A weekend off - part 3

On Sunday I had a lie in and then went for breakfast, before walking down to the riverside. I stopped along the way to drink a fresh coconut and sit and look at the river, but mostly I just walked and enjoyed the opportunity to properly stretch my legs. 

Entrance to the Royal Palace

As soon as it started to get very very hot I jumped in a tuk tuk and went back to my hotel, where I took the advice of a colleague and paid a visit to a nearby hotel that had a roof top infinity pool. I am so glad I did - it was gorgeous and provided just the relaxing afternoon I had had in mind. I just swam, admired the view and stared at clouds. 

By the evening time I just wanted to spend a night in my hotel, wearing pjs and watching films, so I grabbed some takeaway Japanese ramen and enjoyed a film night! 

A weekend off - part 1

I've been a lady of leisure this weekend and it has been fantastic. On Friday night I had a few drinks with some of the volunteers, and then I went for dinner. I had an early start planned for Saturday as a volunteer had offered to go with me to the genocide museum and the Russian market. Both are best done before the day heats up so we arranged meet at 8:30am.

The museum, Tuol Sleng, is the school that the Khymer Rouge turned into a prison and interrogation centre. It came to be known as S 21 and between 1975 and 1979 an estimated 17,000 people were held there. They were interrogated and tortured, made to confess to false crimes and pretty much all 17,000 were eventually killed - either on site or marched 15km to be executed at a site known as the killing fields.

The school classrooms were divided up into cells - some were group cells where everyone was chained together, and others were single cells - tiny tiny spaces. There were strict rules about no talking and having to ask permission for everything, even to take a sip of water.

At the time that Vietnam marched into Phnom Penh and liberated the country 7 people were alive in the prison, and they had survived mostly due to the skills they offered. One was a painter who they used to paint propaganda messages, and one was a mechanic who fixed the typewriters used by the regime. But the Vietnamese also found 14 people who had been recently tortured and killed, so some of the displays show very graphic photos of the bodies exactly as they were tortured and left.

The regime were meticulous in keeping records of everyone they held, and everyone was photographed at least once. The museum displays the photos and Cambodians used to come and look at the photos to identify lost ones. The museum also has testimonies from the survivors and memories from others who weren't detained but experienced the Pol Pot years. The testimonies describe the forced labour and the starvation they experienced.

I've just looked at the Lonely Planet entry for Tuol Sleng and it says 'A visit to Tuol Sleng is a profoundly depressing experience' and that it is. But I thought it was important to go. I'd read about it but seeing it in real life was obviously more profound. They are trying to turn the museum into an education centre so that people don't forget the horrors of the Pol Pot period.

One of the displays had a message from the Minister of Culture and this sentence stood out: 'a diverse society is a healthy society, which values open-mindedness, innovation and freedom.' With all the craziness in the world at the moment this sentiment really resonated.

Back in Phnom Penh

Travelling to work and back in a tuk tuk has not yet lost it's novelty appeal, and I've been loving my journeys to the office. 

Tonight's driver had some mad skills. It was my first drive home in the real rush hour traffic, and we were up on the pavement, darting round cars, brushing up against the millions of moto riders, and generally taking every possible short cut to avoid the traffic. It was quite a journey! 

I've been exploring the restaurants around my hotel, which although pretty touristy, are very delicious and still pretty cheap. However, lunchtime at the office gives me the best 'local flavour' as we head to nearby local restaurants and order masses of food for tiny amounts of money. The restaurant floors are strewn with rubbish, the menu is ignored, and the hygiene is questionable (I found a dead ant in my iced tea - which is brought to the table for every meal) but the food is fantastic. Anyway, I'm not too squeamish about bugs in my food these days. As my dad would say, the ant wouldn't have drunk much. 

This is one of the cleaner restaurants we have gone to...

Lunch with a volunteer from the Philippines

The other evening I had duck in a tamarind curry, which although quite oily, was very nice. Afterwards I was given a plate of what I thought were two tuile biscuits - I was going to leave them but gave one a bite... it turned out to be dried banana and it was amazing! The waitress called it banana crepe... I don't know how they made it but it was chewy and delicious. Here is one, with the crumbs of the other! 

I've also managed to fit in a massage, and dinner with my colleague and his wife, and am now sitting in a bar with an espresso martini... but I promise I have also been working very hard! There is so much information to process, and information to 'extract' from the team that my head is reeling most nights, but being in a different country is giving me the energy to work hard and play hard... it's so much fun having a different environment and culture to explore. I have also really enjoyed feeling more anonymous (so many expats here, I definitely do not stand out or attract attention) and I feel very safe, which is something I have been missing since I moved away from The Gambia. 

Breakfast in Battambang (and other things)

Vietnamese pho was a perfect post-jog breakfast, and this Cambodian rice porridge set me up nicely for a day in the field with community members! I've become more used to eating general food for breakfast rather than English / European / western style breakfasts and I'm quite happy eating a spicy breakfast... although on Sunday, our last morning in Battambang, I had a bagel with cream cheese, smoked salmon and capers which was pretty darn exciting! If I crave a western breakfast the fantasy meal usually involves smoked salmon! 

On Saturday we held a community workshop in one of the nearby villages. It was a great chance to see the countryside, the paddy fields, the irrigation streams and government made canals. I also enjoyed the chance to see some of the different housing styles, especially the houses that are up on stilts to deal with the seasonal flooding. Underneath the house is used for storage and living (cooking, sleeping in hammocks etc) and sometimes keeping the animals while the main rooms are upstairs. 

And just to finish on another food picture... dinner one evening in a restaurant filled with orchids.

Battambang

The drive to Battambang was lovely. As soon as we arrived we went for lunch in a little place where they also hold cookery courses for tourists, and then headed to a meeting. That evening we met some of the volunteers working on the project and had more delicious food in a French restaurant. 

My dish was squid stuffed with minced pork in a lemongrass and saffron cream sauce... washed down with a beautiful glass of French white wine! 

The hotel was great - with various 'towel animals' throughout the three days. 

Looks like a grand hotel but was very cheap!

View from the hotel

The hotel overlooked the river, and Battambang had a very French feel - the old French buildings with shutters at the windows, and the layout of the town by the side of the river. I jogged along the river on two of the mornings (to counteract the huge amounts of food I am eating!). It's very unusual for me to go for morning runs, but it really was the best time of the day - by the evening it was often raining, and perhaps it was still the effects of jet lag but I felt wide awake in the mornings and enthusiastic about seeing the city as it woke up. I wished I was able to run with a camera, it was beautiful to see the slightly misty river and the Buddhist monks gliding by in their saffron robes. 

Most of my time there was in meetings, doing community events or talking to / working with / having dinner with volunteers, but I did get some time to myself to walk around the city and take some photographs. 

Cambodia

I was really excited about coming to Cambodia, from both a personal and a professional point of view. I really wanted to get a better understanding of the Cambodia project, and I was also very keen to have a change of scenery from Africa.

I love flying and the journey was pretty good. The transit times were quite reasonable, the flights were relatively on time, and although on arrival at Bangkok I discovered I'd been removed from the final flight to Phnom Penh the flight still had some space left and I was re-booked on the journey (I envisaged a night in Bangkok but it worked out OK!).

I managed to get through the visa application and immigration process fairly fast (I'm quite efficient in airports and can fill forms in very fast these days!). To get through it quickly I had to strategically dodge quite a few gap year types who were very slow and laid back... I kept thinking about the fact that I needed a good night's sleep before work the next day and it was clear they didn't have quite the same pressures! I was relieved to see my name held up by a driver (the final guy in the line... I was starting to think I'd have to make my own way to the hotel!) and checked in smoothly, getting to bed at 1am -  a good day and a half after leaving Abuja.

I slept like a log, missing one alarm and waking on the second back up alarm, so I dressed quickly and met my colleague at 10am for a coffee before taking a tuk tuk to the office. Almost as soon as we got to the office I was taken to lunch and then I had a meeting all afternoon. Once back at my hotel this evening I went for a walk and stopped for dinner.... at which point the heavens opened. I made the most of the downpour by having a spicy beef salad and two fresh passionfruit juice martinis. Heaven!

Tomorrow we leave early to travel to Battambang, the province the project is focused in. So, tonight I'm turning in early feeling very happy to be in Cambodia.

Field work

Since getting back from my holiday the job has been all about field work. First a week out in Nigeria and now two weeks in Cambodia.

Nigeria was all about meeting community farmers and Village Chiefs. It was nice to be out of Abuja and we achieved a lot. I was photographed approximately 80,000 times. Every meeting, every community event, every opportunity for a 'snap'. The most disconcerting was when I was photographed while going for a jog!

A few pics of those I was snapped with. 

We called in at Guara Falls on the way back which was great - nice to do something that felt a little bit touristy in Nigeria. 

Airport entertainment

A few weeks ago I was travelling from Abuja via Lagos. This involves flying into the domestic airport, collecting your luggage and then transferring to the international airport. 

After collecting my bag I was waiting for the airline transfer service. They asked me to wait a while, and as I was in no hurry I settled down to watch airport life. I chose a spot near to some trolley boys who were waiting for travellers, and I was quickly provided with some very amusing entertainment.

I noticed that the toilet attendant for the ladies toilet was talking very loudly and very animatedly to two girls (who I later realised were American) outside the bathroom. Now, Nigerians can be pretty loud and passionate and a lot of normal conversations sound like arguments, so I didn’t automatically assume they were fighting. However, I soon started to understand the situation via the trolley boys.

They had worked out what was going on and were discussing in pidgin English. While I might throw in the odd ‘how you dey’ or ‘no wahala’ every now and then my spoken pidgin is pretty limited (I just feel too awkward twisting English and I worry that I sound like I am mocking people!) but I can follow along with conversations held in pidgin / broken English. The trolley boys realised this at the point I started laughing at the story they were telling – it was just too funny to pretend I wasn’t eavesdropping.

It turns out that American girl number 1 had sat down on the loo and it had broken off the wall! Totally fallen off, water everywhere, big mess, probably a sore bottom. This would be pretty embarrassing at the best of times, but her situation got worse when the toilet attendant told her that it was her fault and she would have to pay for it! American girl number 2 was trying her best to defend girl 1, but was doing it quite belligerently (“we have a flight to catch, this is ridiculous, can we go now”) which seemed to be fanning the temper of the toilet attendant. A few airport staff had joined the circle, and people started to randomly join in the argument. Toilet attendant’s argument was that she had seen girl 1 standing on the toilet, causing it to fall off. This is quite amusing, but not as stupid as it sounds as you often find footprints on the toilet seats from users who are more accustomed to a hole in the ground. However, girl 1 was denying this, and I clearly heard the line “I do know how to use a toilet you know, this is not the first time I have used one!”.

Sneaky pic of the crowd forming

Girl 1 also queried how the attendant had ‘seen her’ standing on the toilet through a closed door, to which the attendant got down on the floor on hands and knees and demonstrated peering under the door! Obviously it’s fairly unlikely that the attendant was actually doing this, but it did make me wonder what the attendants get up to!

While the group of airport staff got bigger, and the arguments got louder I continued to be entertained by the trolley boys, who not only were discussing the situation, but miming the situation to one of the boys who was deaf. This in itself was highly amusing, like watching a pantomime. They got very detailed about what might have caused the girl to break the toilet off the wall, and despite miming to a deaf boy, they used a lot of noises to emphasise their story!

In the end the big airport boss man came along and said that of course the incident was not the girl’s fault, and that she would not have to pay for the damage. The Americans rushed off, the toilet attendant looked vexed, the crowd dispersed, and the cleaners mopped up all the water. Soon after that my transport arrived, and I set off for the international airport feeling like I had just witnessed something pretty special!   

Some aerial shots of Lagos

Making friends

The last few months have ended up being pretty social. I think I broke through that point of feeling like I didn’t know many people without realising it, and all of a sudden I have a range of different friends, different connections, and a lot more to do.

The primary source of all these friends has been yoga. I have already written about making one friend from class – a Canadian – and that network expanded when she and I went to a party held by one of the yoga teachers. While there we met quite a few people, including two Nigerian women who have since put out a few social invites. A drink here, dinner there, all with more people joining along the way, has led to some interesting and lively nights out including going to see a band, going to restaurants, garden bars, and on one occasion a very expensive club where you could only buy by the bottle. We asked for wine… the cheapest thing they could offer was Moet…. we made a sharp exit!

Then, a few weeks ago one of the yoga teachers – an American with a Nigerian husband – mentioned the ‘Nigerwives’ club as she gave me a lift home. Did I know about it? Apparently Nigerwives, an association that registered back in 1979, is an organisation for foreign wives of Nigerian citizens – the term coming from a stamp you can get in your passport excluding you from  needing a visa (currently top of my to do list). On the stamp they label you as a Nigerwife. According to the yoga teachers sources, the Nigerwives official club can be a little on the dry side, so another girl from class – an Australian with a Nigerian husband – was arranging a break-away group, or a more informal group. So I headed there today, had a really nice time and met some great people, including a girl from the UK who is here with work but her husband is still in England, and a girl from Kenya. The Australian hosted it, and she lives in quite a different part of town to me but thankfully I had a taxi driver I knew who could take me – another thing that makes me feel more comfortable. Although having said that, the taxi driver did tell me a while back that I was his best friend so I haven’t been using him that much lately. He’s the kind of friend I do not want to be making!

And another very interesting source of friend making has been social media! I found a review of top 5 cafés in Abuja (something I am always on the lookout for), and discovered that the writer was an English girl who is blogging for the Telegraph. I looked at her articles and liked what I was reading; finally someone who was being honest about Abuja and Nigeria but not harsh or critical. Someone who could see the charm and beauty of the place (which at times is quite a challenge – even when you are a cheerful person) and make fun of the annoyances in a nice way. I’ve met too many people recently who are so negative about the country you can’t help think to yourself ‘so why are you here? Just go home!’. Anyway… I saw her Twitter name on the blog and sent her a little message, hoping she would come back with ‘do you fancy meeting?’. And thankfully her response was ‘let me know if you fancy meeting for a beer or a coffee’! What more could I ask for!

A few tweets later, I met her and her husband for a drink (which turned into quite a few glasses of wine). They are both great – both journalists, both interesting people, and both happy to live in different countries and randomly meet people who send them Twitter messages. Oh, and they are the same age as me, and we have quite a few things in common so by the end of the evening it felt like we were old friends. It was a great evening, hopefully soon to be repeated.

So, between yoga, unofficial Nigerwives, and finding people through the power of the internet, I can’t complain about my social life at the moment. 

Termite time

When the rains come they often bring different flying insects who are roused from the ground by the rain drops. Or something like that. 

This weekend, just in case mopping up puddles of rain water wasn't enough fun, I was given winged termites to deal with as well. 

My kitchen is technically outside, separated from my living area by a covered corridor. The corridor has a door at each end, one of which is usually open all the time to give some air and ventilation. Inside the corridor are fluorescent lights which, this weekend, provided a landing beacon for every winged termite in Abuja. 

I was happily cooking on Saturday night when I realised what was happening. The corridor outside was starting to emit a strange buzzing sound, and my kitchen was slowly filling up with winged termites. I stepped into the corridor to meet a little termite party, so I quickly went back in to the kitchen and wedged the door so that it was almost closed (I didn't want a repeat of the locked in my kitchen incident!). 

I finished cooking and just ignored the termites, occasionally running the gauntlet between my kitchen and my house, taking care to avoid adding extra protein to my chilli-con-carne and rice, gin and tonic or strawberry jelly. Although I have been told that fried termites are delicious, I didn't fancy adding live ones to my meal, and didn't thing they would be a good mix with jelly. It did, however, prompt me to re-read a blog post I remembered from my favourite Nigerian food blog, Dobby's Signature. In this post she describes the process of collecting and frying termites - and why you would want to do such a thing. Apparently they are highly nutritious (receiving the best attention from the colony to prepare them for their mating journey later in life). As interesting as this is, I'm not too sure how I would feel about actually eating them. 

Just a few of the termites - this was at the early stage

Anyway, the next morning I was met with termite chaos in the corridor - the termites had shed their wings (which were now blowing around like confetti) and I had piles of termites everywhere, with break away groups doing little mating dances at various points up and down the corridor.  

My first idea was to pin open the doors at each end of the corridor and let the wind blow the termites away... but this only worked to a limited extent and I resigned myself to sweeping the piles of wings and termites out with my broom. It felt like some sort of weird bush-tucker trial in 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here'. 

The lizards were pretty happy with me though! The lizard in the first pic is one of the 'mint choc chip' lizards... they have a brown body and a mint green head with brown dots which makes me think of ice-cream. The lizard below is striped black and white with an electric blue shiny tail. The pictures don't really do them justice, but both are very beautiful. 

Last night I learned my lesson and made sure both doors to the corridor were closed before turning the lights on!