NGO Blues

Home

2008-08-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

I've made it home. I'm going to spend some time with my family and take a few days to readjust. I woke up this morning after travelling for about 23 hours and getting home at 10pm ast night, and I had no idea where I was. I was laying in my room in my bed staring at my stuff, and I had no idea wha any of it was. That never happens to me.
So, if you will be soo kind as o give me a few days to regain my balance, I'll start writing stories in earnest.
Thanks and see you soon,
Z

KIDNAPPED!

2008-08-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, I was kidnapped by ladyboy rebels from the Transgender Entertainer Party, or T.E.P. They have been following me for days. I think it won't be long now before they catch up to me....
Just kidding. Road construction and bad driving conspired to get me to there airport 5 minutes late for confirmation, so I missed my flight. I have to wait until THURSDAY now, 21 August, instead of leaving tomorrow. ~Sigh~... I am very ready to be home, but I suppose if I'm to be stuck somewhere, this is where I want it to be. Thinking that I would only have to wait until tomorrow's flight, I got a room here at Boddhi Tree for $36... I suppose tomorrow I'll find a cheap guesthouse and just enjoy my poshy room tonight. Hmmm. I guess now I have time to go to Angkor Wat... everyone vote; should I spend a little extra and go to Angkor Wat or should I kick around PP expat style on the cheap? Let me know soon; the buses leave early.
So, signing off for now. For those of you I know, I'll see you when I see you...

Stung Meanchey Blues

2008-08-15T02:41:00.000-07:00

Stung Meanchey is an industrial area in southern Phnom Penh. Not industrial in a Detroit sense, but for Cambodia, it's industrial. Textile factories, etc. Sort of like Garland for those of you who know Dallas. In the middle of the area is the garbage dump for PP. I guess you could say landfill for reference, but not really. (I have a trained eye for waste). You should look up pictures and articles on it. I'll post my pics eventually, but many professional photographers have taken better pics than mine. Read up.

Around the dump, which is a pretty big place, are little 'villages' of unbelievably poor people who's entire existence is based on digging through the dump for sellable materials. Recyclables, useful items, cloth, etc... There are actual houses in the traditional wooden plank style, tarps pulled over a string to make basic tents, old unused concrete buildings with no windows or doors with people squatting, people just sleeping outside, people living under houses, ... you really just have to see it. Some of the children in Stung Meanchey, so I've heard, don't even know where Phnom Penh is. Stung Meanchey is part of Phnom Penh. Most of the people there cannot read. Like I have mentioned in my other posts, the people, even there, are always smiling. Think about that when you take you rubbish to the curb.

The first time I went, my third day here, we went on bikes to check out the 'room' we rented to open our permanent clinic. Think of a storage unit, a small one, with a bathroom of sorts. Nader took his bike and I rode on the back of Sam's. The roads there are pretty shitty. Really pretty very pretty shitty. Nader got stuck, and thankfully he was in front so we avoided the pit. A little further on I noticed that we must be close. Now, the smell of Phnom Pehn is pretty amazingly strong and.... um... diverse... to begin with. Now I KNEW that we were nearby. When I was younger I went to a landfill with my cousin and it was chokingly strong. I smoke and I have worked in factories... I have lived in pretty shitty places, I had a hunting family (gutted deer in the garage)... I am no stranger to bad smells. I had to stop Sam when we were close to our destination because I thought I was going to spill. We all had our surgical masks on and I was holding my breath. I would almost say that the smell was affecting my vision.

The dump is.... a giant mountain of trash. Paper rubbish, rotting vegetation, sour food, chemicals, medical waste, used rubbers, the occasional dead body, old clothes... you get the idea. It was nearing dark when we got there.. maybe 45 minutes left. We have to drive through the fringe of it, dodging around huge piles of shit and people carrying giant bags of rubbish, sifting through trash on the ground, or just wandering around. Over on the 'mountain' I see people shovelling rubbish into bags and sifting. Over to the left, on the side of the mountain is someone burning trash in a small ...campfire, I suppose. I think he or she is cooking. Hard to tell. Thankfully the people are wearing long sleeves, rubber boots or shoes, gloves, hats, and have krama or just random cloth around their faces. As I heard it, only a year ago they didn't take such precautions... kids ran around the dump naked. I didn't see this. It may still go on, but not in front of me. Again, it's a big place.

We get to the building where Nader has rented the room and hop off our bikes. Nader, Sam, and the landlord exchange pleasantries while I stand and look around, taking in the place in panorama.Some people start coming to where we are, having seen us pull in. Guess what they're doing. Give up? Smiling. They are smiling. Sam looks at me and smiles pointedly. I turn back to them and smile big and say "hello, hello". We talk to the landlord and take a few photos of the space. The landlord's daughter is running around, picking at some food that's layed out on a brick on the ground. She's running around smiling, waving and then running behind something, smiling a big, shy Khmer smile.
The landlord tells us that he can pour some more concrete to 'pave' the area in front of our door and that, if we need it, he can rent the room next door to us for use as a supply room. Hopefully we'll need it. (Since then, he's rented out all of the units, so we'll have to wait to rent the second unit... we've basically decided to rent 2 more as soon as they come available at +$5 what he's asking, which is $20 per month)
We sort of wander around, looking at the place and brainstorming how best to set everything up, etc... talk about how to paint it, that kind of thing. Nader tells us that a woman he knows who lives there is fairly educated and he wants to pay her a little bit to help get people to come, do a little translating and informing... she's not around for us to talk to though. He had gotten her a job somewhere making $50 per month... most likely a textile factory... and she had liked it at first, but she said that paying for a moto to and from work it came to a little less money than digging in the dump. I realised at that point that you can't just come over here and unsheath your dollar riding on your white western education and rescue someone. Although I consider most of these people's situations dire and of basically emergency proportions, it's not like pulling someone out of a burning building. I have been poor before.... well, shit. I used to think that... Ok, by American standards I have been poor and locked into a cycle of hand to mouth existence that seems impossible to escape, so I have a tiny inkling of what this is like. It really isn't as easy as "hey, can I borrow $X so I can get my life back in order in one shot?". You really have to climb back up. As I said, I realised that it isn't going to be as simple as I thought. What we have to do is provide guidance, not handouts. And we have to provide guidance to people who don't know how old they are, what their last name is or if they do, they don't know how to spell it. The clinic is just a tiny part of the process.
We say our goodbyes to the landlord and the little princess and head over on the bikes toward where we came in to look at a woman who was in a moto accident. We're not completely sure what happened, but they tell us she's in alot of pain. Nader, in the lead again, gets stuck again. This time it's big plati-burlap bags of trash. They bag them up in what look like giant rice bags and drag them over near their houses... huts.. whatever, to sort through them more thoroughly and we had to get past a barracade of them... like giant, stinky sandbags. Good thing we're on dirtbikes. I get off and drag the one bag that caught Nader's back wheel over to the side. Some putrid liquid that, if you believe in such things, could easily be straight from some lake in the lower regions of hell runs out and down my hand, arm and feet. There are smiling people standing around and working a few meters away, so I just smile. When I was a kid I had to clean out a full sized freezer that had become completely infested with maggots. I would have to say that this was at least equal, if not one small degree worse. I have nothing to wipe my hand on exept.. well, me. I leave it and just treat my arm as though it were prosthetic and purely for decoration. My arm would have won a living statue competition.
So, barracade cleared, we go on to the little village. The houses here are traditional wooden ones like in the countryside, built on stilts and with no glass in the windows, just shutters or fabric. People live in the areas under the houses as well. So does our patient. She's lying on the platform bed, just under the house with several people around her. She's not moving, so it almost seems like she's dead or dying. Nader speaks pretty decent Khmer, so he talks to the family and determines that she was knocked down by a motorcycle and hit her head. They say she went to the doctor. I suppose someone took her there... the people here don't go to doctors unless someone from outside takes them. She had some antibiotics, but we don't think she was taking them correctly... we can't be sure, so Nader tells the family exactly how to take care of her as per the doc's instructions. She also, amazingly, has a folder with her medical file from this visit and x-rays. I'm in the middle of a garbage dump in Phnom Penh where some of the people don't even know there's an outside world ("What's the Mekong River? Is that in America?") and this woman has her x-rays and medical file. She lives under a house. But, awesome! That helps alot. We get some photos so we can send them to a doctor in Germany and get his opinion. Sam thinks she has an adema in her head. We tell the family to contact Nader if it gets worse and we'll find out what we can. She may have to have fluid drained out of her cranium. We say that if this is the case, we'll take care of getting her to the hospital and paying for it, but they have to really watch her and take care of her in the meantime. The other people around tell us they have headaches... everyone at the dump has headaches. Always. I am not surprised. They also mention aches, minor wounds, infections, etc... We tell them we don't have anything with us, so Sam and Nader give them advice and tell them that we'll be back every now and then and that they should come see us when we're there. They thank us and smile. I ask Sam quietly if I can ask them to use their water to clean my hand. He says to just do it and they won't mind at all. I've had toxic-claw for almost 30 minutes now and I'm worrying about infection. Heh... Ha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.... ahhhh... hah.
So, we say our goodbyes and head back out to civilisation. 5 blocks away.
Sam and I head back to the children's home and Nader heads back to Aziza's Place. Sam and I stop on the way home and get beer. Many beer. We drink, chainsmoke, and watch a movie that night... I can't remember what it was. I think it was a comedy, but it was certainly something light. Again, although I am only posting this now, this was day 3 of my visit here. I was pretty off balance...
Sam has been back once and I haven't been back yet. I say yet because Nader and I have been trying for days to get out there and work on the clinic, but it's been raining every day, like it is right now, and we can't paint or even drive in there when it's pouring rain. We're supposed to be there right now. Tomorrow is my last full day here, as I leave at 11 am on Monday, the day after tomorrow. There are so many projects that all of them suffer. I really don't like that. I don't like it a bit. But, we had a meeting with Nader, Sam, Anne, a doctor whose name I have forgotten so well calll him Gerhardt (he's a Khmer who speaks almost perfect German)n a medical student named Chey who's going to be our main guy at the clinic, and myself. We talked for about 2 hours and got things in order so that we can really start operating the clinic by the end of this month. We'll see what this weird reality does to help us or hinder us.
I have no idea what's going on with the woman we saw who had the accident. I'm sure Nader knows. I'll ask him next time I talk to him and I'll post her status here.

Let's build a school near Snuol!

2008-08-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

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...

Just Add Children II

2008-07-30T04:02:00.001-07:00

So, I stayed at a guesthouse last night. First night away since I've been here. There was air conditioning. I slept late. I woke up about 4 hours after I was supposed to be at the children's home. I freaked out. So, I sat in my room for a while, not wanting to leave the a/c. I love Cambodia. Alot. However, it's even more alien than one might think at first because so many things are westernized, but only on the surface. There's a completely different culture here and sometimes it hits you like a hammer in the head. (And I know exactly what a hammer in the head feels like)
So, as I said, I freaked. I didn't go. I sent Sam an email about 5 minutes ago telling him I was sorry but I had an anxiety attack.
Some woman tried to sell me her granddaughter today at Wat Phnom. I freaked out even more. I thought I would go sit and recharge watching the mokeys. It was great for a while. I was sitting on the steps that lead up to the steps that lead up to the temple, watching a group of monkeys (I got photos and footage which I'll post later) and one young one jumped onto my back and started playing with my hair and pulling on my cheeks and my nose. So, I started pulling on his hand and scratching his head. Then he attacked my hand playfully like a cat does and chewed on my finger for a minute. I know, but he didn't break the skin. I'll be fine.
Then I walked around a little thinking "I feel a little better... maybe I should get a moto back to the school". Then the old woman came up to me and tried to sell me a girl who looked to be about 9. "Aa-dtay, aa-dtay" I said (no no) and walked off. Then I puked.
That was the second weird, fucked up thing to happen to me today. The first was sitting at the Riverside Cafe, eating lunch. The owner, who is South African and was apparently in the military during one of their darkest periods, kept trying to hire me to kill someone for him for $10,000. "I haf enemies" he says, over and over in barely understandable drunkspeak. He was so drunk I'm surprised he could see. It would take me, I calculated, 38 beers to get that drunk. He is about my size, so I imagine that he started early AND had many, many, many shots. Anyway, that was pretty weird. The whole conversation took about an hour. You can imagine. If you can't, go find a dive bar (which this place isn't) and then find the most odd looking character who's hunched over, thousand-yard-staring into oblivion trying to keep the terrible secrets from bursting out of him like Giger's alien. Then go talk to him. That was this guy. He wanted me to work for him. He had long hair, in a ponytail. I have long hair, in a ponytail. Both blonde. Both blue. That's why he started talking to me. He wanted me to kill his enemy. Then he wanted to kill me. Then he wanted me to kill him. Then he started his weird mantra about killing 35 people in a subway. I left shortly after that. He was asleep on the bar.
Words of wisdom: if you ever encounter someone who is that drunk and crazy, don't try to talk reason to them, and don't try to sober them up. Make them drink 800 more shots as fast as possible. They'll pass out soon. If you do otherwise, if you don't just leave, that is, then they will just freak out on you more. It usually gets ugly.
So, now I'm at the Frog and Parrot on the riverfront (with a beautiful view of the fence they've erected in front of the new pump system Hun Sen is having built) using their wifi and hanging out with the bartender. She's Khmer, but she said she was from Jamaica. She's funny... jokes around alot. The place is run by an English guy named Steve. He has a Sid & Nancy poster right next to an old picture of of a skinhead with 'SKINS' spraypainted on the wall. Turns out he's Welsh, not English. (I'm talking to Alech, the sparky bartendress while I write this post)
She says the Mekong is cleaner near her home village... in Jamaica. Heh.
So, it's a weird day. Welcome to Cambodia.
See you next time.

Just Add Children

2008-07-29T04:55:00.000-07:00

So, this is just an update... it's been really hectic around here since right before the election. I'll have some proper 'article' posts up soon, once I have time to myself.
So, Monday the first 5 kids came. They're all either siblings or cousins to one another. Long story.
They're great. All of them have grown up almost completely in orphanages. They're all smiles and very polite. Some of them have pretty good English for having come from the crappy place they did. It's very different around here with kids running around.
When they came, Peter (our main employee... who speaks barely passable Eglish) and I were the only ones here. Sam was taking some Swiss travellers to the school in Kampot Speu (not to be confused with Kampot ) and Anne had gone to the market.
I almost shit myself with fear. Me? I'M supposed to welcome them? I speak no Khmer (well...) and, hey Peter, what are we going to do? C'mon, they're here... c'mon! Hi! ------
saved. Anne has apparently pulled up at the gate when they did, so she's there. My heart starts beating again.
So, that goes fine. The next day, one more comes. She's 11... or so they say. Khmer people don't really pay attention to or care about that. Not poor ones anyway. She could be 9. Who knows. She was bought for $80 from her mother by the cook of Nader, the guy who runs Aziza's Place. The cook bought her to save her from the brothel or the factory. She is not very open, not very smiliey. Her hair is all cut off because of lice and so she looks like a boy a little bit. She smiles every now and then, so I think, I HOPE that she likes where she is better than where she was.
I'm moving into a guest house tonight since there's no place for me to sleep here. I slept on the vinyl sofa last night. Did I mention it's 80-90 degrees here at all times. And humidity of at least 75%..... vinyl.
No air conditioning....
So, I smell great.
Anyway, I'll have more up soon as I said. I'll have my own place of sorts and will be able to lock myself away at the end of the day and focus.
Till then.

Election Blues

2008-07-26T06:16:00.001-07:00

With the election violence all over the world... Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mongolia.. Mongolia? Yeah, really... I was a little reticent about being here during elections on the 27th of July. That's tomorrow as I write this.
As it turns out, it's not violence that the elections bring here, but instead a standstill of any sort of official activity. I don't mean that on election day the government offices are closed. No, I mean that for about a month, possibly more, before the elections you simply can't get anything done that might involve dealing with the government. As it's been explained to me, during the time before the elections, all low to middle level officials in the entire country have to start their bribing campaigns in order to keep their jobs past election day. Now, I've not yet seen any real, concrete examples of this type of corruption, but everyone jokes about it. Very funny. Ha ha.
My first experience with this election obstacle was on day 2, dealing with El Capitan in Kampot Province. That would be July 13th. He basically told us he'd be very busy until the election. Local opinion (wisdom?) is that he had to go around to all of the Commune leaders in his area and collect their bribes, which undoubtedly consist of bribes from Village leaders. Then he has to make sure he has enough to bribe his bosses. Yes, there's alot of responsibility that comes with being a CPP official. Again, this is all based on what I've been told. I have not seen this kind of corruption with my own eyes, so it could be wrong.
On a side note, a few days after I got here there was an article about a journalist who was very anti CPP who was leaving the Olympic Stadium one night after some event and was gunned down along with his son.
m-hmm
On another side note, Hun Sen's government has undertaken a massive construction project to build a massive pump for the city on the bank of the Tonle Sap branch of the Mekong River to keep flooding down during the rainy season.
So, back to my story...
El Capitan tells us that we probably won't be able to get anything done with this process (see earlier posts) until after the elections. Great... that's 2 weeks away. Two weeks of those kids going to sleep with stomach pains and dirty water and no school and I don't even want to think about it. Five kids who have to wait on election day.
So, then Hin Dan, the director of the school in the countryside, tells Sam that the bricks for the school will likely be cheaper before the election by, as he estimates, $1000 in all. I have no idea why this might be. Perhaps no one is building until after the election because of uncertainty and the brick yards want to sell what they have now? Who knows. So I suppose that's one thing about the elections that's favorable. Hooray. The board of directors gives that plan a hearty thumbs up, by the way, but that saga doesn't end there... more on that in another post.
The next big thing we need to work on is getting Chibodia registered in Cambodia as a foreign INGO (International Non Governmental Agency). Great. No problem. There is a lawfirm in town run by Americans. Perfect. So, we put on our 'let's pretend it's not the tropics' clothing and head out to meet with the attorney. She's from the US, born in Alabama and she was almost, she says, born in Texas but for the good luck of her Air Force father being transferred. I'm so amused. So, we talk about business for a while until, you guessed it, "most of this is going to have to wait until after the elections". Great. That's a week and a half from now (at the time of the meeting). We can't go forward at all. Well, it gives us time to put together our proposal and other necessary paperwork... I think actual sitting-down-and-working time on that totals to about 7 hours. Good thing we had a week and a half...
Now, It's hard for me to give you an impression of the general attitude of the country without going on for pages and pages, but don't think it's repressed or 'Soviet' around here. Not at all. In fact, election day is basically a holiday here. MANY businesses are closed, no alcohol can be sold, and the next day, Monday this time (maybe always) is a national holiday. Maybe that's why such a large percentage of Cambodia's population votes as compared to America, where companies barely tolerate the law requiring them to let us come in late after voting. Go America!
Oh, and another thing, you can't buy alcohol on the day before or the day of election. Probably a really good idea... but I only say that becauswe we already had a case of Beer Lao at the house. I like to be prepared. We went to the supermarket this evening to stock up since everything will be closed tomorrow, and driving there we almost thought that half of the city must have gone on vacation. We would shortly discover that, no, they were still here, they were just ALL in the Lucky supermarket. ALL OF THEM.
I often have minor anxiety issues at the supermarket... heh... I'm amazed I didn't collapse. It was insane. Lucky has a parking garage that no one ever uses because it costs 1000 riel (that's about 20 cents or so). The street in front was packed. Sam said "Oh, no one ever parks in the garage. No problem".... packed... but we get a place on the very top. We go shopping... nothing to report other than the massive crowds. Then we get back out onto the streets. They're back. Everyone. It's crazy driving with packed streets as usual, just 30 minutes later. Very weird.
I don't know what it is, but something tells me that Hun Sen is going to win a fourth term... it's just a feeling
So, supposedly everything will be back in full swing... Tuesday? I'm doubtful. I wonder how long it will take to tally the votes.
Stay tuned.....

Update for last post

2008-07-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

I made a few changes in the text... apparently my brain was on empty when I wrote that one.

Day 2:Kampot province and CPP coconuts

2008-07-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

I wake up before dawn. I slept well. Like a rock, in fact. If I dreampt, I don't remember. It gets light around 6. It gets dark around 6. We're pretty close to the equator, so the days are pretty equinotic (?) here all year round. I don't want to wake anyone, so I lay in bed for a little while and listen to the sounds of the area. Birds, weird frogs, dogs, and the occasional moto driving by. As it gets light, I creep downstairs. I unlock the door and wander around outside a little, but only within the walls. The gate is locked and I don't remember whioch key it is. The front door lock was easy, as I had seen Sam put it up the previous night. All the doors and gate are padlocked at night. There are bars on everything. They don't look like bars in the US, and it's standard here. They're on every house. Everywhere. So, not menacing, just different. Plus, you simply can't take chances when you're responsible for 30 defenseless children. I sit outside at the stone table for about a half an hour and Sam comes down, starting to get ready for our trip to the South. We're supposed to pick Peter and his girlfriend up at 7:15. I'm long ready to go. Anne is still upstairs, and Sam is running a little slow. Hah, good to know I'm not the only one who fucks up sometimes. It makes all of this less intimidating.
We pick Peter and gf up at about 7:25. Only 10 minutes. No big deal. They just live down the street, basically. The street is crowded with stalls and motos and kids running around and dogs and food and random crap of all kinds. A guy rindes by on a moto with two giant propane tanks on the back. The road is only about 12 feet wide.. 14 at the most. And when I say the road, I mean the distance from the front of one stall to the front of the one facing it on the other side of the street. Not the curb. Curbs exist here and there in PP to impress the tourists and make it harder for motos to compete with larger vehicles when trying to drive on the sidewalk or whatever is on the other side.
After we get Peter, we head out for Kampot down highway (Hahahahaha)3. Highway. It's a one and a half lane road... what we would call an undivided country lane in the US. It's filled with motos and trucks and cars and chaos. Once again, driving here is... well, I can't even describe it. I'll try to later, but I think I'll just film it. It's like being on a rollercoaster, but with a dynamically changing track. Great fun for adrenaline junkies.
Peter has talked to a village leader and a commune leader from Kampot province, and they say there are people who need help down there. We have 'plans' to meet first with the village leader at 9 am or so, and then with the commune leader. We're running a little late, but that apparently doesn't matter much. The road from PP to Kampot province is impossible to 'cruise' down. It's like leaving the parking lot of a major concert or sporting event... the whole way there. So, on the way we goof off and chat, sometimes talking about the work, others just being silly and cracking jokes, other times I'm just staring out at Cambodia as it passes by. It's amazinly beautiful. In some parts it looks alot like the Southern plains of Texas; sandy soil, patches of low plants, palm trees spaced out.. but not the same. More lush, and something about it is just alien. The shapes of the plants, the mountains in the background, the water buffalo wandering around. It certainly isn't southern Texas.
Signs for the Sam Rainsy party are everywhere. At almost every inhabited point there are half a dozen or more. There are CPP posters as well, but not as many. I don't think the CPP needs a whole lot of advertising; their 'representatives' will surely be around very soon to tell everyone who's going to win the elections on the 27th. They're so considerate.
We arrive at the turnoff for the village. It's a barely visible road right next to a little stand of some kind. No one's operating it at the moment, so who knows. We then follow a dirt track back into the countryside. Now, as far as 'civilization' goes, it basically follows rivers and roads. There are very few places where a town or village touches a major road and goes back off of it with streets and such. They're usually built almost entirely along the road, so you have long, thin towns. Once you get about 100 meters off of the road, it's almost instant coutry. Everywhere. PP is anexception, of course, but everywhere along the major roads this seems to be the case. This place was no exception. Once we drove back a quarter mile or so, but certainly not much more, it was as if we were hundreds of miles from the 'highway". And it was beautiful. It was unbelievable... like a little quiet paradise. Rice fileds, dry and wet. Coconut palms, some trees like date palms but with different fruit.. similar to dates. water lillies everywhere, people on bicycles everywhere, people working in the fields planting, and harvesting rice. Everyone smiling. And no trash. So far, everywhere I've gone has been littered with, well, litter. Everywhere. Even in front of the royal palace.This place, however, is almost pristine. We finally get to a place where we have to park... we can't really go any further. So, we pull the car up to the front of a house that sits right on the road and park. The people there are very friendly and show us where to park. A man on a bicycle knows where the village chief is and tells Peter that he'll take us to him, so we all set off on foot through the rice fields. Even Sam and Anne are commenting on how beautiful it is here, and they've been all over Cambodia. It really is like paradise. The color of green that dominates the landscape is one that I think the West is probably completely unaware of... I've never seen anything like it. The sky is filled with clouds, like a herd of slow, peaceful animals, moving by and creating shadows on the landscape.
Of course there are most of the things you would expect; a water buffalo sitting in the field, someone riding by on a bicycle with a big sack of rice, coconut trees everywhere. And again, unlike PP, there's no trash.
We work our way to a house where there are people milling around, seemingly doing nothing but trying to stay cool. It seems that this is what most Cambodians do most of the time. Now, the temperature here and the temp in Texas are basically the same. The humidity here is slightly higher, but not incredibly so like I expected. My guess is that poor diet is what makes these people lethargic and ineffective in the heat. Surely a people who've lived here for thousands of years have adapted to the heat...
At this forst house, Sam and Anne ask Peter "Is this where the leader lives?" No, he tells us. He is talking to a man I presume is the head of the house. I can't tell. A woman starts bringing us chairs and a younger man starts cutting open coconuts for us. He uses a rusty, fire-carboned hatchet to cut the tops off of them and then brings them over and sets them down on a table. The coconuts in Cambodia are not what we think of as coconuts in America. We think of little hairy, butty things about the size of a softball. Not so here. They are green and as big as a person's head, with smooth skin like a mango. The 'milk' from these coconuts is extremely sweet... like nectar. It's very good and I try to drink all I can while waiting for Peter to figure out where we're going next. There's no way. There is simply too much liquid in one of these to drink quickly. So, I do the best I can, getting sticky nectar all over my chin and shirt.
We're wasting time here and no one really knows why, but this kind of experience is so new to me that I don't mind at this point. Sam is getting antsy though, so we move on with new guides. Two teenage boys start to take us down on of the village paths, further in the direction we headed in. Well, they could be as old as 22, but poor Cambodians look extremely young because of, among other factors, poor nutrition. But, they're smiling and chatting with Peter as we walk through yet more pattys past more cows, chickens, dogs, and paradisical landscape. When you see pictures of rice pattys and they seem to be separated by tiny, narrow humps of dirt, those are village paths. Those are what we, the bicycles, the cows, and the occasional motorcycle use as roads in the villages. The almost one lane wide dirt roads that link the villages could be thought of as highways out here.
We finally arrive at a bigger house with more of a compound feel than the last one, but still with the ubiquitus random merchandise from civilization hanging from the 'ceiling' in the bottom part of the house. There are posters in Khmer here and there, most look official but a few are adverts. The village leader is there. An older man, probably 55-60, he's very friendly, very quiet, and has a younger aid talking to Peter, almost as if he's sizing us up and deciding whether or not to talk to us directly. If that's the case, he decides in our favor pretty quickly. I'm trying to keep a respectable distance from the conversastion and let Sam and Anne and Peter conduct the business. Hopwever, I think I'm making things worse, as one of the dogs has decided he doesn't like the cut of my jib and keeps following me around the clearing barking at me. So, I go and sit down at the table under the house with everyone else. The dog shuts up. The village chief smiles at me warmly, so I'm relieved that I didn't flubb anything by joining them.
They talk for about 10 minutes and Sam starts getting visibly impatient (to me but likely not apparent to the village leader) as we discover that, at least in this village, there really aren't any orphans at all and the poor people here are just people with fewer chickens, and it's starting to seem like they just want a handout. I don't know if that's true or not; they could think we just came by to dole out 'aid' to anyone poorer than us. A precident set by stupid westerners and worthless NGOs who don't consider the dynamics created and destroyed by thoughtless gifts of free money.
As we walk from the village leader's house back toward the car, Sam and I walk a little ahead of everyone else so we can talk about what just happened. He's pissed. He's frustrated because we drove about an hour through insane traffic, using time he could be spending on other things, seemingly for nothing. Hee tells me that Peter talked to these people on the phone, and should have known better what to expect. He thinks at this point that Peter is just using this excursion to 'find kids' as a way to get out of town and see the place where he used to live... a sort of 'working vacation'. I tell him that maybe Peter just doesn't understand what he means... what kind of criteria he has for children to take in. Peter seems to just be telling the locals 'poor kids', as so far all of the kids they've told us about have parents, they just can't get to a school. These kids definitely need help, but we're looking for the worst cases... emergency cases where the kids not only have no money and no way to get to school, but no medical, no parents, and no chance at all.
Anne says it would be rude not to go on after this to the commune leader's house after Peter told him we're coming, so Sam grudgingly agrees to go and see if this guy has any useful information. He says he's going to give Peter a stern talking to, but agrees that he could be wrong.
We get back to the car, where the people who live (or are just hanging around) the house where we parked have covered the windshield and driver's window with reed mats to keep the heat out. They're sitting there smiling, just like when we arrived. We thank them all and say 'bye bye' and drive back toward hwy 3.
We drive a little further South on h3 until we get to the commune leader's house. Liike all Khmer houses, the main house is the second level and the ground level is a combination of patio, garage, and shop. Inside you can see that he has nice tile and refrigerated cases, though some are not running, as they have clothing and other non-food goods in them on display.
We exchange greetings and sit down. The conversation starts, Peter starts into the 'Thank you for allowing us to talk to you and blah blah...". Eventually, he gets down to business and starts telling the man what we're here for and shows him the 'brochure' which is just a printout of the Chibodia website with some extra documents. None of it is in Khmer. So, basically this does nothing except show the leader some pretty pictures. Eventually, he says that we should talk to his boss, the commune leader. The commune leader? We thought HE was the commune leader. There's obviously some miscommunication going on. Peter is starting to frustrate me at this point. The leader leaves on his moto and returns shortly with a slightly younger, but larger and more casually confident man. He's not fat, but barrel chested with strong arms. Just more 'manly' than the other commune leader or whatever he really is, who is in his 40s and fairly thin and unassuming. This second man is quite obviously a leader. Maybe we'll get somewhere...
Once again the greetings, once again the coconuts. I'm a little nervous at this point... am I going to offend him if I don't drink it all? This guy is a bigshot. So, I try to drink as much as I can. There are straws this time, so I don't have to show him how we pour coconut milk down our shirts in America. No doubt he's heard the legends. I don't want to show off, so I use the straw.
He and Sam begin talking through Peter. They go back and forth several times, seeming to reiterate the same things... Peter doesn't seem to be able to convey what Sam is telling him to, and we're all realizing that Peter's English is, in fact, not so great. This is a problem, but they keep at it, trying to reach an understanding. Peter seems to be telling the guy that we're 'here to help poor people'.. or at least that's what it seems like this guy is hearing. He says he can donate land and a building if we'll donate the funds. Seeming now like he wants barang to come in and give him money. They try again.. this time pulling out the pamphlet, brochure, whatever you want to call it. It's basically a print out of several pages of the website and a copy of the lease. It's in English. ~sigh~. The guy looks at the pictures and tells Peter that 'anyone can get pictures and say that they took them'. Good point, and as he can't read the rest, he has no way of knowing. Hmmm...
...So finally Sam becomes a little angry (but doesn't show it) and tells Peter that he has to try to translate correctly. He tells him that orphan does NOT mean 'poor child' or anything like that, it means both parents are dead or that both parents are gone. He tells him that our priority is children who have no chance. Children who are poor but have loving families undoubtedly need help, but that isn't the mission of the orphanage. Peter wressels with this a few times and finally gets it... we think. We talk some more and find out that the guy we're talking to, the 'other commune leader' is actually the CPP (Cambodian People's Party) representative in the commune. He's a bigshot. He's a bigshot with a moped... er, moto. The CPP is Hun Sen's party. The CPP is the party who tossed out the King, tossed out the Prince, exiled Sam Rainsey. CPP is the party who harass people every election to get 98% popular vote. This guy we're talking to now is their man in central Kampot province. And oddly, he's a pretty cool guy. And by cool, I don't just mean he smiles at us and brings us straws for our coconut milk. He's cool because all through this exchange, he's scrutinizing us, our reactions, our faces. He tells us that barang NGOs have been here before and made promises, but they crapped out before anything was done and he has to think of the welfare of his people. He can't let some well-meaning whiteys come in and make a bunch of promises and raise everyone's hopes. He likes us, but he has to make sure that we're on the level. He's a good leader. In Cambodia, that's like saying he's a progressive, understanding, socially-conscious Republican. But he is. Or at least he seems that way...
So, he agrees to take us to observe the conditions of the two groups of children that he thinks meet our criteria for eligibility. (And don't get me started on that. It's a disgusting, heart-breaking moral dilemma that I have to confront every day and it never gets easier).
He immediately asks Sam for the keys to the Chibodia-mobile (a used Toyota 4-Runner) and hops into the driver's seat. Sam doesn't protest. Let him feel like a bigshot for an hour. He drives us a little way down the road to a house right on hwy3. We passed it on the way in. Like all khmer 'settlements', this one is a clump of similar traditional stilted buildings and little sheds and such, and nothing demarking the separate properties. We can guess where the girls live. One of the 'houses' is literally a shack. No door, nothing inside but some dirty blankets. It's not tall enough for an adult to stand up in... a Khmer adult. That's about 5 feet tall. When we pull up, about 8 people wander up. All ages. Most look, well, like villagers... they're dressed in poor clothes; some in just pants, others in dirty t-shirts, etc. One woman, however, is wering a nice colorful shirt with chiffon and several bracelets and visibly a fancy colorful bra. Now, the Khmer people are pretty conservative in that sense, so it doesn't look whoreish, just like semi-transparent tops that Western girls wear that show the bra through a little. Anyway, the point is that she's obviously got alot more money than the rest and she wants everyone to know it. Our CPP friend finds the the first of the kids and introduces us through Peter. It's a girl whose parents have died. Her aunt "takes care of her", read using her as slave labor and not letting her go to school while her kids get to go to school. She looks about 11. She's 15. At this point I'm still sort of hanging back... I'm only in country for a day and I don't want to be presumptuous, so I'm not sure exactly what the conditions of this situation are. I hear a little and Sam sort of fills me in later, but there's a good deal of uncertainty. CPP shows us the house that her parents had... it's a small shack on stilts. It looks deserted. It turns out that the girl lives with the aunt. That's nice of her...
After talking to her briefly, we move on to the next place. There are 4 kids at the next place. Their mother has died, but we're not sure how long ago. Their father takes care of them, but he recently lost his arm in an accident, so he can barely work. They live in what can only be called a chicken shack. I think, in fact, that it really is a chicken shack. I took some video here, and I'll post it on youtube at some point. Hopefully I can get help with adding subtitles. If not, you'll still get the idea. They look about 7 to 12. In fact, the youngest is 13 I think. They look a little sad as a general state, but are pleased and a little amused to meet barang. Especially 2 fair-haired and one bald, tall barang I would bet. Sam and CPP, who I'll call El Capitan for the sake of clarity from now on, talk about their condition for a moment. I still feel a little out of place and, well, guilty. Guilty for having nice clothes... for having a camera that costs more money than these kids will see in the next 15 years... guilty for being born. I realise I'm getting a little overwhelmed and so I wander around a little to shake it off.
Eventually they wrap it up, wave goodbye to the children and head back to the commune leader's house.
Then 'The Talks' begin again. We go through more of the same, basically. This time, I'm sitting at the table during the talks, but I'm sitting a little bit back from everything. Again, I don't want to just insert myself into the middle of this since I'm really just observing at this point. He looks at me, smiles, and gestures for me to pull up to the table. I do. When he's talking he kind of moves his eyes from person to person, talking to all of us. He's pretty serious now, but good natured; not stern. He lets us know that he's willing to work with us, but he needs something concrete.. paperwork etc., and maybe even to come up to PP to see the home. Great. We're all for that and encourage him to do so. We tell him that we'll get some documentation together asap and hopefully we can get it to him before the election. We'll see. I think we told him one week. This goes on for some time, but you'd get bored and frustrated reading it.
So, we say our goodbyes as a gift... for letting him drive the car maybe? El Capitan has one of his people give us 20 fresh coconuts, still on the branches. They just load them into the back of the truck. We thank him profusely and head back North. Exhausted.
We say we're hungry, so Peter says he knows a place. The drive back isn't quite as bad as getting there. It's around 5 o'clock or so at this point. We get about half way back, having passed several places to eat, when Peter says that there's a good place in this town. My stomach is getting a little indignant with Peter. We pull over to a fairly big place and are assaulted by begging Khmer. We all sort of ignore them and go inside. Some of them follow, but we keep ignoring and Sam tells them to go. We eat and down cold drinks. We talk a little about the events of the day, but not alot. A good amount of time is used up by my constant inquiries. "What's that?" "how do you say this" "blah blah" barang. I had sour beef soup for those foodies out there who want to know. It was really good. It cost 2 dollars for a huge bowl and some rice on the side. There was also a tiny saucer with tiny peppers. They were good and they were hot.
After we finish, we start to pile in to the car and are met with more beggars. This time they're almost all very old people. Sam says that giving to the old is a little different because there's no pension or social security here, and they really have no choice but to ask for handouts sometimes. They've all lived through the wars as well. Call it reparations. What ever. I give one of them 1500 Riel (about 35 cents I think) and we move on, back to PP. We drop Peter and his girl off just around the corner from here in front of his place and drive back here. I can't remember if there was beer here or if we bought it down at the gas station, but either way it was welcome. We watched another movie, but I can't even remember what it was.

Day One: Detailed

2008-07-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

The flight from Hong Kong to Phnom Penh was much shorter than I expected. I sat next to a French-Cambodian man who had apparently never visited the place where his parents were from. The stewardesses handed out visa applications forms with our complimentary meal of my choice of sausage and egg or Chinese dim sum. I had the dim sum and so did my neighbor. When we finished, we set to filling out our visa forms. It turns out that this Khmer man from Francais only speaks Francais and Chinese. Almost no English and no Kmer. The visa forms are in English and Khmer. So, he asked if I could help him fill out the form. Some of the fields were confusing like 'place of birth', etc. I tried to help him, but eventually someone nearby who spoke Chinese was able to help him with it.
The second half of the flight was beautiful, as we passed the gllomy clouds of Hong Kong and started to fly over Vietnam. The view was great, and I don't think we ever got much higher than 15 thousand feet, so the features of the land were just this side of being abstract.
Once over Cambodia, we descended a little and the features became more clear. The Mehkong is enormous. We followed it in for several miles... several hundred miles? Hard to say. I had a window seat for this particular flight, but I was right on the wing in the William Shatner seat. Despite the wing taking up much of my downward field of view, I was able to see the countryside pretty well. I think I got some good shots of the mehkong and of some mountains. I can't be sure until I see them on the computer.
Phnom Penh.
Landing in PP was fast, efficient, and painless. From the time I walked off the plane to the time I walked through security and had my passport stamped was no more than 10 minutes. I had my backpack and was outside a minute later where Sammy was waiting for me.
There was of course a hug and exuberant greetings, but we went immediately to his bike. It was 10:40 or so in the morning. He had just woken up. We were both groggy, but happy. He brought his dirtbike instead of the new SUV as per my request. I had told him in an email that I'd prefer to have an unimpeded view and immersive ride from the airport. Dust in the eyes and all. He obliged me and I'm glad he did. It was an amazing ride. Very beautiful. The weather wasn't so hot, but then I'd been wearing long sleeves, a courdeuroy sportscoat and jeans throughout the 26 hour trip on hot airplanes and hot airport layovers.
The trip to the school only took about 10 minutes, as the orphanage is off of the same road as the airport.
The 'residential' streets here often look alot like alleyways in the US because of the ubiquitous walls that completely surround houses here, unlike in the US where the back yard is fenced and the front open. So, we arrive here and the place looks almost exactly as I thought it would, but then I've seen several pictures and a brief video, so that's no surprise. Judging from what I saw on the drive from the airport, this is quite likely the cleanest place in, at least, this part of town. Very nice and spacious by Cambodian standards. Clean tile floors, uncluttered, no dust, fresh paint. Very good for the kids, I'm sure.
As soon as we walk in, Anne comes downstairs and I get to meet her. She's very nice. I do not give her a hug, as by this point I'm fairly stinky. My own armpits are waging war on my olfactory factory, so I ask if I can take a shower. 'No problem' I'm told. 'We take several showers a day here'. I can see why.The humidity makes one sweat alot even if the heat isn't bothersome. There's a sort of persistent stickyness. So the shower, it turns out, IS the bathroom. Between the sink and the crapper is a drain in the floor. Above said drain, hanging in a sconce on the wall is a hand-held shower head. I've never seen that before. Kinda neat. So, now I'm just like the Sim that Vanya created of me; I walk into a room and just start showering. Ha ha ha.
After the shower, Sam gives me a tour of the place. It isn't huge, but it's the perfect size for the kids. I imagine that, for kids who come from cramped living conditions and extreme poverty, coming to a place that's too large would be a little intimidating. This place will be very cozy and there will always be closeness with other humans, but it's not TOO cramped and it's immaculately clean. Very good environment. There are plenty of bathrooms and plenty of room outside so play ball, run around, do projects, whatever...
There are two rooms for sleeping (for the kids); a girls room, where I'm staying, and a boys. 3-story bunkbeds take up most of the space in the rooms. There are 4 of them, making 12 beds. The smaller kids will double up. Again, in america that would seem strange, but here I think it will give comfort and is pretty standard anyway. There is a room downstairs for the nanny, or hopefully soon nannies with an adjacent bathroom. Upstairs there is the aforementioned giant shower with a toilet and a sink in it, and there's also Sam and Anne's room, which will become an office and a little infirmary when they move out.
So, after the tour and some general talk of plans for the home, Sam takes me on a sort of tour of the town in the SUV. We don't really have a goal or even a specific route, really, just sort of driving around town. We drove by the palace and most of the monuments, by the river and by one of the slums... the 'university', the temples, the expat mile... I can't even remember everything we saw. One thing is certain; just the simple act of driving in PP is more adventure than I've had in many, many years.
When we got back, I met several Khmer who work for or with Sam at either this place or other of their projects. I don't remember their names, exept for Zena (sp?), warrior nanny princess.
After our random touring of the city, Sam takes me to Aziza's place (look it up) to meet Nader, who will be one of the board of directors of Motomedix. He and Sam started it a while back as just sort of a side project. Nader talks with Sam about motomedix stuff, what's going on at his schoolhouse, etc. Then, he says he's going to show us the little shed he rented at Stung Meanchey (the garbage dump where kids sift through the garbage for sellable materials...look it up) on Monday. I don't know if I'm ready for that. Earlier in the day we stopped at a gas station and a little girl, probably 6 or 7 but no older, came up to the car asking for money.See, you can't just hand out money to people. You can't. If you do, you're training them to become career beggars and you're training their parents to keep sending their kids out in the street to beg from barang. Nobody wins. I broke down. Sam was pretty stonefaced.. "aa-dtay" "no please". He didn't really even look at her. Not that he didn't care; that's why he gave up the middle class in Germany to come here, he does care, but he won't perpetuate the stupid barang 'charity' which has driven these people to the streets, the brothels, and the dump.
We find out that evening that there are some kids in the south in Kampot province that Peter, one of Sam's directors, heard about. Peter used to work as a teacher in Kampot province, and heard from someone that there were some kids in dire straits down there. So, we plan to head out the next morning to go take a look.
Later in the evening, we go and get some beer, order Indian food, and decide to watch a movie. Anne chooses 21, a film about an MIT professor who takes his math kids to Vegas to cheat at blackjack. I couldn't make it all the way through. The journey finally catches up with me and I succumb to sleep on the couch. So, I get up and go upstairs, climb into my mosquito net enclosed pink bunk and pass right the hell out.

In Country

2008-07-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I arrived on the 12th after 26 hours of travelling. As this blog isn't really a place for me to bitch and complain I won't talk about the trip. For those who don't know (as this blog was originally concocted to inform my closest of what I'm doing), I am here to work with a couple of people who have started NGOs here and intend to expand their reach. Chibodia- Friends for Children in Cambodia is the first, and Motomedix is the second. Chibodia was started by my oldest friend Samuel Pehlke about 2 years ago with the goal of helping children in Cambodia. This help comes in many forms, all of which you can read about at chibodia.org. Now, if you don't speak German, you'll have to use google translator or some similar service. But basically they (we, now) fund and run 3 schools and one orphanage (which we call a 'children's home') which will eventually house 30 orphans.
I've been writing a pretty verbose day by day account of what's going on here, but it's a little behind since I've been pretty busy. There's a fair amount of 'down time', but much of that's been spent either drinking or talking about plans and trying to both learn Khmer AND relearn German. There are two volunteers from Germany here, so most conversation is auf Deutsch. They offered to speak Englisch as much as possible, but I said no, as 1. it's rude for me to make4 out of 5 people speak the minority language and 2. I need to brush up anyway and there's nothing like immersion for that. It's going ok. My Khmer is another story...
So, after I clean up my articles a little, I'll throw the first of them up. That should be tomorrow. Hopefully. There are 4 kids coming tomorrow, so we'll see.
Until then.

Year 33

2008-04-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

Two days ago as I write this was the 33rd anniversary of the Khmer Rouge's taking and subsequent purging of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. For those of you who don't know the history, I suggest you pop over to Wikipedia and read about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It's all there. I'm not going to repeat it here because that's not really wha this blog is about. I bring it up because in July, I plan to go to Cambodia to reunite with my oldest friend and to help him help the Khmer people who still live with the legacy of decades of war.
When Pol Pot's regime 'cleansed' Phnom Penh of Western devilry, he declared that 1975 was instead Year Zero of the new age. In many ways, the Khmer culture was reset, and so this is in fact year 33 of the 'new age' for Cambodia. Not a Golden Age, to be sure. And their problems didn't start with Pol Pot, but they certainly reached a critical point... almost a point of no return. Almost...
As I said, in July I intend to travel to Cambodia. I'm going for many reasons, which I will explore in these posts. I am still preparing for the experience... reading the news of the region, catching up on the history, adjusting my diet, and giving up on trying to learn Khmer from books and CDs; it's just damned near impossible to do.
In the posts to follow, I'll be talking about why I'm going, what I intend to do there, why Cambodia, etc. and then I'll use the blog to post my experiences while there. Sure, I'll post interesting tourist stuff and photos of Angkor Wat probably, but mainly my impressions of the society, thoughts about American society (nothing like going someplace completely alien to learn about your own home), the projects we'll be working on and new ones we develop, and where to get the best beer!
But seriously...
While at the moment I am not really interested in feedback, comments, or the like in these early days of the blog, I will be interested in the future to hear from other people curious about Khmer culture, people who want to share their own experiences of Cambodia, or people who want to help the Khmer people. For now though, I probably won't even read comments as I have lot to do between now and then.
Stay tuned...