Need your help

Bad news today: the kids had a sponsor who was sending them on a trip to the beach for ten days. They're supposed to leave in five days; they've all been SO excited... and the sponsor backed out this morning.  For all 64 kids plus staff to get there and back, it costs about $1500 ($20 or $25 per person; they have to hire a bus). We're all working frantically to see if there's any way that the kids can still go. Food and lodging aren't a problem; they will do dance performances to earn money for food, and they'll all sleep on the beach. They just need to get there! If any of you know of charitable organizations, companies or people who would be interested in helping these guys, please pass the information along to them! (Also, if they'd like donation receipts or pictures of the kids on the trip, get me their contact info and I'll make it happen.) Thanks!

http://pledgie.com/campaigns/9698/

www.acodo.org

"Cha" is my favorite nickname

They call us "Cha."  It's short for "teacher" (tea-cha, the way they pronounce it). With the little ones who don't yet have a good grasp on English, "Cha!" or "Cha, me!" means, "Teacher, look what I did!" or "It's my turn!"  It's adorable and I melt a little every time I hear it. :)

Last night, I went with the kids to a nearby village for a dance performance. First, everyone clamored into the back of a cattle truck... there were five adults and 17 kids, so we were pretty packed in there. On the way there, I had one little guy asleep against my side, a girl passed out on my lap, another boy sleeping against my leg, and my arm around two girls... the girls told me they loved me, cuddled up next to me, and then sang songs together. I am seriously hooked on these kids...

Anyway, at the village, they went to go dance, and a couple of the volunteers went to go buy some water... I'm not sure what of this is because the villagers were drinking, and what was just odd fascination with westerners, but I was walking along, and a woman reached up and slapped me!! She smacked me arm, then grabbed my arm and laughed (a good-natured laugh, I think). No idea why I was slapped, but two seconds later, a really drunk guy grabbed my arm and started kissing it. Have to say, I was quite happy that I wasn't alone and I had some backup!  After the slap/kiss, the rest of the night was great. The kids performed like pros (they're really good!), the crowd was huge and attentive... The president of the organization got up at one point and talked to the villagers (in Khmer, so we got the abridged translation later) about the importance of stepping up and taking care of your family... to not drink too much, and that kids shouldn't be hit... It's apparently big issue that's not often addressed.

At the end of the performance, we all piled back into the cattle truck, and the kids all passed out after a minute or two. This time, I had all the same sacked-out little ones on me, plus one tiny little boy who claimed my lap. When we got back and got all the kids into bed, I was surprised to see their sleeping setup. Even though I'd heard about it, it was a little different to SEE it. They were on the floor of the stage, or on straw mats on the ground, and had mosquito nets up around them. I'm not even sure that they had pillows. And in a few weeks, when the rainy season hits, the area will flood, and the ground will not be available for sleeping quarters (or classrooms), since it will be under three feet of water. ACODO is working on getting donations to build an elevated area so that there's still somewhere for them to go when it floods. They have it started and are adding to it as they can.

It's once again time for me to wrap up here and head back; it's time for the afternoon lesson for the kids who went to school this morning.  Hope you're all well!!

♫ http://pledgie.com/campaigns/9698

Oops!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/MichelleSumner27/ACODO?authkey=Gv1sRgCKjqiNuGscfBwAE&feat=directlink

 Meant to include this yesterday... That's the link to the photos. :)

Photos...

Here's a link to the photos I have so far of the kids. I can't seem to get them uploaded to the Pledgie site (and my computer charger is not working again, so I can't keep trying until it's fixed)... but this way you can see some of the kids!

http://pledgie.com/campaigns/9698

ACODO

http://pledgie.com/campaigns/9698


I started volunteering at an orphanage yesterday. It’s ACODO (Assisting Cambodia Orphans and the Disabled Organization) yesterday… The kids are amazing. There are 64 children here, ages 3-19 (most of them are 13 and under). They sleep on the floor or the ground with mosquito nets around them. Most days they get enough food, though they’re often a bit short on protein and vegetables.


In general, the kids seem happy; they dance and play and goof around… yesterday, a couple volunteers brought in empty water bottles, and set up a makeshift bowling alley in the sand with an old basketball and using the bottles as pins. They had a blast!!

When I arrived, I was given a tour and introduced to the other volunteers (last week there were six, which is unheard of! Normally there are one or two, tops), then helped teach a small group of children. Suddenly I had a little head on my back and two tiny arms around my waist, wrapped in a huge hug. If I wasn’t already hooked, I certainly was in that moment.

The kids are trained in traditional Khmer dance, and they do performances to try to raise money. Right now, it’s getting to be the slow season for tourists, so the older kids are staying in nearby villages, doing performances there at night. The villagers often don’t have much, but they’ll donate a small amount if they can. The younger kids will go out, dance, and then come back to sleep in the orphanage. The staff took the kids out in two vehicles: a van with more kids than seats, plus a few kids sitting on the roof of the van, holding on to the handles; and a cattle truck, where all the kids sit in the back. (It’s not terribly uncommon here, but it certainly startled me!) At the performance, some of the kids were sitting in the grass, cheering on their friends, and during a break, they saw me with my camera and started posing together. They would ham it up for the camera, then look at the picture and crack up laughing, then pose again. At the end of the night, the kids who are staying there would sleep on the stage or on the ground, and the president of the organization sleeps right alongside them. (The fact that he and his wife stay where the children stay made a big impression on me… It helps me feel more confident that money and food are going to the kids, and not lining someone’s pockets.)

This morning, we worked on English numbers and letters with the little ones, and then helped teach them to ride bikes. They were using adult-sized bikes, and the kids were all about four to six years old, but that didn’t phase them. They would tell us whether they wanted us to hold on, or sit on the bike with them, or just stand guard… and then they were off!

http://www.acodo.org/

The website has information about the costs associated with keeping ACODO up and running. It costs about $73 a day to feed everyone, and there are significant additional costs for rent, clothes, supplies, etc. If anyone is interested in making a donation, you can do so through this link. At the end of the week, I will take the money to the market for food supplies, shampoo, etc., and to help the organization with expenses. The donation can be anonymous if you prefer.

Time for me to get back for lunch and the next lesson. I’ll post some photos and videos tonight if I can. :)


http://pledgie.com/campaigns/9698

It's not all paradise

Disclaimer: this is not a "happy, the-world-is-glorious" blog. It's not really meant to be negative, either, but sometimes it's so easy to just see how great and wonderful it all is, and that's not the whole picture. Also, take this with a grain of salt, as I'm sure some of my commentary is influenced by a lack of cultural understanding...

Any of the big cities out here are unbelievably polluted - some guy threw his empty beer bottle out the window of the bus and no one batted an eye; littering is commonplace. Trash lines the streets, sometimes several feet deep. There also don't seem to be any laws regarding emissions, and a painfully high percentage of the vehicles on the road are spitting out black smoke, sometimes so bad you can hardly see through it. Trash is burned and so are crops, so the smoke from that can be pretty rough, too.  Apparently during the burning season, the air pollution in Chiang Mai is so bad that you couldn't see a huge red building from a few blocks away, yet during more clear times, you could see the entire city (and then some!) from the top of a nearby mountain.  Also, in Jakarta, it seems that EVERYONE smokes, and I'm convinced that Indonesian cigarettes are more dangerous than the ones available in the States; just one person smoking anywhere near me is enough to send me running outside to the exhaust fumes.

I know this probably sounds terribly ironic, but it's hard not to get frustrated with the people who make a living off of the money of tourists. It seems like every few seconds, someone is yelling, "where you go?" (which means "do you need a taxi?"), or "you need moto?", or advertisements for whatever else is being sold. I don't even mind this so much when people only ask once, but there are many (MANY!) people who will actually follow you down the street or block your path. People "give" you things and then tell you that you owe them money: one woman dumped corn kernels (for the pigeons) into my hands and onto the ground after I said "no, thank you" and then told me I owed her money for them; another woman started to peel a banana that I said I didn't want - she kept grabbing my arm and trying to shove the banana into my hands; and little kids came up behind me as I was leaving the beach and dumped bottled water on my feet to clean off the sand, then wanted money - they even got into my taxi when they felt like I hadn't given them enough. I can't help being sympathetic, though... the poverty I've seen is astounding. People sleeping on piles of trash on the sidewalk, run-down iron shacks, women - barefoot, in tattered clothing, holding sooty babies on their hips - asking for change... I'm sad to say that I've seen it so much I've almost stopped noticing.

Most of the places I've been feel fairly safe, but Jakarta has seemed a bit less so. I've heard that there are more muggings and pickpockets here than in many other cities (not that that's uncommon for a huge city), and several locals (including a police officer who later asked to take my picture and for my phone number) have asked me if I feel afraid to be here (which doesn't really make me any more comfortable).  I was nervous when I tried to go to the Freedom Plaza; hundreds of people were demonstrating - with one person yelling orders/instructions into a megaphone - and there were probably 300-400 police officers in riot gear waiting to react if anything got out of hand. I was told later that they're just extra cautious because of the plaza's proximity to the President's home and the American Embassy, but I'm not sure how much safer that made me feel.  I left without doing any of what I had come to do.  It was also here in Jakarta that a guy who was giving me a massage started licking/kissing my feet. I realize that probably sounds funny, but it was creepy - blatantly sexual (and unwanted!), and realizing that reporting him would do no good (probably even if something worse had happened) was a reminder that as a tourist and as a woman, my rights here are minimal.  It's an awkward and uncomfortable feeling.  Which leads to the worst of what I've seen, which is the sex trade. Argue what you will about a woman's right to sell her body if she chooses; I'm not even going to address that here. I'm talking about the women who have pimps, the ones who have been drugged or beaten into submission... and the kids. The little girls (and boys, though I haven't witnessed that) who are sold to slimy old men for a few dollars a night.  It's common and is mostly ignored by the locals (and tourists, frankly).  When I was in Bali, a woman was coming around with a petition to try to get the court to look into accusations that a German ex-pat was paying for oral sex from 10-year-old girls.  The man employs a lot of locals, so many people's incomes are dependent upon his business and no one is willing to do anything to stop him. Apparently, the Balinese system isn't going to do anything, so the petitioners are trying to get the German courts involved.  And this is certainly not a unique story.

As much as this trip has been amazing and wonderful, and certain places seem like paradise, it has also been eye-opening.  There are a lot of things here that work beautifully, and things that seem to be much better than the way stuff happens at home, but this region is certainly not without its issues (some of them monumental).

I will return home more aware of the inequities in the world, and will grapple with the awareness that so many people - many of whom are far more intelligent and ambitious than I am - would kill for the opportunities granted to me simply because I was born and raised in America.  I will return less myopic, more curious, and far more appreciative.

Ubud

Ogoh-Ogoh - a huge effigy of evil spirits. Hundreds of these are being made around Bali and will be paraded through the streets and then burned on the day preceding Nyepi (Balinese New Year).

Bali was a great place; I wish I'd had more time to explore! I was in Ubud, which is a really nice city known for it's yoga. When I got to town, I went for lunch at a great spot overlooking rice paddies, and had my first avocado juice. I assure you, it was the first of many. I've probably had one or two a day since then - they're SO good!! Sometimes mixed with a swirl of chocolate sauce... who knew?? (Indonesians, apparently.)

After lunch I went down to Monkey Forest, which is a large conserved area of forest where the macaque monkeys are free to roam around as they please. It was great! I rounded the corner after buying my ticket and there were three monkeys hanging out on the walking path. When I walked a bit farther, I saw that those three were just the intro - there are hundreds of monkeys!! I stopped to take a few photos and met a couple of American women who were in town for a week. We took pictures of each other with the monkeys, and a minute later, one of the monkeys grabbed onto my skirt and climbed right up! It climbed around my side, up my back and sat on my neck for a minute. One of the women tried to grab my camera to capture the moment, but I'd left it on "record," so there's just an awkward, accidental video. Whoops. Anyway, about this time, the monkey (perhaps realizing that I had no food to give him?) reached around to my other side and chomped down - HARD - on my arm! Luckily, he didn't draw blood, but it left quite a tender bruise. The women I'd met gave me some antiseptic and I moved on.

The area was really pretty, and - when they weren't biting - the monkeys were super cute! There were several babies - some hanging onto their mothers as they were transported around the forest, some nursing, some trying to run off on their own to play... they were a riot to watch! As I was getting ready to leave, one of the monkey experts convinced me to buy a few bananas to feed some of the little guys... and the monkeys attacked!! (Okay, not really, but it sure felt like it!) I was suddenly surrounded by about six or seven of them, and they all came up and tried to climb on me like the first one. After my previous encounter, I ended up just tossing bananas away from me so that they'd stop climbing. One of them scratched me on his way down (not on purpose) and this time, drew blood. Thankfully, I don't seem to have rabies or ebola, so I think I'm okay. :)

Those are some serious teeth!

But really, how cute is he?!

Later that day, I was walking down the street when a man holding a chicken started talking to me. He told me about a Hindu ceremony that was taking place that night for the God of Knowledge (a four day ceremony, and the "God" is more of a "Goddess"). He put down his chicken to draw me a map and sell me a sarong (you aren't allowed into the temples unless you're wearing a sarong - this goes for men as well as women) and wished me a good night. As I was heading off to find the temple, I ran into my friends from monkeyland, told them of my plans, and they joined me for the rest of the evening. When we got to the first temple - at a holy spring - we saw women kneeling on the ground, praying. They had carried offerings (woven baskets full of food, some up to 2 meters high!) to the temple on their heads, and then sat down to pray. After the prayer, and after the offering had been blessed by the priest with holy water, the women would collect their baskets, place them back on their heads, and head back home for a family feast. The men and children came as well to pray, but as far as I could tell, they did not bring offerings. People came and went at different times, and once a good number of people had gone home, eaten and come back, the evening ceremony began. There was a group of women playing instruments somewhat similar to xylophones for quite some time, then they left and men came out. Some played the same instruments, but there were also a few drummers and someone playing a stringed instrument. After they had played for a half hour or so, the dancers came out. The music continued as women in elaborate costumes and makeup performed amazingly choreographed traditional dances. Everything was so detailed - from the costumes all the way down to the angle at which the toes were pointed and where the eyes were looking. It was fantastic to be able to see such an elaborate ceremony.

Entrance to the Elephant Cave, which has both a Hindu and a Buddhist temple.

The one near the center of the table was my offering. These are made and replaced daily, on cars, outside homes and workplaces... Anywhere people would like to have good fortune.

The next day I went on a tour (really I just wanted the transportation to a nearby city, but the price was about the same, so why not get to see some stuff along the way?) of a few temples. We stopped at a coffee plantation toward the end of the day, and I got to help roast some of the coffee beans.

Coffee beans

I also saw the luwak "cat," which is the animal that eats only the best coffee beans, then poops them out. Apparently between the luwak's discerning taste and the digestion process, the (still whole) beans that come out are the world's best. The coffee made from these beans sells for about $700/kilo! I was given free tastes of pure Balinese coffee, ginseng coffee, cocoa, and ginger tea, but I had to pay for the luwak coffee. It was GOOD! A little weird to think about where it came from, but whatever, it was tasty.

Luwak coffee beans, post-defecation, pre-cleaning-and-cracking.

Because of a misunderstanding and poor planning on my part, I ended up going back to Ubud that night. It worked out well, though, as I was able to attend a Balinese performance (complete with fire-walking), and convinced my neighbor in the guesthouse to go with me to hike Mount Batur with me the next morning. It was fun to have company, and it cut the cost of my trip in half. It's pricey to do stuff solo sometimes. I also realized - after he and I ended up hanging out over the next few days - that two to three days is apparently my limit with most people. After that, I need a break!! That said, it's perhaps a good thing that I came on my trip alone. :)