Trip to the Kampong Cham province

January 20th

So much to tell today. The trip went not too bad despite the 5.30 am start. It was maybe a bit awkward as I was dead tired but trying at the same time to make conversation with Kosal who was driving. I put my sunglasses on at one point so that I could catch a few winks without her noticing…

So we started with the school for blind and deaf children, which unlike the Chba Ampeu one is in one single compound. Which is a bit a weird, cos they can’t communicate (the blind can’t see the deaf’s sign language, and the deaf can’t hear the blind). It was really good cos we stayed from 9 am to 3pm which meant that I could really see how their everyday lives were and really take time to speak with the kids and everything. I spent the morning mainly watching them. It’s just such a great feeling to see these kids being like normal kids at school.

Then after lunch the teachers went off to a meeting with Kosal. So me and Guillaume interviewed this blind kid who spoke a bit of English. It was a bit hard to get ourselves understood. He wouldn’t understand our questions so we would reformulate and reformulate until we basicially gave him the answer we wanted to hear (eg. How was it before you came to this school? Was it difficult to play with other children? Were other children making fun of you? Etc etc). I got tired of that interview after a while so I hung around with the deaf kids instead. I went into a classroom and immediately they rushed back to their seats because they knew they weren’t supposed to mess around even if the teacher wasn’t there. I went around each table and asked for their name and how old they were. I love sign language. It’s so much fun. They were so excited about me taking an interest about them. When it came to their turn to tell me their name, their face would light up with an immense grin. Then these girls asked me to sit next to them and they went through their school book and taught me some signs. It was ok for me because I can read and understand some of the stuff that was written above the diagram of the sign. So I could actually communicate with the deaf much better than with the blind. When I really wouldn’t understand, I went up to the blackboard and wrote up my question in Khmer. They were so bluffed. But I had to be really careful with my spelling. At one point, I forgot a small accent and they were signing to me that they didn’t understand. A hearing person would have just read out the word and understood, because despite the mistake, you could read out loud the word and figure out what I meant. But I then realized that they just read by recognizing the writing and then associating it with an object or action. They don’t read out a group of letters, which makes a sound, which then is associated with a object or action. But anyway, it was loads of fun. Until the teacher came back and they all rushed back to their seats in fear.

At recess they all ran towards me with their notebooks with questions written on them. It wasn’t hard cos they were all more or less the same questions, the usual “How old are you”, “are you married” do you have a boyfriend” etc. We then had fun taking pictures of ourselves. They loved seeing themselves on the camera.

I really didn’t want to leave, I really enjoyed the deaf kids. When are car left they all waved me good bye from their classroom window. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to got back there at some point this year.