Transitioning to Siem Reap: NIBI

Two weeks ago, I moved from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap to start teaching at NIBI (New International Bethany Institute), which is a Christian Korean-run school for college-aged Khmer students. I get to live on campus here, which is great for me, because it feels a little like I’m back at college again myself. I do have my own room, however, which is very good.

The campus is a ten-minute moto drive from “downtown” Siem Reap (it’s such a little city, more like a town, especially after living in Phnom Pehn). The first bit of driving is quite rough. (Exactly whose idea was it to use sand to build a road, or to fill in potholes with shards of brick?) It’s lovely to be this far away from everything, though. I’ve never lived somewhere I could see the stars so well before. The campus is walled in, so it’s perfectly safe to walk between the buildings at night, which is a welcome change from Phnom Penh. As I type, I’m listening to the crickets, and the window behind me looks out on the lush plantings of mango and coconut trees. Sadly, the mangos won’t be ripe until just after I leave :(

The students are so warm and welcoming to me. They’ve even given me a nickname: Necrue Biytong, or “Green Teacher.” It is a very small and new school, particularly this semester. There are:

Two first-year students: John and Sophann;

Two second-year students: Paul and Sambor;

Three third-year students: James, Esther, and Tiffan; and

Two fourth-year students: Vanry and Ratanak.

The first two years are “prep school,” focused on English and Bible, and for the next three, the students choose either business management or visual design as a major. (There are no fifth-year students yet, as this is the school’s fourth year.)

I’m teaching six classes:

Grammar and pronunciation (2) for the first-year students;

Grammar, communication, and reading for the second-year students (3);

And an English review/writing class (1) for the third and fourth-year students.

I’m also in charge of weekly vocabulary quizzes for all the students.

It is a little bit much, I admit. But it’s a lot of fun.

The faith of these students is amazing to me, for they’ve sacrificed so much to come here. Firstly, they give up a lot of freedom when they study here: they have to stay on campus during all the weekdays and wake up each weekday morning for quiet time at 5:20am! Because they have to stay on campus, they can’t really hold an outside job to support themselves and their families, which is normally expected of college students here. And of course, it’s a Christian school, which further decreases the approval of their Buddhist families and friends.

To top it all off, NIBI is not yet accredited as a university by the Cambodian government, so after five years of hard work, many employers will not accept these students’ credentials. Still, they trust in God and willingly come to a school where they hope to be discipled in their faith. In teaching here, l I tread on holy ground. I pray that I may teach these students in a worthy manner.

Halfway through my first week of teaching at NIBI, I wrote:

My first class was Monday, and it's been going well since then. Monday, I did a grammar test for the 1st and 2nd-year students, and talked about their vocabulary notebooks.

Tuesday, I reviewed the consonants with the 1st year students, and taught about hard and soft c, g, and th. (We were rolling on the floor laughing as I tried to get them to say R correctly!) With the second-year students, I did about 1/3 of a unit from their reading textbook and from their communication textbook, which was a lot of fun. Both textbooks have interesting topics, and in the communication class, most of the time we spend talking and practicing having conversations, so I get to make my students act stuff out.

Today, I decided to start teaching a writing/English practicing class for the 3rd and 4th year students. We talked about vocab notebooks, played the rhyming game that my brother and I always play, talked about writing (what they've used it for already, what they expect to use it for in the future, what they love and hate about it) and I gave a really basic overview of the writing process and the sort of structure we want to create in writing. (Both a "tree" (outline-based) and a "rope" (good transitions between topics). ) We also played scrabble and made up a campfire-type story, involving aliens from Mercury, a man who could fly, divorce, atomic bombs, and various talking animals. That was a lot of fun.

I'm still working on a schedule and syllabus for the classes, but most of the work is done. I just have to adjust it a little to what I know about students' English levels and write it all out. I also have gotten to look over the students' vacation writing assignments (journals and book reviews), so I'm hoping to provide feedback to the 1st and 2nd year (and eventually the 3rd and 4th year) students about what they need to work on, grammar- and writing-wise.

I'm really excited about my ideas for a vocabulary notebook. In previous semester, students were given lists of vocabulary to memorize each week. My idea is that the students get to pick words that they are interested in studying, which can be from their other classes. I’m really excited about it - I think it's a solution that will satisfy teachers and students better.

It's a bit more than a full-time job, but my heart is completely in it, so I'm loving it. I think once I get the classes more set-up (finish deciding a schedule and such) it will get a bit better.

Shalom!

Amanda

Ploung Village (right-brained version)

Sorry, this post has been sitting around on my computer, mostly done for about a month!

Okay, so I think I owe some explanation for the previous blog entry for those of you who haven’t gotten to talk with me about the dental clinic and my time in Srae Ambel/Ploung Village during the weeks of September 4^th and 11^th. This is probably something I’ll be unpacking for quite a while in more blog entries (and probably not in prose), but here I’ll give an orderly, right-brained account.

Central to the work of GCT (Genesis Community of Transformation, the NGO I’m currently working with) is community development through the CO (Community Organization) process. Slowly but sustainably, GCT’s staff teaches communities to organize themselves and use their own resources to help improve their living conditions. Some of the communities GCT works with are urban, while others are rural. Three of the rural communities that GCT works with are located in Koh Kong Province, Srae Ambel District; here is a map: http://g.co/maps/8ugsj. GCT also has land near these villages, which they call the Eden School of Agriculture (ESA), where they hope to bring farmers to educate them in better agricultural practices.

For the interested linguists among you, Srae Ambel means “Fields of Salt,” unfortunately a very appropriate name. There is a river that runs through Srae Ambel that has brackish (salty) water because it is so close to the sea. At certain times of the year, this river overflows its bed during high tide, flooding the rice fields in the low areas, bringing dissolved salt along with it. After years of flooding, there is so much salt in these fields that in the dry season, salt crystals are visible on the surface of the ground.

This is a huge problem, because rice is meant to grow in fresh water. Often, a farmer’s whole field of rice will die because of the salt. But even if the rice plants manage to survive, their yield decreases year by year as salt builds up in the soil. Many farmers in the area are unable to support their families on this meager crop, and as a result, they ask permission of the village chief to raze a new area of forest and plant a new rice field. Of course, increased deforestation also contributes to flooding.

The three villages that GCT works with are named Ploung, Chroy, and Boeung Preav. Unlike Srae Ambel, their names are rather mysterious. Ploung means “bomb,” Chroy means “to fluff rice after it’s been cooked,” and Boeung Preav means “Lake with no purpose.” I haven’t heard any good explanations for why the villages are so called. Ploung is a very poor village, Boeung Preav is only moderately poor, and Chroy is somewhere in-between.

As described in my previous blog entry, it’s about three kilometers from ESA to Ploung if you go the short way on a rough road hedged by forest– but that road is totally impassible by most vehicles during the rainy season because of flooding. All three villages are clustered along one long main road, so as you walk through Ploung, you gradually end up in Chroy, and then in Boeung Preav – and the road and living conditions gradually improve, as well. So far, GCT has focused most of its attention on Ploung, which was where the Dental Clinic was held, and the village in which I spent the most time.

The buildings in Ploung are built on stilts, to tempt a breeze and to avoid flooding. They are mostly wooden, with corrugated metal or thatch roofs. There are a few that are made entirely of thatch and bamboo, though as well. The houses are set back a ways from the road, and their stilts are about a story high, but the storefronts are built right up against the road, with knee-high stilts and only three walls, but a low roof in front to keep out the rain. The road is made of red clay, which is a good road material, but it’s run-down – bumpy, with divots and low shoulders that become permanent lagoons during the rainy season. Because nearly all of the animals are allowed to run free, the road is full of dung, and when it rains, the road goes ankle-deep in brown water.

The yards are mucky and full of animals – dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, cows, buffalo, occasional ducks, and even turkeys. The dogs bark whenever a stranger approaches, the cats keep mice out of the rice stores, the pigs, chickens, ducks, and cows are occasionally sold or eaten. The chickens and ducks also lay eggs, but Cambodians don’t drink cow milk. Some people will also eat dogs or cats. The buffalo are stores of wealth. Every year, they are used to plow the rice fields, and they can be sold for hundreds of dollars a each. They can also be eaten, in a pinch. They sleep under the house, where their dung piles up day after day. Every day, some of a family’s children or women take the buffalo along the road to ESA, into the forest to graze. Many people also collect edible wild plants, hunt, or fish in the forest. The mainstays of the village are fish, rice, and forest plants.

The one building in the village that is not built on stilts is the new primary schoolhouse. This was the location of the dental clinic. It’s a large wooden building with four rooms, painted a cheerfully bright yellow, with light blue trim. There about forty children from Ploung in each grade, but only one principal and one other teacher, both of whom teach a morning and an afternoon class. This adds up to grades one through four. In order to study beyond grade four, children from Ploung have to walk a long way to the next village, and to go on to middle or high school, the walk is even farther. So far, in the history of the village, no one has graduated from high school.

The men are usually bare-chested and wear shorts, pants, or the traditional kroma, a long bolt of fabric wrapped around the waist several times to make a mid-thigh-length skirt. The women wear what look to western eyes like colorful printed pajamas, or else the traditional sroung, similar to the kroma, but longer, in the form of a strapless dress that comes past the knees. Some of them also wear a kroma wrapped around their head in a traditional fashion. The teenagers wear very western jeans and t-shirts, the older kids wear whatever clothing they can find, and the little ones wear either shirts or pants – or nothing at all! People generally either wear flip flops or go barefoot, which is pretty sensible considering that every time you enter a building, you have to slip off your shoes.

Coming to Ploung with my coworkers Boral and Sarath was an amazing privilege. They have been working in Ploung for about a year and a half, and they seem to know and be loved by everyone. Even in the district capital, the town of Srae Ambel, they greeted many people by name and with much fuss and familiarity. (I.e. tossing – and catching – babies, punching teenagers, and teasing everyone) I was really amazed by the report and respect they had gained in such a short time in villages where people have intermarried lived as tight-knit neighbors for generations.

With such a wonderful introduction as to be a coworker of Puu (uncle) Sarath and Bong (older brother) Boral, I was warmly welcomed by everyone in the village. I got so much practice introducing myself in Khmer, as I met so many new people, and each asked the same familiar questions: What is your name? Where are you from? Are you married? How old are you? People were really surprised that I could/would walk from ESA to Ploung in the rain and the waist-deep water (in just one spot), eat the food, and sleep in their houses. I was told many times that I should marry a Khmer man, since I can eat the food (I quickly learned the Khmer for “I’m-not-married-yet-but-I-already-have-a-boyfriend”).

This place has really found a spot in my heart.