Diary

2008-05-15 - Starting at the new orphanage

At the orphanage our very first mission was to get familiar with the children, the staff and their daily routines. We have also been interviewing and taking pictures of all the new sponsor children, which are about 40. In addition to this we have been teaching English every day, on request from the staff. This week we decided to make the teaching less intensive and more organized. We bought English books, note books and pencils to the children and they became very happy when receiving these, since they are not used to having something that is completely their own. This also made them even more eager to learn English. At the same time we limited the teaching to three days a week, while the two other days are focused on playing games or other arranged informal activities.

The country and the life in this city; the poverty, the homeless people, the street children, the child workers, the lower hygiene standards, the dirty environment, the smells, the power cuts and culture differences over all, took a few weeks to adapt to, just as expected. Even after two months here we haven’t actually adapted to everything.

Corruption is one of the most striking and harmful phenomenon we have personally happened to encounter here. In sharp counterbalance is the spontaneity and friendliness of the local people and their willingness to make contact even without a common language. To these contrasts one could add unbelievably beautiful weather from day to day and striking beautiful and authentic beaches with swaying palm trees we saw on the west coast of Cambodia. The sincere welcome and spontaneous fondness helped us adjusting to the everyday life in the orphanage.

However, perhaps surprisingly fast, we started to consider our apartment on street 552 in Toul Kork, as the home with big H. Although we did not have common language, and we were able to communicate fluently only with a couple of the staff members in the orphanage, we were able to solve numerous daily affairs, using just body language and a few common English and Khmer words. The children have truly been a great inspiration and source of happiness for us. Daily, we get amazed by the cheerfulness of the children, and the fact that the big grieves these young people already has gone through by losing their families, cannot be traced in their faces or appearances.
We experienced a small disappointment when we had to call off the Olympic Games we had been planning for a long time. We haven’t had any rain in the past two months, but last Friday it started raining cats and dogs and we truly got to know what heavy rain looks like. The field where we were going to keep the Olympics became a lake. Hence, if we would have wanted to keep the Olympics as planned, on Sunday morning at six, we would have had to change the events into swimming and rowing... This Sunday, the orphanage had already made other plans, but we hope that we will be able to give the children their sports day next week. The children go to school every day except Sundays, so the only day that everyone is gathered in the orphanage at the same time is Sundays.

Monday was also a day to remember, when we brought the children a bunch of donated clothes and other fabric. The children were lined up in four lines and one by one they came to get a piece of clothing for themselves. We had been marking every piece of clothing with the name of our organization in beforehand, since we know that donations easily end up in the hands of the wrong persons in this country. We had also been putting the clothes into different piles depending on the size, so that the sharing of the clothes would go as smoothly as possible and so that we would be able to give the clothes directly to the children, and in that way hopefully avoid the clothes to find their ways out of the orphanage. It was a great feeling to get to be the one handing out these donations. The best payment for every donator is probably the happy face of each child receiving a new t-shirt, a new pair of pants or a new cap.
In the beginning of January we got new colleagues to our new sponsor project, as well as new roommates. It has been a joy for us to share ideas and to realize this new project together with our new volunteers Camilla and Oili.

Greetings,
Liisa and Ville-Veikko Pitkänen