Over the last couple of days we have continued our intensive In-Country Pre-Placement training, where we become more informed and prepared about our future roles as part of our 20-strong team in Ratanakiri.
Although yesterday focused slightly more on team building and information about VSO Cambodia (by John Friend, the VSO Head of Programme in the country), today was a little slower paced, with more advice on the rules and advice to follow whilst on placement, particularly regarding staying safe (don’t get malaria for silly reasons, don’t drink bad water, don’t flash electronic gadgets) and working as a cross cultural team (be inclusive, be positive, be proactive). It was all very similar to previous information and training we have been provided with, so I didn’t feel like I gained any new information, but at least it was reinforced!
We also found out a little more about our potential project placements (also often referred to as “what will we actually be doing?”), which up until now have been very vague. However I now know what the last group achieved, and what plans Andre (the long term VSO volunteer who is our project supervisor) has for the coming months. I will be maintaining the suspense here a little longer though!
By far the best past of the day was our Khmer (the language of Cambodia) lesson. Dara, our Cambodian Khmer teacher was really fantastic – amazing friendly and inclusive, and very patient! Although I’m still learning a lot about the language, from what I can tell so far, it isn’t tonal and it has a lot more vowels (23) and consonants (33) than we are used to. Pronouns also work possesively too: Khnyom means I/my/mine. We’re learning it phonetically, using our alphabet – the script would take me hours to piece together – and so far we’ve learnt the pleasantries, different greetings and some key phrases (yeut-yeut = slowly), as well as the numbers one to 10,000. Five is a particular number of glee due to a rolled ‘r’ in bprum, being an existing Scottish skill.
Right before we started the (3 hour) lesson, Dara asked if there were any phrases in particular we would like to learn. As a result, my first piece of learnt Khmer is:
Khnyom awt-gnaam-saaj
I do not eat meat
It appears there isn’t any word for vegetarian at all (those of us with such an ‘affliction’ in the UK group had been trying to explain it to the Khmer volunteers), so I’m excited to have the phrase to use – especially when it might be a bit of an usual request for the host family I’ll soon be meeting.
However, although this knowledge feels like a major lingual success, today was also the first day I didn’t feel like I needed it! Whereas at lunch over the past few days (in a restaurant called iFood around the corner from the training venue) we’ve had mainly meat-heavy dishes, today we had an amazing prawn and squid salad, made with peanuts and what we think was pickled cabbage. I was ecstatic to be able to launch myself without the usual hesitation. Dinner was also excellent, with tofu, vegetables and cashews at a local restaurant…and a slightly unbelievable soft drink!
Here’s a wee ‘taster’ of the gastronomy of the day
Catriona in Cambodia 
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