Notes to self

As written for http://www.bookbridge.org/who-we-are/blog/

On Tuesday June 16, Sokhan and I attended the National Collaborative Community Learning Centre Workshop in Phnom Penh, organised by ACTED. The general idea of a community learning center (CLC) deviates slightly from BOOKBRIDGE’s learning centers. According to UNICEF it is “a local educational institution, usually set up and managed by local people to provide various learning opportunities with the support of the government, NGOs, and private sectors. Literacy, post-literacy, income generation, life skill programmes and basic education are provided at CLCs.”

Khmer New Year was from the 13th to the 15th. It is worse than christmas in Europe. Every open task needs to be finished, no matter how. All outstanding debt is collected and then everybody leaves the city to visit their families or go on vacation, at the same time. Chaos. Taxis are harder to find. Prices are higher for no apparent reason, except the time being Khmer New Year. The city is strangely empty and we ran into 4 policemen and two tuktuk drivers getting wasted together. On the street. In broad daylight. Needless to say that the tuktuk drivers intended to work later and I don't even want to know about the policemen!

Opening ceremonies are a lot like weddings and therefore serious business in Cambodia. Large, colourful and decorated tents are set up, a lot of plastic chairs are in rank and file. The same model of chair that is omnipresent in this country. I have never seen one for sale, nor have I seen a plastic chair factory… but somebody has got to have gotten filthy rich producing these since they easily outnumber the population. Anyway, there were not only plastic chairs, but also a lot of officials from the provincial ministry of education, the local schools, representatives of the Cambodian scouts, a ceremony host, a bunch of awfully sounding speakers and most importantly, many, many children eager to learn what's happening in the mysterious room which was cleaned and newly painted the last two days.

Our TukTuk in BOOKBRIDGE orange with an integrated bookshelf, hence BookTuk, finally arrived... and to our surprise it did so two days early. Usually there is a delay in everything here in Cambodia but once in a while, just so that you can't rely on things being late all the time, they happen too early. In this case, unlike when showing up on time for a taxi, we didn't care.

Our transportation partner Kuehne + Nagel chose to ship the tablets with UPS on March 4. On March 9, we were notified that the shipment cannot be loaded onto the aircraft as UPS' local freight partner does not allow battery shipments on passenger aircrafts. Since then, it is stuck in Singapore.

Kuehne + Nagel has put in big efforts in organising the on-time delivery of the shipment for the opening ceremony on Friday. They organised a subcontractor who is able to fly the two packages from Singapore to Phnom Penh. To get the shipment, UPS Germany redirected them to UPS Singapore.

However, since 7 days, neither UPS Germany nor UPS Singapore made a move. The answer is always: "Sorry, I do not have the authority". The UPS Person being responsible for the key account Kuehne + Nagel has not been answering e-mails nor picking up the phone for 5 days.

So basically the tablets were sitting in Singapore for a whole week and UPS refused to hand it over to Kuehne + Nagel for further transportation to Cambodia!

It took a personal mail from Bookbridge CEO Dr. Carsten Rübsaamen to UPS CEO David Abney to get the UPS customer support to act:

Hi Carston!  I've received notification that your issue has been assigned to a case manager to address. David Abney has asked for our Customer Relations group to take care of your concern and the case manager will be contacting you very shortly! -April

Big props to Carsten and Kuehne + Nagel for their efforts!

PS: If the customer support can't even spell the name of the customer after the CEO personally told them to start doing something you might have a problem there.

*** Update ***

I went visiting schools in the area with Sokhan to look for suitable rooms. Surprisingly large schools with up to 1000 students appear out of nowhere when following the dirt roads connecting to the main road. I don't fully understand where all the students are coming from because region doesn't look very densely populated.

Sokhan is responsible for the negotiations and seems to be quite good at it since we receive an overwhelming amount of support for our cause. Almost every school agreed to provide us with a room, given that we cut through all the red tape with the provincial authorities.

The rooms could do with some wall paint but how well paint handles the climate will be seen.

Ich habe mich in den letzten Tagen mit Sokhan aufgemacht um Schulen in der Umgebung nach geeigneten Räumen zu erkunden. Beim folgen der nicht asphaltierten Strassen tauchen immer wieder erstaundlich grosse Schulen mit bis zu 1000 Schülern aus dem Nichts auf. Wo die Schüler herkommen ist mir dabei ein Rätsel, weil dicht besiedelt ist die Gegend nicht gerade. 

Sokhan übernimmt die Verhandlungen und stösst dabei grösstenteils auf sehr viel Zustimmung. In fast allen Schulen werden uns Räume angeboten welche wir verwenden können, vorausgesetzt der Papierkrieg mit den Provinzbehörden wird von uns ausgefochten. 

Die Räume können alle ein wenig Wandfarbe vertragen, wie gut sich diese mit dem Klima hier verträgt wird sich zeigen.