This past year I undertook two projects through Water Charity’s initiative Appropriate Projects. Appropriate Projects provides funding through current Peace Corps Volunteers for water, sanitation, and public health projects. With grants of $500 each from individual donations through Water Charity, my village constructed a water tank and distribution system at the high school as well as a bathroom at the health center. The experiences were entirely different.

The school director was excited to have a way to funnel money into the school, but the logistics of the grant were left to me to needle out. I was responsible for setting up meetings, finding a translator, pushing to get all of the details, and sitting and waiting patiently while they did work they were supposed to have done before the meeting. And even though I repeatedly stressed that Appropriate Projects demands that the project be completed within two months of receiving the funds, the director has continuously delayed and prioritized other projects. Then, in the most recent meeting, he discovered he was $53 shy of the total cost and asked if I would donate from my personal funds (i.e. volunteer stipend). 

The health center, though, sought me out after hearing about the project at the school. They were proactive in arranging a meeting and came prepared. They thoroughly explained the need for the bathroom and outlined responses for each of Appropriate Project’s submission requirements. The construction began immediately after receipt of the funds (the purchase and delivery of the raw materials being pre-arranged), and the project was completed in less than three weeks. And when the project cost exceeded the grant amount, they simply reached into the center’s funds to supplement. 

The difference in these experiences, I believe, is that the project manager at the health center is my host aunt. She’s the same woman who arm wrestled me and my best friend, Jessie. The same woman who has insisted on paying to take me to airport when I leave. The one who told me that the only present she wants from America is phone calls from me. The one who whispered urgently to other guests to eat all the American food Jessie and I had prepared, even if they didn’t like it, to make me feel comfortable. Our relationship transformed me from a foreign money source into a human being - her niece - and that transformation made all the difference in our collaboration for the benefit of the community.

The links for the completed health center project:

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/1447

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/1578

The link for the high school project:

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/1331

(posted May 15, 2013)

Excerpt from My Volunteer Reporting Form

The question: What challenges have you faced in your project or in other areas of your Peace Corps experience?

This year has been particularly challenging. I’ve struggled with the work at the school (teaching as well as other projects), with my relationships with HCNs, and with personal anxiety.

Coteaching relationships are hard enough, but they’re made harder when sites are selected based on which schools are willing to take us and not on which schools want us for specific purposes. My school and counterparts seem to view me as an interesting addition, someone to take part of their work load and be a beneficial line on their CVs. They want me to teach when they don’t want to come, grade the tests so they don’t have to, and give them interesting anecdotes to share about working with the foreigner girl. (I do have good relationships with several teachers at the school and there are many positive experiences there, but I want to emphasize here some the negatives and how those difficulties have been affecting me.) No one has interest in extra work; no one wants to prepare outside resources, to meet with me outside of class to develop lesson plans, to change their teaching habits in the long term. We both show up each day and follow the EFC by rote. And a lot of that is my fault. I’m not good at confrontation, at pointing out flaws. And I’m too easily paralyzed by the extent of interwoven problems in the Cambodian education system. I find respite in the class I teach alone; it’s in that environment that I can try new things and treat the students differently from the norm. Those are the students who are learning and improving and excited to come to class. So I’ve taken those ideas and methods and tried to implement them in my other classes and show them to my coteachers. They aren’t taken. Either the teachers aren’t interested enough to spend the time to understand my idea or they don’t care enough to implement it when I’m not in the class. I feel like any changes in behavior are meant solely to appease me.

I’m also struggling with the director and the school system in general. Yesterday I sat down with the director to discuss how we could apply for a grant to improve the reading room. He wanted to tell me what the project required and leave it at that. I tried to explain the plethora of details that went into the proposal, but he wasn’t interested in that sort of preparation work. He showed me a number, saying ‘This is the amount we need to do the project. I don’t care how you do the proposal, just get this amount.’ This reaction harkens back to the mini-IST we had in which our directors and counterparts participated and we had time for us to discuss action plans for our service. Every idea proposed by my director involved the receipt of funds from my ‘rich’ American friends and family. He even wanted me to build a road. I don’t know how to be here under a teaching framework when it’s not my teaching that the school wants from me. I’m not fulfilling anyone’s expectations for my time here, not even my own.

Ever since reading Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence, I’ve been really struggling with some aspects of life and culture here. I don’t know how to act around teachers who coyly admit to frequenting karaoke bars for the wonderful ‘service’ and ‘company.’ I don’t know how to act around my director who regularly participates in the culture of bribery. I don’t know how to act around my brother-in-law who frequently drinks until he vomits the entirety of the following morning. I don’t know how to act around my male family members who think that married men are still entitled to be with multiple women. I don’t know what to do when I see a man taking advantage of a drunken girl and the response is that she shouldn’t have been drinking around men. I feel lost here. I feel like I’m sitting on the sidelines and observing tragedy.

A lot of the above have been contributing to feelings of helplessness and powerlessness that have been overwhelming me lately. As much as I love my host family and how they care for me, I have no control or responsibility for my own life. I don’t go to the market, cook, or clean. Every aspect of my day is prepared for me. I’m an extremely overgrown child. Since I don’t have control over the society I’m in, I need to find a way to take some control over myself.

I’ve started contemplating action plans to begin to approach proactively some of these challenges, so I hope things will begin to change and that I’ll feel more at ease soon.

(posted March 21, 2013)