The poor

We continue to be moved by the plight of the poor in this nation. Whereas our nations (we see ourselves as one-third Aussies, two-thirds Kiwis!!) have a safety net of social welfare, in this nation (as in so many nations) a person can keep falling and falling.

I took Patrick's moto for a run yesterday to pay some bills - and promptly got a puncture. A helpful local pointed me in the direction of the nearest fix-it man (every third corner has one). Where he had set up shop on the street corner, a stones-throw away from the tourist mecca of Wat Phnom, my moto-puncture-repair man appeared to have his family living too. Mum, grandma in a hammock and four children. One boy was stark naked; maybe 8-9 years old. He seemed mentally impaired a little too - just wandering around the street, starkers.

Susie wandered off and returned with six packs of soya milk. They were gratefully received by hungry little mites. Sad, sad - how lost, how poor so many are.

Wintery blast

My little spot - on the front patio. Susie brought the 'cold weather gear' back from NZ just in time!

Life is getting harsher over here. Plumetting temperatures meant that I needed to find a pull-over this morning when I got out of bed. My first time in six months, wearing a bit of wool!

For the locals, anything below 25 degrees is seriously cold. Nimol, our lovely language teacher, says that she is late out of bed every morning now because it is 'so cold'. Amazing, how such 'cold' to a Cambodian is breaking out in a hot sweat to a Pom. As for us, a touch of cooler weather is just so refreshing. We should have another 6-8 weeks of temperatures around 25 - wonderful!

Cambodian wakas

Where there are people, there are food sellers!

Today marks the first day of the Cambodian 'Water Festival'. The highlight of this festival is river-boat racing, waka style. The city is buzzing and excitement is high.

Phnom Penh is built on the banks of three converging river systems: the mighty Mekong River, the Tonle Sap River and the Bassac River. The Mekong is the 12th largest river in the world; 4800km long. It starts in China, touches Tibet, forms part of the border between Burma and Laos, then flows down Laos and right through the heart of this nation, before flowing on to Vietnam and into the sea.

To the north-west of Cambodia lies a very large lake - the Tonle Sap. The Tonle Sap River runs out of the southern end of this lake, and flows into the Mekong River river right alongside down town. a few hundred metres south, and another river carves away from the Mekong. The Bassac River flows roughly south, pretty well parallel to the Mekong in its meandering run through Cambodia, Vietnam and into the sea.

Waiting time ...

So much river water means that the boys just have to have fun. There are (at my count) 65 blokes aboard each waka. Today was initial heats. Like different swimming strokes, there were a couple of different stroke styles in the heats - waka-paddle style upright on your knees, and another style of standing and rowing forward - pushing on the paddles.

Water festival is invasion time for Phnom Penh. Over a million people come into the city from the provinces. Much of the central city is now blocked to traffic. We walked a couple of kilometres to have a look-see today. Quite noticeable too is the amount of hills-tribe people in town, many with their provincial crafts to sell. It is important to keep reminding ourselves - Cambodia is a rural nation. Phnom Penh is not what this nation is really like - 80%+ of Cambodians live in provincial villages.

On the Tonle Sap River - taken from upstairs in the FCC

Susie's back

Susie today in FCC as in 'Foreign Correspondents Club' - a cafe overlooking the Tonle Sap river in downtown Phnom Penh. The FCC was a focal point for Westerners' during the war, prior to the take-over by Khmer Rouge in 1975.

Hard on the heels of Peter and Kerry, Sue returned this Tuesday. Her four weeks away in NZ and Australia were excellent in every way. We are most grateful to so many who have blessed and cared for her on this journey - and so pleased too at how often she was at the right place at the right time: LinkNZ day in Palmerston North; Christian Leaders Network monthly meeting in New Plymouth; church in Toowoomba, New Plymouth and Palmerston North; coffee shops in ....

She is happy happy to be back - and that hand of hers continues to improve, too.

Good buddies

Out and about in the tuk-tuk. Pete quickly learned to keep his elbow tucked in!

Having Pete Denholm and Kerry Hartley in town for three days was most excellent! They are our first home-based visitors, and most worthy of the title!

It took Kerry very little time to establish that many of the stall owners at our local 'shopping centre' (the Russian Market) were of Chinese descent. He was quickly conversing with the locals like an old-timer - pretty sickening really for me to watch, having been here nearly six months and still only being capable of stuttering along!

We got around a bunch of places and people - Big Frank at Hagar, Bophal at the Centre of Peace orphanage, Grahame and Sandra at another orphanage (blog article to come on this), duck into church, plus a whole lot of places around town. Pete was a real surprise; happy as a duck in mud for this his first trip out to Asia. Even his tummy turns after breakfast at the market did not discourage him.

Praying for God's little champion, Bophal, at the 'Centre of Peace' orphanage

River of Life Church in Waitara will be sending out a team next year - so that has made Pete's time here even more valuable. As for Kerry, he shall certainly return!

The tides they are a'changin'

The tide has been going out a little lately, people-wise. Kara's visit ended; then Susie headed out. Aussie friends Mark and Jo are back to Melbourne for two months; then good neighbours Patrick and Carol headed off to Perth for two months also. At least with Patrick I get to baby-sit his toolbox and his Spider with the ever-flat battery ...

Anyway, two more sleeps, and Kerry Hartley and Peter Denholm blow in. I'm as excited as Pete's puppy on steroids! Two more sleeps and Sue is back. Sleep on - and Donald Scott and his boys arrive from Christchuch via Malaysia. They have 11 days with us, starting Dec 12. Andrew and Ruth Smith have signed in during January and more teams are on the horizon. We want to spread th bug of 'Love Cambodia' far and wide!

We have a new assignment to - be mum and dad to 11 boys and 6 girls, nearly all teenagers, for 6 weekends from Dec 19. Grahame and Sandra, Aussies out of Citiepoint Church in Brisbane, are getting a timely break too and have asked Susie and I to sleep at the orphanage they run over the weekends Fri-Mon am. Just when we thought that we had raised all our kids .... no, not at all! It will be a joy. Looks like I'm getting signed up to take another class at New Life Fellowship too - this one a foundations class for new christians. Great!

Cooking with gas

Good-bye 150kg/month of firewood; hello gas. The work has been done at the 'Centre of Peace' orphanage with two gas cookers and a gas bottle installed, and a servery now in place. Bophal was out when I called but the cook was all smiles and a bunch of the kids know me by now and so I got the guided tour!

Child-friendly height: the new servery

'Scared stiff'

No - not me. Young Heng.

Today I had been asked by Pastor Kakada to speak at a church seminar. I picked up Heng, who has been working for Mark and Jo in their admin office this year, to be translator and headed 8km or so north.

Things very often are not what they seem in Cambodia. The seminar was actually ... as far as I can make out ... the AGM of the church with a couple of teaching slots dropped in. There is more tomorrow, so perhaps the 46-page Khmer AGM report was just part of this morning's program.

Anyway, I did my teaching and Heng had a few 'say that again please ... what was that again??' moments but went pretty well over-all. We sit down and he turns to me and says 'I am scared stiff'. I then discover that this is Heng's first sortee into the world of translation. Poor bloke - I gave him heaps of stick ... told him that I had no idea Cambodians could be scared 'stiff' - thought that only happened to Aussies ...

Heng (left), Pastor Kakada (right) over the lunch table.

A kitchen for 70

Two blocks from our place, Bophal manages a orphanage of 65 children and one tiny wee new baby. With their few staff, that makes some 70 people living out of an old 2-storey house that has a bit of a courtyard. The place just buzzes - shining little faces, two classrooms to teach up to grade 4 downstairs, and always washing hanging out to dry.

The Kelly's introduced us to this orphanage when we visited Cambodia last September - and finally I've got back there to visit.

The kitchen is a little basic. 150kg of firewood go thru the 'stoves' every month. There is no servery and the cook is hotter than a pig on a spit in her daily work.

Patrick and Bophal in the kitchen (above) and the fire stoves (top)

Bophal is a treasure. I asked her to consider what she would like the kitchen to become; talk it over with the cook and I would be back in 2 days. They had plans drawn up - an L-shaped servery; two gas cookers - simple but great. Now she is getting a couple of quotes and we'll get the job done - dedicated to a fine kiwi couple who put some $ from a property sale into blessing children in Cambodia.

I had in mind to get Donald Scott and his two sons, from Christchurch, to put this together when they arrive here next month. However, the concrete-built benches and tile tops are not really a hammer and 4-inch nail job. The boys will be thrown into English classes instead - and I'll get Donald wrapping Christmas pressies for 65 little ones :-)

Frank

One of the huge privileges of living out here is the remarkable new people that we get to make friends with. Frank is high on the 'remarkables' list - an outstanding fella who would be most upset at me if he ever read my commendations of him.

Frank comes from Perth (too!) - supported out of Riverview Church there. He heads up 'Hagar Catering' - the catering arm of Hagar (Hagar is also involved with a soya-milk business, abused wife rescue/support, sexually exploited children rescue/support and other areas). In the four years since he arrived here, this man has become a legend.

Frank is firstly a heck of a nice bloke. He's a gentleman and a godly man. He's such a softy, that when a moto guy pulled a knife on him and 'requested' the contents of his wallet, Frank's first reaction was to quickly lift his arm. Moto man and moto go splat to the ground. Feeling terrible, Frank leans over, picks the guy up, brushes him off, picks the moto up and apologises! Still feeling bad, he goes and confesses his random violence to his pastor!

Four years ago, Hagar had a dishevelled training program for hospitality. They had no expertise, no manager and no way of achieving their desire of job creation for the poor. A guy talked to Frank about the woes of Hagar's hospitality training. Within 15 minutes, in a Perth restaurant, Frank said 'OK, I'll go over'.

Since then, Frank pruned everything back to ground zero, set in training procedures and started tendering for cleaning and catering contracts. Today, Hagar Catering has an annual turnover of $1million - a phenomenal amount in this country. Frank operates from his knees (4am riser 'I'm coming, dad!') and is hugely wise, professional and funny!! He has got contracts for catering and cleaning, from clothing factories to the American embassy; from fancy hotels to schools. Further, a couple of years back he set up a restaurant - two levels and outdoor garden area. Hagar Restaurant does a great lunch buffet; sets high standards wherever you look and has the happiest staff in town.

In all of this, the poor are trained, employed, professionally developed and given a future. One of his problems is the amount of head-hunting of his staff he is experiencing. Businesses want to get his people - they are so good. In every challenge and difficulty (often multiple per day) Frank is an example of a man who knows where his help comes from.

I love this guy. He is the business mentor in the weekly small-group I am in (I'm the 'pastoral mentor'). Few people in life have so inspired and blessed me as young Frank.

For stories, Frank is without peer. Take his stint in Papua New Guinea for example. 'You have to be very careful with your instructions to the folk over there' he says. Like the time he carefully explained - 'see the rubbish on the ground there. Pick the rubbish up. Put it all on the truck. When all the rubbish is on the truck, take it to the dump and burn it'. Instructions were followed to the letter. By the time he got wind that all was not well, he turned up at the dump to find the fire just about burned out - rubbish, truck, the lot ...

Perthites

Don and Pat moved into our second floor here yesterday. They are troopers from Perth - in their early 70's and old hands at living in SE Asia. They have come as interim directors of 'Transform Cambodia' - the work that Patrick and Carol have headed up until now. The Kelly's are back to Perth for a couple of months, then return here to a heap of other involvements.

Don and Pat - my new cooks!

They are brave battlers, these folk. Pat recently did a face-dive down a flight of stairs and Don had a week of back-pain agony before getting on the plane out here. With 20 steps up to their floor, Pat is 'back on the horse' so to speak.

Their space is pretty well set up, with a good size bedroom and then a large open room to themselves. Don got a fridge and the cane table sorted yesterday ... well, he paid, I sorted. The fridge was fun - one metre of fridge tied onto the back of my moto and navigating home from Central Market - a decent 20-minute run from the other side of town. Fridge, Spider and rider all good!

All going well, Pat and Don are with us until January - when they return to Perth for their 50th wedding anniversary. Sue and I ticked over 30 years on Monday. These guys make us feel young!

Bonnevie's

We've just become easier to find. No excuse whatsover now for you not to come and visit us. Land at Phnom Penh International Airport and ask any moto driver to take you to the Bonnevie's ...

Patrick and Carol are off to Perth tomorrow for two months and I have kindly offered to babysit his tool-kit, so I'll get this sign anchored before it turns up on some-one else's doorstep down the road!

Wedding bells

With all the excitement of Melody becoming engaged and her happy emails and texts back and forth, I have been reflecting a little on cultural differences surrounding the wedding day.

1. Timing - it is all with the monks. Go to your local temple, talk to your monk man and he gets back to you with the favoured date - when omens are all good.

2. Venue - a great choice ... of streets. 'Street party' takes on a whole new meaning in Phnom Penh. Local hire companies set up a tented affair, together with chairs, tables, banquet, the whole bit - on the road. The tarseal road. Or, the dirt road - your choice.

In the process of setting up - neighbourhood wedding venue

Riding your moto through streets that are two-thirds blocked with the wedding reception is just part of every-day experience here. Better still, riding around a block because the wedding reception has filled the street is just as likely ...

3. Gifts - could not be easier. Money. The envelope is opened with you present.

4. Who pays - interesting. Everyone would be the short answer. The man pays his in-laws for his future wife. Prices are negotiable. A lovely guy in the church here needs to come up with US$3000. A white boy marrying a local girl is up for a $60,000 house for his inlaws to hand her over. David Collins, look and learn ...

It appears a little fluid - inlaws can pay, or the young couple can pay for the reception etc. Which, hopefully, the guests cover. The trick is to invite the right guests. One of our friends got an invite to a wedding from people whom he had never met.

5. Love - distressingly optional. The right family, social considerations and the like are paramount. Young folk we know a little who are now engaged are out of favour with her parents. He is 'below her' - the former man she knew, the guy who beat her up, was much more suitable. She should not have broken it off with him.

Life in the old girl

It is one thing to have one's wife canter off overseas for a time ... but for a bloke to lose his computer too ...

Happily, it was not what could have been - but just a hard disc ending its useful life. Monday was a fun day with a great young IT techie, as we got to resurrect the trusty Evo machine. New hard disc- no problem. Set-up discs - yes, safely in an Aussie storage shed. Nothing that money cannot fix - off on a tiki-tour of Phnom Penh computer shops until they were sourced and loaded.

Computer shops here have a heap of bright young things working flat out. One place was mostly second-hand machines. A heap of machines came in while we were waiting - and all hard drives pulled from them in the first five minutes ...

... which reminds me of a true Patrick tale of life in Phnom Penh. His relatively new DVD player had kaputted. At the time he was about to return to Aussie, so he decides at the last minute to toss it in the bag and get it fixed in Perth. He takes it to a joint where the sign says '$55 up front - comes off the bill when fixed'. So Patrick hums and ha's and decides 'may as well'.

A couple of days later he gets a phone-call - 'mate, I have some bad news for you. It is not a Sony'. Patrick laughs - he suspected as much. 'What's more' the bloke says, 'it is not a DVD player either'.

'Is so' says Patrick. 'Is not' says the fix-it bloke. 'Well mate, I've watched a bunch of DVD's on it' responds Patrick. "No way' says the bloke. 'No way could this thing play a DVD. Wherever did you buy it?? 'Phnom Penh' says Patrick. Laughter at the other end. 'Look mate, come on in and get your $ back'. Patrick says no problem - he is happy to pay as the guy is doing his job. 'No, come on in and get your money. No way could I take money off you in good conscience for this.'

Back to the other girl in my life - Evo is almost back to where she was. Nearly all my stuff was backed up (thanks, Scotty!) and life continues!