In Cambodia: futbols and kazoos a big hit

In the 1984 film, Amadeus, I believe there is a scene in which the young Mozart plays the piano upside down and backwards. Well, I can see how one can do that with a piano, but a kazoo?  I always believed the kazoo was designed to be played in one direction, until I saw this image of  a young Cambodian student playing the kazoo backward!  With her hands off the control surfaces!  The kazoo is a rather straightforward instrument. But playing it in reverse? The kazoo? Sacre bleu!

Blowing on the wrong end of a kazoo, and lovin' it.

Afterward she lost it.  In the photo below, the young lady is cracking up while her classmate struggles to keep a straight face.

The smiles make a caption for this photo totally unecessary.

In the photos above, taken as grab shots from a video David Biviano forwarded, the kids are clapping their hands and blowing notes to that old Sunday School standard, "if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" (clap, clap). It's not a song I would have expected to hear in Bosthom Village, which I can't find on Google Maps and have no idea where it is.

This, of course, is just my way of saying that my good friend David Biviano has already returned to Cambodia, and has started distributing One World Futbols. And kazoos. Especially kazoos.

I'm sure you remember David from the last blog post -- he's the philosophy professor who ran an

Vanny and mother

orphanage in Siem Reap,  called the Cambodian Children's House of Peace, until the government bowed to a suggestion from Unicef and closed down orphanages, sending the children back to villages.

However, David had the last laugh, sort of. When he returned to Cambodia this summer, he visited Bosthom Village, where a Mr. Vanny, a graduate of David's orphanage, now teaches, after completing a two-year teachers college in Siem Reap. Vanny is now attending Cambodia's Build Bright University in pursuit of a bachelor's degree, and his mother is the principal of the school where he teaches. That's a photo of the two of them at the right.



Naturally, with David's connections to Bosthom Village, there was a ceremony for distributing the balls.  In the photo below, Vanny is translating for David, gesturing to clarify that the One World Futbol will never go flat.

"This ball never goes flat," said  Mr. Vanny, translating for David.

Then they all said "thank you for the ball," like they were supposed to . . .

And then they got down to it -- the first game was "keep away."

David also visited the primary school in Bos Village to present a One World Futbol to Ms. Sohkeng, a teacher assistant and another graduate of the Cambodian Children's House of Peace. In the photo below she is sitting with her cousins at the end of the school day.

Teacher assistant Ms. Sohkeng receives One World Futbol for Bos Village primary school.

What follows tells the tale. The children turned into a blur of activity. And lest you think this is just a boy's game, follow the sequence below. He is about to give the ball a swift kick in the first photo. In the second grab shot, she's already blocked it and has gotten the ball away from him.

Looks like he's got it all under control . . .

. . . but she blocks it with her knee and hooks it with her foot before he knows what happened.

By the way, before I close this post, I should admit a little aggravation about these kazoos.  I am the man who introduced the kazoo to Hanoi, and then to Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. And I wanted to include Cambodia in my résumé of firsts, but now David has claimed that honor. But I have my revenge, because, as it turns out, he is the reason those kids play the kazoo backward.

"I am embarrassed to say I have been playing the kazoo from the wrong end, which nevertheless still works, just not as efficiently," he confessed. Well, I guess it's time to repeat the tutorial I posted back in 2016 which I introduced the kazoo to Hanoi. Here it is:

Deceptive in its simplicity, the kazoo has only one moving part--your vocal cord. (Tongues optional)

The kazoo is a musical instrument sophisticated in its simplicity. There is the blowificator, where you place your lips, the musicator, where the tune emerges, and the buzzifier on top, which yields the kazoo's unique tonal qualities. There are also the control surfaces between the buzzifier and the musicator, where you spontificate the sounds for melodious effect by pressing down or fluttering with your fingers.

Well, that should settle that. Now then, I know in the last blog I indicated I was going to profile a new individual. That was before I knew that David would report back so quickly. So he gets two shots at the spotlight. But now I really am going to return to the subject of  Malawi and some other notable characters. There's more to tell.

Love,

Robert,

And Shu