Update - March 2008

If you read the e-mail, you can skip to **
The school is way bigger than the 4 walls that define it, with more happening outside of the main space than inside.
Our computer lab, a room inside of a shack next to the school with 5 computers, is a great success. The students had always asked that we teach computers. Now we are, and with great success. We have 5 classes per day, for 90 minutes each, plus weekend tutorials. The teachers are all students and volunteers who had some previous understanding of computers. The manager is a student from the community, Sok Eing, who is also a university IT student. He is a great success story, and keeps all the computers running smoothly. Many thanks to our donors for making this come alive.

LEADERSHIP TRAINING:
I will likely talk about how great Sokchea’s leadership training are for a long time; maybe the rest of my life. Perhaps it will become sad. In any case, Sokchea has taught levels I and II (45 hours of training) 6 times at Aziza (with an average 25 per class). We can now say that we have a large body of leaders, and the results show all around. I regularly show up and am struck with pride with the initiatives the students are taking on, and how they shine. The level of English speaking has gone up, and more and more students are finding quality full and part time jobs (quality, for the local economy that is).
Sokchea has brought together a group of 12 volunteer students, or Team Leaders, who want the opportunity to practice leadership skills by taking on a responsibility within the school, as well as assisting with our Leadership trainings. Having the Team Leaders be a part of things gives us much more leverage in our ability to get things done and influence the community (since they are the community).
The leadership training has gone on the road, and so have the Team Leaders. Many of the Team Leaders are also our best presenters, and during these weekend-long trainings to other groups, they assist with teaching the lessons, talk about their lives, how they overcame obstacles, the challenges of living in a slum, and just getting to know each other (see the above picture of our student Lena holding hands with a student from the countryside at the end of a leadership training). In exchange the rural students show them their lives, the farms they work, and local customs. It is another achievement for which I am proud to be a part of, and feels like it will have the most lasting impact since these students seem unstoppable, and I have full faith that they will be great leaders for the future of Cambodia.
While away at the most recent leadership weekend, 2 team leaders taught a Kundalini Yoga class and did a great job, thanks to a very cool group that is teaching yoga/meditation to our students and the community 2 evenings per week; http://www.kundaliniyogacambodia.org/
We have a lot of fun, and have activities for physical and mental wellness in addition to yoga. Every Sunday evening we go to do aerobics/dancing at Olympic stadium. With a hint of communist mass-exercise, it is pure fun and my favorite part of the week. About 25 teenagers all pile into 3 tuk tuks for our weekly routine, and we get special attention from the teacher who recognizes the student’s enthusiasm. The students all say their dancing has improved, and it is contributing to the high level of confidence they have these days.

**
We had a huge X-mas party packed with activities from afternoon to night, organized by the students, finishing with a loud dance party that our students are always good for.
A clown came, and so did Michael Higgins and his brother. Cambodian medical students came recently and gave the 1st of 3 shots of a tetnus vaccine to students over 8 years old (see picture of kids holding their arms – there were over 90 recipients that day).
One thing we have been doing since the beginning is giving the students de-worming pills. Recently we gave out a round, and had a nurse assist with the education portion of the treatment, making sure kids understand what they are taking and why (if they wanted to take it). Two days after we gave them out, a mother told us that her child puked up a 4” worm. I was so happy to hear it was making an impact.
We are lucky to now have a great Cambodian doctor come weekly to help sick students and their families (lucky, and blessed by great donors). It has been a big undertaking of resources, but is going great. Many students who lived with sickness are now well! Dr. Chenda (female) also teaches a few days a week, and assists with health trainings for our women’s group. After she gives the exam, our medical coordinator, Sreang, fills the prescriptions and distributes the medicine, carefully going over the instructions and asking patients to write down and sign that they understand how to take the medicine. We also have an Australian nurse, Lucy, volunteering to create good structures to provide the best health care and education we can, and to make the best use of our funds.
One night, an owl flew into the very tall palm tree in front of the school. I was happy to see the majestic, rare creature bless us with his presence. Simultaneously, a student was preparing to throw a rock at it. I motioned for him not to do so, and said that I liked owls. A few of the students explained to me that the owl is thought to bring death, and that the death could be getting placed into someone as we watched it, our necks creaking upward. After I thought about it from their side (I mean owls do have a pretty creepy look), I decided to join them and we all threw stones up at the bringer-of-death.
Just kidding! I gave my best performance and tried to convince them that owls are great, which seemed relatively effective to the 6 kids who were actually listening to the student who was translating for me. After a bit the owl flew away, and I thought it must kind of suck to be an owl in Cambodia.
We recently went to a very small village outside of Oudong, the old capital of Cambodia, and Sokchea gave a leadership training. The boys slept on tarps outside the manager’s house and the girls slept inside. I spread my tarp under a bamboo tree, and had multiple students approach me that they were concerned that the tree would take the oxygen out of the air during the night, and I would be a little deprived of oxygen. They said that during the day trees give out oxygen, but at night they take it in and give out carbon dioxide. I moved my tarp after they also said that I was on a cow path.
Cucumbers, I feel, should not be cooked, but so often in Cambodia they are.
Oh, and we had some tragedies too. I don’t feel the need to publish them, but of course it is not all rosy in a poor community within a country know for human rights abuses and child labor. I can see people pulling themselves out of the cycle of poverty, but I am saddened knowing what potential gets untapped, especially in young people, when even a small event takes resources from a family.
There is also a new short story on my personal blog, http://cambodiastories.blogspot.com/

It's been a long road to get to where we are, and I thank everyone who has been a part of our success. We are eager for and donations (click on the Donate button on the upper right hand side of this page), and would appreciate anything that is good for you, as well as any help in finding us new donors.
I will be in the US for a visit starting in April. I hope to see you in person soon.
Warm regards!

The School Was Torn Down!

(pictures of the new school, insice and out, as well as staff members Sreang, Sokim, and Sokchea)

There have been plans to evict the community around Aziza Schoolhouse since before I arrived, and the process has been underway for over 1.5 years. Sometimes in clusters, but often one-by-one, houses disappear as the owners negotiate to take a house outside the city, or a cash settlement. The land is very prime real estate for Cambodia, and is worth as much as land in many American city centers. Prices have skyrocketed since the initial agreement was made between the village chiefs and the developer, fueling the rage between home owners and the developer, with the remaining residents feeling they are being offered compensation well below market value. I have witnessed multiple riots that have included a lot of stone throwing, injuries, a few Molotov cocktails, and a truck being lit on fire.
Last fall the community amazed me, and made a contingent plan for the school. There is a run-down apartment building that borders the slum that is also part of the community, which likely won’t have to move for a few years. One day a small girl walked me over to this dark, dungy, apartment where a woman in a wheel chair lived with her family. Her great uncle owned it, and she was able to tell me that “Aziza move here.” It was tough to navigate over the 4 foot high pile of garbage that had built up from upstairs residents dropping their trash out their windows, mosquitoes were rampant in the stagnant water, and there was a cluster of outhouses directly in front. I tried to show gratitude to her great uncle, Pim Prin, but it was difficult to know how to react to an offer that didn’t seem too appealing when looking at it in its current condition. Someone else was able to explain to me that they had plans to fix it up and blow out a wall.
After a major 6 weeks renovation including removing the massive pile of garbage, a bathroom installed, walls and floor re-cemented, painted, new electric, all at the expense of “Uncle.” We’ve made a documentary about this, which I look forward to showing you. You can hear him telling me that he doesn’t care if we don’t always pay the below-market [$30] rent, he just wants to have a place for his grand-nieces and nephews to go to school. He had accumulated multiple shacks which he’d sold, and showed awesome generosity. He lived in the slum for 25 years.
We turned the new school into a computer lab as construction was wrapping up, but knew we’d need it for a classroom in time. We named it Aziza School (dropped the ‘house’).
Aziza Schoolhouse was owned by the brother of the neighbor, our cleaner, who is a close friend (‘Moch’ is also the mother and aunt of 2 of our students). She had said that her brother was not allowed to sell the school until the end, so we thought we’d be there for a while yet. All that changed one Friday, and I wrote an email to my local community to share what was happening on that day last November:

>I just found out today that we have to be out of the building where Aziza is by this Sunday, when they will come and demolish the building. We will move into a better room about 70 meters away in the apartment building, which has been renovated for us, and everything is fine. It will be cooler and look nicer, but I will miss our little wooden shack where there are so many good memories.>

> I feel it is a special place, and I know I am not the only one. I had an appreciation for the simplicity and roughness that is the schoolhouse. I loved it the moment I laid eyes on it. I like how it blended into the neighborhood, and it's flaws grew on me over time to where it seemed it was meant to be just the way it was. I think the kids found it easy to be comfortable there, though they can likely have a good time just about anywhere. The rats navigating the ceiling beams nightly were always a thrill. It's been the greatest place on earth for me, and I am emotional about the change.>

> Many of the good memories happened outside the school as well, and the specialness of the school was what we created, not the building. And that was part it as well I guess; the school sucks, the desks suck, it sucks having rats walking around.., but the kids always made the best of it, and all their laughter more than made up for what was missing in the small room. The schoolhouse was a microcosm of Cambodia in many ways.>

> This weekend will have a series of events starting with parties on Saturday, where we'll show the new documentary and reflect back, then move everything on Sunday morning, ending with a bon fire on Sunday night, possibly with a pig roast (using wood scraps from the school). I plan to sleep there on Saturday night - yikes!>

> Peace,> Drew

I did sleep there and it was pretty cool. The move happened quickly in the morning, and men came with crow bars to salvage the valuable wood (the men with crow bars arrived early, and I lost my cool for a few minutes when we were encouraged to hurry, and emotionally proclaimed that we weren’t going to be told what to do anymore).
In the afternoon we had a ceremony where a procession of monks chanted and blessed our new home. The evening was a great party with 2 pigs and dancing.
The students and I adapted to the new building, but it was not without some sentimental conversations and longing for our old building. I was especially emotional around this time. We had numerous conversations with the students so we could try to capture what they liked about the old school into the new school.
One student said he missed the smells of the old school, and the neighbor’s cooking. Another said she liked hearing the rain on the tin roof. Minor details about the random decorating of the school were brought up. They loved their old school as much as I did!
How could they have grown up in such tough conditions, yet think these sweet thoughts and have these memories for little insignificant pieces of life? The new school is better. It has a fresh paint job, spotlights on the white board, and no rats. Why do the students hold on to their affinity for the old school? This is the thought that has made me cry more than anything since I have been here - their innocence! They have made it through years of living in a community with rampant violence, witnessed god only knows what, and yet have an attachment to the smells and sounds of our old school. They are so precious.
In time I have come to love the new school – it really is better. We have a nice bathroom and sink, and a loft for some of the students to sleep (in addition to sleeping on top of the desks). We also had some art students from Long Beach come to help make it our home.