Let's build a school near Snuol!

My illness had gotten pretty bad by the 5th and 6th. Lots of snot, lots of coughing, and lots of pain in my chest and stomach (but my 6-pack looks much better. Get a bad cough if you don't like your abs. Sit-ups are for punks). I went to Boddhi Tree to get online and enjoy the balcony and Sam got me on Skype. I hadn't seen him in a few days and he was worried. Maybe he thought I had given up and was just drinking and entertaining Vietnamese hookers. He was half right, I suppose... I had become a little disillusioned with things. Anne was unprepared for the children when they arrived, despite having had about 6 months to prepare. Sam has trouble doing many things at once, despite the fact that being the director of an NGO AND the primary operations person means exactly that. They didn't really have anything specific for me to do at the moment... the proposal and all of the ministry stuff was stuffed in between dealing with the kids and dealing with other programs. I was sort of a third wheel at this point.
I don't want to give the impression that my friends are incompetent; I just expected something a little different. Plus, my timing was awful... another month in either direction and this probably wouldn't have happened... probably. More on all of that later.
So, Sam contacted me on Skype. I tell him that I feel like shit and that I'm probably going home (back to the OKAY Guesthouse) at about 3. He says he'll drop by and bring me some antibiotics. I am usually against their use unless the situation is pretty bad... this is getting pretty bad. So, he comes by and I meet him in the 'common room' downstairs. We talk and he says that it's been really busy at the orphanage lately.. they still don't have an English teacher so he has been doing it. He says he needs a break and that he and Peter's brother (the guy next door to the orphanage) want to go to the North tomorrow to look at the children in a few villages there. I tell him I'm probably up to it, but I'm feeling pretty shitty. He slides the antibiotics over to me so I can get started right away. We talk a while longer and decide to leave by no later than 7 and that he'll pick me up. He wants me to call him later that evening... I don't know why... I end up being really really sick that evening. At about 7 I went out to head to the Frog and Parrot and I decided to take a new route through some non-barang areas. Sometimes the smells in this city are almost too much to bear. Burning trash, burning plastic... open sewers... durian fruit stands (no, I haven't had one yet). This evening they were all too much. I puked. Repeatedly. So, after that I sat down for a little while and then made my way to the Frog and Parrot.
I arrived and Alech wasn't there, but Steve was sitting at the bar with no shirt on, already pretty closed to pissed drunk. He said I look like I just woke up. I told him I was sick... blah blah... we bullshitted for about 2 hours and then he went upstairs. His girlfriend kept calling and bugging him about drinking too much I think, and finally she showed up and dragged him upstairs. So, I stayed a while longer... until 2... hanging out with Alech and the other girls and Julian the Frenchman who is engaged to Tea (pronounced Tia). I'll make trading cards of all of the cool characters when I get back.
Still couldn't sleep, so I wandered around a little. On the way home, I encountered one-eyed girl. One-eyed girl is a prostitute who hangs around about a block from where I live on Sisowath Quay. She hangs around in the shadows and this area is not a 'prostitute area'... I think this is likely because she's considered ugly and unlucky by Asians. She's always very sad and very plaintive. “Slip, slip?” (Sleep, sleep). I tell her no, and I give her a kiss on the cheek and wave bye and go home on most nights. This time I gave her a few bucks for food or whatever. I had learned how to say 'pretty' and told her she was.. or tried to. Khmer is tough. I gave her the usual kiss on the cheek and started off again toward my place. This time she followed me... almost stalking after me. “Slip, slip?”... she was obviously really frustrated. I stopped once and said sorry “soam dtoah” and waved. She still followed me. Almost all the way home. Damn it. I wonder if she has someone who beats her if she doesn't make enough money, or if she just doesn't eat... or what? She's not what you would call thin by Cambodian standards. She eats well, or until recently did at least. I don't know. I'm probably going to take Alech with me to translate and see if she wants to go to a hospital about her eye. She isn't missing an eye, but her right eye doesn't open all the way and is blood red. Birth defect? Disease? Battle damage? Poor girl...
So, I finally sleep after being sick again. I wake up the next morning at 5am. I get up, shower, watch some Asian news, and then go downstairs. Sam had said that if he didn't hear from me he'd be by no later than 7. I told him 6:30 would be fine. So, I go down at 10 after 6 since I expect him at 7:15. I eat, have coffee, etc. 8 rolls around. I go upstairs for a few minutes. I come back down... nothing. I finally go back up at 9:10 and give up. I lay on the bed and try to find a movie. After watching Hun Sen talk for about 20 minutes, there's a knock at the door. It's Sam. I told him I was sick the previous night but feel better now. I grab my bag and we split. He tracked a lot of it with his GPS and I may put the data up here, or I may just release an overlay for Google Earth. All of that kind of cool stuff will just have to come after I get back to the states. (I know you all want to see pics too... I promise I'll add a few in the next 2 days. But remember, bandwidth is L O W )
In the car waiting is Peter's brother who lives next door to the orphanage and one of his kids. I'm not sure if it is his son or just one of the kids who lives there.
We drive through the countryside for hours. It's different than Kampot was... similar, but different terrain. As with just about everywhere I've been so far in Cambodia, there are houses and businesses all along the road. In some places you wouldn't guess you were in the countryside because you can't see behind the houses and buildings. After about an hour, we realize we're in the country. There are still houses, but they're spaced out a lot and they're traditional style wooden houses on stilts instead of the concrete and brick jobs you see closer to PP. Kampot had lots of concrete as well with a few traditional wooden houses. We drive through Kampong Cham, a fairly large city on the Mekong. When I say fairly large city, I mean Cambodian style. It's probably the size small college town in the U.S.. Cham is the name of a people who are Cambodian but who are not Khmer, and they are mostly Muslim. So, there are a few cool mosques in town. All of the roads are dirt except for the main road, Highway 7, which we take all the way through. Once we get past there, the land starts to get hilly and fairly thickly forested. In parts at least... there's lots of logging in this area, legal and illegal. There are also rubber plantations everywhere. It's neat, really, driving past kilometers and kilometers of perfectly straight rows of trees. Very hypnotic. We pass a few spots that are just full on native jungle and I feel the pull... I just want to get out and run in... maybe come back to civilization when I've grown a long beard.... I can't grow a beard....
Finally we get to a town called Snoul which is the dirtiest town I've seen aside from PP. PP, however, has nice ares, parks, beautiful temples... this place is red dirt, garbage everywhere, and there's really not much else to it. It's situated at a sort of fork in the road, and the buildings are along the road for maybe half a kilometer in one direction and far less in the other. It's like a wild West town in a post nuclear holocaust world. I don't like it a bit. We stop and eat there... and I'm none too pleased by that. The food is ok I suppose, and really cheap. We leave after eating and head North, still along hwy 7.
This is where the commune leader lives who is in charge of the villages we want to look at, so we stop in and see him. He looks really tough. Maybe 40, thin and muscular with serious eyes... he looks a little Vietnamese, but then a lot of these people probably do. A few miles back on hwy 7 we were literally meters from the Vietnamese border. He has faint scars running from the corners of his mouth back across his cheeks... I try not to look at them. Who knows where he got them. I find out later that this area was really bad during '75-'79 and then, when the Vietnamese came in the throw out the Red Khmer, they used this area as one of their staging grounds. Nasty history here. This commune leader has certainly seen it, too. But, he's a pretty cool guy. He's happy for us to come and look at the villages and wants us to come back when we have some paperwork and literature to show him. Peter's brother knows him and also knows English a lot better than Peter. This conversation goes a hell of a lot better than the one in Kampot. Plus, I don't think this guy is corrupt; he has probably seen too much for stupid petty shit like scamming small change out of people or trying to be a bigshot by driving their SUV around town...
So, with his blessing and a hearty handshake we're off to the villages. He doesn't accompany us. No need. Peter's brother is from here. We drive a little ways and take a turn off down a red mud road. Good thing we have a 4 wheel drive... the road is not so friendly. It's about a half a kilometer down the windy road to the village. This place is really primitive and everything is packed together, unlike Kampot where everyone has their own little farmoid. There are billions of children. Okay, at least 50 or so just when we drive in... past the unused school building made of nice brick and painted and metal roof, etc. Part of the roof is missing. In one way, it looks really old and abandoned. It's only about a year old and has never been used. No teachers. Heh.... I'm told that this happens a lot. Well meaning NGOs spring for the cash to build a school for a village, but don't set up any funds or programs to make sure there are teachers in it. Niiiice. I'm finding that most NGO people are either really stupid, well meaning jack asses or slick bastards who basically create a pseudo-charity to fund their expat lifestyle and make them look like generous people who are trying to make a difference. Feh. Bastards. I really really hate well meaning halfwits. I really do.
So we get into the village and stop in front of the big man's house. By this time there's an army of kids following us. We get out and go upstairs to the house, do all of the greetings, etc. The chief doesn't get up... apparently he's had a stroke recently. Older guy... I'd guess in his early sixties. Looks a little like a less scarred Captain Christopher Pike. I'm not going to say who that is. If you know, you know. He's not brain-dead though and is happy that we've come. Peter's brother (yeah, and I'm tired of typing it... I just don't remember his name and neither does Sam at the moment...wait for the trading cards) talks to him for a few minutes and tells us that there are some pretty poor kids here, and that one woman, who's standing behind me, has 4 grandchildren and can't really take care of them. Her daughter, their mother, has died and the father remarried. He dumped them off with her. He doesn't give a shit about them because he has a new wife. Nice. They are 6, 8, 10, and 12. This guy's pretty regular. The kids aren't there at the moment. 2 of them are working in the fields... I don't know where the other 2 are. Working in the fields... kids.... shit.

We talk a while longer and tell them that we want to come back and help them with medicine, medical checkups, dentists, and hopefully some teachers to put in that monument to asshole do-gooders who can't think past the next commercial. We then leave the village chief's house and decide to walk around the village for a few minutes and see how things are. Lots of naked children, lots of sad faces, lots of trash (thanks for all of your miracle products, West! They're really changed our lives! Huzzah!).
This place really needs help. Kampot was pretty nice. Simple, poor, but nice. It was clean, there was definitely enough food, and with the exception of a few kids, everyone had a family and a little land to grow food on. All clean, all smiling. This place was, frankly, like the places Sally Strothers went to eat children. There were plenty of smiles, but they were polite “oh, how nice, someone came to see us” smiles, not contented smiles. We say our goodbyes to the children and move on. Next stop, Peter's brother's village...
Or is it? We drive a little further and turn down another road... he tells us that this one was donated by the Chinese. It's.... it's not really a road. It's a packed-dirt path... more like a motocross track... but very uneven and with plenty of holes and furrows. Much worse than the last one. Me crack wise about the Chinese for a while. Then we turn off the Chinese road to one that's about 4 times worse. Driving down this road was like being at sea in a small boat in bad weather. We call this one the Hun Sen road. More cracking wise. We go a couple of kilometers down this road and pass some huts... not it.. Then we get to some more huts. Still not the village. Another kilometer or so. We get to a place that looks like it's from another time. Water buffalo wandering everywhere... chickens, dogs, cows, pigs. Now, this is pretty common, but there are more here. Tons of them. The houses are all rough-hewn wood, not store bought planks. Along the road on either side is a little stream of water. The water is surprisingly clear compared to other groundwater you see in Cambodia. Still a little milky though. Not, strictly speaking, clean. We pull around to a group of huts. They're like the traditional houses in that they're simple in shape and are on stilts, but they are pretty paleolithic. There's a guy nearby making planks from tree trunks with an axe. Oddly, there are a couple of motos around and the kids on them are wearing townie clothes. Probably not from here. Relatives maybe. Aside from them and the t-shirts and flipflops, you would think you were in the distant past. Here, however, the people are smiling like crazy. The village chief is a really cool old guy wearing a khama and nothing else. Khama is like an all around piece of clothing that most wear for a scarf or sort of turban, but some use it like a sarong. They're always plaid or checked... you'll see pics soon enough. If you've seen any movies with the Khmer Rouge, they wore them with their black pajamas. Anyway, there don't seem to be any orphans here. Peter's brother knows these people well, and a woman comes up and is really animated... she would be a female pirate in another time and place. Really gregarious and face full of black teeth, always showing... this lady probably smiles in her sleep. I love her. She shakes my hands several times, cracks a lot of jokes I don't understand, and laughs a lot. She and the others in the village either smoke weird primitive cigarettes made from some local stuff and wrapped in leaves, or they chew some nut or berry that makes your teeth red and, eventually, rotten. She doesn't seem to mind though. All laughs with her. But most of the villagers look like they're ill in some way or another. Not deathly ill, but diseases that won't be friendly in the long run. It turns out that this is not, in fact, the village that Peter's brother was born, but very nearby. We decide that we are not going to go... if we don't get a move on, we won't get to where we're sleeping in time. It's several hours away.
So, we leave the distant past and head back toward Snoul. Peter's brother tells us we can take him to his father's land, which is near his land. We drive out into the countryside again to a really rural place with no houses and a clump of rubber trees which are overgrown with jungle. Apparently a plantation years ago, but the trees are too old now. There's a photo of Sam and me there. I'll post it eventually,,, The road past this point looks impassable, even in the 4wd, so Peter's brother says he can walk, no problem. It's only about 300 more meters or so. We say our good byes and thank him profusely for taking us around the commune and he and the boy set off. We hop in and head out, back to hwy 7. It starts getting dark in about a half an hour or 45 minutes... something like that. It's very rural here. Not roads crowded by houses and commerce... fields, rice paddies, cows, bicycles, kids walking, dogs laying in the hwy... (hwy just means it's paved. Think 2 lane blacktop). After... 2 hours? I'm not sure, we get to Kratche (or sometimes spelled Kratie). Kratche is awesome... just awesome. But, you'll have to wait for part 2, because I have to make sure the crazy kids get in bed and then lock up and go home. (Sam and Anne went out to dinner with some Swiss couple they know. So, I'm in charge until the kids hit the mattresses,) Stay tuned...