Sunday, 3 June 2001
Vuth, my roommate, woke up at 4:00 this morning because of the time difference between Finland and Cambodia, and his taking a shower was all that was needed to push me the little bit farther into wakefulness. The sun was already high in the sky but I got him to close the blinds and got back to sleep till 6:30 AM. We ate breakfast at 8:00 in the hotel dining room and then were ready to go at 10:00 AM when Johanna Arponen came to pick us up.
Johanna is a bright and lively young woman, and her plan for the morning was a walking tour of central Helsinki near the harbor. Helsinki is a very European, very clean, very friendly and comfortable city, and our walk took us past several museums, statues, monuments, and other points of interest as we made our way to the harbor. There Johanna left us and we went to lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. Our gang were almost showing signs of withdrawal after being away from rice for two days. I suspect we'll be back there several times during this week. It turned out the owner was from Hong Kong and we chatted in Cantonese for ten minutes. He still didn't give us a discount, though. The restaurant prices were high--$10 for a plate of fried rice--but most things are relatively expensive here.
At 1:00 PM we met Johanna at the ferry pier and also a member of the Finland-Cambodia Association, Saara H. When we first saw each other, she said "I know you." She did look familiar to me but I couldn't figure why, but then it turned out she had been at the Christmas mass I celebrated in Phnom Penh last December! She was visiting Honesta, a mutual friend of ours in Cambodia. Saara led us onto the ferry for the 20-minute ride out to six islands in the harbor, heavily fortified in the early 1800s as a defense against a Russian invasion. It didn't work. The brick and stone ramparts have been entirely preserved, and now the islands, connected by bridges, are a favorite picnic spot for locals and a destination for tourists.
We got back to the hotel, changed clothes, and then caught a #4 tram to the end of the line where Johanna met us again to take us to a very posh restaurant overlooking a bay of the sea. I was glad I had brought a tie along! We ate with Liisa Kauppinen, the executive director of the Finland Association of the Deaf, and Markku Jokinen, its president. Also with us was Katja Merentie, an FAD field worker who had spent several years in Cambodia. Vuth chose reindeer from the menu but I limited my exposure to Finnish food to the dark bread that is a staple here.
Monday, 4 June 2001
Our work started this morning at 8:00 AM in the hotel lobby where we met Kimmo Leinonen, a young energetic deaf man with talent and personality to burn. His task was to lead us to the Light House, the center where the FAD has its offices, and introduce us to the bus and train routes so we could travel on our own later. Once there, he became one of our two interpreters with us for the full day. His speciality is communicating in international sign language and the other interpreter copied him using more of American Sign Language. The interpreting here is already quite impressive!Kimmo took us first to the offices of the World Federation of the Deaf. I hadn't realized they were here, and was really pleased to meet Carol-Lee, WFD's General Secretary, because I had been wanting to contact her about a development program in Cambodia. Then we toured the Center for Sign Language which Kimmo runs; the Organizational Department; the Employment Project; and ended up with an hour with Liisa Kauppinen again. Quite a rewarding day.
We managed to find our way back to Helsinki on the train by ourselves, and then stopped at at kebab place near the hotel for an early supper. The deaf crew went to bed early, but I went back out to check for an Internet connection (one cyber cafe had no unoccupied computers--and was also very expensive) so I went to a supermarket and bought some cookies and an imitation cola and then worked on the computer in my room for a while.
Tuesday, 5 June 2001
Vuth felt the need to take a shower at 4:00 AM again this morning. I'm hoping he gets over the jetlag soon so he can sleep to a decent hour. When we arrived at the White House, our first task was an interview by the staff of Magazine for the Deaf. It proceeded rather slowly because there were four interpreters involved, a pattern that became the norm for most of the week. Two hearing interpreters take turns spelling each other throughout the day, and the two deaf interpreters work in International Sign Language and Khmer Sign Language. The latter follows the former, using all the Khmer signs he knows.
At lunch time I had a working meal with Liisa Kauppinen, the executive director of the FAD who made time for me. She is deaf and so two of the staff interpreters were there for the meal (although they didn't get to eat!). Mainly I wanted to give Liisa some background on the attempt in Cambodia to develop a comprehensive plan for deafness throughout the country.
After lunch we took a tour of the video production facilities of the FAD. They are quite impressive. They have several studios and editing rooms, all run by deaf people, and they produce videos for commercial use on television.
Then the real work of the day began. Navy and Charlie met with two of the FAD interpreting staff for three hours while Vuth and Sokhom toured the deaf cultural centre, the library, and the deaf museum. The session on interpreting involved another interpreter, this time a spoken English to spoken Khmer interpreter. It is amazing how the Finnish people function in beautiful English as easily as they do in Finnish. I seldom feel that I am even in a foreign country. Most people also know Swedish and all the signs are in both Finnish and Swedish.
Jakob, a young Finnish deaf man, came over to the hotel after we returned home and the five of us headed out to supper. When I found out that they wanted to go to a Thai restaurant fairly far away, though, I decided to grab a sandwich closer to home and do some work on the home page. I went over to the Cable Book Library which has 20 work stations connected to the Internet. I had made a reservation earlier, but when I actually got online, I found that I could not log into my account for some reason. I tried for 40 minutes before giving up.
Shortly after getting back to the hotel, an explosion shook the building from a blast at a construction site down the street. There are signs in the hotel and on television warning of the blasts four times a day. That added a little excitement to the evening which was otherwise occupied with washing some clothes in the bathroom sink. The towel rack here is a heated metal tube with a lot of S-curves. It's great for keeping nice warm towels, but it's also ideal for drying clothes overnight.
Wednesday, 6 June 2001
Vuth slept all the way through the night till we got up at 6:30 AM, a first--a welcome first. He and the other Cambodians seem to be addicted to the televisions in the rooms. As soon as they walk in they turn them on. When Vuth gets up at 4:00 AM he turns it on. When he comes in the room at night, he turns it on, and then clicks through the cable channels. That doesn't bother me because I got him to turn the volume all the way down since he doesn't hear it anyway. At times, though, he clicks it back on to wake me up long before I want to get up.At the Light House we spent the morning discussing what the CDPO deaf program has been doing the first six months of this year and what they want to do for the last half of the year. This was background for the formal discussions that begin tomorrow to determine the actual level of funding that the Finland Association of the Deaf will offer to the Cambodian deaf program. The discussions in these sessions go quite slowly as the questions and answers go through the four interpreters, but we manage to accomplish our goals.
In the afternoon we split into two groups again. This time Vuth and Sokhom met with Katja to talk about the needs of the deaf program as they see it. At the same time Navy and I met with Johanna Arponen, with the spoken English-to-Khmer interpreter present again. The morning session had focused more on actual budget amounts, but in the afternoon we talked more about priorities and the way the program should be structured.
The other group finished earlier but then we decided we had had enough, too, so Vuth, Sokhom, and Navy all headed back to the hotel. I used Johanna's computer to send some e-mail while she meet with Katja to compare notes about the two sessions. Then Johanna and I met till 5:30 PM as I gave her more background on the Cambodia program and she explained the policies of the Finnish Foreign Ministry funding that is channeled through the FAD. Then I took a bus back to downtown, trying something different instead of the train.
Vuth still hadn't eaten when I got back so we went out to a Chinese restaurant, a different one. A group of Hong Kong tourists came in while we were there, easily distinguishable by their Cantonese and style of dress.
Thursday, 7 June 2001
Today was mostly meetings. When we got to the Light House, we started at 9:00 AM to discuss in the formal negotiations what we had talked about generally yesterday. Overnight Johanna had taken the facts and figures we had given yesterday and put them together
We finished a little early in the afternoon and went back to the hotel to eat before we left to go to the Helsinki deaf club for the evening. We rode the subway for the first time to get there. The club has a beautiful old building in a lovely residential, quiet part of town. Probably 30 or 40 deaf people were gathered there, some watching a version of something like baseball (but without a pitcher) on television, and most of them just chatting. It reminded me of the days long past for US deaf clubs. We received a warm welcome from the officers of the club who showed us around and then sat down with us to talk about our experiences in Finland.
Friday, 8 June 2001
Today we had the actual formal negotiations about budgets for the deaf program of the CDPO in Cambodia. The Finnish government's Foreign Ministry channels funds through private groups like the Finland Association of the Deaf to further its foreign aid goals. The FAD now has about 15 assistance projects for deaf programs all over the world. Cambodia is the only project in Asia.
In the morning we discussed this year's Plan of Action and budget. The discussions yesterday provided the background and detail for deciding on the budget today. Then in the afternoon we looked at the Plan of Action and budget for 2002.
In the Orthodox section there was a small Orthodox church, and I went in and looked around and then stayed to pray awhile.
Then I headed for the railway station and looked at the timetable for early Sunday morning trains for tomorrow. From there I walked to the ferry pier and hopped on the next boat out to the Suomeninnen fortifications in the harbor. I spent 2½ hours there, seeing many of the things I didn't have a chance to look at last Sunday. Most interesting this time was a small submarine set on the beach. I had never seen a complete sub out of the water like that where all the details of design were obvious.
The Finland Association of the Deaf held its annual general meeting yesterday and today. We were invited to observe today and had a time slot to introduce ourselves at the opening of the day's business. Sokhom explained about the Cambodia deaf program and then gave some souvenir gifts to the association. Then we sat and watched as they took care of the last part of their agenda including the election of three members of their board of directors. At the end there were a lot of sincerely felt goodbyes as we said farewell to our hosts of the past week.