Au Revoir les Enfants

This week saw the departure of the majority of the Montagnard refgees with whom I have been working in Cambodia. After the government of Cambodia demanded the closure of the site where they were housed, Canada stepped in and offered them asylum. Most of the Montagnards I have worked with derrived their refugee status from a family member already in the United States, and they expect to be settled there eventually.They will be living in Quebec. I am so glad that they are going somewhere where they have the freedom to work and travel; many of them have been in the closed site in Phnom Penh for as long as six years. During that time, food and basic necessities have been provided to them, but they have not been allowed to leave the site except for official purposes and under supervision. This chunk of their lives has been in suspended animation. The education provided to them there has been less than ideal, and my biggest concern is for the young adults among them, who have grown up in this environment. 

I have loved working with them, and I am very sad to say goodbye, but hope that their futures will be bright in Canada.

 

Certainly, Canada in February will be difficult to adjust to for people from the Vietnamese highlands who have living on a closed site in Cambodia. Not just the weather, which may come as a shock, but the unfamiliar amenities and ways of doing things. Even seeing them off at the airport brought it home to me how many things will be new to them. At the airport, the automatic taps, the toilets, the escalators, were new, and sometimes bewildering or terrifying experiences. I put all my faith in the social services in Quebec to support them through this. I trust that they will discover, as I did, what a privilege it is to work with such amazing people.

Fear and Self-loathing in Humanitarian Space

The brilliant Hugo Slim in his essay ' A Call to Alms' says;

A sense of neo-colonial guilt, which can verge on self-hatred, lurks just below the surface of many individual humanitarian vocations and has a pernicious effect on humanitarian purpose and morale.

Slim is the only writer on humanitarian matters whom I have come across who has pinpointed this issue which I have seen so much evidence of among my peers, but rarely heard discussed. The uneasiness we feel about the neo-colonial nuances of what we do, and our frustration with the ineffectiveness of some projects can translate into feelings of negativity that threaten to take over.

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between a healthy dose of self-satire which helps us laugh about the issues we deal with, and the self-hatred which Slim refers to. We humanitarian workers have to be able to laugh at ourselves, and I think we need to to be able to laugh at situations that really aren't funny. I find this blog; http://stuffexpataidworkerslike.com/ a great instance of aid workers poking fun at themselves, and I find most of the entries hilarious and very recognisable.
I  recently saw a cartoon video posted on Facebook entitled 'Aspiring Aid Worker Interview'.The tagline reads: This is a satirical look at the challenges of professional aid and development work with idealistic activists with good intentions. I haven't reposted it partly because it seems to have been removed for copyright reasons.  A young man with a robotic voice tells an interviewer with a robotic voice that he wants to be an aid worker, and gets put straight about how useless and uninformed and naive his ambition is, and how he doesn't need to go overseas. It was posted by a fellow humanitarian, and several other of my humanitarian friends 'liked' it, and commented on how funny it was. The young man protests 'But I have a Master's degree! I use words like 'empowerment'!' Speaking as one with a Master's degree, who uses words like 'empowerment', I'm not sure that I think this is laughable. If we don't believe in what we do, how do we expect anyone else to?

Refugee Education

My projects in Phnom Penh have diversified and I am now also working with the refugees who have been granted asylum in Cambodia, and those seeking refugee status. This has opened my eyes to a lot of issues surrounding refugee education. While the Montagnard refugees live at one site, and cannot leave without permission and supervision, the other refugee population, called 'urban refugees' live where they choose and have fewer direct provisions made for them. The Montagnards have food baskets delivered to them, whereas the urban refugees have more autonomy and the freedom to work.
The urban refugees that I work with come from Vietnam, Myanmar (both Rohingya and Burmese) Pakistan, and Somalia.  I have set up a programme for the women refugees, with the goal of empowering them by fostering a sense of community, as well as local integration, and exploring opportunities for vocational training. Because they live throughout the city, the logistics of meeting with all of them are difficult. There is one place outside Phnom Penh where a relatively large number of the Muslim refugees live, and I have met with some of the women there. One of the central difficulties is communication, and the visits become like the game we used to call 'Chinese whispers' (for politically correct reasons, while teaching I now call it 'Telephone') where a sentence is whispered from one person to the next around the room until the garbled final form is said out loud and compared to its original.  My English is translated to Urdu to Burmese to Rohingya and who knows what my original sentences become. Language is a central issue in refugee education, and even more complicated than I knew it to be. Few of the refugees speak Khmer, some because they can get by without it, and some because they are hoping to get to another country, and are unwilling to make the investment in learning a language that won't be of use to them. The kids go to English classes, as it seems all kids in this country do, and then, since English has become a common second language among the refugees, the children who have studied English and picked up Khmer become the family translators and negotiators, putting a lot of pressure on them, and leaving the women dependant on their husbands for money, and their children for communication. My project for empowerment has some way to go.

Cambodia

Several of my illusions about working for a UN agency have been shattered during my time here.My work is extremely interesting- advising UNHCR and its implementing partner NGO on education for the Vietnamese Montagnard refugees here in Phnom Penh, and having a hand in providing that education.

Unfortunately, the Cambodian government has ordered the closure of the refugee site by January 1st. UNHCR have asked for a three-month extension in order to get the refugees resettled, but we'll see how that goes.

Gleeful Teaching

I am up to my eyes in last-minute thesis work, and do not feel like being Serious about Education Issues.

So on an unserious subject, I was amused by Gwyneth Paltrow's guest appearance on the television show Glee, as a substitute teacher who goes to great lengths to make subjects 'relevant' and engaging for her students, seen above teaching history as Mary Todd Lincoln, urging students to 'Practise your own bi-polar rant! See, history is fun!'

After Haiti

It was an intense experience. As far as my research went, it didn't go according to plan- the hurricane and the cholera outbreak, meant that I did not get to do as many interviews as I had hoped. But I had a very positive response from so many people from the education cluster in Haiti, who were very generous with their time and ideas, and some of whom I managed to interview from back in Ireland.
But I was busy. I made some visits as a representative of the Andrew Grene Foundation, and saw a potential site for a school. And I got to visit a number of schools, and talk to some education professionals there.

I found volunteering with EDV to be an amazingly positive experience. I thought their projects were thoughtful, community-based and sustainable- I have rarely been so impressed by a volunteer organisation, which can tend towards good intentions that are badly informed. I got to teach a little bit, and to write up a bit of a guide which volunteers can use in future for tips on teaching. I had the privilege of working with some really amazing people.
I had many of my assumptions turned on their heads- as assumptions should be. I wish very much that I could have stayed longer, but I am very certain that I will be back at some point. The graciousness, generosity, courage and strength of Haitian people that I encountered was phenomenal. It was so much beyond what I expected to find, and I was so humbled by it.

In Haiti

The last week has been intense. Community health training on cholera prevention, visiting an orphanage, schools, teaching, evacuating for the hurricane, and unevacuating again. These beautiful children were at a small orphanage which the NGO here works with.

I'm very glad I came here. So far I have achieved very little of what I came here to do, but I still feel it was important to have come.