Monday, August 2nd: The beast is loose

The alarm goes off at 5AM on the dot. I look over at Blandine, she's completely KO. I lower the aircon a bit and jump into my red PSE T-shirt and shorts.My heart beats fast with excitement as I sit up in bed. Today's the day" I think as the alarm of my mobile phone resounds in my head. I was concious earlier in the night, equally excited/nervous, yet tired enough to fall back sleep. Some of the 800 kids from unfavoured households are descending with equally fast-beating hearts on the PSE campus at this moment, for their 1-week summer holiday. We, the European PSE monitors, get to try to control this Khmer-style mayhem brought upon the PSE campus. 5 days of madness a week, for the next 4 weeks. This is major....something!

I get dressed, eat a quick snack and bring the van to the back of the kitchen, just like it was explained to me yesterday. Porn, my van-ally, is patiently waiting for me. We load the industrial sized casseroles of breakfast (fried fish with rice), morning snack (dragon fruit) into the back of our white iron stallion and wait for the monitors to arrive. At 5:55 all French monitors of the first paillotte have made it to the van, rubbing their eyes. No trace of any of the Spanish monitors. Grrrr, no need for a crystal ball to predict this one. At 6:05 the first few eye-rubbing bits of the Castilian Armada hop into the back of the van. It makes me laugh, really. Finally we leave, 10 mins late, all monitors on board. The delivery is smooth, flawless (Belgian quality).The rest of the morning Porn and I spend racing back and forth between the paillottes and base camp. Finally, near 1:30,  I lay down on one of the wooden campus benches to stretch a bit. The mobile rings, and I get a glimpse of the time before I pick up: wow, I fell asleep for 15 minutes. No time to worry about that, I've got to pick up a kid with a broken tooth and bring some Betadine out to the paillottes.

Lunch (pork soup with rice) is late, because the 400 paté-cucumber sandwiches for the afternoon snack have not all been prepared yet AND the kitchen chef is mad to hear that way too much rice was made for P1 (paillotte 1). The solution is simple: Porn and I speed up things by preparing a few of the remaining sandwiches, the leftover rice is given to the people who live in the shacks that surround the P1 school.

A gruelling busy day finally comes to an end around 17:30, when all monitors are back at base. A mystery meat with rice is awaiting all the monitors. It's chewy, but it'll have to do. The Cambodians are happy with it, so there's no need to make any faces.

Tonight will be short, I need my sleep, or this week will become extra heavy.