Retreat in Siem Rep

Kampuchean Action for Primary Education (KAPE), the organization I will be working, for held a retreat, for all employees, in Siem Reap. It was a great opportunity for me to meet my new co-workers in a setting outside the office. The organization has doubled in size in the last year and the leadership organized the retreat to present new administrative policies to all employees.

It was interesting to observe group dynamics and think about the differences between what I was seeing and what I know from the US and Europe.

The group broke into small groups to discuss the new policies. When someone had to write on a piece of unlined flip chart paper, they put guide lines on the paper, using an ingenious method, to help align the Khmer characters. They rolled the paper into a tube about 1-½" in diameter and pressed the tube flat. The result was guide lines across the paper at even intervals. What a great idea.

Employee association officers were elected in a very open election. Each person wrote the number of their candidate on a small piece of paper, which was collected in a box. The number of pieces of paper were counted and written on a whiteboard. Each piece of paper was then drawn from the box, the number read to the person marking on the whiteboard and the paper shown to the group. The person marking the white board used Cambodian style markings.

In the US, we indicate the number "five" with four vertical bars and a slash from the upper left to lower right. How many times when tallying like that have you had to count the vertical lines to see if there are three or four? In the Cambodian method you do not need to worry, it is obvious:

One	is a vertical line.
Two	is a horizontal line that connects to the top of the vertical line and is drawn to the right, like the top of a small box.
Three	is a veridical line the looks like the right side of a box.
Four	is the bottom of the box and.
Five	is a slash from the upper left corner of the box to the lower right.

 
Using the Cambodian method it is easy for everyone to see that all of the numbers, one to five, are complete. Nothing left out.