Phnom Penh Khmer Foundation

Five of us from AJWS arrived at the Fairyland guest house, our hotel in Phnom Penh, in the late afternoon on Friday February 18th.  Though the name would not work in the US, there was nothing campy about the hotel.  It was clean, with great wifi and excellent air conditioning.  The hotel was centrally located, about 1/4 mile from downtown Phnom Penh, and close to several good street stalls, our favorite eating venues, so we were pleased and able to keep our food costs low, usually less than $5 a day for the two of us, if we were not having beers with dinner, or eating with our colleagues.


Rich and I spent the weekend exploring the city as my colleagues from AJWS, who were remaining in Phnom Penh, secured housing for the duration of the stay.  We explored several markets in town, the downtown, the national museum and several temples during our five days in the city.  The city is quite bustling with busy streets and no traffic signage except for a couple of lights.  The rule of traffic seems to be "the biggest vehicle has the right of way".  This unfortunately leaves pedestrians at the bottom of the hierarchy and so walkers need to beware.  This traffic pattern combined with the sidewalks being used for motorcycle parking, forced all to walk in the streets.  We were careful about staying aware to traffic coming from any direction, as vehicles did not necessarily keep to the right when turning or passing.


On Monday I went to the Khmer foundation, and I met the staff who was there, the financial manager, who was almost as new as I was having started two weeks before.  Dararoth, the volunteer executive director, drove both of us to Home # 1, a 45 minute drive from Phnom Penh.  The orphanage itself is located on a 4 hectare property which is located about 30 away by paved roads, and then down a rutted dirt road(which I imagine is relatively impassable in the rainy season).  The orphanage seems to share space with the founders’ farming concerns, and a solar energy group from Denmark.

The area of the orphanage consists of a kitchen with a covered, outdoor dining pavilion, a set of four non-attached toilets, four or five dorm buildings, and a central hall with two classrooms and a dance, performance space on the second floor.  There is no electricity, outside of some solar power for lighting the yard in the evening, and there is no plumbing for the site. 

The grounds are beautiful with ponds for fish, there is a chicken yard, scrawny cattle with protruding bones, chickens, ducks, and a host of flowering plants and trees.  Most of the children were away at school while we were there, but those who went to afternoon school were around and were a bit bashful, and very polite.

The next day I went into the office to prepare my plan for the assignent and then we went to lunch together.  The plan we developed is as follows:  Assess admission criteria, develop behavioral expectation for children living at the orphanage, and develop operational definitions, and descriptions  for the differing staff positions. 

I was told that I should take the rest of the day to work at the hotel as Dararoth would not be at the office, and that we would not get together until Thursday when we would travel to Battambang to begin the placement at Home # 2 in Battambang.