Life in England... goodbye ice creams and sunshine, hello school uniforms and snow!

We are back! England has welcomed us gloriously with snow and sun and frost and despite wearing hats in bed we are actually enjoying the cold. While there are many things I shall miss about Cambodia, right now I am loving the fact that I can run and skip down the road with the girls safely (apart from the patches of black ice), that they wake up at 830 each morning instead of 6, and that they have learnt how to walk further than from the front door to the gate or Tuk Tuk once more. We have walked up a hill every day since we arrived, been sledging, had hot chocolates by the fire and they have even stopped complaining about the ten layers of clothing they have to wear each time they leave the house. It is good to be home.

Yes, it feels like the right decision despite having left so many precious people behind. We still think and talk of Cambodia all the time and this feels like a holiday for the girls I am sure. For me it is frighteningly real. Jemima starts school on Monday. MONDAY! I have nightmares about her wearing the wrong uniform (we have not got it yet!) or arriving late or not being able to start the car but she is completely relaxed and excited. While I am in mourning at the thought of her not coming home for lunch all she can talk about is the school puddings she has read about on the menu on the school website!

I am sure this blog will be a bit of a T-E family settling back into life in the sticks for a while, so if you are good friends you will enjoy, especially if reading from our old beloved hot and sultry Cambodia. If you are new to Motherland you may find it more interesting to read some of my other less mundane scribblings :-)


Read this post

What will I take home from Cambodia?

A dear friend asked me yesterday, what will you take home from Cambodia? Today these words come tumbling out, fast and furious. I could edit it but I don't want to. Better to give you the raw unfinished rough draft, a from the heart flow …

Cambodia

So many smiles mask so much pain.
So much gold, so much dirt.

Gold Towers, evictions, Lexuses, rape,
Swimming pools & sewers where children play.

White sand islands, plastic bags,
Coconuts palms, foreign owned.

Colourful weddings, music and lights!
Bride unrecognisable. Woman in chains.
Make-up that hides her soul.

Glinting green rice paddies, warm russet earth,
Yellow afternoons.

Sunsets that bathe a whole city in red.
Monks swathed in orange, photographed daily. Fed by the poor. Faith uncertain.

Mangoes and jasmine, cyclos and street kids.

So many smiles. So much pain.

What will I take home with me from you, Cambodia?

Scents and impressions of all of this. Branded into my soul.

And more.

Healing, love, art and peace
Destiny found and embraced

Humility, outrage and hopelessness

Hope, patience, empathy and light.

Flow, grace. Nightmares and dreams.

Tolerance for dogs and music and traffic
Yearning for space and tears and passion

A desire to see something here change
The fear that nothing will

Friends, forever, deep in my heart.

Soul touched. Soul love.

Bella! Conceived and nurtured from nought to two. Naked and free, loved everywhere.

Jemima, already five! Wise and beautiful, loving and strong.

James, closer every day. Forgiving, brave and true.

Loving, warm and trusting. Open hearts, open lives.

Cambodia embraced us all.

How can I leave?

How can I stay?

Trust. Trust and let go.

For more rough poems click here


Read this post

Leaving Cambodia.. for real this time..

Ok, I know this blog has been sleeping for a long time. (I haven’t.) I also know that I wrote about a year ago that we were leaving Cambodia and I never quite got round to writing that we were not leaving after all. But this time it is true. After four incredible years here we are flying home for Christmas and not coming back. At least, not any time soon. So of course I have to write. I can’t imagine anyone visits my blog now it has been such a long time since I last wrote, but I need to write anyway, for the girls and to relieve my heavy heart. Oh, and for my mother. I know she will be reading. :-)
Cycling home last night through Phnom Penh at dusk, having spent the afternoon playing yoga games and creative arts with a team of Cambodian counsellors and social workers who are in great need of some Time for Me (as the project is called) to release stress and trauma and to learn to support each other, I was ready to cancel our flight booking. However much I long for the green hills of Herefordshire and however much I am excited for our new life in the countryside, I still cannot really imagine saying goodbye to this extraordinary city and its wonderful people. Last night the streets were madly busy, the uncovered sewer, or black river, was especially pungent, the sun was huge and red in the sky, weddings blocked off whole streets on my bike route, and the air was its usual warm, damp, musky self, with that unmistakable Phnom Penh smell that hit me the first time I stepped off the plane and which I will never forget.

There was a time, three years back, when I would have been so ready to leave here. Now, although I know leaving is the right thing for us to do in many ways, it feels as though time is slipping through my fingers. I don’t feel ready to let go, no matter how much yoga I do for the 1st chakra!

What has been incredibly moving, and also quite surprising, over the last few weeks, is to see how Cambodians become very emotional and expressive when it comes to goodbyes. I am used to the smiles that mask the real feelings within, when it comes to most of my Cambodian friends. However I am beginning to understand how goodbyes trigger off subconscious memories of previous endings - endings which, for most Cambodians, have been deeply painful traumatic events. I can honestly say that not a day has passed in the last week or so when someone has not welled up on seeing me or the girls. I totally understand of course. I fight back the tears (or let them flow forth actually) several times a day at the moment, at the market, in nearly every yoga class I teach, and especially when hanging out or working with one of my dearest friends and yoga colleague in Cambodia, Mindy, and her son Ivan, Bella’s best friend. Seeing my girls with their friends, lovely children who have come to mean so much to me, many of whom are also my little yoga students, is probably the hardest thing of all. It is at times like that when the urge to stamp my feet and shout “No, I can’t leave them!” comes upon me. But I was not prepared for the sheer amounts of love and expressed sadness from the Cambodians in my life. Bella and Jemima’s teachers, our beloved nanny and house help Sophy, her daughter, her daughter in law, her daughter’s friend…. It is overwhelming, exhausting but it is so honest and real that I would not want it to be any different. A friend reminded me that the pain of leaving honours the deep relationships we have built here. If it were easy to leave what would that say about the last four years? I never thought I would feel at home here, but right now this is the most at home I can imagine feeling anywhere. The fact that it is not our home is one of the main reasons we are leaving I suppose. To go back to England and put down some roots. Once we have a home back in England maybe one day we will feel free to move overseas to live again, knowing where we came from and where we will go back to.

Jemima is very excited of course. She keeps looking at the school menu in the local primary school she will go to and talking about uniforms and white socks and black shoes. Bella is altogether much harder to imagine in England. She is deeply settled and happy here. She is naked about 99% of the day. She is loved and adored wherever she goes. She has a touchingly profound friendship with Ivan, who is absolutely her equal in everyway – from naked bottom wiggling to non-stop conversation to butterfly catching and everything else… you should see them feeding each other raisins and caressing each other’s faces. When Bella is upset and I cannot console her, she knows who can. With a look of anguish on her face she will plead me with “I NEED Ivan, Mummy. I need to go to his house and play with him now!”

How will Bella be received in her naked splendour in England? (If you are thinking what I think you are, yes, I know but Bella likes to be cold. I think she will go sledging in her bottom given half the chance.) What will people say when she sheds all her clothing in the middle of the supermarket and sighs loudly and sensually “Ahhh, I got my botty. I love my botty.”? How will she feel without the constant company of Tuk-Tuk drivers, friends and general bustle around her? Cambodia is so full of life and there are people everywhere. Herefordshire, how ever much I love it, is rather quiet, let’s face it! While I can imagine Jemima curled up in a corner of the house looking at a book or lost in a game of make believe, what will Bella make of those long hours when her sister is at school and she is stuck with me at home?

I guess I will find out soon enough. In the meantime I plan to live every moment of this Cambodian life until the minute we board the plane. And probably the next time I write will be from the freezing hills of Herefordshire. It is currently 7 degrees Celsius, which I know thanks to the setting James has added to my desktop. Every time I log on I have to be reminded of the fact that we are leaving the constant warmth and light of the sun behind. It has been three years since I experienced a dark winter morning in England. 7 degrees?? I wonder what Bella’s beloved botty will make of that.

I am off to teach my little 5 year old yoginis. Today we will explore how it feels to say goodbye.


Read this post

Travelling with kids (Asia Life, June)

As Georgie Treasure-Evans prepares for three weeks backpacking around northern Laos with her husband and two girls under five, she shares a few tips to help you plan for your own family adventures. Her top tip? Keep it simple!

The long school break is a strange time for both parents and children alike in Expatria. There is the inevitable sadness brought about by yet more goodbyes to beloved friends, often distracted by wonderful, albeit exhausting, trips home to reconnect with friends and family. For some there are agonizingly long days hanging about in Phnom Penh waiting for everyone to come back and schools to start!

But these long ‘summers’ also provide the perfect opportunity to explore the beautiful and exotic places so easily within our reach. Here are a few tips to make travelling with children enjoyable and stress free.

What better region to brave with children than southeast Asia, cheek pinching aside? You are welcomed everywhere by willing babysitters and play mates – from local kids to fully grown backpackers. You can relax on long bus journeys as the children get passed around your fellow passengers for a good dose of ogling and boiled sweet-pushing. Nobody cares when you ask the bus to make five loo stops in half an hour. Even a tantrum provides intriguing relief from the tedium of the journey.

Here are a few essentials to add to your usual list. Keep it simple and only pack what you and your kids can carry!

1. Take your favourite baby carrier, and a cotton sling that folds up small. The Ergo carries new-borns up to four year olds, perfect for long walks or late night transits.

2. A wet cloth in a plastic bag is great for washing faces and hands. Waste-free, it is eco-friendly and lighter than a pack of wipes. Though accepting that your off-spring will look and smell rather like street children for most of the trip can be quite liberating, and helps you pack half as many clothes.

3. A bendy, plastic ‘catchy’ bib that you can fold up and shove in a pocket is great to stop children picking food up off the floor. It doubles up as a nose bag if you fill it with raisins for children snacking on the loose.

4. Bags of nuts, dried apricots and prunes are filled with protein and iron for when the children’s diet becomes less balanced. Otherwise Royal D and local snacks will probably suffice.

5. An inflatable highchair that folds up small. Really. It makes having to eat out three times a day with babies or toddlers bearable.

6. Stories and songs downloaded onto an MP3 player with headphones and/or speakers.

7. A book of children’s songs or the words to your favourite songs. Be prepared to sing. For hours....

8. A small kit of natural remedies. E.g. Echinacea for fighting colds, Lavender oil for mossie bites and restful sleep, Citronella for mosquitoes, Chamomile for calming and skin irritations, Aloe Vera for sun burn, Rescue Remedy for shocks, Tea Tree for antiseptic, Eucalyptus for blocked nose, Pro-biotics for keeping Thrush at bay for sugar-fuelled kids... herbal tea bags are good too.

9. A full first-aid kit, sun screen, sun suits and hats and mossie guard.

10. Toys come last on my list from experience. Travelling kids mostly play with their environment. You know: rubbish, old tin cans, cigarette butts, plug sockets, hotel loo brushes, filthy shoes. My nine-month-old daughter played with a half full plastic water bottle for three weeks in Vietnam. If we didn’t have it on long journeys we were in trouble.

But, if you have room, pack a bag with small toys that you can empty onto the floor wherever it becomes necessary. E.g. finger and sock puppets, face paints, fuzzy felt, small dolls with removable clothes and long hair, hair brush, beads for making jewellery, bouncy ball, balloons, washable bath crayons. Twister is great for older kids and making friends.

Your kids can help you pack. Explain why you need to travel light and tell them how exciting it will be to come home again knowing all their toys are waiting for them.

Other than that relax and try not to worry about the mosquitoes, dirt, heat and jetlag. Your kids are probably far more tolerant to these than you are... as we get older and set in our ways, children are the perfect antidote!

Join in their excitement as they experience new cultures, foods, transport and lifestyles. Watch them become thoughtful, compassionate and open-minded as they begin to see their own life in the bigger picture. And encourage them to be thankful for this opportunity of a life time.


Read this post

Asia Life article - Kids Love Yoga

I have taken over the Next Generation column of a local magasine called Asia Life. Here is March's edition.. sorry, yoga again!!! But with great photos!

Kids love yoga. Any parent who practices at home knows this. Just roll out your mat and they’ll gravitate towards it, along with all household pets, the occasional frog, a gecko or two... It is not only children’s innate, irresistible, primal urge to stretch, wiggle and contort their body into every conceivable shape and form that draws them to yoga. Often they simply want to curl up in your lap and absorb your peace. Either way, it can only be beneficial. Especially in hot, noisy, stress-inducing Phnom Penh, where the opportunities and spaces for letting our children run wild remain scarce. Yoga provides the perfect escape, as my four-year-old daughter Jemima taught me not long ago.



We were quietly picking our way through the rubbish and dead rats that adorn our walk to school, all efforts at conversation having been drowned out by the noise of cutting metal from the building sites along the way, when she unexpectedly transported us to a beautiful island.

“The pavement is the beach, Mummy, and when it ends, we’re not falling into the road. We are jumping and splashing about in the sea! The motor bikes are sharks... friendly sharks though.” A Hummer roared by. “And the cars are whales”.

The Tuk-Tuks were fishing boats, from which we ordered our dinner, fresh fish for that evening. Every so often one of us tripped on a friendly crab, or an empty coconut shell fallen from a palm that fringed the warm, white sands. All we could hear was the lapping of the gentle waves on the shore, the call of the birds in the trees, and a soft breeze rustling the leaves. I bet you feel calmer just reading about it.

This same island paradise got her through 30 minutes of teeth-extracting hell at the dentist a few days later. Grown men would have been howling, all coping mechanisms buried deeply beneath years of accumulated baggage. My daughter breathed.

Without having to think about it, (let alone lie down on the therapist’s couch), Jemima had found a way of creating the exact conditions she needed in order to maintain her relaxed, centred, happy state of being, rather than allowing herself to be at the mercy of her less desirable external environment. Which, let’s face it, is pretty much what yoga is all about. The word itself, coming from the Sanskrit word jugit, means to unite. The practice of yoga, which incorporates breath, movement and meditation, is essentially about achieving a happy union of mind, body and soul. About feeling whole, and at one with God, the Supreme Consciousness, the Infinite.

If yoga isn’t something you do at home but you would like your child to stay connected to his or her inner constancy, peace and joy, you will be happy to hear that if there is one thing Phnom Penh is full of, it is yoga classes for kids. Teachers take the children on magical adventures through forests, oceans and jungles. They fly like butterflies, growl like lions, dance like monkeys! They grow from tiny seeds to big beautiful trees. They do just about anything the imagination allows – every yoga posture can be turned into something that fits in the story!

The physical stretch and workout they get is wonderfully beneficial, and could not be more natural. All of us have, in our life time, regularly practiced each of the 84 postures that exist in yoga. Yes, you too. As a baby in the womb. But even more important is the sense of peace, grounding and self-love that each child gains through their yoga practice.

Some yoga classes start with the chanting of the mantra Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo, which in Sanskrit means “I honour the one creative consciousness, I honour the divine wisdom within.” Or, as six-year-old Shawna puts it: “I am saying hello to the teacher in my heart. Which means, I have the answers within”.

As Anya Weil, my own yoga teacher and constant source of inspiration, explains, yoga gives children tools for growing into self-confident individuals able to fulfill their unique potential in life, while always in harmony with their spiritual selves:

“When I do yoga with children, I am profoundly aware of their future. Children's yoga does not pull or demand, it guides and plays. It is a means of physical and spiritual expression, of development. As responsible parents, we focus on social and mental development in a healthy constructive environment but children's yoga offers a means for the union of the child's physical and spiritual elements as well. Yoga builds these core bases upon which they will make their individual ways through life. It is a privilege and a pleasure to be a part of their journey. It reminds me of my own path, my own journey.”

Uplifting songs and meditations fill the children with positive affirmation. “I am the light of my soul, I am bountiful. I am beautiful. I am bliss” is the one Jemima sings herself to sleep with every night.

“I am happy! I am good!” is another favourite mantra, though Archie, three and ever the realist, prefers “I am happy! I am sad!”

Expatriate children are not the only ones benefiting from yoga in Phnom Penh. Several NGOs now incorporate it into their programme. It can be especially healing for children who have suffered trauma. Roza, 14, was recently evicted from her home in the Dey Krahorm area of Phnom Penh. “Yoga makes me feel good. When I am sad I can do yoga and forget about things. It feels lovely”.

At the end of their adventures the children lie down and have the opportunity to drift into a deep relaxation. Guided visualisations help them to truly relax and be still, even for a few minutes at a time, though they often stay there for longer than you’d expect.

I have never seen children sit so still and look as serene as I have in kid’s yoga classes. Over time, those who come with behavioural issues, stress or unmanageable temper tantrums seem like different children, so much calmer, so much happier. Really, when you watch children practice yoga it is easy to imagine a world without war.


Yoga for kids in Phnom Penh
Anya Weil teaches yoga to two-to five-year-olds at the Giving Tree School both as part of the curriculum and in their after school programme. See http://www.thegivingtreeschool.com/Yoga.html for details.

ISPP has yoga classes for 5-8 year olds. See http://www.ispp.edu.kh for details.

Georgie teaches yoga for 3-6 year-olds at Gecko and Garden Pre-school on Tuesdays at 330. Please call 092575431 for details.

The Kundalini Yoga House teaches yoga for children and adolescents from the Aziza
School in the Tonle Bassac resettlement area. See www.kundaliniyogacambodia.org for details.







Read this post

Friends

I feel so sad. We have just come back from a good bye lunch with Jemima’s beloved friends Marina and Amanda. The three of them are great friends and class mates at school, and Marina is going back to Iceland tomorrow. Even though I am sure we will meet again sometime, I still had to stop myself from squeezing and sniffing the life out of the poor girl as I kissed her goodbye. I just wanted to imprint a bit of her in my memory, she has become such a constant part of our transient lives out here in Cambodia.

Jemima first met Marina when they were two, nearly two and a half years ago, at the little kindergarten they went to a few mornings a week. I remember the day I first met Marina. Jemima was upset about something and Marina marched up to her, sat on the swing next to her and put her arm around her, a tiny fairy godmother with attitude.

Soon after that I took Jemima out of the kindergarten to stay at home with me and we did not see Marina again. Then on their first day at Garden and Gecko school, a year later, the two girls just reconnected like old friends. Neither remembered the other, at least not consciously. But I am sure that on a deeper level they both knew exactly who the other was. These two were always meant to be friends.

“Of course neither of them quite understands”, we parents have been saying to each other. “It will sink in later”. Today I think we were proved otherwise. The two of them argued throughout lunch, like passionate couples often do before a time of separation. Actually they reminded me of James and me when we were first together, each of us travelling for a few weeks at a time. Of course we could put it down to the fact that the girls are both tired, it has been a long week, and Marina must be feeling unsettled at all the goodbyes and packing and changes afoot. But I also believe they are both more aware than we realise that something is coming between them, and this is their way of expressing the uncomfortable not quite understood feelings this sensitivity arouses. You would agree with me if you could see these two together.

For the last 18 months Jemima and Marina have been class mates, and played together at least two afternoons a week – mostly arranged by them. We are only informed of their plans at going home time. I would often be greeted with a laughing Marina saying: “Why did you come to get Jemima? She is coming home for lunch with me today!”

As we drive home from school in opposite directions every day they call out each others’ names from the back of their respective Tuk Tuks, until each is out of sight, just like lovers. You think I am exaggerating? When I asked Jemima today what she loves most about Marina she replied without a pause, “The flowers that she brings me”! Anything else? I asked. “Her heart. The inside smells of flowers.” She once carried a pair of Marina’s pants (I mean knickers, not trousers) around the supermarket, “Because they are Marina’s (and I like looking at Snow White”). We could learn a thing or two about romance from these girls!

One of my favourite things to do is to sit on the sofa and just listen and watch as they play, often with Amanda as well. They get into role more of less the minute they are together and the next hours are spent lost in imaginary games of Mummy, Sister and Baby: “Sister! Sister! You forgot your shoes! We’ll be late for school”, travelling on planes, pulling buggies and suitcases behind them and wearing fleeces in 35 degrees, because “Marina, it is so cold in Iceland, yeah?” “Yeah, and it is so cold in England Jemima, right?”, making houses with all the cushions in the house, painting each others faces... and much more.

Whatever the game, it would inevitably involve changing clothes at least five times each. When they’ve all departed at the end of the day the house resembles my home when I was a teenager, one of four sisters... Knickers, scrunched up inside out t-shirts, odd shoes, pretty much the entire contents of Jemima’s drawers actually, strewn all over the place.

I knew clothes would be an issue with girls at some stage, but I was bargaining on a few more years yet. Jemima, Marina and Amanda come home each day from school with each others’ clothes and flip-flops on. Sometimes they share the shoes out between the three of them, so that they all have one of the other’s; or over the months one of them amasses three pairs of another’s. Our drawers are full of Marina’s knickers. However often we sorted it all out and returned them all, a week later they would be back. I love the fact that we have traces of Marina all over the house.

I feel sure that Jemima and Amanda will miss their darling friend but happy that they will continue to enjoy their own lovely and unique relationship. Until the summer, and then we have to put them through it all again. Hmmm, won’t dwell on that just yet.

If you liked this post have a read of this.

Read this post

Long post! Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope you all had lovely Christmases. Ours was very quiet with visiting family, perfect really.

Ah it has been so long and I have missed my blog. I have been writing here and there and perhaps I should have just posted it all here as well to keep readers interested. I fear I have become such an infrequent blogger recently that no one is reading anymore. Comments are very rare, so then I think ah well, no one will miss me. But I miss it and you so shall continue blogging regardless! You will be pleased to hear that I am finally getting published again! Not my motherhood book, I have left that to brew for a while. But two short stories will appear in a new book called Expat Journals. I have also co- written an article on gang rape soon to be published in LOOK magazine, which has opened up another world to me, one of slavery and cruelty beyond most people’s wildest imaginings. The sex trade will become my campaign of 2009 I think.
Of course right this minute I should be studying. This always happens. I open my books and read a few pages of my yoga files, that cover everything you can possibly think of that has anything to do with life, as we do and do not know it... the anatomy of the human heart, the soul, dharma versus karma, destiny versus fate, recipes for health, how to love a woman... it is like a sacred manual for succeeding in life and death that I have in my hands. As I read I can’t believe how it is that I have lived for 35 years without thinking about all of this! For ten of them I have even practiced yoga and enjoyed the experience, but still not given it much thought. I always thought of us as human beings who have the chance of a spiritual experience but now I believe we are spiritual beings born with the chance of a human experience. I was always postponing the spiritual experience but now that I see it in reverse and am practicing daily yoga and meditation, I feel very different. I feel like a spiritual being who is constantly trying to improve, and live to the full, life as a human being. And the result is that, mostly, life feels so much easier lately. Things work out, knock backs don’t hurt so much, anger and despair are no longer daily or weekly emotions for me. The river just seems to flow more smoothly somehow.

Because of the changes I feel in my life since following this path, every time I sit down to study I last about five minutes before I get so inspired I want to tell everyone about it! Last time I attempted my homework I ended up writing a poem. Often I go and do yoga or meditate. The thing I really struggle with is staying put and doing my assignments! I will never get my certificate at this rate, though I could argue that I am experiencing it and spreading the word.

Well today I shall give myself only 20 more minutes to blog and then I shall get back to my studies I promise. My plans for 2009 are to get this certificate under my belt so that I am no longer bound by homework and reading course work and can focus more time on writing and reading about all the other things I want to, still all closely related to yoga and mothering of course. Then I will have more time to develop my teaching and begin to work therapeutically with women and children who have suffered trauma.

But, this will probably be in the UK now, rather than here. Yes! In six months or so my blog will have a distinctly colder, windier, wetter feel to it altogether. We are leaving Cambodia. The decision has been made and although I still have half a year to enjoy and so much I want to achieve while I am here, I can no longer think of anything else.

This is where you can help me, my British readers at any rate. I am staying awake worrying about car seats and the tantrums that go with them, twenty layers of clothing (and the tantrums that go with them), the sudden exposure of my very stylish (dresses over skirts over skirts are her latest thing) and confident four year old to peer pressure, fashion, labels, consumerism generally (and the tantrums that go with that!)...

How negative all this sounds. I am also kept awake with exciting plans for creating a lovely room for my children in my father’s house where we are moving for a while, to keep him company and to delay the decision about where on earth we should settle; dreaming about the vegetables we will grow in order to survive while my husband studies and I look after the children. I will teach and write too when I get the chance but still, we have pretty much decided to be broke for a while and enjoy being together as a family. So yes, that is a lot of vegetables we need to grow. I am excited about bringing Kundalini Yoga to the countryside, though town halls and school gyms feel less than ideal after having been so fortunate to teach on wind swept, sun dappled roof tops in Phnom Penh.

Probably what keeps me awake most, having complained about the heat for three years, is the cold! Suddenly I am terrified of moving back to cold, and so often grey England. Having longed for home all this time I am now realising that life in the tropics is so easy as a mother. The kids are always naked, potty training happens with us barely noticing, clothing and shoeing the girls costs practically nothing, and we always get to see the sun. I get sudden panics that the girls will suffer depression from seeing so little sun after having it everyday for most of their lives. How pathetic I sound. I’ll tell you why.

Over the last few weeks Cambodia has been officially cold. 24 degrees in the shade. The water in the pools feels so cold that I hardly take the girls swimming anymore. I am wearing jeans and a jumper as I write, and even Jemima wrapped herself up in my cardigan on the Tuk Tuk on her way to school this morning. 24 degrees! What has happened to me? My friends and family won’t recognise me. This is the same woman who has swam in the coldest Cornwall seas, who for thirty years could not physically pass a lake, river, sea or pool without having to get in, whatever the weather, whatever the season. I stopped short of those Boxing Day or New Years Day plunges, but only because we were never near water. Had it been a family tradition I would have been first in. I was your hearty English lass. James reminds me how utterly unsympathetic I was when he quite literally turned blue on the beach one summer on holiday in Cornwall with my family. I have been spoilt, my character has softened. And if I have, imagine how the girls will react to the cold English seas. Of course by the time we leave here we will have endured the hot season and I will be back to my old sweaty, miserable, moaning self (it will be interesting to see if the yoga and meditation will mean that the heat becomes easier to endure too, I will let you know), so hopefully the cold will seem more enticing by then.

James says the biggest shock for me will be no longer having Sophy around the house to take Bella whenever I want to write or do yoga. He is so right. I am quickly realising that all the things I want to do for myself will have to wait until after bedtime. At the same time I am looking forward to spending more time with Bella while Jemima is at school. Now I tend to work most mornings, so that will be a nice change for a bit. But ah Bella! She is one. I think I will post my chapter on this area of mothering from my book actually, to remind myself as much as to share with you all. Notice my emphasis on tantrums above... Actually Bella is so far stopping short of full tantrums, and still mostly delightful and gentle, but she is just at that stage where she wants to do everything for herself in her way, yet, of course, is not always able. She gets understandably cross with the bicycle that won’t drive through closed doors, or the t-shirt that won’t cooperate with her arms, or the cat for not letting her ride it. And she gets even crosser with me for trying to help. This is another post on its own so I will write it soon. My twenty minutes is up long ago. Bella will be back from her little play group in about half an hour. Oh dear, another studying period gone pear shaped, and all I have to show for it is a very, very, unblogly long ramble. Back soon, if you are up for it.

Read this post

Green man running.. for his life!

I am off to the beach for a few days and am so excited! We have not left the city for two months.. and this is Phnom Penh, where green space has never been considered much of a priority. I feel like I am going crazy here at times. Each day there is a new building site, with a poster of the 30 storey high rise we have to look forward to. When the building commences it basically entails at least three years of nerve-wrenching, ear-splitting tile cutting.

And the traffic! Put it this way, on the new traffic lights popping up all over town the green man runs. Seriously. It runs fast too. It made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it. This city is mad. Tiny women peep their beautifully coiffed heads over the top of steering wheels (which their fragile wrists can hardly shift) of Hummers! Yes, Hum Vs. Tanks. There used to be one in Phnom Penh - now they are everywhere. Even one of Jemima's school mates rides in one now. Bonkers. Actually I have so much to say about life in this city but I have to pack so I will reflect on it from the peacefulness of the beach and come back next week to tell you all about it.. the city and the beach that is. Happy
Water festival if you are here!
Read this post

Buying beds in Phnom Penh... (was going to be about yoga but turned into an expat ramble...)

Bella and I had a great morning in the mattress shop today. She spent it bouncing and contorting her body in ways that barely looked possible, even from a relatively-but-not-very-bendy-yoga-teacher’s perspective, while I tried to find a mattress that did not contain (what smelt like) deadly toxic poisons within. There is no way I would have Jemima breathing in whatever was in some of those mattresses for 12 hours a night. Really, the things people have to put up with here that would not be legal in any of the rich countries in the world.

Yes it was one of those mornings when I struggled to reconcile the life I lead here with that of so many Cambodians around me. Anyone living here understands. How do you feel when you have just spent close to $100 in a shop, while playing with your baby, watching everyone else play with her and love her and try to feed her nice things etc, and the next thing you do is meet a six-year-old boy, in the middle of one of the busiest highways in Phnom Penh, with his brother, the same age as Bella, strapped to his body in a Krama, telling you his mother and father are dead?

They are not dead. They have sent their children out to beg... for – if you believe most locals – money to fuel their drinking and gambling habits. But maybe not... maybe they need the money for food and rent. The older boy’s clothes were completely torn and his younger brother was naked, with something like scabies on his face and arms. I didn’t give him money because the biggest street kids’ organisation in Cambodia, Mith Samlanh, asks us not to - it just fuels begging. As long as their parents think they can make money from the streets, these children will never get the chance to go to school as. Try explaining that to the boys though. I felt horrible as the tuk tuk tried to move forward in the traffic and the boy held on for as long as he could.

I have been through all this before on Motherland I know. It is just that same old story of feeling guilty because instead of spending all my time trying to make my own children’s life lovely, a bit of me feels I should do more to try to make life happier for Cambodian children. Last year I did, and next year maybe I will. But right now in my life all I want to do is be there for my girls and study and teach yoga. The latter takes up enough of my time for me not to want to spend a minute of the rest of it on anything other than my family. Oh to live somewhere back in the UK where this decision does not make me feel like so uncaring and uncompassionate. Instead I live here, and it could almost be anywhere. (Actually I am sure my Cambodian friends and helpers, Sophy (cleans and looks after Bella when I work) and Sokhun (our tuk tuk driver) would beg to differ. I do spend half my days with them speaking their language). But you know what I mean, the things that make me feel happy and fulfilled these days are joining in circle time with Jemima’s class, or teaching Bella to swim. Neither of these things have much to do with Cambodia, let’s face it.

Really I am just indulging in a little off loading because I am not planning to change anything about my life right now. In fact the reason I first sat down to write this post is because, despite the nagging conscience, I am blissfully happy with things at home at the moment and wanted to share some of the stuff we’ve been doing recently that has been so lovely for the kids. But because this has turned into a ramble (and one barely worth publishing but I have written it now so I may as well!) I will finish here and link you to a new post which I shall now write called Yoga, meditation and other lovely relaxing things to do with children.
P.S. If you got this far thank you!

Read this post

London rocks!

I’m sitting on the sofa at my in-laws watching the end of Olympics party, televised live from London. Having said yet more good byes to visiting family today, all this national celebration and patriotism is making me quite emotional. Remembering what I love about Britain, wondering where on earth in the world we will be in 2012 and hearing Jemima say today: “We’ve been here rather a long time now haven’t we? Isn’t it time to go back to Cambodia now?”… Well, it does make me wonder what a simple life would be like - one where we know where home is and we live there.

Anyway the reason I am finally blogging again (been busy catching up with family and friends, sorry) is because Bella is asleep, Jemima is out somewhere with her cousins, dressed as a fairy and high on birthday cake (early b’day party so she could share it with family) and, well I just feel like joining in the ‘celebrate London’ fest.

Because it is a totally brilliant city, let’s face it. On our first day in the country we were invited to a public peace meditation in our old stomping ground, Brockwell park, complete with crystals, drums, and words of wisdom, mediated through participants, from various spirit guides; Jemima was mesmorised by a woman with dreadlocks that reached down to the ground, and we all had a good chat with a jolly old man who was sitting on the street terrace of a smart restaurant, sharing a quiet drink with his South American macaw. It was perched merrily on his shoulder, huge, rare and colourful. What a welcome.

The day after that we came across a bunch of students having a jumble sale outside their shared house – 18 of them lived there, in 16 rooms. They offered us tea and biscuits and we sat and listened to them practicing for their upcoming busking tour around Eastern Europe. They promised to remember Jemima and play Happy Birthday for her on her birthday. And so it went on. The parks and playgrounds are amazing, the people are truly weird and wonderful (we spent a lot of time in Peckham in the middle of the day in the middle of the week…) and best of all, they come from all corners of the world. Love it.

Oh, gotta go, Bella's up. Not much else to say anyway really ... the rest of our holiday has been much more rural, very lovely, bloody cold, and will be all over a week today. We are looking forward to coming ‘home’ to Cambodia. Bella is now walking (so sweet) and … sleeping through the night! I did not believe it either, but that is another story, to be blogged about soon. All I will say is: no sleep training involved. Hooray! All those sleepless nights were worth it… Back soon.

Read this post

Bella’s birthday blog (and a tribute to single mothers everywhere)

Today is Bella’s first birthday. In fact as I write this it is almost to the minute that she first looked up at me, opened her eyes wide and latched on to my breast. We were in a holiday-let bungalow in Winchester with views over the garden and golf course. The landlady’s daughter was a community midwife hence had no qualms whatsoever with me giving birth on her sitting room floor. Bella was delivered by the same midwife as Jemima, though our home birth plans did not work out first time round. This time it was perfect (the birth I mean, not the hours of agony before hand). Given that she could effectively have been born in any one of six different house-sits and spare rooms, none of which felt quite right to me as I tried to make my nest, and that Sheila was only on call for about three nights in July, the beautiful circumstances of Bella’s coming into this world really were a miracle. And I could swear she has been smiling ever since (teething nightmares aside).

Sheila and her co-midwife Sue stayed for tea and toast, put me and Bella in the bath and helped James clear up. They stayed for hours, making me feel like I was the only woman they had ever helped to give birth. Sheila even asked me for a CD of the music I had playing on repeat for nine hours. James never wants to hear it again – he said it was like being in a time warp where the only thing that changed was the intensity of my screams. (For anyone living in Phnom Penh the music was from Boom Boom Room – their female chill out mix. I never planned to have it as birthing music but once it had played through once I needed it with a passion. I still love to listen to it. I think I will put it on right now actually).

The rest of the day was spent resting in bed between receiving visits from family and friends while Jemima had a day on the beach with her grandparents. She had come home from her cousin’s house where she had spent the night, greeted her little sister with a mixture of excitement and indifference, not really understanding what all the fuss was about. My only anxiety over that time was how it would affect her and how they would get on. I found it incredibly emotional giving her a little sister and imagining the life change to come after nearly three years of her having me all to herself. Now a year later we have to try hard to remember life before Bella.

Today I cannot help wishing I was back in England in that bungalow bedroom being spoilt and cared for by family and friends. I am not complaining. Really it is lovely to be here in our own home in Phnom Penh. The sun is shining (of course) and the weather is cool. Jemima has spent all morning telling Bella she is ‘such a funny sweet heart baby’ and for the first time ever Bella sat patiently beaming in her high chair as though she knew something was up while I made her breakfast and we sang to her. But... you knew there would be one, this is expatria... James is away, Jemima is off school sick, and I have not slept for three nights thanks to their remarkable waking antics caused by anything and everything from needing to pee, 40 degrees fever, ants in the bed attracted by strawberry flavoured medicine, Bella’s tormenting teeth and a cockroach in the mosquito net. My mouth feels like it has lost all feeling and my face is sliding towards my feet... I thought kids were supposed to keep you young. I am quite fine really, but put it this way, for the sake of the kids I am doing a lot of meditation for emotional balance.

Seriously I am so in awe of single mothers and fathers. Maddy you are an angel! Last night at 3am, still not having slept, I felt I was on a slippery slide. I left Jemima and Bella in my bed and retreated to a quieter place, my parting words to Jemima being: “Bella may cry for a minute, just ssssshhhh her and she’ll be asleep in no time”. What was that? And what will come next? By Saturday will I be asking her to make my tea and take her sister for a walk while I lie in? By day it feels manageable again but in the dead of night when there is no one around to calm you down... I just don’t know how single parents keep their cool.

Anyway Jemima is tiring of making Bella’s card and is covering each crayon, or fish, with glitter glue, sorry, tomato ketchup, so I should probably go. It has been good therapy to blog after such a long while. Thank you for listening. I'll be back later to tell you about her tea party we are having this afternoon and a picture for you.

If you liked reading this, you might enjoy this.

Read this post

Expat files... I have been here before

Just as I am finally feeling really at home in Cambodia, thinking this part of our lives was meant to be after all, nearly everyone we know and love is leaving. Not all of them for good, but Phnom Penh is definitely emptying for the summer. The streets already feel very quiet and by the end of next week nearly all of Jemima’s friends who have not already left will be gone for the whole of July. They’ll come back just as we head to England for August. James will also be away for two weeks. I really ought not to complain. I have plenty of inner resources. I enjoy being on my own with the girls, it’s raining every afternoon at the moment, the house feels cosy and perfect for hanging out at home cooking and painting etc. So it has been hard to explain this strange feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach – a familiar sensation of being left behind, vaguely friendless. Until today, when it suddenly made sense. I have been here before.

It was while I was cycling by the local international school that it dawned on me. Normally I avoid that street due to the huge jam of four wheel drives, expat and Khmer, that block the road as they drop off and pick up each day. Today the street was quiet, term having ended last week, and as I passed by the school I was suddenly bombarded with some long forgotten childhood memories: school boys packing trunks and cases into the backs of Volvos and Range Rovers; a disconcerting quiet in the house and the streets, and a faint wondering about quite what I should do with myself now.

I grew up in the very peculiar environment of a famous English boy’s boarding school. Our entire lives were built around the school bell, whose ring would signal the onslaught of 750 boys onto the street every morning as I was walking to school; a sudden silence in the corridors above my bedroom each evening when prep started, and the bursting of jubilant boys through banging doors as their hour of homework was up. I often fell asleep to the sound of their thumping music and muffled conversation.

For 13 years we shared our home with 85 boys, separated by nothing more than a ceiling and a couple of fire doors, one of which led to the stairs in my bedroom (of all the rooms in this beautiful old Georgian house, I, and my sister before me, chose to make our bedroom in the tiny space under the fire stairs). Our life was so intertwined with the school timetable that the silence that fell around us at the end of each term, when the boys went home to their real friends and family, was at once sacred and lonely, liberating and unsettling. For me at any rate, these tri-annual interruptions to our normal existence, forced me confront, or preferably avoid, an uncomfortable confusion about what was my real life and society, and what was just a façade.

While my relationships within, and my commitment to the expat community here cannot be compared to the encounters with school boys (who I barely knew despite sharing the same roof) of my youth, I am amazed I have not been reminded of all this before now. Ever since our family left that old-fashioned, though much beloved institution, when I was 18, I have turned away from everything that it represented, or at least all of the negative associations: private school education, privileges bought by wealth, British upper class, elitism, snobbery, colonialism, English foreign policy and so much more... I suppose the simple act of sending your children away to school could not be further away from my ideal of motherhood I write about on these pages!

And yet here I am living in an artificial, privileged community that could be anywhere in the world for all its connections with its physical location, but happens to be in Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in the world. I have a 'house-help', a night guard, and friends that leave each year to reunite with their family and ‘real’ friends. My father often jokes that the overseas NGO world is a bit like the British Raj in India. Mostly it is nothing like that, but it does have its comparisons.

I’ve lost my thread but it is too late to recover it so I’ll just publish this for what it is... a few memories and reflections on life and where it takes us. Just writing about it now brings up so many memories of this extraordinary childhood existence – though of course it seemed the most ordinary thing in the world at the time – that I feel inclined to shut myself away for a few months and write and write and write about it. One day I will.

Read this post

You thought your in-laws were bad! On breastfeeding...

Last Sunday night, just as I was putting the girls and myself to bed for an early night, a friend from my breastfeeding group called. Her Khmer friend was in hospital with her six-hour-old baby and having problems breastfeeding. Her first baby (now one year old) was not breastfed because the woman’s mother insisted that her daughter had wrongly shaped nipples for breastfeeding. The baby was given rice milk from birth.

So off I went to the hospital. I have done this before but I am always amazed by the sheer number of people congregating in the maternity units. There is one benefit to be gained from not offering food or drinks in hospital – your family rallies round. Each room, not to mention the corridor, was crammed full of family members, from small children to grannies, all fussing around the mother, offering home cooked food, another blanket, and lots and lots of advice. Did I say benefit? Well I do love the idea in theory. In practice unfortunately, the sheer volume of people can interfere with the mother’s bonding with her new baby, and the well-meant advice is often harmful and misguided.

My new friend’s room was just as packed. I was nervous that they would wonder who this western woman thought she was, coming in and offering advice about breastfeeding. Little did I know that her father was interrogating James outside:

“Is your wife a doctor?”
“No”.
“oh, she’s a nurse right?”
“Urm, no”
“What is…”
“She’s a breastfeeding counsellor!” he sort of lied.
“Oh, good!”
Apparently a peer counsellor, untrained but experienced, might have been confusing, what with the language barrier… so James explained to me later. But I know he was just scared. There were a lot of people.

They were all very friendly however and it was quite clear that the mother herself desperately wanted to breastfeed her second child. So we chatted, I helped her latch her baby on, reassured her that her nipples looked perfectly normal to me and that her daughter was latching on and sucking perfectly. Then it became clear that the whole family thought that she did not have enough milk, so I explained about colostrum and the fact that her milk would not really come through until day three or four. Then I encouraged her to take off the baby’s clothes, and her own layers, and hold her skin to skin for as much time as possible. This actually goes against Khmer culture where they believe that a newborn baby and mother lose dangerous amounts of body heat during labour so they each wrap up in several layers of towels and blankets, which of course prohibits the breastfeeding hormones from doing their job. In the countryside they still practice ‘roasting’, whereby mother and child spend a month in a hut lying over hot coals, sauna style. Luckily this woman was educated enough not to throw away the colostrum, which many Khmers believe is dirty and bad for the baby.

I left the hospital feeling hopeful that she would enjoy a happy breastfeeding relationship with her new daughter. The next day she called again with the same concern. “I have not got enough milk”. I went over the facts once more and received a text a few hours later: “My baby is now absorbing milk. Thank you so much for your help”. Hoorah! I knew she would need lots of encouragement but it seemed as though the case were closed. I got distracted with other things and that was that. Until this evening, when my friend updated me on the woman’s progress. I am gutted. Despite her education, her parents have convinced that her milk is too yellow after all. It must be bad, they thought, so they went out and bought a tub of formula and that was that. Gutting.

I know it is no use getting upset or too involved (although I have texted her of course and offered to meet up with her tomorrow!) but it is hard not to feel angry. It was so disheartening in the hospital to see the number of brand new babies on bottles all along the corridors, and more so because the grandparents and mothers offering them were so proud of the fact. “Formula” they said to me happily, as I cooed over their babies. The laws against advertising formula milk mean nothing in a country like Cambodia. The image of a fat, formula-fed baby is desirable - just that morning James’ colleagues were expressing disapproval and disappointment over how small Bella is. (She is not small. She is just slim and long…but there were no tubby rolls for them to pinch and squeeze.) I am not angry with Cambodians. It is the formula companies I feel disgusted with. Infant mortality in Cambodia occurs at a rate of 65 deaths per 1000 live births. In 2000 it was 95 per 1000, so the situation is improving thanks to breastfeeding awareness campaigns. But while the formula companies continue their aggressive advertising campaigns, babies and children continue to die unnecessarily. In a country as poor as Cambodia, women, babies and children need all the health benefits offered by breastfeeding that they can get.

Grrrr. I'm off to bed. For a far more articulate read about very naughty formula companies check out Baby Milk Action. Good night all.

Read this post

Where have I been?

Dear everyone, I am back. Thank you for your emails and messages wondering when I am going to be back in Motherland. I am so sorry for long quiet absence. Our three week backpacking trip to Vietnam was a total adventure and despite all my intentions to blog from time to time I did not go on-line once. How liberating that was!

I love email, not to mention my blog and all the fruits of communicating to other mothers, but spending three weeks focusing entirely on my family was incredible. Especially when the reality of living my life in Cambodia while maintaining contact with all my friends and family in the UK means that I have basically doubled the number of people who I care about, want to write to, and hear how they are doing. It's brilliant but overwhelming at times.

Phew, life is so busy now we are back, it is hard to hold onto all that time we have just had to just breathe! The most amazing thing about travelling is that it is a complete escape from everything. You have nothing to do each day except enjoy and get from a to b. We were told countless times that a nine month baby was too young to travel. Ask Bella what she thinks of that.

She spent three weeks in the sling on me or James, breastfeeding whenever she wanted, playing with everyone she met and of course, had her sister and father around at all times. Since we arrived home on Sunday she has been put down a hundred times, made to wait for her feeds and generally had to adapt to the inevitable competition for my time. I reckon travelling with small babies is the best thing for both parent and child. The former never gets bored of being stuck at home playing peekaboo and the latter never has to be put down while dinner gets cooked, siblings get dealt with or washing gets done. Of course it is expensive but it can be done on a budget if you have the energy. Our trip was way cheaper than many one or two week's holidays in the sun.

Actually since we returned all I have wanted to do was sit down and write about the whole amazing experience but I have been busy interviewing prospective teachers for Jemima's class next year. I am not complaining. What a privilege to be able to choose my own child's teacher - the wonders of belonging to a parent run school. I am just explaining away the last month's silence at Motherland. We now have two days of classroom observation so it may be next week that I come back to tell you all about our adventures in Vietnam and just why I think travelling with kids is not only absolutely possible, but also totally brilliant and recommended!

I look forward to resuming my usual two to three blog posts a week soon - well, actually I ought to add that I am starting to train as a Kundilini Yoga teacher on Sunday and this will take up weekends and evenings for a good long while. So my posts may be a little less frequent (this could be a good thing) or a little shorter (this will surely be a good thing.)

Jemima is telling me that I am missing her dance performance and Bella is heading for the computer wires so will sign off now. I am off to take the girls to a story reading afternoon at a cafe near here. How lovely. I'll try to come back this week, otherwise next week for sure!

Read this post

Happy Khmer New Year!

Next week is Khmer New Year. Jemima made me cry last night at her school party when she stood up on stage and sang and danced to traditional Khmer songs. As usual schools, shops and businesses close, Phnom Penh’s residents make their mass exodus to the provinces and the festivities commence. Oh, and the police come knocking on the door of your child’s preschool asking for three crates of beer. (The more inhibited ones go to impressive efforts – last year they came to our house and presented us with a very official looking proposal for a new fire station.) But given that their salary just about covers the hugely inflated costs of a month’s supply of rice and gas, we can hardly blame them.

Tomorrow we leave for Vietnam for three weeks, or less if we run out of money. I know, I am only just back from the UK. Blame James! He has to travel, it is in his blood. I’d be perfectly happy in a cottage in Herefordshire writing for mothers and teaching yoga and never travelling another carbon mile again. (Well, I think I would be…). At least we are only taking one very short flight. The rest of the time we shall be ‘child-packing’, bussing and training around the country. Very, very exciting. How lucky are we?

I am seriously excited to get into the mountains and carry Bella on my back without us both getting miserably sweaty and slippery. We even bought a second Ergo so that we can carry Jemima in the hills when she gets too tired of walking. She will be four in September but it is still comfortable to carry her – how cool is that? I really ought to get commission from them. Half of PP now seems to have an Ergo thanks to me. Except that I have heard they are not made very ethically. When I get back from Vietnam I plan to write to them about this. I also plan to write about the fact that garment workers in PP, who make clothes for Next, M&S and Hennes, to name a few British brands, get paid $50 a month, without benefits, insurance, sick pay etc. How disgusting is this? The cost of one pair of trousers for a whole months’ salary. This is old news but we need reminding. Especially given that clothes companies are refusing to increase salaries to reflect recent and crippling inflation. Trade Unions are threatening to strike but this is a risky business in Cambodia where just last year an outspoken TU leader was killed in very suspicious circumstances. If you care about this I recommend you visit
this great blog site, Fair Trade Blogger – written by my brother-in-law, Paul. Something to read while I am away.

I will try to pop in from time to time and tell you how things are going but I will probably write about it all on my return. What I will do while away is repost old posts which are now buried in far corners of the blog, for all my new visitors to read. I’m off to pack, hoorah! See you soon!

Read this post

Coping with change... or not, rather

Jemima has just stopped coming into our bed in the mornings when she wakes. Instead we find her sitting on her bedroom floor utterly absorbed in her books. In fact she spends more and more time each day doing her own thing. While I love to see her lost in her own play, I have to admit I struggle with how fast she seems to be growing up.

I have just come back from visiting my friend Tone’s new kittens. It was a beautiful sight. The mother lies still all day while her two skinny, wobbly babes scramble about her body, fumbling for milk. Their fragility reminds me of how it felt to handle my own new born babies, terrified I might do some damage with my hands – hands that suddenly seemed so huge and rough. I can’t believe how long ago that seems now. This week, time seems to be rushing by.

Having struggled for two years to get to grips with living in Cambodia, I suddenly find myself feeling incredibly happy and at home here. My Khmer is flowing, the children are happy and I am brimming with ideas about how I can throw myself back into the local community again after my year of time out with Bella comes to an end in September. (Given our mutual attachment to each other, whatever I do will no doubt be breastfeeding related.)

Yet it almost feels as though time is running out. Our contract ends at the end of next year, many of our friends are leaving at the end of this year and there are major changes afoot at Jemima’s wonderful pre-school. Buildings are being knocked down before our eyes, replaced by high rises and four storey villas. Everything seems to be changing around me and so much of it is quite beyond my control. I have no idea how I will ever thrive in this expat existence if I am so easily thrown by change.

Until recently I have always looked forward to the day we go back ‘home’ to live, so that I could resume my life. Today I surprised myself by feeling sad that we will one day have to leave this place. Honestly, I finally accept that my life is here and all I can do is worry about leaving in two years time! People say the ideal length of an overseas contract is four years. I think I probably need six. If it takes me two to settle in and two to prepare myself for saying goodbye, I’d jolly well like a couple of years in the middle just to be here, no looking back and no looking forward.

Then of course there is Jemima. I often wonder how she will be affected by all this. Will she care that her friends are leaving? Should she care? Should I be relieved that, so far, she does not seem to mind it much? Or worried that this is a sign she is already protecting herself and will probably have life long issues with forming attachments? (Oh goodness this should be a cry for help post on an expat mothers’ forum – if any of you out there are reading, please do share your experiences.)

At least Bella is too young to absorb much of all this, though she too is growing fast and definitely on the move. Last night I woke to find she had crawled out of her cotbed and was sprawled over my body, just like the kittens, fumbling around for some milk. It made me think – those kittens are just a few days old. It takes a human baby many months before they can move themselves towards their mother. Hmm, I could easily go off on another of my ‘this is why attachment parenting is so important’ rants here but I won’t. This post is rambling enough. I will publish it anyway though. That’s the best and the worst of blogging, depending on who is reading it.

Read this post

This ex-pat life for our children... living more locally again

On Jemima’s first day back at school after our visit to the UK I discovered that two of her closest friends are leaving Cambodia in June – to Iceland and Azerbaijan. Her other great play mate already upped sticks to Madagascar in February. Oh, and her long-term friends, the twins, are headed home to Canada in August.

I admit a bit of me finds all this terribly exciting – her childhood seems so exotic at times. But my main emotion is that of a fiercely protective lioness who simply must protect my daughter’s fragile heart... and mine for that matter. As my friends told me of their plans to leave I could hear another voice in my brain telling me: “Start to have less play dates now! Emotionally prepare! Loosen the bonds gently!” (This is the problem with the ex-pat lifestyle – never tell anyone you are leaving more than a few weeks before you go or you will be friendless for the last months of your stay.) No, I am not really planning to abandon my friends before they leave, but I have actively started filling her life with more permanent pals as well.

The street kids have come in twice this week already to play with Jemima and the neighbours' children are here every day again, as they used to be before Jemima started school. There is also another big change in our daily life. Srey Mach is no longer working with us. This is a long story which would not be fair to share here. We miss her but now have a lovely, older woman Sophy, mother of two older children, working for us instead. Not only is she a calm, quiet, grandmotherly type who helps me keep the ants under control (they are marching over my keyboard right now, the little bloggers) and adores Bella, she speaks no English and loves tea. The result of all these changes is that our lives have come to feel a lot more local lately, and my Khmer is improving dramatically.

I ought to explain that I do speak Khmer, though many who have heard me might beg to differ. I can travel around the country, direct a Tuk Tuk, shop, chat, enjoy a conversation with people on the streets, and talk on the phone. Actually I really love the language, but I do find the tiny and subtle nuances between ten different words with ten very different meanings hard to grasp. I was thrilled to hear that Khmer was ranked one of the hardest languages in the world recently. So there is a reason to put it on my CV after all! I have been wondering how I can justify showing off my prowess at a language so utterly useless anywhere else in the world but here.

Seriously though, after giving up the lessons when Bella was born I was getting increasingly frustrated at having to stop a conversation as soon as it started to get interesting because of my limited vocabulary. I also wanted to improve my pronunciation so that I could be understood by the foster mother of the children we support in Takeo province. (In the provinces people tend to tell me they do not speak English when I start to speak to them in Khmer. Of course at the same time they cheer and clap when anyone manages a mere Sok Sabai! They run around saying “The Barang speaks Khmer really well!” even if that is your only word. I do love Cambodians!)

So I had my first lesson in ages yesterday and am back on track. Hoorah! I have a brilliant new teacher who started to correct me before he even shook my hand. It turns out there are some words which I have been using every day for two years which I do not say quite right. This man is a perfectionist and I could not be happier about that.

Sophy joined in my class - mainly because this week I asked if we could devote my lesson to the long list of things I wanted to express to her. After watching me mess about with about various concoctions this week (ginger water for a natural antibiotic, olive oil and garlic for ear infections, olive oil and citronella massage oil for mossies, olive oil and lavender for bedtime, chamomile tea for bottom washing…) she has asked me to teach her how ex-pats look after their children. Obviously I am taking this opportunity to tell her how I believe ex-pats should look after their children, being the objective and nonjudgmental woman that I am. So lessons in natural, positive, attachment parenting here we come! We must have made a funny scene yesterday. A tiny Khmer man and a tiny Khmer woman, both in their 40s - ooh, I wonder if he is married? Sophy kicked her useless husband out long ago… - sorry, where was I? Oh yes, a tiny Khmer couple with a huge white Barang repeating and translating: “Carrying babies is very good for their emotional and physical development!” and “Chamomile tea is very good for nappy rash!”

Long may it continue! Next week I shall ask him to teach me how to proselytise about breastfeeding. And the week after that we need to get Jemima on board... though that is another struggle altogether, to be posted about sometime soon. Off to get her from school now. Have a great weekend everyone!
Read this post

Travels with my children (2)... thank heavens for my breasts

Yesterday I breastfed Bella about one hundred times. This is a calculated estimate, not a wild exaggeration. Honestly, I don’t think she left the breast for longer than about 20 minutes at a time all day. This is not entirely her fault, I should say. It is quite true that my answer to pretty much any sign of discomfort with my babies has always been to try the boob. She has had a very snotty cold for nearly a week now and as a result I have found myself sofa- or sling-bound with boobs on permanent stand by. I simply cannot imagine how people cope with a sick baby if they are not breastfeeding.

And the same goes for so many other aspects of attachment/continuum parenting. My trip back to the UK, alone with two children, would have been hell were it not for breastfeeding, baby-wearing, co-sleeping and baby-led weaning. Actually it simply would not have been possible. As it was I had one baby on my back, one toddler walking, her own small rucksack on her back, and holding on to the strap of one small wheely suitcase, while my hands were occupied pulling said suitcase and carrying my hand bag (you know what I mean – I don’t actually have a hand bag, but my shoulder bag whatnot thing filled with all sorts of things I should have left behind – really, I carried four copies of the Guardian Weekly and a thick novel around with me for three and a half weeks. I finally read the papers in an airport delay on the way home, and the novel is waiting by my bed) … oh and an inflatable booster seat thing that folds up small and straps onto chairs to act as high chair. I know that was a long sentence - it was a long trip.

This was all perfectly manageable, provided Jemima was in a good mood, until the moment we stepped inside the underground/train/bus/plane and started to overheat because I had cunningly dressed all of us in most of our clothes so that I could fill the suitcase with eco-disposable nappies that you can’t buy in most corner shops. Inevitably we would emerge from the underground/train/bus/plane with ten items of clothing tied around waists, onto suitcase handles, hanging out of the sling pockets, and me wearing Jemima’s rucksack on my front. Depending on the length of the walk then necessary to reach our final destination all our layers would then have to be put back on again… arrrggghhhh just writing about it exhausts me.

I suppose had we been able to afford to hire a car, take regular taxis, not cared about eco-nappies and not have friends and family strewn inconveniently across the entire country then this trip would have been a little easier. But had we needed to add travel cot, bottles, formula, a buggy, jars of baby food, baby toys and dummies (the latter two replaced by having fun looking out of sling, and my boobs, respectively)… to the equation, well I would never have left the house. The fact that Bella could eat whatever we were eating, could feed whenever she was hungry wherever we happened to be, and we could all share one bed made the whole thing possible, and more likely to be invited back.

So was it worth it? Absolutely. We got to spend lots of time with nearly all members of both our families, and my two friends with their new(ish) babies. I could not manage the expat existence without these regular trips home, so I would happily do the whole thing again tomorrow. Even Jemima agreed. I asked her after collapsing onto the tube one evening. She was exhausted and sobbing because she had had to carry her rucksack for five minutes more than she wanted because I simply did not have a hand free to take it from her.

“Jemima? Do you enjoy these trips back to England to see family or are they just too tiring?”

“I enjoy it!” she sobbed dramatically, “I really enjoy it!” I made sure the following day was a quiet one.

There were a few hiccups along the way. After arriving at Bangkok airport the night we left home, where we were due to wait for three hours before boarding our 12 hour over night flight to London, Jemima managed to shut her hand in the lift door. The doors jammed half open, her hand acting as an indestructible wedge. She screamed for what felt like three minutes before I could finally slide the doors to release her hand. Her fingers were squashed flat a la Tom and Jerry but no harm was done. Having no arms free to lift her, as I was pushing an overloaded luggage trolley, I had to convince her to walk with me to the lounge where I was planning to plead my way in.

Have you ever been to Bangkok airport? It is huge. So we walked side by side, Jemima howling with pain and exhaustion (it was 11pm), stopping for cuddles along the way, for about 15 minutes, while helpful passers by threw me disapproving looks because I obviously did not love my children very much to be putting them through all this. Her tragic condition did secure us a nice sofa and all we could eat for free in the first class lounge though. Good old Thai airways, BA would never stoop so low. Of course this brought us more unwelcome peers from above the laptops of some fifty be-suited business men. Apparently it is not customary to have to share your air mile privileges with a stressed out mother changing her baby’s nappy on the plush velvet sofa while her unruly toddler spills cake and hot milk all over the carpet. We blagged our way in on the way back as well :-).

I also nearly lost Jemima in the London Underground at one heart stopping moment. She simply stepped out of the doors at the wrong stop and luckily they stayed open longer than usual so that I could grab her and pull her back in. I cannot think what I would have done otherwise. She had no name tag or mobile number on her and I had not even discussed with her what we would do if she lost me because that simply was not going to happen. Oh god… Having Bella on me meant that I could have easily jumped out with her of course. If she were in a buggy? You see? Slings are gold dust. I love them like other women love their shoes. So much so that I now have the updated Ergo, softer, cosier and cuddlier, in beautiful blue to add to my collection. Another reason going back to the UK was such a good idea.

Read this post

Doing nothing...

I am sitting on the sofa doing nothing. Well, I was until I decided to write about it. I have spent the last hour sitting here with a poorly Bella asleep on my lap, watching Jemima play with her friend Marina. I admit it was not easy to resist the urge to move Bella from my lap and go and tidy up/check emails/think about dinner, but I stuck with it and it was great. Just sitting still, holding her, watching her sister. It reminded me of the title of the great book by Naomi Stadlen What mothers do, especially when it looks like nothing.

After an hour of marvelling at the creative capacity of three-year-old girls to make up exciting games out of nowhere, using more or less no props, and at the softness of a baby’s cheeks, I decided I badly needed a cup of tea, some bite cream (the mosquitoes were making the most of my inactivity) and a pee. Now I have returned to my spot, the girls are outside, both dressed in several layers of Jemima’s clothes, hats and carrying bags – a couple of true expat kids, they are on the way to the airport. Bella is on the sofa still asleep and I shall continue to do nothing – or at least write about doing nothing.

Two new mothers, both dear friends of mine, recently reminded me of what my life was like when Jemima was a baby. I wrote a whole book about it for goodness sake! As I watched them both just hanging out at home with their babies, cuddling, feeding, changing nappies, reading, sleeping, thinking, I realised how full my life had become recently. So I have resolved to spend more time doing nothing with my girls – it is after all when they are at their happiest.

Two other friends of mine have just seen their last child off to school for the first time and they have reminded me just how quickly time flies. I know I must make the most of the chance just to hang out with my girls, watching, listening, photographing... imprinting these days firmly in my memory forever, and in the albums for when the memory fades. I am incredibly fortunate to be at home with them (though it must be said that I would live in a shed and grow my own food rather than go to the office and leave them in the care of someone else) and I am lucky to have an age gap that allows me frequent time and space with Bella while Jemima happily entertains herself alone or with friends.

“You are sure it won’t be too much?” Marina’s mother asked. On the contrary, having a friend over for Jemima frees me up to do whatever I need to do. Play dates are brill!

So I plan to sit here until Bella wakes. She can keep me company while I cook dinner – what’s the point of doing it alone now? The ants that I am watching march in through the front door and across the walls will have polished off the girls’ biscuit crumbs and left again by the time I move anyway, far more efficient than me getting up and wasting valuable energy. The editor I was going to call will only say No, not interested… I can definitely do without that right now. The Khmer vocabulary I need to learn has waited six months already, an extra day can’t hurt. The toys can be put away at bed time. My sister has a postcard on her fridge that says: “A tidy house is a sign of a wasted life”. Too right. The nappies can fester.

The only thing that stops me from feeling entirely comfortable with my plan to do nothing is that I live in a country full of desperate people in need of help, in a city where voluntary opportunities abound. I have always filled my time with good deeds – in my former NGO career before children and since, as a volunteer with my children tagging along too. Ever since Jemima reached about three months, naptimes for children have always (mostly) meant me doing something worthwhile (mostly). I don’t want to do anything for anyone else right now, but there is a voice in my head saying I ought to. I think the best way of getting round this is by inviting the street kids in to play again. That way I shall have to be at home to watch them and they will have some sacred fun time just to be children for a change. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. Tomorrow. I’ll just get another cup of tea first…

Read this post

Travels with my girls...

Just a quick note from Britain, where we arrived safely a week ago after a mostly smooth journey. (Oh, apart from Jemima wedging her hand in the lift door in Bangkok airport for several minutes, but at least that gained us entry into the posh lounge for a couple of hours of being tutted at and frowned upon by besuited business men.)

Everyone seems shocked and full of pity when they hear I am travelling to, and around, the UK, alone with two children, but I can honestly say it would be a lot harder and a lot lonelier without them.

There is something utterly exhausting about travelling with your children and being a guest in someone else's home. Something about trying to balance my instinct to care for my children as I feel fit (especially when I am extra sensitive about the emotional and physical strain of carting them around this country far away from home), and while being dependent on others and not wanting to impose, with the needs of all my family and their expectations for the visit... well, it's knackering, as all other expats will know, and I find I lose myself every day somewhere between breakfast and getting dressed. I have found the odd moment for my writing or yoga in the early hours of the morning before everyone else is up (which absolutely goes against my nature)and this helps me stay grounded. But mostly it is my children who make it all ok. Every night as we all curl up together and read stories and take a bit of a breather after a long (lovely) day of being with lots of other (lovely) people, I just feel so blessed that I have them to keep me company as I try to fit back into life in the UK. I shall write about the whole experience of coming 'home', culture shock etc another time, when I have time. Now it is late and a cosy be-childed bed awaits me.

So I shall just say that it is freezing cold, my children have red rosy cheeks, chapped lips, and a passion for swings. Hoorah for green space, wind and play grounds! Bella has two teeth and is pulling herself up and about to crawl at any time. She is growing way too quickly and every night I snuggle up with her under the duvets and encourage her to stay a baby - at least until we are reunited with her daddy. But the next day she just wants to be with the big children again. She is still waking non-stop for feeds but something about the air here means I pretty much sleep through regardless. There is something about cold wind and duvets that makes sleep so much more exciting and rewarding. I do love the extra cuddles inspired by her waking actually. I might actually be disappointed when she does start to sleep through. (Although I think that might be a year or two away...)

As for Jemima, well she always does me proud on these visits. I could not wish for a more adaptable, sweet-natured, friendly child. She falls right back in with all her aunts and cousins, loves the novelty of gloves and tights and has shown her 'winter shoes' to a host of strangers on the street. She normally keeps going for a few weeks of this nomadic existence before crashing, but this time she seems more sensitive to it all. I have been fuelling her with echinacea, probiotics and herbal tonics, but I can see she is already exhausted.

And so am I, so good night and have a lovely weekend everyone.

Read this post