A Phnom Penh Saturday

My colleague from 'Daughters' has been at my house this afternoon. I’m teaching her to swim, as I have a small pool at my apartment. 

My swimming pool

Most Cambodians can’t swim as they have no P.E. lessons at school here. My lovely friend is so nearly swimming after just 2 lessons-very exciting. I also tried to teach Bunti, the Security guard's baby to swim, but he cried :-( 

We are so fortunate to have been taught to swim at school...

Currently it is the rainy season here, and Cambodia is very flooded in many provinces. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15246653

Lots of people have died-well over 200, mainly because they can’t swim and so they have drowned. Many, many more have lost their homes, and everything they own. Lots of peoples animals have drowned, and their crops failed as the land is too water logged.

Here in Phnom Penh the river does look very full, but only a few areas have been badly flooded. During the heavy rain storms the drains overflow and the streets flood, so we all drive through/walk through about 30cm of water/raw sewage/rubbish (nice!), it soon dries up again though.

Flooded streets: best not to think about what is in the water!

After I taught the swimming lesson today, we changed roles, and I had a lesson in Khmer cooking. I learnt how to cook Loc-Lac beef. I recommend you give it a try if you fancy trying something utterly delicious!!...

Mine looked a bit like this, but much nicer!

Here is the recipe:

Loc-Lac beef = My favorite Cambodian dish. Peppery, limey delicious beef, served with salad (seems to be a very Cambodian way of eating, hot food and salad) and rice, and a fried egg.

Chynam naa!! (Translation: very delicious)

INGREDIANTS  (for 2 portions)

Peppery sauce:

Black pepper corns and a grinder

Juice of 1 lime

2 garlic cloves

A large pinch of salt

Salad:

2 handfuls of Lettuce leaves (not iceburg the more floppy ones)

2 Tomatoes sliced into thin discs

1 small onion sliced into thin rings

Beef:

2 lg garlic cloves finely sliced

A hunk of rump steak chopped into small pieces

A large dollop of oyster sauce

A small dollop of fish sauce (not the same as oyster sauce-this one is made from salty fermented fish)

A dessert spoonful of sugar

2 eggs.

HOW TO MAKE IT:

First make the sauce (which goes on the side and gets spooned onto the dish as you eat)

Grind up lots of black pepper-must be freshly ground, atleast 2 table-spoons of it. Finely chop up 2 large garlic cloves and add to the pepper along with the juice of 1 lime and a good pinch of salt.  Put the sauce on one side until you are ready to eat.

Prepare a large plate with a bed of lettuce, topped with a layer of finely sliced onion, and then a layer of finely sliced tomato.

Fry 2 mashed garlic cloves in oil for a few mins, add some finely sliced beef (enough for 2 people) and stir fry until cooked. Add a dollop of oyster sauce, some fish sauce, and a desert spoon of sugar, simmer on low heat for about 5 minutes.

While the beef simmers fry an egg for each person. Fry it so the yoke is cooked through.

Poor the beef stir fry onto the middle of the salad, then top with the eggs. Serve with boiled white rice, and the peppery limey sauce. 

Cambodians never pile their plate up with food the way we would, eating is very communal, so the main dish goes in the middle and you get rice and then each add a small bit of the meat at a time to your plate (unless your a greedy foreigner like me who forgets and piles my plate high!) 

x

Cambodia's Pchum Ben Festival

These flowers are sold for offerings at the Pagodas (or sold to me to look pretty in my apartment). They cost about 8 pence each and the seller hand folds the petals on each flower.

Here in Cambodia it is the time of an annual event called Pchum Ben. This 'festival' seems to be unique to Cambodia.  
I write 'festival' like this, as it is such a spooky and spiritually dark event that to me it doesn't seem very festive. More like a grown-up creepy version of halloween. Cambodia is a predominately Buddhist country, but the Buddhist way of life tends to be pic'n'mixed with bits of other religions/traditions all around the world so can look very different from country to country.


The Pchum Ben festival is when many Cambodians pay their respects to their dead ancestors. This is what I have been able to find out about it: Monks chant mantras all night for a number of days running up to the 15th day, as they believe the 'gates of Hell' open on the 15th day of the 10th month in the Khmer calendar (this year that is Wednesday September 28th on our calendar). 

Monks chanting before eating food left at the pagoda (some also gets given to the poor)

It is believed that when the 'gates of Hell' open the spirits, or ghosts of those who went to hell come to earth for 1 day and roam around looking for food. Cambodian people head to the pagoda's at sunrise and leave food there for their ancestors spirits to eat (someone told me they leave very small sticky rice, as some of the spirits are thought to have very small mouths as a punishment for something they did which was bad). As it isn't clear which pagoda the ancestors' spirits may arrive at, they go to various pagodas near where their ancestors lived to leave food. 
I don't understand how the ancestors have ended up in Hell??? And I dont get this: Buddhists believe in reincarnation of the spirit after death, this seems to be a contradiction to the idea of spirits being stuck in Hell, but no-one seems to be able to explain why they are in hell and have not been re-incarnated?

Cambodian's eat rice 3 times a day, so of course lots of rice will be taken to the pagoda's

Today I saw ladies selling flowers, incense and birds in cages (I think the birds are for offerings also? maybe they were just hoping someone wanted a pet bird-but i think this is unlikely!), where there was a big crowd of people queuing up to enter a pagoda. 

Ill fated birds?? (note the day time Pyjama bottoms -all the rage the wear PJ's in the day here)

Away from the Pagoda's Phnom Penh is really quiet today (Monday), with most shops and cafe's closed Monday-Wednesday. Many people have returned to their families in the province they are from. The positives of this event (besides a much appreciated week off work, for catching up on rest) seem to be that the Cambodian people spend time together as families. I have been hearing/reading some pretty distressing stuff about the break down of families in this nation: parents/husbands selling their daughters and wives into the sex trade;  mothers selling their babies to traffickers;  child abuse;  wife beating... 

I hope and pray that this Pchum Ben is a time of Fathers loving their families, that God will turn the hearts of Cambodian family members towards each other, and that they will love the members of their family who are still alive, and that something positive will come out of this dark unfestive festival. 

Thankful that I don't have to worry about my life after death involving being in hell with a very small mouth, only getting to eat rice once a year (I'm totally over rice already b.t.w). 

Life after death: I will be in Heaven with Jesus-Hooray to that!!! 

For this week however I will be mainly by the pool, or sleeping ;-) 

Cambodian countryside

I started my new job with a very timely trip- the annual Daughters' staff retreat. It was brilliant timing for me to be able to get to know the staff team and who does what.
It was the first time i had been outside Phnom Penh, so I was looking forward to the journey, and it didn't disappoint.
Most of Cambodia is covered in Pea green rice fields

The people you may be able to see are planting rice in the flooded fields. It is rice planting season now.

Along the journey I also saw lots and lots of ponds covered in water-lilies, very pretty.

Not the best picture of lilies- but they were everywhere along the side of the road

We passed through small villages where the houses were mainly still in the traditional style: wooden and on stilts. Most houses had a cow or 2 underneath, a hammock, the odd chicken, some a motorbike. 

Typical Cambodian house from a village in the provinces. 

The place we stayed at was near Kampot in the south of Cambodia, near the coast. We traveled for 3 hours on main roads, and then for 1/2 hour on a red dirt track (very bumpy) until we arrived at the beautiful retreat centre. 

We stayed by a river, so here I am... by the river

Our accommodation- cute or what :-) 

The Khmer staff were in charge of catering. We went to the market in Kampot and they bought food which we cooked on a BBQ. I struggled with the food... Im not massively keen on rice, which we ate 3 times a day. I don't eat chicken's heads or chickens feet, and rice with pork, or noodle soup for breakfast is not really my thing. I think I will have to get used to some interesting dishes :

I found that the retreat place sold wine and almost crisps (salted broad beans), and had a stash of french magazines so I made up for all that rice and food with eyes like this. . .

Phew! Wine-O-Clock for me. A moment of (almost) normality on a lovely balcony

We went to the beach, at a place called Kep. The French (Cambodia used to be a French colony) had got there 1st and put a massive statue of a naked woman on the sea front.

Very Un-Cambodian. Very French. 

There was also a massive crab statue. Here are some of my new colleagues, with me and the Crab.

At Kep beach 

What a great way to start a new job.

My 1st week in Phnom Penh

I have been in Cambodia a whole week!!! (And survived to tell you about it!!)
My initial thoughts are:
It is hot and wet!!
It smells funny!
The roads are insane!!

My hair is getting curlier each day- it mainly it looks like I have stuck my hand in an electric socket:

Curly Cambodia hair!

Monica's humidity hair

I do seem to keep getting electric shocks from the dodgy electrics, so maybe this has something to do with it? We have high humidity-it is rainy season= dramatic monsoon rain fall, and thunder storms. I look increasingly like Monica from Friends when she goes to Hawaii!!!

I have mainly spent the week trying to over come jet-lag (i think I have finally conquered it!), quite a few nights were spent lying awake in the dark for hours-not so much fun! But the past 2 days have been better :-)

I have achieved various things to help me start to set up my life here...

The 1st day I got a mobile phone, sounds like a simple thing to do? But here in Cambodia I found I had to buy a hand set from a scruffy shop, a sim card from a shiny new bright yellow 'Hello' phone shop, where it took about 4 people and a photocopy of my passport :-/ to buy a sim card, and then some phone credit from a little stall at the side of the road. This all felt like quite an achievement-and a culture shock on day 1!! 

The 2nd day I kind of repeated the process in order to get a dongle for internet connection. Im up and running on my 'unlimited' month of internet, which the girl in the shop told me once Id bought it, "isnt actually unlimited, it's just called unlimited"!!?? Ok! It seems to work so far.

I also managed to get a helmet: 

So I have been taking Moto-dops (a moped taxi). Every street corner in Phnom Penh has a group of men who say "you wan moto lady", if you do, you hop on the back of their moped, try and explain where you would like to go, and then cling on (praying the whole way that you don't die) while they weave in and out of 100's of other moto's, tuc-tuc's, cars, trucks, dogs, bikes, people etc. and usually end up where you expected. Only one time this week I had to get off the moto, as the driver was driving like a mad man in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go. 

And a P.O. Box (again this was a right palarva!!) but I have now rented my own post box :-) If anyone would like to send me post-especially british fashion mags and chocolate ;-), but all post would be much appreciated, let me know and Ill send you my address. 

I started work yesterday. I have a design room, where I will be based, and where the girls will come for their design and pattern cutting lessons.

The view from the design room

The new design room, the fan is very important!!

Here I am designing some men's accessories 

My desk (anyone who has worked with me knows it wont be this tidy for long!!)

Tomorrow I am going on a retreat with the staff team at Daughters. We are going to Kep and Kampot, on the Cambodian coast. Ive not been out of Phnom Penh before, so am looking forward to seeing the countryside as we travel, and enjoying the sea...pictures to show you soon I hope!!

Kindness

I am feeling so very appreciative of all the encouragement and love people are giving me as I prepare to move to Cambodia. Thank you so much to those people who have been praying for me, offering financial support, advise and practical help. You know who you are, and I am feeling overwhelmed with how kind you have been.

x x x x x x x xx 

"SUESAWDAY"

The word for 'hello'  in Khmer is pronounced 'sue-saw-day' with sue as in a woman's name, saw as in a thing you cut with, and day as in sunday.

I have been doing some basic language study- learning Khmer is essential as the women I will be working with  mostly don't speak English, and some are illiterate in Khmer. I cant find a language school in London which teaches Khmer, so I've got a CD. I can so far only say a few basic words/phrases. Once I get to Phnom Penh I will be having some language lessons, and I am fortunate that there are some wonderful translators at Daughters. 

"You want Moto Lady"

Phnom Penh moto's

Another challenge for me is going to be riding a moped around the streets of Phnom Penh- Im scared of Motor bikes, bikes, mopeds, anything with 2 wheels (give me a horse any day). So far I have managed wobbling on a Boris bike around London, it was the 1st time I have ridden a bike since I was about 12! Next I will be getting on a friends Moped-eeek!!! Im selling as many of my belongings as possible, so I can hopefully afford to buy a Moto when I get to Phnom Penh-how exciting!!

I am so excited about this amazing opportunity to share all that I have with such wonderful Women in Cambodia. I have Luke 4:16-19 going around in my head. God has shown me personally what this verse means in my life: he has set me free, given me riches beyond measure, and freedom to be who he made me to be. My prayer for the women I meet will be that they also receive the freedom Jesus offers them-that they would know his Kindness beyond measure!

“The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the lords favor” Luke 4:16-19

Email newsletters

If you would like to receive my monthly email newsletters, which will include prayer updates and requests, then please send me an email/facebook message and let me know your email add. so I can include you on the mailing list.

Financial supporters

‘Daughters of Cambodia’ will pay me a local salary, and cover costs for my accommodation, visa and health insurance. I don’t have to raise all this money myself, but as ‘Daughters’ is a charity they need financial donations and supporters in order to be able to employ me. If you would be able to financially support ‘Daughters’ and the work I will be doing then please go to Donate page- link below...

http://www.daughtersofcambodia.org/get_involved.php

Send us out to shine in the darkness...

Both the evening service and youth group were on Social justice tonight...more than just coincidence in my opinion!
I love it when God makes it that clear what he is saying to us as a church, it was unplanned between church team and youth team but we all look at the same theme on the same day!!
Did you know in the bible there are over 300 verses about the poor, and God's concern for them (he makes it so crystal clear we cant ignore this!!).
As Christians we are called to have compassion on those who are the last, the least and the lost.
As Christians we shouldn't turn a blind eye to the needs all around us.
As Christians we are called to LOVE our neighbour!!

"And what does the Lord require of you? 
To act justly and to love mercy 
and to walk humbly with your God" Micha 6:8

However...
As I sit writing this on a comfy sofa with a blanket over my feet, and a cup of tea next to me, I know that there is a homeless man sleeping rough outside our church, I know as I listen to the rain bucketing down outside that so many people here in London have no shelter, no bed, no hot drink. I feel like a hypocrite spending my evening thinking about loving those most in need, but now I feel helpless to know what to do, how to help him.
We all have an inbuilt conscience, we all know right from wrong, no matter if we call ourselves followers of Jesus or not, we can see the world around us in full of injustice, poverty, abuse, inequality, we all get too comfortable with our comfort.
"There is enough in the world for everyones need, but not enough for everyones greed"
What are we going to do about it? What am I going to do about it?...

I rediscovered this song today, Vicky Beeching, break our hearts.

I long that God would do just that. Break my heart for the things that break his, and send me out to shine in the darkness. Not just sing about it...But actually be his hands and feet, taking his love to those most in need.

The preparations have begun!!

Cambodia here I come...well in 11 weeks time anyway :)
Im so excited, Im counting down the days (75 to go)!!

Ill be going to work for 'Daughters of Cambodia'. A Christian charity in Phnom Penh, in the heart of the red light district in Cambodia's capital city. 'Daughters of Cambodia' provide a way out of the sex trade, for women who are working as prostitutes and want to leave. Many of the women (and men who have been working as Ladyboys) have been forced to work as prostitutes by their families.

Im going to work for 'Daughters of Cambodia' from the end of August 2011. All of the women who are employed by Daughters learn a skill or set of skills, the long term goal is that these women can then find good employment outside of the sex trade. I will be teaching them design and pattern cutting skills. I will also design clothing, home-wears and fashion accessories to be made by the beautiful Daughters girls in the sewing centre, and sold in the Daughters boutique. There is an optional church service on a Friday at the Daughters centre, where I hope to sometimes teach God's word. I would also love to run some Discipleship Bible study groups with the Women and the Men from Daughters 'Sons' project, who have become Christians. Having enjoyed looking at self esteem and image with teenagers and women over the past 2 years, Id love to also incorporate biblical image and value workshops.

Here is a video about Daughters if you'd like to find out more...

This is a blog to keep in touch with friends and family once Im there, but I have set it up now as I begin to prepare for the move. I hope you will feel a part of what Im doing as you read my updates, as i reflect on my experiences and follow the passion God has put on my heart to show these amazing women that he has made them in his image, overflowing with potential for a new future and able to put their trust in him for a new life.

... and you never know perhaps you can come and visit me sometime..... x x x