Omniscient waiter

Ups and downs and constants, those are the elements the last two weeks were made of.
Coming back from the conference, I was still full of euphoria and an overwhelming desire to change the world (or for the moment, Ek Phnom district in Battambang, which is to be our target area.
However, this euphoria was quickly to be diminished. Still having received no funds, our project was all but nonexistent, which forced us to stay idle for another couple of days. Quite opposite to vacations from school, this “free time” did not exactly cause any joy for me.
I used the free days to study some more of the Khmer alphabet (of which I know at the moment about half, i.e. 50 letters) and to establish some constants of my life here. Unsurprisingly, these are exclusively tied to the subject of food. The first constant is the vegetarian restaurant I recently discovered at the 2½th street. It is a typical Khmer eatery, fitted with plastic chairs and ever-smiling staff that offers excellent vegetarian food for low prices and is frequented almost exclusively by Khmers.
The other constant is quite the opposite: It is a French bar/restaurant called “Madison Corner” that is frequented only by tourists and expats and is one of the most expensive places in town. It offers food of excellent quality, constituting a welcome variety from the typical Khmer vegetarian food. In addition, it serves the best coffee in town and has free access to the internet which is the reason why right now I’m enjoying a coffee here as well. The staff here knows Jakob and me already by name, and we seldom have to take a look at the menu, as most of the time, our orders are pre-known to the waiters. We also have established a good relationship with the French patron (who would better keep it up, if he doesn’t intend to loose his “meilleurs clients” as he once called us). This allows me to train my French a bit, which might turn out to be quite useful.

The next “up” in my work life occurred, when we met our Khmer counterparts, all of which are very sympathetic. They are all very proficient with the English language, which somewhat facilitates communication (a good thing, as the cultural differences do hamper it quite often already). But let’s take a look at them individually:

• Nareth is studying at the university; she is 22 years old and very good at English. She is very enthusiastic and active, having no fears to express her political opinion or addressing Piseth, our project official directly in order to ask for a change in working hours (to start at 8:00 instead of 7:30 AM – an action that earned her quite some sympathy with me). She works with Paula and Simone in the Training Team.

• Neruh is my partner in the Advocacy Team. He, too, is 22 years old and spends his weekends studying at university. He is very committed to the nonviolent ideals of YFP, despite planning to become an army official later in his life (a paradox that I’m still striving to comprehend). I discovered that he is very able in conversing with the authorities (his father being an official himself), a fact that may still serve us well in our work.

• Paula is the oldest of us all with 24 years of age. She is very patient and understanding and might well once be the island of tranquility in the team. Working with Nareth and Simone in the Training Team, she is also the best (written) translator of the team.

• Last but not least, Sopheeng is the only team member actually living in our target area at Ek Phnom. He likes to speak American slang, which he learned at the university which makes him sometimes a bit difficult to understand, but is still great fun. He works with Matthias in the Publication and Communication Team.

Knowing them for only about a week, there’s unfortunately not much more I can write yet, but it will be great to get them to know better, particularly, because it will make communication a lot easier when we get to know each other’s communication habits. (As for now it is still somewhat difficult to grab the actual meaning of each statement).

Unfortunately, despite having such a great Team, we still had to remain idle for another few days. During this time it the first thing I saw in the morning was Piseth’s face telling everybody how sorry he was not to have any work for us. We already went on the research for other NGOs to invest our workforce and motivation in.
Then finally on Wednesday the relieving message struck: We were to be funded for three months by DED.
Feelings then went continually upwards: During a two-day orientation workshop by Mr. Mony (the YFP program coordinator) we created a concrete action plan and got back all the motivation that had slipped away in the phases of idleness.
Now work can finally start!