Angelfish in a seashell...

Angelfish is a pilot swimming and water therapy project in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. No specific structured swimming program exists in Cambodia for children with disabilities or from underprivileged backgrounds. Cambodia has one of the highest populations of people with disabilities in the world, yet few have the chance to exercise away from their wheelchairs or crutches. Swimming contributes to rehabilitation of children with disabilities in the following ways: water resistance improves mobility and circulation; swimming pools offer freedom and independence in a safe playground; swimmers with disabilities do not need the aids required on land and therefore "differences" are minimised and children can play together, on the same level. With these benefits in mind, Angelfish was set up in 2007, and we are now mid-way through the pilot. We wanted to see if it could be done, to see if it was needed, if children enjoyed it, and if the project had a future. A week into the pilot program, and the pool looks promising.

 

The Angelfish Pilot Scheme

By the end of next week, we will have put twenty children, most of whom have a disability, through five hours of swimming lessons each. Children have two half-hour swimming sessions per day, and poolside activities, including drawing and English conversation, have been developed to be constructive whilst allowing the children time to rest in between sessions. The children have come from two orphanages (The Rabbit School and Sunrise Orphanage) and disabilities include: cerebral palsy, polio, hydrocephalus, haemophilia and learning difficulties. Angelfish is working closely with The Cambodia Trust to make contact with children and provide support in the water.

 

A Day in the Life of an Angelfish...

8am

The Angelfish team have arrived and start to set up the equipment: hoops and brightly-coloured floats are lined up on poolside.  Fruit is cut up and colouring books, toys and a blanket is laid out in the shade. A rope is put across the pool to protect Angelfish children from boisterous pyjama-clad swimmers.  Volunteers and helpers arrive and they have some training in how to hold children in the water, what to do in a rescue situation and how many choruses of “Old McDonald Had a Pond” they will be singing in the lessons that day.

9am

The children from the yellow group are having their first lesson.  This lesson is very active; five able-bodied children who have learning difficulties,  hydrocephalus or another disability are learning to swim by blowing balls or kicking their legs on a woggle-“motorbike”. Each child has a carer to help them.  After a warm up they might go on a “rescue mission” for colourful balls, run away from a scary lion, or have a seahorse race. The lesson finishes with a rousing chorus of the Hokey Kokey, where all the children are “whooshed” into the middle to say goodbye.

9.45am

The red group are having their first lesson while the yellow group eat some fruit and do some colouring in. The red group are walking across the pool splashing their arms like the trunk of an elephant, or stalking across the pool like a tiger, or lying on their backs like a swishy snake.  All five children in this group have cerebral palsy, and most are carried or taken to the pool in a wheelchair. The focus of these sessions is mobility and water therapy: children are helped to move their limbs, to float with the support of the water, and to get their circulation going. At the end of the lesson they might play a cat and mouse game and then relax in a circle to an inevitably tone-deaf rendition of “twinkle twinkle little star.”

11.30am

Time to get the last of the children changed and onto the bus back to the orphanage. The volunteers finish off their morning with a few rides down a waterslide, while the Angelfish team put the equipment away, hang the towels out to dry and collapse onto chairs to review the day.

 

What Makes an Angelfish?

 

 

Kara is ten. She has cerebral palsy and this is the first time she has had swimming lessons. Kara can move her legs a little bit and use her arms, but has difficulty using her hands and controlling her body. She spends most of her time in a wheelchair. Swimming is one of the only places where she can be on the same level as other children, with no one looking down at her. Kara loves blowing balls, jumping up and down in the water and lying on her back and wriggling. Swimming provides the opportunity to move her legs, and water resistance strengthens her body.

 

 

 

Chirorn is eight; she had tuberculosis as a young child and has one leg significantly shorter than the other. She uses a wheelchair to get around. Chirorn has had little experience of being in the water and started off in the pool clinging determinedly to the neck of Seb, a volunteer helper. By the end of the week, she was swimming breaststroke on a woggle, towards Seb, and blowing bubbles. Chirorn also has a backcrawl kick to get water in the eyes of any helper foolish enough to be hanging about in her wake. Chirorn loves splashing water at her friends and shows no mercy in collecting the most amount of balls in the warm-up.

 

 

 

Youleng is thirteen and she has haemophilia. Swimming is the safest playground for her: there are fewer ways to bang or scrape anything. Youleng needed support throughout the lessons, but was swimming independently with only a woggle by Friday. Youleng’s friends include sixteen-year-old Poeun Thavin, who had polio as a child and walks slowly with her one good leg, and Sreng Socheata, who has one leg longer than the other. Socheata loves frontpaddle and diving for hoops underwater, although she tends to sink on her back because she forgets to look at the ceiling and giggles too much.

Here are some photos from Week Two...