Bug infestation, CLC and the start of volunteering.

I think I’ll start with the bug infestation as the rest is more happy and upbeat. Now that my tummy worms have gone (although I’m still suffering with milder symptoms from it all), Mother Nature has decided to infest my room with around 300 ants (some dead and some Alive), 4 ticks and a few alive black worm/leech things. To be fair, the majority of bugs you find in Cambodia you end up saying “what the hell is that?” as they all look huge and scary.

I didn’t see these last night, and whilst I was in my mosquito net, I kept feeling something bite me repeatedly. Quickly, I turned my phones light on and saw.... absolutely nothing. So again, I turned off the light, closed my eyes and felt another. I repeated this process a few more times until Sanmort turned on the main light and helped me look. As we were looking on the bed sheet, we didn‘t see all the dead/alive ants and everything else that came with it. In the end, I gave up and went to sleep after covering myself in Deet. I woke up with a few blood bites on my feet, itchy bites on my thighs... and these:

These bites burned and stung a lot, they also itched insanely bad at certain points in the day and then calmed down at other points. I got quite worried as when you look closely, there‘s two holes in every bite which means that it was an insect with pincers.

(Also, excuse the leg hair, I’m trying to see how long I can grow it out before I can’t me it any longer)!

After dinner, Sanmort (the absolute legend) came up and helped me gut the entire room out, sweep all the dead ones off the floor, spray all my sheets and mattress with mite spray and then cover the room in insect killer. I’m currently downstairs waiting for the monsters to die. My net was my only safe space and now that’s been ruined.

I also had a rubbish night due to the fact I was depriving myself of water to avoid going to the toilet with this monster and it’s babies. I’ve never seen a spider as big as my hands before (other than in a zoo).

On a happier note, today we took our second trip down to CLC (community learning centre). Our first trip was on Monday at 8am where we had a meeting with a student and the director. CLC is a small learning facility which runs in a school in the afternoon. The facility is free but they only teach 3 courses: sewing, music and mechanics). Even though this is a free facility, there are extremely high drop out rates due to agricultural season and many students find themselves going to work in factories instead of pursuing something of further substance. The entrepreneurship team‘s job is to come in and teach them about creating their own businesses , methods of creating a sustainable business and everything else from soft skills to finding work and keeping them on course. The students ages are anywhere from 12-30 roughly.

We did a trial session today to see how many students would like to learn how to start their own businesses with an expectation of around 3-5 people showing up... we had 14! They need 15 students to run a substantial class but once we had started our session, we had children peeking through the windows and listening to us.

All the students were genuinely engaged with learning about entrepreneurship, which was great considering we were doing a simple and small session due to the fact it was a trial. CLC want us back for the rest of the cycle which myself and the rest of the team are ecstatic about.

Tomorrow we’re meeting our other partners, Spok Reach and meeting all the students there. I also feel like I have 1000 other things to do in the next few weeks but it’s all and enjoyable out here.

Suffering with a bit of homesickness which is only right at this point in the cycle. Part of me knew how hard this would get at points and the other part of me didn’t believe it would be hard at all. I may be a professional squatter by now but I struggle with eating out here. I‘m not sure whether it’s the fear of getting sick or just the pure tasteless food but I would die for one of my Mum’s toasties or her Carbonara with cheesy garlic bread right now... ok now I’m just winding myself up! I hope everyone at home is enjoying the heatwave and are looking after themselves properly.

See you on my next post.