All quiet on the Eastern front (23/05/11)

All quiet until now that is.........hello!! Life seems to have accelerated in the past two months. Two weeks ago I celebrated my six month anniversary here which seemed to swing round sooner than anticipated. Good though. Twas a gleeful day and I felt really thankful to be here and for all the things that are opening up now. PTL.

More of that later though. First, some highlights from the past few months........

MARCH BEST BITS

Baptisms

Since January I’ve been going to the Elim church up the road and at the end of March, 20 Khmer young people got baptised at a local school pool. It was exciting to hear their testimonies, most having been saved quite recently through friendships via the football team and a Bible study the church runs.

APRIL BEST BITS

Khmer New Year at the Tiles Village

Khmer New Year is a Big Thing here and for three days a year, Phnom Penh pretty much empties as people leave to spend time with family and friends in the provinces and party for much of the time. I managed to escape for a day with friends to Phum G’Orm, the tiles village, not far from the city and we had a great laugh playing games with the kids, hanging out with friends there and dancing the night away..........

Gethsemane Garden

Gethsemane Garden was the result of several months of praying, planning, making and creating with a small group of friends from different churches in Phnom Penh. Thanks to a local language school, we had use of a big room which became Gethsemane Garden over the Easter week – an art installation set out a bit like the stations of the cross depicting different scenes from the Easter story.  The idea was for people to walk through the story and engage with different aspects, either through looking or reading or drawing or making things or simply sitting in quietness. For a first of its kind in PP, we were very encouraged by the response with people from different nations, churches and faith backgrounds coming along.

A collage of Phnom Penh - Jesus weeps over the city                      Gethsemane

Peter's betrayal and the look from Jesus                       The Cross and the empty tomb

Visit to Honour Village in Siem Reap

I first read about Honour Village in the IOW County Press last summer would you believe! A lady called Sue Wiggans was doing a car boot sale to raise money for her imminent departure to Cambodia and for the orphanage she was setting up. To cut a long story short, I got in touch with her and met her a couple of times on the island and last month, got in touch again and went to see her in the now up-and-running orphanage just outside a town called Siem Reap in the North West (about a 5 hour journey from PP). An amazing lady, Sue has thrown herself into the work at Honour Village completely and has a great rapport with the 50+ children there and several Khmer staff and volunteers. As well as co-ordinating most aspects of the work, she teaches the children English and runs a small choir which I had the joy of seeing, hearing and joining in whilst I was there. Great fun :-)

Incidently, Sue used to visit St Paul's when the previous vicar was around. Does anybody remember her? She's from Freshwater and would have come as a lay reader I think...........

MAY BEST BITS

Drama training day with Chab Dai

Chab Dai means “joining hands” in Khmer and is an umbrella organisation with a membership of over 50 NGOs all working in the area of preventing trafficking and sexual exploitation. Twice a year, in May and November, they have a training day to address a particular area of practice and this May it was about Child Protection issues.

Just to backtrack a bit, in February I had a meeting with the Chab Dai directors about the Good Touch Bad Touch Puppets Flipchart Project I’ve been doing with Love146. During the meeting I talked about using drama as a way of exploring issues like Child Protection and briefly mentioned my experience of participating in and facilitating similar types of drama workshops. From this chance comment, a door suddenly swung open...........

Rather than doing a typical training day using powerpoint and hand-outs, staff at Chab Dai decided on something different: a “Paperless Training” day using drama instead. And then they asked me to help them co-ordinate and run it. Yikes!! A scary but exciting opportunity............

As it turned out, it was great and I loved the whole thing. It was hard work bringing things together but thanks to friends and some of the Chab Dai staff, we were able to get all the actors and facilitators needed (30 in all) and rehearse in good time before the training day too. A feat in itself. As for the training day, it went really well!! I was so pleased!! Lots of energy and enthusiasm, especially among the Cambodians (there were four Khmer speaking groups and one English speaking) and huge learning curves all round.

AND NOW.........

The Love146 Good Touch Bad Touch Puppets Flipchart Project

Well, after doing the observations and gathering feedback for the pilot project over the past few months, I’ve now written the report and presented it at a Child Protection Forum at Chab Dai. The next stage, once funding is secured, is to train teachers and facilitators in 4 key areas in Cambodia (Siem Reap, Poipet, Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh) and make sure the support and back-up is in place for any children who may disclose after seeing the flipchart. So, in the meantime, I’m putting together a curriculum for the training and looking into the whole area of support and making sure things are in place for when things are up and running, probably by the end of the year.

Chab Dai

Currently helping evaluate the Paperless Training day. As a first and a complete experiment, it was a big risk but thankfully it worked! However, there were definite areas that need to be improved so I'll be looking at those these next few weeks and hopefully staying involved for future events and workshops. Watch this space........

And finally.........

Reading this through it sounds like I've been working all the time but lately I seem to have acquired more of a social life which is great! Definitely feel part of things now and more and more at home here. One thing that hasn't gone so well though is langauge!! Have blipped on that one, I have to say, and haven't given it the time it really needs. Things calm down for a while in June and July though so aim to do a language offensive for 5 weeks: 20/6-21/07. And possibly semi-fast. Am getting desperate! Please pray!!

Sending lots of love from Phnom Penh and hope all's well on the Wight.

Blessings,

Fiona :-) x