"Sus a day" all my chums "soc sa bye tei"? well the language training is over and we are being launched into the great Cambodian public with the sounds of K'mai ringing in our ears I was secretly hoping that I would miraculously develop a gift for learning languages but sadly it was not to be I got the grammar and all that stuff in one respect K'mai is easy in that there are no tenses but a lot of words to the untrained ear sound alike and it is hard to differentiate but at the end of the day it was my memory which let me down as I struggled to remember all the words but I will keep trying
At the end of language training we went straight into home stay which was a 24 hour stay in a small village 45 km's from Kampong Cham although a bit apprehensive about this as sleeping outdoors or above cattle on a piece of rush matting has never been quite my thing never the less I was quite looking forward to it. I rather rashly said before I came out that I wanted to try every thing that was on offer but fete would have it that I was not to experience the home stay as the night before I was struck down with fever joint pains and other symptoms not mentionable in polite company so I was left in the hotel.
My room mate Vicky from the Philippines had to brave this alone taking with her all the things i had bought for the family which included bats and balls for the children biscuits and a jar of sweets.Vicky brought back some photos of the boys playing with the bats etc she said that they were thrilled with these but had to be taught how to play with them as they had never had them before their dad was particularly pleased so that made me feel a bit better I will try to post the photo's at a later date.
Because of my illness my return to PP was delayed and that meant I was way behind with moving into my new apartment I had just two days to buy enough stuff to get me up and running including basics like sheets towels cutlery et al as the apartment had non of these things quite a feat I can tell you particularly on wobbly legs!!Any way my new friend Chris came to my rescue she let me stay at her place so I didn't have to go back to VSO Joy and had some home comforts including baked beans I was in heaven but I digress by Saturday and with Chris's help I had moved in and I love it
Yesterday was my first day at work getting to work was one of my biggest challenges as despite practising my bicycle riding skills in Kampong Cham I am still not confident enough to cycle around the city it may come in time but it is mad here on the roads and at present I just can't so I have arranged with one of the guards at VSO Saskya who doubles as a moto driver to pick me up both ways day two and its working well so far! he drives slowly and carefully.
My first day was memorable the office is situated at the Ministry for Health which lets CMA have a room in the basement which it shares with the fledgling Cambodian Midwives Council administration officer. The office was an absolute tip very dirty with rubbish everywhere so that was my first task to give it a tidy up as best i could.
The President a practising midwife in PP came in during the afternoon but my translator did not turn up so it was difficult to communicate (I learned afterwards that he does not work Mondays) which is helpful as that is the day she comes in however we got through she has set up a meeting on Thursday afternoon with the rest of the exec committee so that will be good and I can start to look at what needs to be done to strengthen the organisation so that it can improve midwifery practice and promote the profession there is a lot of empirical evidence to suggest that where there are strong professional associations standards improve and maternal and neonatal mortality rates improve
And the Floods well I woke up this morning to see my street under 4' of water!! how am I going to get to work this morning I thought no traffic was getting through but within half an hour it was clear now that's clever and that's Cambodia!!!
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