just another day in paradise..

so im travelling back from phnom penh to kampot. a three hour taxi trip. usually i make sure we leave plenty of time to get home before dark. but this is the first time for a night drive. my thirteen year old son is with me.

the sunset is spectactular. i make some very feeble attempts at capturing the display. pretty hard to do through a window of a moving car. the palm trees are silhouetted against the pink and purple sky. this is cambodia at its very finest. we eventually ask the driver to pull over so we can just stop and absorb the beauty around us.

we continue our drive. its now dark so my focus shifts from the horizon to the actual road. i notice that we are passing a lot of trucks. when i have a closer look i realise that the trucks are JAM PACKED with young women. seriously...these women are so crammed in that they dont even need anything to hold on to. some of the trucks have a few young men hanging on to the back of the truck.

reality slaps me in the face. sweat shop workers!! coming home from their 12 hour shift. we are more than an hour and a half out of phnom penh. so after a long long day of sewing our factory made clothes...these young people then have to climb onto a truck and be herded back to their village a couple of hours south of the city. which can only mean that they started their day in the same way.

my son is mortified when i pull out my camera.  "muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!!!!!  you CANT do that!!"  he's got a point.  but when i hold the camera up it looks as if they are waving at me.  so i wave back.  big smile on my face.  thinking how great it is that they dont mind having their photo taken.  thats when i realise.  it wasnt their hands waving.  it was their scarves blowing in the wind.  and no one is smiling.  damn it!  i was hoping to capture the scene to show people back home another harsh reality of sweat shops. but i was also sort of hoping that i wasnt totally trampling on these people by snapping pictures.  but yes...i have just trampled.  and feel like an absolute moron.  my son explains to me that surely their situation is bad enough...they dont need some western woman in a comfortable taxi...with spare seats...and air con...to snap away.  and of course he is right.  uuuuggh!

so yes.  yet again the reality of cambodia strikes hard.  this incredible beauty.  yet in amongst it this absolute poverty and mistreatment of people. 

as my friend Any said after seeing an episode of "animal rescue".  in australia animals are looked after more than people in cambodia'"   and yes...sadly Any is right.

happiness is mud

we have a crab farm out the back of our house. normally it looks like a river - but now at the end of the hot season it has pretty much dried up...the kids have had an absolute ball running around in it...and have collected lots of fish with their hands...possibly the most fun they have had in months. (and my kids are not lacking in the fun department)
i love the last photo since it really shows so much about them as individuals. the moment they let go holding hands, Levi goes searching for something, Neshica does somersaults, Time runs of...and Ocea follows. Bingo!!

gotta love cambodia

You might remember me as someone who used to write updates about Cambodia

Ummm....so it's been a while to say the least. I'm pretty sure there is a direct correlation between blogging and levels of happiness.
( I will let you connect the dots on that one. ) All that so say, we are here in Kampot. It's the middle of hot season. Steve is back in Australia until mid-June. And I think a few photos might be a good way of getting back into the blogging zone.

Khmer New Year, April 2011. Every home has a shrine to celebrate. Check out our very proud landlady. The centerpiece being a Berri's apple juice of course.

Our friend and helper Any decided last minute to have a New Year's celebration at her house with a monk blessing the family and praying over her ancestors.

Young and Old in our village.

Our current addiction is sugar cane juice. So refreshing. We've been drinking it with a sliver of lime. However, this week in a moment of inspiration I asked the lady to add some ginger that I happened to have on hand. And holy hell!! Talk about the perfect drink!!

We woke to the sound of music blaring. Another funeral. As I was going in the tuk tuk I happened to pass the family preparing for the funeral. And look what i found!! Possibly the funkiest coffin ever. Made from my favorite tree. (banana). It looks so incredibly gorgeous...and as Levi pointed out...it's biodegradable.

The wondering wandering Jew

I’m pretty sure that most of us have our own Promised Land that we yearn for.  A land flowing with our own version of milk & honey.   I have actively started searching for what our life will be like once we finish up our time in Cambodia.  With our oldest two kids rapidly approaching their teens I feel the need to provide them with some semblance of a social life.  Something that sadly can’t be done in rural Cambodia. 

Thankfully my husband seems to be on the same page as me when it comes to our future existence.  We both long to be part of a community.  A place where families have the time to be part of each others lives.  Spontaneous meals.  Lots of time wrestling out the questions of life through lively chats.  Kids having access to a whole bunch of ‘aunts & uncles’.   Focusing on the simple things in life and not getting caught up in the ‘get fest’ of consumer society.  On top of that being able to eat local food and growing a lot of it ourselves would be highly sought after bonuses.  Too much to ask for?? 

As it turned out our search began on the 1/1/11.  Not a bad date to begin.   Our Holy Grail began in the hills of  Queensland.  After three days we came away with our heads spinning.  Yes the option of natural living was there...but the communal thing was sadly lacking.  We then had a mini visit to inner city Brisbane where  we wouldn’t have the option of nature...but the communal thing seemed to be thriving.  On top of that there was the whole social justice aspect that our family seems to be drawn to.  Perfect!  The excitement lasted  about 12 hours.  Until I got online to look for real estate and nearly passed out when I saw the current property prices. 

All this highlighted to me that no matter how much we yearn for community...we don’t want it to come at the cost of financial stress either.

So now our search has pretty much been narrowed down to this:

Communal Living (with a social justice twist if possible)

Affordable Living (with a comfortable twist if possible)

Too much to ask for???  

It seems so. 

But what I have to ask myself is this.  Surely there are lots of individuals & families like us?  People who have an intolerance to mainstream affluenza.  People who crave the same ideals that we do.  Thing is, I don’t know where to find them.   I’m tempted to get two massive posters.  Some paint.  Then in big letters “HONK IF YOU CRAVE COMMUNITY.”    Hang that around my neck and see who I can attract. 

In the meantime my Inner Emo is alive and well.  Surfacing throughout the day singing songs of loneliness and longing.

By the rivers of Adelaide I sat down and wept.

My Non-Educational Thoughts on Curriculum

Here's an article I wrote about three or four years ago.  Figured some of you might enjoy it.

I've been a home school mum for over a year now. Something to be proud of, I know. Initially I was happy if I survived a month... then a term... and now with a little bit of hindsight I'm kind of thinking that maybe its not so hard after all. There is one thing in particular though that hangs over my head like a dark cloud.

It's that eternal question that pops up when I least expect it... ‘Which curriculum are you using?’ I know, I know... people just can’t help themselves. It goes hand in hand when mentioning that I home-school. In the same way that children get asked how old they are and mothers of babies are asked ‘is he a good baby?’

In my opinion, the word ‘curriculum’, like other words that have that dreaded ‘rr’ in them, should be removed all together from this planet.
No one would disagree with me that terrorism, hemorrhoids and cardiac arrest are things that we could all do without. So why not get rid of the curriculum concept as well? Just think... it would make homeschooling so much more enticing.

Imagine the education department sending their rep over to your home to make sure that your children were being properly educated. They would make sure that your child was spending most of their day outside in the fresh air. They would then deduct points if they felt that your child’s day looked too similar to the day before. The rep would ‘tsk tsk’ when seeing work that looked repetitive and practically faint when presented with a daily schedule.

In many ways, a curriculum for a home-school family reminds me of a birthing plan for the pregnant couple. It's a fairly standard procedure these days for the doctor or midwife to sit down with the couple and discuss what sort of ideas they have in mind for the impending birth. The options are endless. Water births, epidurals, medical students being present and so on. Reality is though... that once the woman is about five centimeters dilated, the birthing plan - along with the scented candles, whale sounds CD and the massage oils get thrown out the window. The rest of the labour is then able to progress as nature intended. It's a completely acceptable practice to spend ages discussing a birth plan and then having it discarded within moments of that first contraction. Let’s embrace that for the home-schooling family as well. Let's allow the dialogue about curriculum to take place... but once that first cramp happens... let's ditch it and allow nature to take its course.

As much as I’m in awe of families that have their day planned out... as much as I come away from their home with my head hanging in shame, I have to wonder…
How do you design a curriculum that makes room for a spontaneous trip to the beach... that lasts all day... where you just can't pull yourself away from the magical sand castle so you come home after bed time with sand in your hair and exhausted smiles on your faces. A curriculum that then allows the next day to not even start till after ten because everyone needs to stay in bed and recharge.
Or a curriculum that allows for the kids to venture down to the nature reserve at the back of your house. They pack their own lunch and don’t come back for hours. Eventually in the late afternoon they return with stories about waterfalls from the latest downpour, finding blue tongue lizards and catching yabbies with their bare hands.

Or a curriculum that caters to younger siblings who urgently need help to build the biggest Duplo tower ever and then decide that they no longer need morning naps?

For the life of me I just can’t see how a home-school curriculum can in anyway go hand in hand with children who wake up in the morning ready to create, explore and have that zest for life that is so rare these days.

Yes my kids are doing maths most days. Yes they write stuff about their lives or stories that they create. And yes... if I can pull myself away from the endless dirty dishes I try to make a point of correcting their spelling and so on. But to be honest, other than that our days just happen. I figure that they are learning so much from the books they devour, the cubbies they are building, the dance routines they choreograph and the time spent helping in the home.

Their dad gets involved with the occasional science lesson (thankfully I'm not expected to help out in that department) and he is available at dinner times for vital questions about friction and distances in space. We are also blessed with a multi talented friend that teaches the kids anything from fire twirling to crocheting colourful beanies.

I long for the day I can stand tall when asked about my home-school curriculum. When with a straight face and with full confidence I can say, ‘We follow the highly sought after... “spontaneous” approach’.