflected and felt like it was really a holy day. We also found a guesthouse that had a Finnish sauna, so we enjoyed that for a while, too (very random). Christmas dinner was Swedish meatballs and Wiener Schnitzel. A different Christmas, for sure, but it was great.
We miss home now that our adventure is over, but plan on attending a big expat party at a club tonight for New Year's to take our minds off it.
I posted more pictures of our trip on Facebook as well.

On Monday we had our Chab Dai Christmas party on a sunset cruise on the Mekong! We ate and talked and sang much karaoke and danced to the karaoke. It was really fun getting to know the staff even better. We had a great time.

We visited the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary on our day off last week with a few friends. Most of the animals there have been rescued from poachers.

MTV EXIT Concert

MTV put on four concerts around Cambodia to raise awareness among youth about trafficking. We attended the one in Phnom Penh at the Olympic Stadium. After four hours, much waiting, many speeches, one very bad DJ, concrete seats digging into our bottoms, and a few Cambodian pop singers, we gave up and went home at 8:00. Apparently the English band finally came on at 10:30 after an hour of sound check... oh well, you win some, you lose some.

A Picture a day: Aerobics at the stadium

We live right near the Olympic Stadium, and it is the site of many different sport and exercise activities. Basketball, football (soccer), jogging, tai chi, etc. What has surprised us, however, is how popular aerobics are here! Everyone does aerobics, both men and women, of all ages and sizes. And they are mostly public classes, where anyone can join. It's pretty refreshing to see all kinds of people comfortable enough with their bodies to go all out to pop music, following a (usually) male instructor who can do high kicks in jeans!

A fraction of life in a few pictures

We've been all talk, talk, talk, so here are some pictures of around our place.

Evening view from our flat

We got Christmas stockings made by a tailor in the Russian market; of course, they turned out just a little "off"!

Shredder, our cat, just "hanging out" (hehe, I'm so punny)

We're loving our evening chats in the hammock after work.

Training of Trainers in Phnom Penh

I just finished up a two day training of trainers on child abuse prevention with Chab Dai! We had 25 participants from 15 organisations! We delved into many aspects of child protection, including our biblical mandate to protect children, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, definitions, types, and symptoms of abuse, screening and operational procedures and abuse response protocol. This training was in English, so most of our participants were foreigners (from Canada, the U.S., Europe, and other Asian countries), but having some Cambodian participants was very helpful when discussing cultural issues. The Khmer training will take place over three days in January.

Through the activities and discussions, we were able to confront difficult issues, such as cultural practices that are potentially abusive, and a real sense of cooperation emerged, giving some organisations encouragement that they don’t have to face these issues alone. Chab Dai is a coalition, a learning community, where organisations working to end child sexual exploitation and trafficking, can learn from each other, lean on each other for support, and share knowledge and resources. Child protection is just one of the issues involved in this fight, and I hope this training was a big step in the right direction!

Child protection in Cambodia is very different from child protection in Canada. In Canada, if one of our staff reports an allegation of abuse, our main responsibility is to report it to the police and social services, and to extend compassion and facilitate healing for the victim. In Cambodia, where social infrastructure is still lacking, police and social workers severely underpaid and overworked, and significant levels of corruption exist on every level of government services, organisations are mostly left to investigate and substantiate abuse themselves. There is still much work to be done in this area, both in helping NGOs and churches do this aspect of abuse response, as well as challenging and helping government services to improve and respond effectively and without prejudice.

Keep Cambodia in your prayers!

A little about my work.

It's about time I actually let people know about the work that I am doing. I am working for an organization here called Child Helpline Cambodia. As you can imagine, it is a helpline, where children in Cambodia call when they need someone to talk to.

Right now the organization (CHC as I call it) is in its preparation phase, so there are only 3 of us that work here, but soon there will be more people. As it is so small, my work has been quite varied. One of the big things that I did was to design a database using Access where we could enter the details of any organizations that partner with us. This was a big task. Normally in Canada, when a child calls a helpline, and it is clear the child needs ongoing help, the helpline can just make sure a local social worker takes the case. However, in Cambodia, this does not exist. So since we are not going to be able to go bring kids the food they need, or give them shelter, or stop them from being abused, we need partner organizations that can do all these things. And we need a way to search all these organizations that lets us easily find the best option for a child in need, and that's what my database is for.

Creating the database has been a really interesting time for me, and a lot of fun since I get to think logically about how things interact, and also I get to pretend to code. If I did another database, I would definitely design it and then make it, not the other way around, because I spent a large amount of time realizing that I'd made a huge mistake and starting over when halfway through, and then another large amount of time making small corrections everywhere.

Another large part of my work here has been to find the organizations that we should be working with, and to convince them to partner with us. This is generally quite easy. I stress that we only want to send children to an organization that is a very good fit for that child, and many people respond well to that idea. Also, I think that the idea of giving children the voice to speak their issues is something that people really identify with. I have really enjoyed this part of my work. Talking to all of these organizations has given me a really good broad view of the work being done here in Cambodia. I have talked with people who work with children and youth from: Legal organizations, Human Rights organizations, Shelters, Work Programs, Education Programs, an HIV/AIDS support centre, Crisis Centers, and more. While the problems facing children in Cambodia are certainly numerous, it has been very uplifting and hopeful to meet so many people who are all working to bring hope and change to the lives of children here in Cambodia.

I also support my boss in many general office ways, taking minutes at meetings, preparing presentations, and so forth and so on.

The one other thing that I do, that I am really enjoying is working with another ex-pat from a different organization, who started working there as an artist, and has moved into a more development-type of role. I have been meeting with him and one other person from his organization, and sort of working through a lot of development thinking. Most recently we developed a Logistical Framework Analysis for a program he is working on. It has been really great for me because it is easy to meet with people who work in development, and have been for years sometimes, and have no idea about the types of issues that arise when development work is done. To have someone who is so keen to learn about some of the pitfalls of development work, and who is willing to put in a little extra work to avoid them, has really made me enjoy my time here.

I am sorry for all the text and no photos.

Ho Chi Minh City

We haven't told you about Vietnam yet! Although it was a month ago already, it's still fresh in my mind because we had such an amazing time! We were gone almost a whole week, leaving on a Saturday and getting back on the Thursday. We didn't have many plans when we set out, but had a guesthouse booked for the first few nights in the backpackers' district.
Ho Chi Minh is such a great city. We enjoyed it very much, found our way around the main area pretty quickly, loved the neighbourhood we were staying in and ate oodles and oodles of noodles! There are many more green spaces than in Phnom Penh and it was nice to walk and sit in the big park near the market. We also ate in a nice little Russian restaurant, which made us feel like we were in Charlie's Oma's house eating borscht and pirogies.
On our second day, we joined a day tour and saw the Cu Chi tunnels, where Viet Kong fighters hid out during the war. It was really interesting and very propaganda. We even got to walk along part of a tunnel that had been expanded to 'fit' tourists (the normal size tunnel required you to shimmy along with your elbows on your stomach). I had to remind myself a few times not to panic, but I was glad I did it.

Charlie fulfilling a childhood dream... shooting an AK-47
Can you see me?

We also visited the Cao Dai Temple that day for the noon mass. Cao Dai is a strange religion, which we learned a little about from our tour guide, who liked to be called 'Slim Jim'. It is a religion that combines aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Taoism and Confucianism. They also worship Victor Hugo as one of their saints... umm, yeah, we're still confused by that one. All in all, though, it was an honour to be allowed to observe their worship service.

Some of the priestesses; men and women sat on opposite sides of the temple
Can you find Jesus?

The last thing we did that day was visit a handicraft factory workshop where the government hires physically disabled people, which Vietnam has no shortage of thanks to Agent Orange (thank you, America). The crafts are beautiful and the people very kind. It was obviously a tourist trap, as almost every tour bus going through this town stops here, but it was a nice experience anyway.

After a couple more days hanging around Ho Chi Minh we decided to get back to Phnom Penh by the scenic route, literally. We booked a two day boat trip along the Mekong, stopping by a floating market and a few other coconut and rice paper workshops. It was lovely. Some bits were by bus, but we caught a beautiful sunset on the ferry ride across the river.