Education

Sorry its been awhile here is an article I wrote for the Concordy.  Sorry for double dipping.

                I feel used and dirty.  Like a piece of meat that has been paraded around for everyone to gawk at or, as is more common here, like an eighteen year old who has spent all night clinging to the arm of an overweight fifty-something man in the darkened corner.  The meeting is going on two hours now and not a word of English has been spoken.  So I smile and nod sitting there trying to laugh at the appropriate times, and looking deadly serious at others even though I haven’t got the slightest clue what anyone is saying.  I know why I’m here, but something about the whole situation just doesn’t seem right. As I try to fend off suspicious eyes and yawns of boredom it occurs to me that I’ve never felt this good about being objectified. I’m simply playing a roll, proving to the Ministry of Education that our NGO has western backing and therefore reinforcing the ingrained stereotype that we are flush with cash.  This faint scent of money is enough to get the mired cogs of bureaucracy oiled and moving in our favor.  After two and a half hours the principal and I emerge from the sweat drenched conference room having secured what we came to for, a vague promise that our new students will have placement, free of charge, in a Cambodian public school come next July.  Awkward… yes, but also great news for ten young Cambodian children.

                Cambodian public schools are technically free, but as so often happens, the laws do not match the reality of the situation.  The Global Child’s (TGC) primary objective is to give street working children a second chance at education.  For some this means providing housing, food, clothes, and a weekly stipend, while for others it simply means a series of conversations with their parents about the value of education and the shortsightedness of having their children hawk flowers to tourist, or as our principal likes to say, “teaching people the idea of education.”  The problem is that TGC is not a recognized educational institution in the Kingdom of Cambodia.  Officially we file our paperwork with the Ministry of Informal Education, and as such the students at our school must also attend a government approved school if they wish to receive a twelfth grade certificate upon the completion of their secondary education.  This past July The Global Child received a fresh batch of students, and after a year of playing catch-up with their studies here at TGC, we sought to enroll them in one of the public schools for three hours of classes each morning.  But at every school we went to, we encountered the same road block.  “Yes,” the principal would say, “public school is free if you start from the beginning, but not if you want to start in grade three, that costs money,  one-hundred dollars a student to be exact.”  For that sort of money we could enroll them in a decent private school for a year. Rather than comply with the system as we have in the past we decided to take a stand.  Which explains how a few days later I found myself freshly shaven wearing a nicely pressed shirt prostituting myself to some low level government administrator.

                I tell this story not to highlight a personal success on the part of my award winning smile or to demonstrate the complexity of Cambodian bureaucracy, but to illuminate some of the gross inadequacies that still exist in the Cambodian educational system some thirty years after most of the educated populace was exterminated.  When a catastrophe like the Khmer Rouge genocide wipes out two million people the effects are long lasting, but when that anger is directed at the intellectual community the effects seem to linger on forever.  When the Khmer Rouge era ended the government took anyone as a teacher.  Hiring had nothing to do with skills or quality or ability they were just bodies to fill empty spots.[i]  If you could read and write you were a teacher.  If you graduated fourth grade you were qualified to teach fourth grade.   This devaluation of the profession of teacher has continued to the current day. High school teachers find themselves by far the lowest paid government employees, making somewhere around sixty dollars a month in a country where even maids are paid eighty.  Besides causing widespread apathy amongst the teaching corps this debasement has also lead to corruption on the part of teachers and school officials.  The situation we encountered is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cases of corruption.  It is not uncommon for teachers to sell the answers to the high school exit exam, take a bride to raise a failing grade or even for principals to forge high school certificates.  

                The lack of quality teachers has lead to disastrous results for the Kingdoms students.  The absence of effective schooling and accessibility issues has resulted in only forty-three percent of Cambodian males ever making it past the sixth grade.  The figures for females and the rural population are even more discouraging, with only thirty-three percent of women making it into secondary education and with less than two percent of those in the country-side receiving their high school certificates.[ii]  In a country where many children are forced to choose between food and school it’s hard to place the blame on one factor, but there are many elements within the country seeking to improve this dire situation.  While the Cambodian government seriously considers switching back to a colonial system of education where the top one percent of students would be guaranteed placement in internationally recognized universities thousands of organizations both domestic and international are working hard to meet the United Nations goal of universal access to education.[iii]  Some are aimed at providing teachers with a living wage to help stem corruption, while others offer teacher training and advanced education courses free of charge. Some organizations distribute school supplies and construct new educational infrastructure and then there are those like TGC which have sought to simply supplement the poor quality public education for a select group of at risk students.  The most effective of the measures are and will be debated by people until the Cambodian education system is on par with its more affluent neighbors.  Until then I’ll keep showing up to work every day, lessons prepared, homework corrected, enthusiastically ready to give our students the chance at an education they never thought they would have. And if sometimes that means kissing some government clerk’s ass for a few hours I’ll do that too. 

[i] Coates, Karen. Cambodia Now, MacFarland and Company, 2005 pg 297

[ii] UNICEF, Cambodia Statistics, <http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cambodia_statistics.html#56>

[iii] Coates. pg 256

Priorities

                1. Breathe 2. Eat 3. Sleep.  The first three priorities in life are easy, because without them you die.  The list becomes infinitely more complicated to compile after this because everything else is a choice.  Most people would put health, education and shelter pretty high up on that list, but for others good food, fast cars, and entertainment take the cake.  This explains why people who sleep outside here have TV’s with them under their mosquito nets, and why someone will spend two years salary on the newest nicest moto rather than spend half a month’s salary on a bike that will get them  to work just as quickly.  These may seem like extreme cases, but they are not.  Sometimes in Cambodia people’s priorities are utterly mind boggling. 

                His name is Ja.  Ja is somewhere between 10 and 12 years old.  Ja does not go to school.  Ja does not have clean clothes and I doubt he has used soap in the four months I have been here.  Ja works at the gym I go to.  He unlocks the door each morning, arranges the weights, and cleans the floor.  He has a pet dog named Da, who looks better fed than he does, and sleeps on a bed with no mattress under a mosquito net. He has to sleep under the net because he lives in a building that could only exist in Cambodia, called the Wat Bo Gym and Ski Center.  The building itself is sort of like an aircraft hanger with no walls except for the many small wooden houses built along the outer edge of the property.  These small wooden structures are all two and half stories tall so that they can use the aluminum roof of the main building as cover.   A small section of the hanger is fenced off to house a gym and inside is an odd collection eighties style exercise machines and those vibrating belts you see in advertisements from the nineteen-fifties.  From the faded pictures painted on the makeshift walls I can tell that at one point the entire building was used as a rolling skating rink (what they call skiing), but now it’s nothing more than a supply depot for beer and soda.  Ja and Da guard this merchandise at night.

                The other day Ja was exceptionally happy.  He had something he wanted to show me, and since he doesn’t speak any English and my Khmer is still worse than some tourists he physically had to show me.  He tore off towards the gym, with Da nipping at his heels and came running out with what from a distance looked like a huge cell phone.  To my surprise he handed me a Play Station 2.  For those of you who didn’t grow up in the last two decades the Play Station 2 or PS2 is a video game console made by Sony.  Only this PS2 was unlike anything I’d ever seen.  Usually you have to plug a PS2 into a TV and it operates with separate controllers but this PS2 was a hand held version with its own screen and a built in controller.  After a little research on the internet I realized that such a product did not exist.  Which means somebody took apart a PS2, rearranged the circuitry inside hooked this up to a small TV screen and controller then housed the entire thing in a custom made plastic carrying case.  In the states a PS2 costs $100 dollars and if you take into account the aftermarket alterations you are looking at least a $200 product.  This is an absurd price for anything in Cambodia let alone an entertainment device.  Needless to say I was shocked to find Ja with such a lavish new toy.

                Of course I couldn’t ask Da where he got it, if he stole it, or whether he knew the person making the device, so I went about my workout while Da happily sat and played the latest Version of Techin (it’s a 3-D Game where you fight, martial arts style, against an opponent).  A few days later I found out from the owner of the gym that it was what Ja parents/employers (not sure of the exact relationship) got him as payment for services rendered.  For $200 dollars they could have enrolled him in one of the better schools for a year, bought him a new wardrobe, some soap and at least a month’s rent in a house nicer than mine.   But instead, Ja has a new toy to distract him from the monotony that is his life. (I know it’s monotonous because I’ve been to Wat Bo Gym and Ski Center at every time of the day and he’s always sitting there looking very bored.)  The failure to prioritize what is really important in life is in no way unique to Cambodia it happens all around the world.  Like when a government can spend a trillion dollars on two wars half a world away while fifty million of its own people lack access to proper medical care.  Or how a world famous golfer with millions of dollars worth of endorsements can throw those away for a midnight tryst with a glorified bar tender.  It’s just that in Da’s case I can’t begin to rationalize it.

                How can one buy a video game for someone who lacks food and shelter?  How can one choose entertainment over health and wellbeing?  How does one even afford batteries if one can’t afford soap?  How can one be so apathetic towards the future that they forgo an education that is clearly within their grasps?    These are questions I’ll never be able to answer, but coming to a place where they must be asked is truly turning out to be an eye opening experience. 

I am Man

I am a man.  I’ve always been a man, but never have I been as aware of that fact as I am now.  I was raised in a household where men and women were treated as equals. Growing up both my parents worked. As a child my mother regaled me with stories about how when she was young it was either get a job or have a family and never could it be both.  About the fights she had with her parents for the right to wear pants.  She even went as far as inserting the lines, “with liberty and pants for all,” onto the end of her pledge of allegiance.  This upbringing instilled in me the notion that things are much better now that women can wear pants and go to work.   In college I took women’s and gender studies classes which further convinced me of the need for equal rights and responsibilities (selective service agreement wink wink cough cough) with regards to sex.  Coming from that background to Cambodia it was shocking to find that I am a man first and everything else, even a foreigner, second. 

 Technically speaking the Cambodian law is not so different from our own.  Cambodia’s constitution guarantees equal rights to men and women in all areas of society.   Women have equal inheritance rights, can own private property, have equal claim to the children in divorce hearings, and recently (2005) laws have been introduced to criminalize domestic abuse.  With laws similar to our own one might expect the treatment of the sexes to be akin.  This is not at all the case.  In some cases laws are directly flaunted and in others cultural elements are so pervasive that they undermine any notion of sexual equality.  Either way it has been an eye opening experience.

I should have known things were going to be different from the moment I walked off the plane.  I had run to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and when I came back, I found Lyndsay consulting with one of the airline employees.  Apparently, our baggage was too heavy and we needed to pay some sort of fee.  As soon as I approached the women turned to me and completely shut Lyndsay out.  The employee wouldn’t look at Lyndsay, speak to her, or when the moment came to inspect at our tickets, take the ticket from her, even though Lyndsay stood there presenting her ticket and I had to dig through my bag in order to find mine.  The same attitude persisted on our first day of work when we sat down with the school principal in order to go over our job descriptions.  It was a two hour meeting and not once did he address or attempt to make eye contact with Lyndsay.  He directed the meeting completely towards me. It was as if we were having a conversation and Lyndsay was not even in the same room.  This attitude has since changed greatly in large part due Lyndsay’s outgoing personality.   These initial impressions were further reinforced by daily occurrences. 

At lunch I am always served first.   Even if I arrive just as lunch is being served and Lyndsay has been with the kids all morning I am served first.   I don’t get the same degree of back talk either.  The kids at school have an advantage that most students do not.  They speak another language so they can say whatever they want in Khmer and I usually have no idea whether they made fun of me or not.  Luckily for me and the other male teachers this is kept at a respectful whisper under the breath.  The school’s female employees don’t have such a luxury as insults are openly hurled at them daily.  Recently the situation got so bad we had to place several of the students on probationary status (continued misbehavior can even lead to expulsion). Outside of school the inequality becomes even more obvious.  If you take a ten minute bike ride outside of town you immediately find yourself surrounded by rice paddies, and it doesn’t take long to recognize the equal distribution of labor in the fields.  The women plant and harvest the rice, which is a back breaking (literally you have to bend at the waste all day) process that requires constant vigil, while the men plow the rice field which as best as I can tell took about a week.  The rest of the time they leisurely go about fishing or sleeping.  Even the language differentiates between the sexes.  Besides having the normal differentiating words for “Mr.” and “Miss”, Khmer is full of a litany of gender specific words. For example, “Bah” is yes for men and “Ja” is yes women.

In a country famous for prostitution and drug trade one may be extremely surprised to find that most Cambodians are ultra conservative with regards to women in the public sphere.  The school has very strict rules regarding the whereabouts of its students especially so for the girls. Basically none of the students are allowed out after dark, and none of the girls are allowed to be out alone ever, because as I’ve had it explained to me it’s just not appropriate and they will be raped.  I was once reprimanded for giving one girl a ride to school and leaving another to walk the five minutes to school alone.  Countries that enforce Sharia law often take flack for forcing women to go about in public wearing Hijab, but a similar situation exists here with surgical masks.  I recently asked a Cambodian friend why so many women go around with the surgical masks.  He explained there were for three reasons for this.  One, they don’t want the H1N1. Secondly they are too shy, and third they don’t want their families to know they are out in public.  It’s not the first two that alarmed me but the later.  Just the act of leaving home could somehow bring shame upon the family, and this mask is an attempt to bypass the stigma of becoming an improper woman.  Elizabeth Shey noticed the same thing in her analysis of both traditional and modern Khmer literature.  As she puts it in her essay “The Status of Khmer Women,”

“She (Khmer Women) is required to speak softly, walk lightly and be well-mannered at all times. She is required to stay in her home, and serve as the caretaker of the family and preserver of the home. As a young woman, a Khmer woman must be a virgin before she marries and be faithful to her husband after marriage, even though he is allowed to have extramarital affair,” furthermore, “Heavy consequences exist for women who disobey the didactic message directed to them in Khmer literature. Often times the women are punished by rape or end their lives in suicide from shame.”

The notion that the public sphere is too dangerous a place for women seriously undermines any notion of sexually equality here in Cambodia.

Belying this conservative attitude on women in the public sphere is the relatively resigned attitude towards prostitution.  The Khmer Rouge genocide set up an interesting population dynamic in Cambodia in which sixty-five percent of the population is female.  This has led to several interesting phenomena.  The first and most obvious is the prostitution mentioned above.   Prostitution is in your face in Cambodia.  It is harder to find a restaurant, bar, or nightclub, without prostitutes than it is to find one with.  Even the restaurant across the street from school offers a late night ladies of the night menu.  There is a bridge I have to take home from the main part of town.  I know that if I cross it after dark I will undoubtedly be accosted by two “lady boys” as they like to all them here. Thankfully I’ve never seen it but the newspaper is constantly reporting on foreigners and nationals being arrested in child prostitution stings and gang rapes.    The fact that the saying, “if you can’t find what you want in Bangkok, go to Cambodia,” is well known throughout Southeast Asia speaks volumes about the state of affairs here.

A second interesting phenomenon created by the uneven population demographic is the disproportionately large number of Cambodia women who are marrying foreigners.  Recently I had the honor of attending one of these mixed nationality weddings, and as interesting as the bride groom dynamic was (this was their second time meeting), it was the traditional Cambodia wedding ceremonies that really caught my attention.  They all seemed to reinforce the same concept, that the man will provide and the women will be subservient.   In one she ties herself to his wrist, in another they hold money together over a luxurious pillow, and in another two swords are used to place the women under the man’s cloth.  But more than any other ceremony the foot washing best encapsulates this idea.  In this ceremony the man stands on a short pedestal.  The woman gets down on her knees and first scrubs and then perfumes her future husband’s feet.  Then he whips out a large wad of bills and hands it to her while she is still crouched on the ground.  Then they both turn and smile for the awaiting photographer.  For me these types of ceremonies only emphasized the inequalities I come across every day.

Foot Washing Picture

As a man I can’t sit here and tell you that I find this all bad.  I rather like being served first, and it’s nice to just have respect rather than having to earn it.  But I know that these advantages come at the expense others, and that this line of thinking leads to things like rampant prostitution and human trafficking, which is why I hope someday Cambodia will actually start to enforce its laws and become a country with liberty and pants for all.

One quick side note- Yesterday was Cambodian Independence Day and as a history major I think it’s incredibly interesting that when someone tells you its Independence Day you have to question which independence.  From the Thais, Vietnamese, Japanese, French, or from the home grown enemy the Khmer Rouge?  Each at one time or another controlled a portion or all of Cambodia so who’s overthrow are we celebrating today?  Turns out it’s the French, but just having to ask the question reminded me of how much older history is outside of the United States. 

Another quick side note-  Turns out my grandmother was the progressive one.  She forced my mother to wear pants when she was younger.  On the way to school they both drove by a dress factory, and my mother would stand up and say, “with liberty and dresses for all.”  This story doesn’t fit with my blog so I’m keeping it the way it is.  Just pretend thats the way it happened. 

Ghost Town and Water World

Every year around mid September Cambodians take a week off to celebrate their version of Halloween.  Although thus far every holiday has had something to do with evil spirits so I don’t know how well this Halloween moniker applies.  The Pchum Ben festivals marks a period of 15 days during which time the spirits of dead ancestors walk among the living.  In order to ease the suffering of these deceased relatives, balls of rice are thrown at the ants.  Apparently ghosts don’t have mouths so the only way they can eat is if the ants break the food down into very tiny pieces.  Each morning at around four am people gather at the local temples to throw rice balls at the ground. In the states Halloween is a children’s holiday, but here in Cambodia it is taken much more seriously.  I attribute this seriousness to the fact that most people I’ve met, even educated people, believe in ghost or at least supernatural beings.  Every girl at school has their own bed, but on many a nights they huddle together, in spite of the intense heat, out of fear of ghosts.  One of my fellow teachers and perhaps the most knowledgeable person and definitely the best English speaker I know, still consults his village holy man to receive a fortune telling when making any important life decisions.  Even the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, recently espoused his belief in ghosts when he wished the spirits of Pchum Ben on his political opponent, Sam Rainsy.  (Sam would most likely be arrested for making the same comment).  And most recently I learned the Cambodian word for ghost is phonetically identical to “come out,” which explains why the little girls shriek in terror whenever say, “come out come out wherever you are” during hide and seek. 

For me Pchum Ben marked a week off from work and my first chance to get out of Siem Reap and see more of Cambodia.  I chose to head down to Phnom Penh, the capitol, because its home to most of our students’ families and several of them invited me to visit.  Phnom Penh is a lively metropolis of nearly two million people infamous for the intensity of its traffic.   Motos, tuk tuks, cars, trucks, buses, ox carts and people try to make their way around the city each and every day.  Which is why I was shocked to find the streets nearly deserted.  Huge double lane boulevards usually teaming with traffic only trickled with the occasional vehicle.   It felt as if the city was made of vacant parking lots crammed between French colonial buildings.   The bustling covered markets, that were suppose to put Siem Reap’s to shame, were full of closed stalls and empty carts.  The few people one did meet the street all seemed to be of Chinese or Korean decent.  The eerie silence of this giant city conjured up thoughts of the last massive evacuation, in which the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh in less than two days and ordered all its inhabitants into the country side.  But that was in 1975 and Cambodia was in the midst of a war.  It’s now 2009 and Cambodia has had a relatively stable government for over ten years now, so where did all the people go?

They went home.  Apparently, Pchum Ben is also a time in which everyone goes back to their ancestral village to celebrate at the local pagoda.  Luckily, I had some friends in Siem Reap from Champong Cham Province.  A few cell phone calls and a bus ride later I found myself in rural Cambodia.  Rural Cambodia takes rural to a whole new level.  There is no electricity, no running water, no sanitation facilities, and very few hospitals or schools.  For all that they lack in Champong Cham they still know how to have a good time, and I could finally see why everyone was in such a rush to get home for Pchum Ben.  Outside of the city the holiday is essentially a fifteen day binge.  They eat, drink and dance until about two in the morning.  Then they pass out and sleep until the heat makes sleep impossible.  So at about nine thirty in the morning the music switches back on and they start the whole process over again.  I took part in the celebration for only two days and was exhausted, although this may have had more to do with sleeping on bamboo slates than on my partying ways.  

With no electricity one might wonder exactly how they provide the music for this late night dance fest.  I assumed it would be a band and maybe a microphone or karaoke, but younger Cambodians are not huge fans of traditional music.  Like youths from around the world they gravitate towards newer sounds like the musing of superstar Cameron Sreymum and western hip hop.  So what they do is a lug out speaker after speaker, a full DJ booth and a boatload of car batteries to each and every village.  It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.  Imagine walking through miles and miles of rice fields where all the houses look like they came out of a Doctor Seuss book and then suddenly being met by a six foot tall wall of speakers blaring the latest American dance hits so loud that you can’t even think.  It was a little disorienting to say the least.[i] 

 Another thing that struck me about rural Cambodia was something that Tom, my fellow fellow in Uganda, touched upon in one of his early blogs, the novelty of my white skin.  In Siem Reap I am simply one of millions of barang (literally means Frenchmen but they use it for all white people) who come to visit the temples every year.  Most barang never get very far from Siem Reap or Phnom Penh, so in the country side I attract quite a bit more attention than I do in the city.  I started to notice this at my first night of dancing when people were literally pushing their way through the crowd to get closer to me, but it really became apparent the next morning at breakfast.  First off everyone wanted to feed us, and when we finally got to sit down for breakfast a small crowd began to gather.  Soon it wasn’t just family members and neighbors, but people from all around started to press in on us.  But even more interesting than watching us eat, was watching us try to shower after breakfast.  With no running water and no outhouse taking a shower becomes an interesting procedure.  First you go into the house and change into a thin sarong.  Then you head outside the house to these large clay pots full of captured rainwater.  Inside each vat is a plastic bucket.  You take one bucket full of water and dump it on your head to get wet and then soap up.  Then you take a second bucket of water to wash off the soap.  Although this was an efficient process that felt incredibly refreshing considering the fact that I’d been in the same cloths for about forty-eight hours, it did leave me with a few questions.  When do I wash my underside, and what happens in the dry season when there is no rainwater?   But since the villagers smelled fine I felt these questions were better left unsaid.  Despite the crowd and my nagging want to clean below the waist, my shower in rural Cambodia was an altogether pleasant one. 

When I returned to Phnom Penh the next day the city was back to its active self.  The celebrating Cambodians put the Khmer Rogue’s evacuation to shame proving that you could repopulate a city of two million in less than twelve hours. Crossing the street became like a game of Frogger (it’s an early video game where a frog tries to cross the street without getting smashed by cars) and I couldn’t go more than five feet without being propositioned for a ride in a Tuk Tuk.  I spent the rest of the break doing the typical tourist circuit in Phnom Penh.  It wasn’t until I returned to Siem Reap that something truly exciting happened.  In late September the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia were hit by Typhoon (typhoon = a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean) Ketsana.  Although the Philippines and Vietnam faced the brunt of the hurricanes wrath Cambodia was besieged by massive flooding.  Two days of nonstop deluges prompted the Siem Reap River to rise nearly 10 meters and overflow its banks.  The streets turned into canals and the wakes caused by passing cars made it nearly impossible to stay upright on my bike as I attempted to pedal through waist high waters.  But like all moderate disasters the kids turned the flood into a holiday.  Catching fish off the front porch of the school, diving off the bridge into the surging river, and generally just, enjoying being wet.  This of course changed around the third or fourth day of flooding as the waters continued to rise due to the opening of a dam in Vietnam (I’m starting to see why Cambodian and Vietnamese aren’t the best of friends).  Even the sandbags at the entrance to the kids’ house couldn’t halt the tide of floodwaters and some were forced to move into the school house.  On the home front only a makeshift cement barrier constructed by our landlord kept the house dry.  Eventually the waters receded and took with them the pavement.  Once smooth blacktop has been stripped down to clay foundations, and giant meter wide potholes litter what paved surfaces remain. 

What struck me most about the Typhoon wasn’t the severity of the storm, but the lack of reaction to it.  Although slight flooding is common in Cambodia nothing like this has happened to Siem Reap in over ten years, and yet people just acted like nothing was happening.  The day after the storm ended businesses were open, schools were back in session and people returned to their normal way of life, albeit a slower wetter way of life.    Siem Reap wasn’t declared a disaster area, no national guardsmen showed up people just dealt with it and in the end it turned out fine.[ii]  This same apathy, will probably allow a similar event to happen in the near future, but during the flood it was a great feeling to have.  Rather than gripe and complain, Cambodians got back to living and it really proved to me what a couple of bags of sand and some perseverance can accomplish. 

[i] On a side note Kampong Cham is Cambodia’s second richest province, so this speaker phenomenon probably only takes place in better off villages.  Although I saw nearly 20 of these out of place apparatus, so it can’t be that uncommon. 

[ii] Slight note here, I later found out that three people drowned in Siem Reap so “fine” is a relative term here. 

I am too big!

Laughter awakes me from my slumber.  Startled, I sit up and notice that my quads are slightly sunburned.  That’s what I get for falling asleep on the bow of the boat as it lazily meanders back from Tonle Sap (big lake right in the middle of Cambodia, can’t miss it).  It’s the wet season now so the floating villages have moved onto the lake’s tributaries to escape the swells caused by the Mekong River as it pours into the lake.  I stare out into a wholly unfamiliar site.  Entire families packed onto makeshift barges made of a few slates of wood laid across an oil barrel or two.  They live out their entire lives floating atop the freshwater lake carrying everything they own, pigs included, back and forth from river to lake as the seasons change.  Somehow they survive year after year relying solely on the bounty of what the water can give them.  The laughter snaps me from my day dream and back to reality.  Apparently a giant has fallen from the sky.  I turn around expecting to see a human shaped mountain off in the distance, but am met only with smiling faces.  It takes me a few seconds to realize I am the giant.  Sprawled out across the bow, my hands stretch the width of the boat and my feet dangle carelessly off the front end.  Apparently to my shipmates, I resemble a giant who has fallen from the sky and plopped himself squarely on the front of their ship.  This isn’t the first time my size has been an issue, but it is the first time it’s provided five minutes of unabated laughter.

Not Communist

I want to start this entry off with an apology because I’m talking about food again, but only because I feel the need to explain something using rice as a backdrop. Coming to Asia one might expect rice to be a staple of the diet, but in no way did I expect it to make up about two-thirds of what I ate.  Retrospectively, I guess I should have known that’s what staple means.   Rice is served with breakfast lunch and dinner, and the banality of this was getting to me.  To make matters worse my house is not equipped with any sort of cooking devices, and my budget does not allow me the luxury of eating out at restaurants that can afford not to serve heavy portions of the staple I’m trying to escape.  So I decided that a quick, affordable, rice free meal option was going to become a necessity.  Breakfast seemed like the best choice for this because, even at home, it rarely involves the use of a heat source.  Unfortunately, the milk here just doesn’t taste right, cereal is just too darn expensive and although I have a refrigerator it keeps things just below room temp (32°C or 90°F for all you in the States) so keeping any substantial amount of produce was out of the question.  All this lead me to oatmeal.  It’s cheap (if I buy the Chinese brand, sorry Quaker Oats), healthy, and requires minimal effort.  The only problem is that it requires a source of hot water.  This dilemma led me on a search for the elusive electric kettle, but more importantly it led me away from the tourist markets of downtown Siem Reap and onto National Road #6, the local hub of economic activity. 

                National Road #6 directly links Siem Reap with Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.  Road #6 is also the main artery of the city.  Every morning a great multitude of tourists, rice, shoes, fruits, bicycles, electronics, and appliances rumble over the best paved road in town strapped precariously atop the backs of motos.  The hustle and bustle of Road #6 makes the tourist rush in old town look like a lazy afternoon promenade.  It was here among the chaos that I set out to find an electric kettle at the best Cambodian prices or in my case the best Cambodian prices for Westerners.  A marked improvement over the tourists prices of downtown.   My first stop the overflowing throng of Phsar Leu Thom Thmey, literally big new upper market.  If Road #6 is the artery that supplies the city then Phsar Leu is the heart, pumping out goods in every direction.  It clings to the side of Road #6.  Motos seem to spill out the front gate choking the flow of traffic in either direction.  The air inside the covered labyrinth is old and stall, and that’s before you get close to the fish section.  In the vast array of tiny shops I saw food, clothing, toys, restaurants, books, detergents, furniture, TV’s, computers.  Each stall, no more than a few meters across, seemed to be packed with only one product, and each surrounded by at least three others selling the exact same thing.  After an exhaustive search through Phsar Leu I failed to find any stall dealing strictly in electric kettles.  Disappointed yet undeterred I sought out the litany of smaller shops that line the edge of Road #6, eventually stumbling upon Angkor Gas.

                Outside an entire array of brand new propane powered stoves glistened in the morning sun.  Inside a slick new air-conditioned showroom full of their more delicate electronic equipment awaited the sweaty bargain hunter.  Tucked away in the back corner of the shop was a modest supply of electric kettles ranging from the super deluxe to the, I wonder if that ever worked model.  In the spirit of frugality I started to bargain for the I wonder if that ever worked model.  But the proprietor wouldn’t budge on the price.  Either the language barrier or my own haggling ineptness was keeping this kettle just out of my price range.  So I walked away from a product I really wanted in search of a better deal.  As I walked out of Angkor Gas, wondering to myself why I had walked away from the item I’d been searching for all morning, I spotted Cambodia Gas on the other side of Road #6.  The shopkeeper at Angkor Gas stared disapprovingly as I attempted to maneuver through the steady stream of bikes, motos, cars, and people that is Road #6 and towards what I can only assume was her main source of competition.  Everything that Angkor Gas was Cambodian Gas was not.  There was no fancy showroom, no display models, only row after row of boxes covered in a thin layer of dust stacked upon wooden shelves set in a dimly lit store.  Buried deep with these faded boxes I found it, the Vitek 1825 cordless kettle, which interestingly enough does in fact have a cord.  Nonetheless, here was a product that fit my price range and looked like it might actually boil water.

                As I reveled in the success of finding a bargain, unbeknownst to be me a confrontation was brewing outside the shop.  High pitched screams[1] of anger were being flung over the din of Road #6 as the owners of the respective gas shops exchanged what I can only assume were not compliments.  Although, I had no intention of returning to the other side of the road I knew that I could use this conflict to my advantage, and before I knew it my kettle was half off.  As the two determined women tried to persuade me back into their shops my mind drifted elsewhere.  Here I was in a heated bargaining situation between two female shop owners.  I had just left the busiest market I’d ever been to in my life.  Something about this unfettered capitalism was wrong.  Wasn’t I in Cambodia?  Isn’t Cambodia a communist country?  Where were all the state run stores, the huge industrial complexes, the long bread lines outside the shops with no bread?  I’d done my term aboard in Germany, Romania, and Hungary studying the fall of communism, and I can tell you from experience that this was not communism.  This wasn’t even post-communism.  But if it wasn’t communism, then what was it? A few hours on the internet and in the history books later I had my answer.

                Technically Cambodia is not a communist state.[2]  In 1975 the Kingdom of Cambodia was overrun by the Khmer Rouge who decimated the population as they attempted reestablish the agrarian culture of 14^th century Cambodia.  The cities were emptied, intellectuals were shot on site, an entire generation grew up literate, and nearly 2 million people starved to death.  Four years later the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) backed by the Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge and set up a communist state.  This was until 1992 when Cambodia’s political system was opened up to a multiple party system at the urging of the E.U.  Since then nearly every election has been mired in controversy.  The last election was in 2008 and the CPP took over sixty percent of the vote among allegations of vote buying, using the state run media subversively, intimidation and outright fraud.  This gave them enough seats in parliament to rule outright as it had sice 1979.  When you take into account that both the Khmer Rouge and the CPP consider themselves communists then that marks over 30 years of communist rule.  So despite not technically being a communist state it has been communist for quite some time.  So how does one explain the unregulated free markets that run rampant across Cambodia? 

                I believe the answer lies in the lack of government.  It doesn’t matter what the political leaders ideological leanings are if the government doesn’t actually do anything.  There are public schools in Cambodia, but they have something like a 90% dropout rate before the end of grade six.  The water and electrical grid bills are paid to the government, but they don’t maintain either utility, a NGO does. There are public hospitals, but the privately funded Swiss managed Kantha Bopha system of hospitals claims they provide 80% of the countries healthcare for free.   The Cambodian government does not build roads or street lights.  In fact it’s actually illegal for Cambodians to fund the building of roads, currently that’s the job of the Korean government.  The Cambodian government does not protect or conserve the vast array of temples that prop up its tourist industry, that’s the job of the Japanese.  As for the judicial system let’s just say that they just got around to trying the Khmer Rouge higher ups earlier this year.  (That’s a quarter-century lag time) From what I can tell the only government services that the U.S. and Cambodia have in common are the police force and army.  For me it is this absence of government that has allowed over a quarter of a century of communist rule to give rise to Cambodia’s unregulated markets.

                So daydreams aside let’s get back to the story.  After a few more minutes of blood curdling arguments the owner of Cambodian gas finally led me back inside her store.  She would not accept payment until she assured me that her product worked.  Unfortunately, for me the Vitek Cordless Kettle worked a little too well, and when I reached out to touch it a burned my fingers.  The owner and her daughter hollowed with laughter and knocked another dollar off the asking price for the stupid American.  Soon I found myself peddling home westbound just as the sun rose high enough to fry the tarmac of Road #6.   The search and purchase of the kettle was certainly an adventure, but the true prize was the revelation that the debate over the role of government encompasses a much larger spectrum than I ever realized.  At home we argue over higher taxes, bailouts, and universal healthcare, meanwhile in Cambodia they are desperately searching and calling out for someone, anyone to fill the void of basic social services I have come to take for granted.  As someone who has yet to decide whether or not big government is a problem or an answer my experiences with no government has certainly pushed me towards the latter.  Yet another lesson learned during my short stay in Cambodia. 

P.S.  I have pictures of a lot of this stuff but I’m having trouble getting themto load.  Check back in a few days for updates

[1] Quick side note, Khmer is a piercing language.  By that I mean it is marked by a wide range of vocal songs and highly accented syllables all of which seem to take place in the upper registry.  Yelling in Khmer is torture on the ear drum, especially when the yelling is two women as was the case here. 

[2] Defined by Wikipedia as having a socialist economic policy and one party political system.

Week One

The Weather

                Any extended period away from my loved ones seems to coincide with the growth of beard.  Not to toot my own horn, but I grow a great beard.  Full, even, and auburn it is often times compared to that of a lumberjack’s.  I take pride in this fact and had every intention of growing yet another illustrious beard here in Cambodia.  The one thing I didn’t take into account was the heat.  Walking out of our air-conditioned hotel the first morning (we missed our guide at the airport and since addresses are spotty at best we were forced to spend one night in a hotel) it was the first thing I noticed.  It hits you like a brick wall of heat and humidity which slows every movement to a crawl.  At night, my fan has the tendency of vibrating out of its socket.  Every time is does so I suddenly awake in a puddle of my own perspiration.  But the real heat creeps in at about eight o’clock in the morning.  Suddenly it feels like a damp towel has been draped over everything.  The suffocating nature of the heat relegates most of the populace indoors except the tuk-tuk drivers who lounge on their moto’s hoping for the unsuspecting tourist lost in the fog of humidity.   Needless to say this type of persistent heavy heat has led me to rethink my beard growing plans. 

                The second aspect of the weather that is markedly different from what I’m used to it is the rain.  I know this is cliche but in Cambodia when it rains it pours.   There is no such thing as a sprinkle or light misting only full on thunder storms, albeit lacking of thunder.  The sky suddenly opens up with little or no warning and anyone caught out in the open is immediately soaked.  Then as quickly as the storm appeared it is gone, the heat returning in a matter of minutes.  I’m told that these quick dousing are only a preview of what is to come.  The duration of the rains will steadily increase over the next three months culminating in month long downpour sometime in October.  Despite the reprise from the heat I am not looking forward to this situation because when it rains the frogs hump, and when they do so they croak.  This massive orgy takes place right outside my window and sounds something like a large amateur percussion ensemble in need of a lot of practice. 

The Food

                More than any other factor the prospect of a completely foreign diet gave me the most worries before I left.  It’s not that I’m a picky eater, in fact I will eat just about anything, but I’m a particular eater.  By that I mean I like to choose what I eat.  At some point around my sophomore year in college I started cooking family meals at my house over winter and summer break.  This preference for personal choice culminated last Christmas when I prepared the entire Christmas feast.  Complete with both a ham and fully dressed turkey (my grandmother who had been preparing the meal for years had grown too old and taken to buying premade meals from Stop & Shop, this of course would not do for a particular eater). For me the prospect of being served foreign delicacies for nine months was not particularly exciting. 

I had been reading horror stories about one ingredient in particular fish sauce, which apparently would be served on nearly every dish.  For those of you who don’t know what fish sauce is let me describe how it is made for you quickly.  Fresh fish a hung up on a clothing line and left out to dry, rot and ferment for anywhere from three to five days.  After this exposure to the elements the slightly rotten fish are taken down, placed into barrels and packed with salt in order to stop the degradation of the flesh, but allow the fermentation process to continue.  Somewhere between three weeks and year later (the longer the better or so I’m told) the  liquid is pressed from the barrel, purified in some manner, bottled and then shipped to restaurants and markets all over Southeast Asia.  The salt and barrel are reused for the next batch of fish.  The fish sauce tastes and smells exactly as one would expect like rotten fish and garbage water left out in the sun.  Luckily for me the sauce is not on dish rather it is served with every dish, an extremely important distinction that the authors of the travelogues I’ve been reading seemed to have overlooked.  Much like ketchup it can go on everything or on nothing, and when mixed into a paste like substance with enough salt, sugar and chilies it becomes almost palatable.  

                Besides the fish sauce the food has been better than expected.   From the stories about the wrecking crew that ran though the digestive tracts of the Fellows last year I was expecting the worst, and up to this point have been spared that unsavory experience.  Most meals are spent with the kids at their home the Woodhouse, aptly named for the wood floor upstairs. Most floors are tile in modern Cambodian structures.  The meals consist largely of rice with a small side of vegetables, normally a water plant that looks and tastes like a cross between celery and leek, and chicken or beef.  Surprisingly the meat and vegetable combo is not all that different from the Chinese food at home.  This is almost always accompanied by a fresh-water fish soup, made from various types of fish parsley, lemon grass, and what tastes like cilantro, although no one has yet been able to translate exactly what it is for me.  The soup although rather salty is normally the highlight of the meal.  It always amazes me what one can do with a few simple, extremely fresh, ingredients.   Beyond the prepared food, there is also a whole new world of tropical produce to explore.  Although many of these fruits are available at home I have been lucky enough to try my first mango, my first plantain, (there are about 20 types of bananas) and my first mangosteen. (picture)  Although the kids insist that this intake of fruit will be my digestive downfall I have really taken a liking to the native produce.  The positive dining experience of my first week here has taught me to let go of my personal preferences and to more fully embrace the food culture of my home for the next nine months.

Cultural Differences

                Every culture has a particular set of rules to live by.  Shoes must come off at the entrance of someone’s home, don’t pat kids on the top of their head, women cannot touch monks, and it is rude to put your rice in your soup, but okay to put soup in your rice.  But these are all things one can learn from their lonely plant guide book.   In my first week here I have already learned some other important facts about Cambodian cultural norms.   The first is the issue of personal space, because here there is very little.  The kids will think nothing of laying their head in your lap, rubbing your shoulders, or gently placing their foot on yours during class.  Perhaps this intense need for physical affection stems from the special circumstances the kids face in being so far from their families, because as any good guide book will tell you, any overtly public displays of affection are frowned upon.  

Whether the drive for contact is culturally or circumstantially driven it best manifests itself in their hugs.  They throw their whole bodies into the hug, wrap their thin arms tightly across the waist or chest and breathe in deeply through the nose they have just buried into your clothes.  Although I have yet to be a recipient of one of these hugs I watch the embrace with some uneasiness.  To put it bluntly I do not like to be touched.  If you don’t believe me just ask my mom.  Something just weirds me out when hands, feet, arms and legs, that aren’t mine, suddenly reach out and touch you.  This aversion to physical contact has served me well in my past experience working with kids as a camp counselor where even a pat on the back can be misconstrued as some form of physical or sexual abuse.  The small amount of personal space will take some getting used to, and in time I hope to embrace the hug, if I’m ever lucky enough to receive one.

                The second cultural discrepancy I noticed here was the kid’s concept of family.  Although many political scientists and politicians in the States like to stress the idea of the nuclear family as the single most important unit in society, the fact remains that today more than fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.  Despite or maybe because of the separation from their own families the kids have a much more concrete definition of family than most Americans.  This revelation came about in the context of a simple grammar exercise.  The students were asked to mark a number of statements as being negative or positive life experiences.  “Getting fired”-negative, “Getting a promotion”-positive, “Getting remarried”- negative.  This last one struck me as because they agreed unanimously that this was always a negative thing.  Personally I would consider a marriage ceremony to be a joyous celebration whether it is the first, second or even fifth such occasion.  After class I approached two of the students, Piron and Marrot, about this.   As they explained it in Cambodia a remarriage could only come about in three ways all of which implied the dissolution of the first marriage, something that was highly unacceptable.

 The first and least frowned upon is the death of a spouse.  Now a wage earner or child care provider must be replaced.  This second marriage is one of economic necessity, and in most cases not a particularly happy circumstance.  The second circumstance is that of the absentee husband who for some reason or another has abandoned his family.  In his case the wife may seek a divorce, but this act is highly stigmatized.  In fact the wife often times receives the blunt of the blame for this because everyone assumes she has not been fulfilling her wifely duties. (their words not mine)  This concept of wifely duties seems to be pervasive across Cambodian culture.  Right now one of the most popular Khmer songs is entitled “Super Woman.”  It is not as many of us would assume about a strong independent women making it on her own, but about a female apologizing to the man, who left her for another woman, because she could not be a good enough girlfriend i.e. the super woman.  The third case and perhaps least joyous cause for remarriage is the case of the wife leaving the husband.  Although rare, these cases usually involve blatant forms of abuse where the wives family or neighbors are forced to step in.  In this case the second marriage although a positive prospect for the wife is still a negative event overall because it involved the dissolution of another marriage.

In only a week I have learned so much about Cambodia, and yet I learn so much more every day that it seems like I know nothing.  I hope to continue to learn more from the kids and people of Siem Reap over the next nine months, and in turn pass some of that knowledge on to you through this blog so stay tuned and be on the lookout for my next post.

P.S.  The coconut is the world’s largest berry. 

The Trip

Started at 5:45 AM Swampscott MA July 15, Arrived 3:30 PM Bangkok Thailand July 16, taking into account that they are twelve ahead in Thailand that makes for just about 22 hours worth of travel.  For those of you who have never endured this marathon session of flights let me describe as best I can what it feels like.  It feels like your whole body is covered in a thin film, due to the intermittent bouts of sweating followed by periods of prolonged exposure to the dry slightly chilly pressurized cabin air.   It feels like a stomach full of two English breakfasts ( picture of English breakfast),  which my account is two too many, and assorted other microwavable treats.  All of which is now plastered on your teeth giving the distinct feeling that you may have just finished eating a pile of garbage.  Your mind is about a useful as it is after a long night of drinking and the aches in your legs and lower back tend to agree.  But most of all it’s the boredom that gets to you.  Four in flight movies on that grainy back of the seat screen and two trashy novels later begin to take their toll.  One longs for a break of the monotony.  As bad is this sounds the trip on the whole has been particularly unremarkable.  No problems with the tickets or bags.  No issue with customs officials or nearly missed flights.  In fact right now I’m sitting in an airport longue enjoying a nice glass of water (its bottled waters so don’t worry Aunt Jill). The only misstep in the entire trip is the hour delay that holds me her in Bangkok before we puddle jump to Cambodia.  Luckily it has given me the opportunity to write this post.   In a few hours I’ll set down in Siem Reap and begin my work for the next nine months.  I just hope they give me a full night’s sleep before they expect me jump in.

P.S. If the math on the length of trip is wrong it’s because of the lack of sleep not an oversight

Lindsey filling out forms

First Post

Welcome to Nate’s Cambodia Blog.  My name is Nate Saslow and I recently received the Minerva Fellowship from Union College (Fellows Website).  Starting July, 15 2009 I will be- spending the next 9 months livingand working in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  I grew up in the small suburban town of Cheshire CT and spent the last four years at Union where I majored in History.  Most of my time in Cambodia will be spent working at The Global Child (TGC Website).   TGC is a nonprofit school based in Siem Reap, Cambodia, that gives bright, enthusiastic, street working children, hungry for an education and a wholesome future, the opportunity to pursue a progressive and rigorous course of study in a nurturing and empowering environment.  TGC actually pays the children’s families in order to replace the income the children could earn if they were not at school.  This blog looks to keep those at Union and elsewhere in the states informed about of my journey in Cambodia.  I’ll discuss the cultural differences, problems I encounter, and anything else that seems interesitng enought to write about.  I look forward to an enlightening expereince and urge all those interested to check back soon for updates.