AdamInCambodia

Bits and Pieces

2007-07-30T22:03:00.000-04:00

Over the past few weeks, I’ve traveled from Santa Cruz to Cuzco, passing through small towns, large cities, Lake Titicaca, the Bolivian-Peruvian border, Machu Picchu, and points in between. Below are a few anecdotes from my travels that I think illustrate some of the more interesting aspects of life here.

El Duende

As the sun set in Santa Cruz, it had begun to rain. Tropical location aside, Bolivia’s elevation means that the July winter in Santa Cruz can be cold. Alex, Cindy, and I had rushed to nestle under a small overhang, avoiding the spray while crossing our arms to ward off the cold. Cindy was keeping their daughter Aisha close by. Alex would later tell me that this was the first time in his three years in Santa Cruz that he could remember seeing his own breath.

“Do you see that hitching post across the street?” Cindy motioned to me as we waited for the micro-bus to arrive. I glanced to the opposite corner where a small lone wooden post stood fixed into the modern street tiles. There was what looked like a head carved into the top of it. Together, she and Alex told me the story of a young man, a hundred years ago, who having been denied permission to marry his beloved, stood nightly across the street from her window. There he carved her face into that same hitching post, as he watched her and wasted away from grief. They say his ghost still haunts the area.

“Are there many stories like that around here?” I asked.

“Oh sure,” Alex replied, “But here, they’re not stories. These things happen.”

“Bad husbands, adulterers and drunks,” he continued, “They see the black widow when they’re alone. Often it’s in a church. She comes dressed all in black, covered from head to foot, with a veil over her face. She’ll appear, approaching them silently, staring accusingly. They can’t see her eyes, but they know. Sometimes they try to lift her veil to see her face. Maybe they see a skull. Maybe they don’t. Every single one passes out and wakes up alone and frightened.”

“And this actually happens?” I responded incredulously.

“To people I’ve known,” Cindy answered matter-of-factly, “Of course it’s more so in the rural areas, and there it’s mostly el duende.”

“’El duende?’ I don’t know the word. What is it, some kind of Chupacabra?” I asked, referring to the Mexican legend of a short creature with a spiky back that mutilates cattle, sucking their blood until they die.

“Not really, no, though it is a short little creature, about three feet tall. El duende wears a long white robe made of roughly woven indigenous cloth with a hat so ridiculously wide-brimmed you can’t see his face. His hair is long and snow white. He loves beautiful and pure things. That’s why he steals little girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. Only children can see him. In the rural areas, when several children all share the same imaginary friend, speaking to the air and listening as though they hear a response, the parents take notice.”

“Especially the ones whose children have blonde hair and blue eyes?” I quipped.

Cindy looked at me directly, got the joke, smiled a little, but wasn’t biting.

“It’s very uncommon for rural children to have blonde hair or blue eyes but not unknown. When a little girl disappears, the parents immediately begin searching the woods. If they’re lucky, they find her, alone, crying, on a perfectly clean mat, surrounded by the finest fruits and flowers of the forest.”

“El duende loves only the purest things. It won’t keep a girl once she cries too much or wets herself.”

I was hooked. I was even starting to believe a little bit: “So if it’s only children who can see it, does it ever hurt adults? What about the girls who aren’t found?”

“It depends. Some women are actually married to el duende,” Cindy replied.

“What?!?! Married to el duende? How does that even work?”

“In the smaller towns. These are women who live in large villas on the edge of town. Usually they’re widows or escapees from violent marriages. No one ever sees them work but somehow they always have more than enough money to live. They’ll walk through the village streets holding conversations with empty air. If anyone asks, they’ll say that they’re talking to their husband.”

“Sometimes violent former husbands who have been forced by popular opinion or the law to leave their wives will try to return home to regain them. When they do, an argument usually ensues. The next morning, the woman will wake up, covered from head to toe in bruises. With his history and the sound of the argument to condemn him, rather than face prison time, he usually flees town.”

“El duende keeps his brides.”

Help Control the Pet Population?

Bolivia and Peru are places full of hospitable people, large four-course lunches, and stray dogs that are cute until the moment their barking, car-chasing, and fornication begins to irritate. They represent every breed imaginable, with adorable bright wide eyes and lolling tongues. Some are well kept. Some are fed occasionally by quasi-owners who otherwise leave them alone to roam the streets. The rest bother with humans only to eat their trash, bark at them, or chase their cars in a way that defies their apparently missing sense of self-preservation. Sometimes the dogs form packs. Together they chase females and yowl into the night. With all the barking, I expect Alex could count on his fingers the number of full nights he’s slept since moving to Santa Cruz.

Feral though they are, it’s still hard to find these creatures intimidating. This is probably because they seem so pitiable when the copulating’s done.

For as long as his erection remains, the male is trapped by the female. There’s something a little ridiculous about the sight. Unable to withdraw, he tries desperately to extricate himself. He flips around, facing the opposite direction. There both dogs remain for minutes at a time, bum touching bum, the female patiently exasperated, the male pawing the ground uselessly in occasional furious attempts at escape.

Alex tells me this extra time helps ensure that the first dog is the most likely to impregnate.

The rest of the pack sits back, barking, yapping, and occasionally fighting over who goes next. When the first male finally gets away, the female makes a mad dash for freedom. The rest of the pack chases behind with the winner of the last round of fights in the lead. The former leader usually stays behind, dazed and trying to recover his composure.

The Flota Infomercial

Inter-city buses here are called flotas. They work a little differently then back home. In order to ensure a full complement of passengers, they can be flagged down along the road at any time. The seeming hitchhikers who board pay a fraction of the fare and sit in whatever space is available, including the floor of the aisle. I’ve been forced there myself on occasion. It’s not as comfortable as you’d think.

Other times, passengers ask to be let off early. This has led to an interesting phenomenon:

“Yes, the ultimate information book! Learn all of these essential words in English, including numbers from one, uno, ten, diez, one-hundred, ciento, to even one million, un millión! Also parts of the body, the arm, the foot, the face! There are also basic instructions for important software, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Windows, and more! And all of this for only seven Bolivianos!”

I had just started to drift off into sleep, when from the corner of my eye, I saw the man in the second row, seated directly in front of me, begin to stand. “Why did I sit so near the front where the shouting would be?” I asked myself. Inwardly, I began to groan, preparing for the oncoming onslaught.

“Today, as a special offer only we are also presenting this other book, the complete geography and history of Bolivia! Yes, with this book your children can learn the history, location, capital, and major industries of every province! It also contains relevant biographical information about major government figures, including every minister and the president!”

Every sentence ended with an exclamation mark. Not since the first episode of Amazing Discoveries aired in the early nineties had I seen anyone so excited about a new product. I tried to tune him out, despite a slightly unexpected nagging interest in the second book, politely refused the not-to-be-missed opportunity to flip through a sample copy, prepared myself for the final onslaught:

“And for all this, how much would you expect to pay? Today only we are making the special offer of one book for seven Bolivianos! That’s right, either book for only seven Bolivianos! Or, if you act right now, you can have both for just ten! That’s right! One for seven Bolivianos, or two books, containing all this information, including English vocabulary, software, geography, history, and more, for only 10 Bolivianos!!!”

He kept going for a while, nearly exploding with feigned enthusiasm. A few people bought the books. At about $1.25 for both, it wasn’t a bad deal. Eventually the salesman called to the driver for a stop. He left the bus, likely hitching his way back along the ten or twenty kilometers he’d just traveled from town.

With the salesman gone, I reflected to myself that this was better than the last time. On a bus of less than twenty people, that man had spent nearly half-an-hour shouting about the wonders of his new cures for both impotence and prostatitis.

Teacher’s Strike

Having crossed the Peruvian border the previous evening, my tour group had just dropped me off near the central square in Puno, a medium sized town on the shores of Lake Titicaca. A large crowd had gathered in the central square, with banners megaphones, and creative home-made t-shirts. A protest was about to start.

I was hungry. I raced ahead of the plaza to find a restaurant. Behind me, the crowd began to approach, filling the street ten abreast until there was standing room only next to the walls on either side. “Así! Así! Así!” they cried, the Spanish equivalent of, “Yeah, that’s right! That’s so right!”

I still couldn’t make out what they were protesting. Pushed to the side, I asked someone nearby. “They’re teachers,” he replied, as if that explained the matter.

As the crowd marched on, a chorus of beautiful female voices, began singing. They had the consistency of a choir on key. The sound was distant and pleasant, growing louder as this new group approached. I listened for the lyrics, hoping to learn more.

“Presidente mentiroso, ahora te jodiste,” sang the melodic chorus.

Literally translated it meant, “Lying president, now you’ve f---ed yourself!”

These were some angry teachers.

I stopped a few and asked them to explain. “The president announced two weeks ago that the national education system will be privatized. He’s a liar, he breaks all of his promises, and if he doesn’t change, we’ll get a new president!”

In the meantime, the other teachers continued to sing: “Si no nos pagara, eso no nos importa. Con sueldo, sin sueldo, la lucha continuará.”

If you don’t pay us, we don’t care. With wages or without, the fight continues!

Usually it’s the students who start revolutions. I felt like it was nice to see the teachers taking up the slack for once. More realistically, I was amazed to see so many citizens concerned so strongly about public education that they took to the streets to voice their support. At my best guess, I was seeing at least three thousand teachers marching. “If only people back home cared as strongly as these people do, things would be better,” I thought to myself.

“Privatisation of education is horrible,” I told them in broken Spanish as I ducked into a restaurant for lunch, “Good luck to you!”

Hundreds more passed by the restaurant window until finally with a last giant effigy of the president, his eyes crossed out with large x’s, the demonstration passed.

Of course there was more to it than that.

For the past few weeks I’d been hearing stories of massive strikes in Peru disrupting transport much as the bloqueos had in Bolivia.

The Peruvian president was a man known for breaking his campaign promises. He’d been elected before and done none of what he’d promised. This time, a few years after leaving office, claiming that he’d learned his lesson and matured as a leader, he had successfully sought re-election.

Once in office, he began pulling the same technique again, pandering to the more powerful blocks in an effort to avoid rocking the boat. Faced with an inconvenient former policy that had created teaching jobs by allowing anyone with a high school education to seek work in education, he’d tried a two-pronged approach to fix the nation's problem of countless teachers of questionable quality.

The first prong, mandatory skills testing for all teachers, with rewards and consequences implemented to enforce quality made some sense. Hoping to cut his own costs and liability though, he’d also suggested a second policy, relocating responsibility for the administration of the educational system to the community level. Communities here are the smallest unit of government administration. They oversee populations of no more than a few thousand. The second prong failed uproariously. By creating hundreds of completely autonomous boards of education, he was in effect creating a de facto privatised educational system.

Thousands of teachers who already feared the new controls now had an excuse to run amok in their students’ name.

Within the first week, as demonstrations gripped the country, disgruntled teachers seized control of the airport in Cuzco, Peru’s tourist centre, and one of its largest cities. No planes landed or left. Other teachers were soon blocking roads, throwing rocks at any cars or buses that tried to pass.

It soon became hard to distinguish between dedicated teachers and self-serving protesters who threw rocks by day and drank themselves silly in bars by night. Public opinion was confused and consternated.

Luckily for me, by the time I arrived in Peru, the demonstrations were beginning to fade. Though I'm unsure what, if any, the final resolution was, this demonstratoin was the only one I've seen in my two weeks here.

Democracy in Action

2007-07-12T21:48:00.000-04:00

I arrived in Bolivia one week ago. I'll be travelling between here and Peru until August 3. For those who would like postcards, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment on the blog or to send me an e-mail.

Bolivians value their democracy in a way that could shame an American. When things aren't going well, they don’t vote for change. Instead, they go out and form a new government. From 1825 to 2003 they had 192 different governments, an average of roughly one every 11 months. In case anyone was starting to feel complacent, they went through about another three by 2005. The current President, Evo Morales, swept into power after a wave of popular protests paralysed most of the country. With Morales at their head, the growing middle class and the indigenous peoples, who comprise most of Bolivia's population, came to power through a new weapon, Los Bloqueos, Bolivia’s greatest contribution to democracy to date.

Los Bloqueos are roadblocks. Individually small, their strength lies in their numbers and the people manning them. They operate on a wider scale than the one or two roadblocks raised by native protesters in Ontario a few weeks ago. They are simple, non-violent, can be built quite literally from twigs, and with little effort can completely cripple a country. Two years ago, Morales had come to power on the stength of a popular movement, willing to block traffic to all major centres with trees, old furniture, whatever was to hand, and sheer force of will on the part of those manning the blockades.

The effectiveness of this strategy wasn't lost on the rest of the country, Morales' opponents included. Like Pandora's box, once the demons were out, there was no putting them back.

My first stop in Bolivia was a visit with my old friend Alex and his family in the town of Santa Cruz. When I arrived at the central bus terminal in La Paz one week ago, I had already been through four flights, two luggage check-ins, five countries, and one night of fitful sleep in the airport of the world’s highest capital. Waking up after shifting position at four thousand metres above sea level feels a little like running the hundred metre dash head first into a wall. The slightest movement causes breathlessness. The act of waking up itself is an invitation to the type of headache only a hangover can produce. With a taxi carrying me to the mercifully lower altitude of the bus terminal, all I had left to overcome was the long ride to Santa Cruz.

I arrived at the bus terminal at 6am, travelling pack, suitcase of gifts from Alex's family in Canada, carry on bag, and phone number for Alex’s wife, Cindy, in hand. I was already looking forward to the end of the upcoming twenty hour bus ride. By 6:30, I had tried to purchase tickets from about a dozen different bus lines. Every single one refused. Some of them had signs: "No hay salidas por bloqueos." No departures due to blockades.

By 7am I was watching the crowd of stranded shivering passengers around me on one of the terminal’s many television screens. The blockades had started the previous evening, isolating the capital city, and leaving hundreds of travelers stranded. Miners, upset at their working conditions, were trying to draw the governments attention to their plight. The average Bolivian miner dies from massive dust accumulation in the lungs ten years after he starts work. I'd like to say that at least the money is good but the region around Potosí, Bolivia's minig capital, is also the poorest in the country.

By contrast, the region around Santa Cruz is the richest. Soon after the miners began their blockades, the peoples of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba, which lay halfway between me and my destination, set up their own blockades. Tired of the government's socialist transfer payments siphoning their riches into the poorer areas, they were demanding more administrative autonomy.

Of course there was more to it than that. The Collas in the west near La Paz disliked the Cambas near Santa Cruz. The feeling was of course mutual. The indigenous population was disenfranchised and wanted more from the Spanish descended families that effectively ran the country. These families were themselves none too pleased with a socialist government, which kept trying to reposess tracts of unused land from them for redistribution to the poor. Essentially, everyone had an axe to grind, the government was the target, and the roads were simply collateral damage.

I for my part naïvely asked a hotel owner to give me a room at a discounted rate, since I would certainly be leaving by that evening when the blockades ended. In the evening, all that had changed were the signs in the terminal. They now read, "No hay salidas por bloqueos. ¡No insista!"

No departures due to blockades. Don’t insist!

After two days of waiting, I took a flight to Santa Cruz. It was great to see Alex and Cindy again. Their new daughter Aisha is adorably cute and has already mastered her fist word, "Dog," which she uses to refer to any animal she sees, people included. Alex and Cindy planned us a day trip to a nearby resort in Samaipata. By now, the nationwide blockades were lifting. Watching the news as we left, we learned that five families had taken it upon themselves to start a new series of blockades. Upset by the government's plan to take their unused land and redistribute it to the poor, they had hired the same families who stood to benefit from the policy to man blockades for them all around the city protesting it.

Bolivians really do love their democracy. They will not only defend others' rights to express themselves, but also demonstrate on their opponents behalf. So long as they’re paid for it. Land redistribution or a few dollars in pocket with which to feed your family, for the poor of Santa Cruz it was win-win.

Home Again

2006-09-02T00:17:00.000-04:00

I arrived back in Toronto almost two weeks ago. Classes resumed on Monday this week. It’s been a hectic but wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends, family, and my wonderful girlfriend Rachael. There are several more blog entries I had been hoping to write. Unfortunately, as the obligations of life back home are beginning to take hold, I’m still hopeful they will be done but I don’t know if or when.

In the meantime, I’m living with my family until next week, after which I move in with some old friends downtown:

40 Ulster Street
Toronto Ontario
M5S 1E3

647-895-5548

Thank you all for sharing in my experiences these past few months. Those of you who are in the neighbourhood, please feel free to drop me a line anytime. Hope this finds you all well. Looking forward to seeing many of you again very soon. All the best!

Bone Rot

2006-08-14T04:18:00.000-04:00

Another Tuesday morning meeting. Amna and I sit side by side trying hard not to fall asleep. As Mzungu medical students, our actions draw more attention than they normally would. The minutes of the last meeting are read. The number of patients seen by each doctor is announced. Unsurprisingly, most have been seen by residents rather than fully-trained surgeons. When even the executive head of a department earns only a few thousand dollars per month in the public service, most physicians try to spend as much time as possible at their private clinics. This leaves a group of semi-trained residents to guard the trenches of medical care without supervision, equipment, or support.

As happens every week, one of the consultants complains about the lack of clinical work from his fellow surgeons. As happens every week, the chairman notes his concerns, agrees with him, points out that little can be done at present, and expresses hope that something will be done eventually – Three weeks later, one of my neighbours, a middle-aged woman who was once this same consultant’s patient, will describe to me a case of semi-benign neglect suffered at his hands. She was briefly paralysed and is now forced to wear a brace for the rest of her life. The irony surprises me only a little. The system is difficult.

The meeting continues. Amna and I try not to fall asleep.

"What is the situation for Operating Theatre 7?" asks the chairman.

"Mr. Chairman, as you know, Theatre 7 was meant to open on Monday," responds one of the consultants. "Unfortunately, this has not yet happened."

"Though the original problem has been fixed. Results from samples in the theatre show that it is still not clean of anaerobic germs. We have asked that it be properly cleaned again and new samples taken."

Another doctor feels the need to clarify. "Mr. Chairman, the problem arises because there is a trash heap smelling of feces outside the theatre. It has been dumped there by The AIDS Support Organisation next door. Also Mr. Chairman, stray dogs have taken to perfuming the theatre’s outer walls."

It would be funny if the results weren’t so tragic.

The various wards declare their numbers of patients seen, discharged, admitted, and transferred. With the central operating theatre closed for nearly a month, the number of patients awaiting treatment is growing constantly. Every week the bottleneck is supposed to be cleared. It never is. It will be almost another month before the situation is rectified.

Reports come in from the nursing units in the different wards. "Sister, how fares your section?" the chairman asks the nurse in charge of the central ward, 2CO. "Not good," comes the reply, "We are severely understaffed."

"Sister, how many staff do you need?"

"We need at the very least eight to be able to care for those with spinal injuries and others requiring constant care."

The chairman addresses her with the Luganda word for healer: "How many staff do you have Musao?"

"Mister chairman, we have eight but two are on leave and may never return and two have spinal cord injuries."

In a room full of spinal specialists, some snicker at her casual diagnosis.

"What do you mean spinal injuries?" comes the forcefully benign reply.

"Mr. Chairman, one has a slipped disc, the other has weakness and can not bend her back without excruciating pain."

The snickering dies.

"Musao, are there any other difficulties?"

The question is a little incredulous. What other difficulties could there be?

"Yes. One of the remaining four is pregnant."

There is nervous laughter in patches throughout the room. The chairman pauses. He knows the difficulties. He wishes they would disappear. Beyond comforting words, he is powerless to help. "So, in fact, you have three nurses to perform the work of eight?" he asks.

"Yes, Mr. Chairman." The nurse takes a deep breath. She is steeling herself for the inevitable lack of support. After a short pause, she continues. "Mr. Chairman, we have all been working double and triple shifts for several weeks. I fear we shall be unable to continue."

The understatement in her next words lands with all the subtle dark humour of a mortar round striking a balloon factory:

"Mr. Chairman, we are very tired."

More words. More promises to raise the matter with the administration. Cold comfort without the power to effect change.

It would gain more sympathy if it hadn’t become routine.

Rounds on the Orthopaedics Wards

Three weeks before this meeting I assisted on my first surgery. It was almost accidental. The attending physician had me inadvertently providing the extra pair of hands needed to allow him to go somewhere more profitable. On the way to the operating theatre, I stopped with Dr. Otiano, one of the residents, to collect blood from the hospital blood bank. "Have a look in that fridge there," he said, pointing to the far wall. "All of the blood supply for the entire hospital is in there."

"You mean this fridge?" I asked, "That can’t be right, there’s only one unit."

"No. That’s probably right," he replied with a smile of stoic dejection, "There’s always a shortage."

To add insult to injury, the unit was AB positive, a type of blood useful to less than four percent of the population. "Sometimes some of the departments hoard their own," he continued, "You go ahead to the theatre. I’ll try to find more."

Unfortunately, this is a recurring story at Mulago, Uganda’s largest, proudest, most well-equipped hospital. Hundreds of well-trained physicians, nurses, and support staff, people in whose treatment I would be confident in any Canadian hospital, left to work without beds, tools, drugs, finances, support, or in some cases, even gauze.

On a recent visit to the Pediatric Infectious Disease (PID) clinic, Amna and I found a similar story. Children waited in crowded rooms for nutritional support, lab work, clinicians, and counselors. Bright cheerful paintings of animals played on the walls. A teacher gave English lessons to a group waiting seated on the floor. Thanks to the AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, PID is synonymous with HIV. Every child there was HIV positive. Every single one.

We were visiting through Canadian Feed the Children (CFTC), our medical class’ official charity. Money made available from charitable groups has allowed this clinic to increase its capacity several times over in recent years. It is still not nearly enough.

Infected children need more than drugs to survive. They need adequate food and resources to keep them healthy while the drugs take effect. How do you provide food for infected children when there is not enough for their siblings? How do you counsel teenagers, patients who have lived with HIV since birth, about their budding sexuality? What do you do for families too poor and too far from a clinic to receive treatment?

As we walked past the lesson, our nurse guide made an announcement. I caught the Luganda word for "We thank you," before a scattered applause began. What had we done to deserve such a reaction? "She’s just informed them that you are Canadians who have helped by making donations to support this clinic," Christina, CFTC’s Country Director, told us. Too stunned to reply, we watched the lesson continue.

"We are moving forward in Uganda," the teacher intoned.

"We are moving forward in Uganda," the children repeated.

"God, I hope so," I thought to myself as pat of me wanted to laugh and the rest to cry.

Sadly, HIV is not the only burden overwhelming Uganda’s limited health resources. Earlier this month, I manned an educational booth with Jacqui, the chief physician in Mulago’s Casualty – British for Emergency – department. We tried to teach children the basics of first aid, the ABCs: Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. In Canada, the goal is to teach people how to stabilize friends and family until they can be rushed to hospital. Here these lessons seem sadly impotent.

Jacqui

In Canada, if someone stops breathing, one helps with mouth to mouth resuscitation. Here, with a bleeding victim, mouth to mouth is an invitation to infection. Our booth had pictures of masks used for protection from infection. They are both unaffordable and unavailable in Uganda. Other first aid lessons seemed equally inept. To avoid spinal injuries, if someone hurts their neck or back, Canadian children are taught not to move them until help arrives. Sadly, with no public ambulance system, in Uganda help will never arrive. Moving the injured is a necessary evil.

Jacqui is a vibrant woman, cheerful, quick, and no-nonsense, someone with whom I would be honoured to work one day. Soon after we met, she asked me in frustrated disgust, "Do you know how many quadriplegics we could save if we just had proper spinal boards available?"

I empathised. Throughout June and July, as mangos, avocados, and a local olive-like fruit called Jambuya were all in season, broken necks from falls out of trees had become so common that the orthopaedics residents had begun referring to them as "Mango Syndrome."

For Jacqui, the lack of understanding, funding, and support has become almost unbearable. "It’s a silent epidemic," she told me, referring to injuries. They are the third leading cause of death amongst the young in developing countries. We see them as the inevitable result of poverty. They are anything but inevitable. Were they the result of some virus or bacteria, we would be hearing as much of injuries as we do of HIV, TB, and Malaria. As is, very rarely does anyone stop to consider how many everyday mishaps, quickly treated and discharged at home, become life-altering for the poor.

Case in point, Osteomyelitis. It is a disease almost unheard of in Canada. In Uganda’s hospitals, it is seen every day. A cut becomes infected. Through neglect and poor conditions, the infection spreads to the bone. There is some pain and swelling. This fades. Most patients don’t seek medical care. Transport costs to hospital are too expensive. The infection consumes the bone, leaving it so brittle it snaps. Broken shards spread in the wound. Some of them regrow, combining into a weak, misshapen, useless core. Left long enough, the only available treatment is amputation.

It’s something I’ve seen first-hand. My first surgery was on a thirteen year old girl. Arriving calmly in the operating theatre, she seemed nervous but not scared. As Dr. Otiano arrived with the blood for which he had been searching, we both made our way to the sinks to prepare.

When we returned, the girl was anaesthetized and draped. The young woman I had seen was gone. In her place, an anonymous arm poked out from under green sheets. "So," I asked, remembering with confidence the girl’s nervous but reassured appearance, "what’s our plan of attack?"

"Oh," Dr. Otiano replied, "A simple amputation from just above the elbow."

First Surgery

During the surgery, we made small talk while arteries, nerves, and muscles were severed. I reminded myself about clinical detachment. The arm was anonymous. The girl was not. When I could, I placed my free hand over the green draping, feeling the spot where her stomach rose and fell, reminding myself that a person lay beneath. When the procedure was done, the arm was discarded into a shining steel bucket.

We paused for a break. Sitting down outside, Dr. Otiano completed his paperwork. Soon, we were scrubbing for our next surgery, a young boy.

"What’s this one?" I asked with forced casualness. Observing the movements of my hands under the water, I felt a sense of gratitude and shame I had never felt before.

"Amputation. Lower-right limb. Just below the knee," came the reply.

Après la Mort, la Vie Continue

2006-07-30T14:15:00.000-04:00

Rwanda is beautiful.

The Country of a Thousand Hillsides – Le Pays des Milles Collines – it gives the impression of a rumpled blanket, covering the fitful sleep of a slow unseen giant. The countryside is a patchwork of sloping banana tree fields and vegetable patches, dropping down into tea plantation valleys. The wispy clouds above are complimented by the green of the tea leaves below, a deep, pleasant, and relaxing colour. It’s almost enough to make one forget the nauseating stop and start of the curves in the road, and the steep unforgiving drop just a short driver’s error away to the left.

Just across the Ugandan border, the road provides its own stern warning: the charred skeleton of a petrol truck, lying at the bottom of a hundred-foot black scar. The smoke has mostly cleared as we drive past.

Rwandan Landscape

Our driver continues obliviously onward, treating the speedometer like a bungee cord as he bounces between sixty and thirty kilometers per hour at every bend. The speedometer is likely broken anyway. It has been my experience that in poor countries, they always are. Exhausted from several days of travel, I curl up in my seat, resigned to whatever fate has in store.

I am in Rwanda at the invitation of my friend Aska, a Polish medical student I met in Cambodia last year. She is on an International Federation of Medical Students exchange at the University of Butare in the south of the country.

Arriving in the capital after a ten hour bus ride I am soon informed that the last bus to Butare has already left. I find an alternative route on public transport. Four hours and several dozen stops later, I saunter into a restaurant in Butare, a dusty mess with a large backpack. Thankfully, Aska is there waiting with friends. She’s already entertained them with the story of how we met, traveling on the roof of a pickup in Cambodia. My ragged entrance seems appropriate.

They invite me to join them at a dance club. Émanuel, a Rwandan medical student in his final year of studies, is warm and friendly. He seems to take a special delight in looking after foreign visitors. As the girls gyrate their way to distant corners of the club, he stays behind to make sure that Laurent, a French student, and I are both comfortable. We’ve both been awkwardly practicing our respective versions of the white man shuffle. Surrounded by the kind of booty-shaking that can only be seen in Africa, our lack of rhythm draws attention.

We are soon joined by other enthusiastic Rwandans, men and women who are happy to offer words of encouragement, "No, no. Don’t worry so much. Relax! Have fun! Just feel the music. … Much better!"

This is Rwanda. At first glance, it is a country beautiful, friendly, and open. Old men pass the time playing Igisoro, a subtly complex game of sixty-four stones in thirty-two piles. Women sidestep around puddles and people, carrying snack trays for sale. Children shout "Bonjour Mzungu!" at passing foreigners. An exception amongst poor countries, the government passes progressive laws, and the people actually follow them. Every motorcyclist wears a helmet. Taxis even carry an extra one for their passengers. Every major road is paved with barely a pothole in sight. Plastic bags have been replaced by environmentally friendly paper ones. In the hospitals, volunteers dressed in pink clean and tend the grounds.

"Il y a un esprit de développement ici." – "There is a feeling of progress here," I told a Rwandan named Émile when he asked what I thought of his country. He had just been telling me about the genocide. Émile is a Tutsi. He survived by moving from one hiding place to the next. Several members of his family weren’t so lucky. "Après la mort, la vie continue" – "After death, life continues," he replied.

That is also Rwanda, a country littered with genocide memorials and mass graves, a country in which only twelve years ago, men, women, and children butchered men, women, and children.

After World War II, European civilians could claim they were unaware of the genocide in their midst. In Rwanda, there is no such option. With the limited resources of a poor country, the Hutu massacred the Tutsi with whatever was ready to hand: machetes, hoes, and clubs. For a hundred days, people murdered from sunrise to sunset, stopping only for food and rest. It was hard work. Those Hutu who refused to help were often massacred alongside the Tutsi. Unable to escape, victims were gathered in groups to watch and await their turn.

The volunteers in pink do not work voluntarily. They are génocidaires, former participants in the genocide. With limited resources and countless accused, Rwanda relies on traditional courts. Every week, businesses close so that the population can convene to hear evidence. The guilty are usually sentenced to public service. It has been twelve years since the genocide ended. The lists of accused are still long.

Génocidaires at the Hospital in Butare

I gave a talk in January at a synagogue, contrasting the Cambodian Genocide with the Jewish Holocaust. "How can you begin to compare such atrocities?" I was asked. Here I didn’t have to. The Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum had already done so, with displays of the mandatory identity cards that labeled Tutsis, the propaganda that dehumanized them, and the tools that killed them.

The Hutu Ten Commandments, a document widely circulated by the Hutu Power movement before the genocide, exhorts all Hutu: "Show no mercy to the Tutsi!" It forbids marrying Tutsi, frequenting Tutsi businesses, or showing kindness even to Tutsi within one’s own family. Substitute Jew for Tutsi and the commandments provide a good summary of the Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany.

The museum contains displays of other genocides from the Armenians to Nazi Europe, from Cambodia to Yugoslavia. The Children’s Memorial in the basement is a darkened room in which the names of children are recited in an overwhelming seemingly endless list. If it were filled with the lights of flickering candles, it would be a perfect replica of the Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. There is even a hallway paying tribute to righteous Hutus who risked their lives to save Tutsi. At its centre is a quote from the Talmud in English, French, and Kinyarwanda, "He who saves one life, it is as if he had saved the world."

There is an eery feeling in the museum, a sense that though we know nearly nothing of the history of these people, they know us and ours well. That feeling is confirmed by a glass plaque in the final display, the museum’s central unspoken message:

"When they said ‘Never again’ after the Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?"
–Apollon Kabahizi

It’s a valid question. While Interahamwe militias manned roadblocks, scouring throughout the country for Tutsi to kill, the United States government actively blocked the United Nations from sending troops to intervene. Until the bodies were piled so high that dump trucks were required to remove them, US officials refused to use the word "genocide." Under international law, that word would have required them to do something to stop it.

France was worse. President Mitterrand was so closely linked to the Hutu Power movement, its leaders referred to him affectionately as Mitterahamwe. Before the genocide, French troops helped in identifying Tutsi. As the genocidal government collapsed, France unilaterally created its own UN mission under the banner of humanitarianism. New French soldiers arrived enthusiastically, expecting to save lives. Many quickly became disillusioned as they provided a safe retreat for fleeing génocidaires.

After publishing One Boy at the start of this month, I was asked, "It’s great to say you should care but practically what action can you take?"

It’s a difficult question. I spent much of my time in Rwanda thinking on it. Here is my answer: Care actively. Become interested enough in the injustices you hear about at home and abroad to learn about them.

We are active in the things we care about. Governments act on the issues of greatest concern to voters. Corporations act on the needs and demands of consumers and shareholders. We are voters, consumers, and shareholders. When we care as much about an injustice as we do about the environment, health care, and gas prices, corporations and governments will take notice.

We want a simple solution, a path that has already been laid for us: Click a link. Sign a petition. Buy a product. The small solutions are good but they don’t absolve us of the need to educate ourselves. Learn. Don’t stop because a practical direction is unclear. The first step is understanding. Solutions won’t immediately follow but the next step will.

Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian who led the United Nations Peacekeeping force during the genocide, has said repeatedly that with only four thousand troops he could have ended the slaughter. Subsequent military analysts have agreed with him. No country was willing to send those troops. We in Canada had the resources to help. We chose not to do so. The Belgians, who composed most of the troops in the UN mission, withdrew days after the killings began.

"Riskless warfare in pursuit of human rights is a moral contradiction. The concept of human rights assumes that all human life is of equal value. Risk-free warfare presumes that our lives matter more than those we are intervening to save."
– Michael Ignatieff

Four thousand troops could have saved eight hundred-thousand dead.

I met two Australian UN workers this week. They were on leave in Kampala from Southern Sudan. I asked them about the situation under the current peace agreement.

"Peace agreement?! There’s no peace and no agreement. Most of the groups didn’t sign it. Many of the remaining groups, Janjiweed and others, might as well be working for the government. No worries though. There will be peace in Sudan. It’s coming just as soon as they’ve eliminated or pushed all the undesirables across the border."

"Après la mort, la vie continue."

Unfortunately, neglect, apathy, and genocide do too.

As for the Rwandans, the government while coping with the same problems of poverty faced by its neighbours, has done a miraculous job of keeping both sides living peacefully side by side. Artwork in national galleries more often than not has titles like "Reconciliation," "Peace," "Compassion."

Rwandan Art

The Tutsi still remember the murder of their families. The Hutu still mistrust and fear the Tutsi. Witnesses set to appear before the traditional courts still disappear. So do former génocidaires. Nevertheless, the Rwandans are moving forward. As Émile told me, "Most génocidaires were poor and angry. They were told to kill, coerced to kill, and they killed. They did not know what they were doing. If one of these now understands his actions and wants forgiveness, we must forgive." After all, what alternative is there?

"The only conclusion I can reach is that we are in desperate need of a transfusion of humanity. If we believe that all humans are human, then how are we going to prove it? It can only be proved through our actions. Through the dollars we are prepared to expend to improve conditions in the Third World, through the time and energy we devote to solving devastating problems like AIDS, through the lives of our soldiers, which we are prepared to sacrifice for the sake of humanity."
–Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil

Life in Kampala

2006-07-14T13:18:00.000-04:00

Providing a break from heavier subjects, the lighter side of life in Kampala.

Mobile Phone

Ladies and gentlemen, as seen on countless Kampala street corners, the world’s most mobile phone:

World’s most Mobile Phone

It’s even got wheels.

The Equator

“Hey Australia! Which way does the water in your toilet drain?”
&tab;–Bart Simpson

Thanks to the valuable scientific knowledge in The Simpsons, many of us learned that while water drains counter-clockwise in our Northern Hemisphere, it drains clockwise in the Southern one.

So, I’ve been asking myself ever since, what does it do at the equator?

About a ninety-minute drive from Kampala, there are three small water basins set up at the equator where one can try the experiment oneself. The first basin is about ten meters into the Northern Hemisphere, the next directly on the equator, and the last about ten metres into the Southern Hemisphere.

At the exorbitant charge of nearly three dollars, I opted not to try the experiment.

Standing at the Equator

Luckily for science, weeks of staring at my bathtub drain, which according to the GPS unit I borrowed from the Injury Control Centre at 0º 20.63’ North latitude is pretty near the equator, have yielded the following result:

Counter-clockwise about half the time, clockwise the rest.

Purchasing Pants

Arriving for our first day at Mulago hospital, Amna and I immediately noticed a problem. We were underdressed. Luckily, with much haggling, used clothes are available here at very reasonable prices. This is part of a general trend throughout Africa. When second hand clothes dealers in rich countries are overstocked, they ship in bulk to Africa at discounted rates. These clothes are so cheap that local manufacturers are often unable to compete, effectively destroying domestic garment production in many countries. It’s a twisted irony. Clothes that were donated to help the poor rob them of employment.

I’ve been told that in some places these shipments are called “Dead white men’s clothes.” The logic is that no one in their right mind would give away perfectly good clothes for nothing. When nearly everyone is poor, fashion is a non-issue. Besides, 1970s polyester dries more quickly in the sun than cotton blends do.

About a week before my departure I had been telling a friend about this problem. “Really?” she’d responded. “I don’t want to donate clothes just to have them cause problems overseas. Which groups are responsible?”

It was an astute question. “I’m ignorant,” I replied. I’ve heard of the trend but I don’t know if it’s Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or what. Once the local clothing manufacturers are wiped out, I’m not even sure if the process could be stopped without leaving whole countries without clothing. I haven’t done the research.”

Back in Kampala, Amna, some friends, and I investigated Owino market, an amorphous heap of wooden and tin stalls stretching endlessly through the downtown core. It is a place so full of pickpockets that even local Ugandans dare not bring more than a few small bills with them inside. The sight of three potentially rich foreigners started a ripple through the shopkeepers. As the word, “pants,” escaped my lips, I was surrounded by eager men with measuring tapes, proffering me endless pairs of Khakis.

One of them had a green Value Village tag on the waist.

Value Village, j’accuse.

Pants Shopping at Owino

Shylocke?

Ugandans are a religious lot. Muslims drive taxis with Bismillah emblazoned on the front. Christians pepper their buildings with biblical references. For the New Testament Scholars there are frequent Agape Health Clinics. For those who prefer Hebrew, there are The Haggai Nursery School, The El-Shaddai Guest House, and the Shekhinah Prayer Centre. In my opinion though, there is one Hebraic business here that inadvertently tops the list:

Shalom Moneychanger

Yes fellow Israelites, you read correctly. Despite all our hard work to move beyond the stereotype, he changes money at a business called Shalom.

The World Cup Downtown

"Which team are you supporting?"

Right after "How are you?" and "Where are you from?" it’s the most common question I’ve been asked here. Wandering the streets of downtown Kampala after sunset, one often feels like a fish swimming between human islands that stand thirty men deep. The focus is always the same, a single small television screen resting in a shop window, above a restaurant counter, or even someone’s flat. The men trail out as if queuing in a bread line, never moving, always waiting and attentive. Often the TV is muted, as someone in the crowd has brought a radio from which the commentary can be heard in Luganda.

The rule here is solidarity. Though Uganda did not qualify for the World Cup, the teams to support are all African.

"Ivory Coast but they didn’t do so well. Now they are out," I responded one day in surgery, "What about you?"

"What about me?!" was the laughing response, "My skin is black, I support Ghana!"

By this time, with an impressive win over the United States, Ghana was the only African team left. Riding a matatu as the sun set this evening, I was perplexed. The van had stopped short. It was turning away from its usual route.

"Conductor, stage!" I called, asking to be let out. Amna and I exited, strolling around the ever denser downtown television islands as we approached the core. It soon became clear why the matatu had stopped. People filled the city’s central artery, shoulder to shoulder on Kampala Road. They stood calmly, expectantly, staring upwards into the distance.

We followed their gaze up to a large billboard, advertising the greatest public service I had yet seen in Uganda. It was broadcasting the World Cup game. In the streets of Kampala, thousands of Ugandans stood side by side, silently cheering the Ghanaians as they struggled with Brazil.

Already late for our dinner meeting, we stopped. I can not describe the energy of that moment, thousands of people together in the heart of a major city, happy, expectant, and hopeful.
The game was nearly done.

"Hey Mzungu!" someone called from the side of the road, "Who do you support?"

"Ghana!!" Amna shouted with a smile, "I am in Africa! Who else?"

Ghana lost that night. Still I wish that I could have bottled that moment. Never have I seen so many strangers so happily united, stoic in a single hope.

One Boy

2006-07-09T14:35:00.000-04:00

I noticed him on the first day in Loubugumou. To the dozens of children not in school, the sight of two white people with clipboards was the most exciting event in months. They let us know by gathering round, asking us endless questions in Luganda that we could not understand. We answered with English that was equally incomprehensible to them. Together we made a game, a vain attempt to start them on the road to literacy, calling out letters printed on the bottom of a water bottle or scratched in the dirt.

Letters in the Dirt

One boy had come with the others to pay his respects. He looked to be about ten years old, leading a group of two or three younger children for whom he had decided to be responsible. He was unlike the others. When he saw what my digital camera could do, he made no attempt to see endless pictures of himself. Instead, he hurried to find a young girl of about four, carrying her back so that she could join in the fun.

He stayed longer than the others, smiling, drawing doodles in the dirt that covered our pickup, and raising his shirt to reveal a protruding lump the size of a small fist where his belly button should have been.

I stopped watching the passing motorists. "Amna," I called out, in my calmest possible voice, "I know I’m not qualified to tell but does that look like an umbilical herniation to you?" Translated into English, umbilical herniation means "Intestine pushing its way out through the belly button."

"Oh yeah. It’s easily treatable. We used to see them at the clinic in Ghana all the time."

"You’ve seen these before?" I asked, "So, without treatment, what’s the likely outcome?"

There followed a look that spoke with silent finality.

In theory, every Ugandan has access to universal health coverage. It remains only a theory though. Coverage extends to those able to afford travel to the hospital, medications that are almost forever out of stock in the public wards, and lost time helping to support their families.

To the best of my knowledge, eighty percent of Ugandans work in subsistence agriculture. With luck and hard work, they grow what they need to feed their families, with a little remaining to buy clothes and tools. With poor luck, transport costs, and unexpected hospital bills the average Ugandan family will begin to lose what little they have.

I looked over at our guide, Jerome.

"Amna, do me a favour," I asked with forced casualness, "Ask Jerome what would happen if we told the boy’s parents that his problem is both potentially dangerous and easily treated."

She returned a moment later. "He says the problem is common here. The parents will expect you to transport and treat him yourself."

Here was my dilemma: Similar things happen every day. It wasn’t a revelation to me. I had known the statistics for a long time. Thirty thousand people die every day from hunger and preventable illness. Every day. Six thousand are children. Though I knew this indirectly, until that moment those children had always seemed like someone else’s responsibility. There I stood, a budding health professional with the resources and connections to whisk this boy away to the side of a well-trained surgeon and back again.

Was it my responsibility this time?

I continued counting motorcyclists, trying to decide what to do. I opted to wait for an opportunity to check with some of the doctors from whom I’ve been learning in Kampala.

The response came during rounds of the hospital the following day. "It’s quite common here," I was told, "Generally, you don’t need to worry about it unless the bowel becomes twisted or the blood supply is interrupted. Then it’s serious. Actually often the larger hernias are safer than the little ones."

"Oh good," I said, feeling both surreal and relieved.

On the drive back to Loubugumou, I considered this re sponse. The boy was in no immediate danger. I had dodged the responsibility. There was nothing I needed to do. Still, I had not dodged the question.

Between malnutrition, unsafe water, and poor sanitation, these children have far more than umbilical herniations with which to contend and no reliable access to health care with which to do so. In a country with supposedly universal health coverage, they are the rule not the exception.

What if the boy had needed treatment urgently? What difference if I poured my resources into treating this one child? Did he deserve it more than the others?

Worst of all, what kind of a system would prompt me to ask such a question?

The resources exist to protect all of these children. In Canada alone, we spend more each year on ice cream than we do combating global poverty. If the numbers were reversed, proper nutrition, safe water, and actual health care could be made available to every one of them, not only in Uganda, but also in several other countries as well. I’ve read it before. Somehow though, when I reach a Baskin Robbins or the frozen foods section of a Loblaws, it always seems so distant.

Having had two weeks to think about it, I’ve come to some conclusions. The resources exist. We have the power to make them available. That boy is no more my responsibility now for having been right in front of me than he was before.

He was always my responsibility.

The trade, economic, and political imbalances that lead to extreme poverty are subjects wide enough for several books but the central point is this:

There is a global system that allows for this kind of poverty. Canada is powerful enough to help change that system. We can influence our government to represent the causes in which we believe – We have the power to change that system. "It’s not my fault," "It’s not my responsibility," and "I’m only one person," are about as valid an excuse for apathy as "I was only following orders."

When we arrived in Loubugumou the following day, the children were there, happy to see us. We began our observations as they laughingly clambered over the pickup truck, shouting and joking in Luganda. Several of them were running around without shirts nearby in the tropical heat. This time, I noticed what I had not seen before: countless umbilical herniations, only smaller.

"All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
–Edmund Burke

Cracking Heads?

2006-07-03T14:23:00.000-04:00

Passing under towering Mukavu trees, our driver eases gently along the dirt roads of Mukono district. In front of us, a flat-bed overloaded with firewood teeters dangerously on top of a mound of dirt. The mound is one in a regular series. This is a country in which SUV drivers have an excuse.

Before our arrival in Uganda, we had proposed a study to measure how often motorcyclists here used helmets. A law was recently passed requiring that drivers, but not passengers, wear them. No one here seems to know why. As motorcyclists in Kampala try to save the twenty dollars needed to buy proper headgear, one sees everything from construction hardhats to equestrian caps bobbing through the traffic flows.

Mukavu Tree

When we first arrived in Kampala, we learned that our study had become redundant. The Injury Control Centre of Uganda (ICCU), where we now work, was recently contracted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to perform the same study on a far grander scale. So, we adapted. We altered our plans to complement the larger study. We decided to leave Kampala, to learn the effect the new law is having outside city limits.

We are in search of a “rural” town, somewhere not too far from Kampala, so as to save on gas, but not too close, so as to create a reasonable contrast with the city. At the end of a bumpy lane, just down the road from a mud brick kiln, we find Loubugumou. It is a small collection of buildings and fruit stands, full of dust, playing children, and idle men. We place ourselves in front of the “See How God Loves” chapati shop, next door to the “Jesus Cares” barbershop, with a clear view of the road and the “Trust in God Soda Depot and Payphone” across the street.

Loubugumou

Over the next several hours and days we watch the road, ticking off riders and passenger as they glide past. The children entertain themselves with loud shouts of “Mzungu bye!” a semi-accurate mishmash of English and Luganda meant to convey, “Hello white person!” The women mind their fruit stands or pass by on errands. The men sit idly in front of their shops and motorcycles, awaiting a customer. Occasionally one will ride his bike morosely across the street to a fruit stand. Amna and I will debate if this qualifies him to be counted in the study.

At the end of the day the men gather in circles around benches to play board games. One of them offers to teach me to play. The board resembles Sorry! encased in a picture frame. Four men play for a pot worth slightly more than two dollars. It’s more than most earn for a day’s labour. It’s more than they or their families can afford to lose. I ask permission to take a photo. One man agrees on behalf of the group. Another, who speaks no English, is unwilling to be caught on film. He flees at the sight of my camera. I thank them in Luganda and the crowd laughs.

Board Game

At the end of a week, having observed nearly nine-hundred drivers and their passengers, there is neither a construction helmet, nor an equestrian cap in sight. A quick glance at our survey sheets shows that only about one in fifty were wearing any helmet at all. Those locals educated enough to speak English have been happy to explain the cause.

Motorcycle helmets aren’t designed for tropical climates. They’re hot, sticky, and uncomfortable. Motorcycles are often shared between several drivers. To save costs, they also share one helmet. Many are worried about head lice, communicable infections, and sores. For women, who spend a large portion of their limited income styling their hair, a helmet is guaranteed damage on their investment.

More importantly, no one seems clear on why helmets are necessary. It is thus unsurprising that as police presence dwindles outside the capital, so too does helmet usage. Some riders even take to carrying their helmets under one arm, popping them on their heads when they pass a police check and removing them again afterwards.

There has been no public education on the benefits of helmet usage and no precedent in local history to explain them. Some believe that the government passed the law requiring helmets because of pressure from donor countries. Others believe that it was done simply to imitate richer nations. Most are less concerned about the reasons than the inconvenience it causes. One man, who tells us his name is Mr. Ibrahim, explains that though he knows that in our country helmets have been linked to lower rates of injury, no study has ever been done to prove that this is true Uganda.

I flash back to a man I knew in Cambodia, working with the WHO and the Ministry of Health to promote helmet usage amongst motorcycle taxi drivers. “Months of ad campaigns, sit-down sessions, and public education, and when we ask them what their number one reason for wearing a helmet is, do you know what they say?! To keep dust out of their hair! Aargh!!”

I added the “Aargh!!” There were more expletives in the original version.

Seeing that helmets damage local hairstyles, the Ugandans don’t have even this slim motivation. Having visited nearby Kowolo hospital, notorious for treating the most road traffic accidents in the country, I can see their point. The hospital’s logbooks are full of fractured legs, arms, hands, and feet that occurred on the roads. Though many of their most urgent cases are not recorded properly, in the past five months not a single skull or neck fracture has been logged. Ignorant as I am of the statistics proving the benefits of helmet usage, I’m forced to wonder if maybe leg braces or wrist guards might not be a more appropriate measure.

In the meantime, with our data collected, we pull out from in front of the barber shop one last time, waving goodbye to smiling children and thanking the men for their hospitality. Some look up long enough to call out “Goodbye mzungu!” as we pass.

With only two short months in the country, there is little we can do to contribute to the larger question of how useful helmets are. At best our information will show how effective the new law is – the short answer is that outside of Kampala, it isn’t. For my part, I’d be curious to see someone answer Mr. Ibrahim’s challenge to prove that helmet usage prevents injuries in Uganda. In the meantime, without resources to enforce the law, or public education to explain it, to me it seems naïve to expect Ugandans to abide by it.

Kampala

2006-06-25T15:08:00.000-04:00

The city drapes itself over hills and small valleys, covering them in patches of rust-coloured metal roofs, dusty soccer fields, and green lawns. Its roads circulate in loops and branches, fading outwards into towns where young children plod alongside, carrying the day’s water on their heads in yellow plastic gas jugs. Universal primary education means that those able to afford uniforms, pens, paper, and books, will spend the next few hours at school. The other forty percent will help their parents in houses and fields, collecting firewood, and playing at the side of roads that slowly spiral back into the city.

Soccer Field

Children with branches rolling used bicycle tires along the dirt road gradually give way to Matatus, fourteen passenger minivans that race with reckless disregard for obstacles and each other into the city’s heart, a sea of white metal, where all routes converge. Here ordered chaos reigns. The unwary find themselves startled and sandwiched between white behemoths while vendors hawk their wares, oblivious to the chaos, as they gracefully weave through the whirling traffic.

Central Taxi Park

Along the sides of the park, stretching throughout the downtown core, street vendors recline next to mats covered in cuff links, prayer books, wallets, and bibles. Next to them are newspapers, weighted down with shards of broken glass to keep them from escaping in the breeze. The New Vision proudly proclaims the government’s accomplishments. The Daily Monitor decries its excesses. The Red Pepper falls back on Freud, selling the latest crimes, collisions, and scandals with only the most graphic photos that can be found to illustrate them. The truth lies somewhere in between. No one seems certain what it is but it makes for lively discussion.

Never empty, conductors attract new passengers to the minivan taxis, proclaiming their destinations in a chant: Kamwokya Ntinda Bokoto, Kamwokya Ntinda Bokoto, Kamwokya Ntinda Bokoto. As the tarmac arteries leave the city’s heart, its few towering buildings give way to smaller blocks of flats. Motorcycles and Matatus circulate through the routes, carrying passengers at breakneck speeds in chaotic flows where signaling is optional. Sometimes necks are broken. More often it is legs, arms, and hips.

For these unlucky many, the destination is Mulago, the country’s largest hospital. Here wounds are tended and illnesses treated with whatever supplies are available. Between its large central building and outlying clinics, the hospital covers a hillside. Spread out on the grass between the cilincs, visitors wash laundry in plastic buckets, leaving clothes to dry on the lawn.

The Grounds at Mulago

Storks, ungainly, awkward, and even ugly on the ground, swoop gracefully through the sky overhead. To them the hospital must seem a small sea of bed sheets dotted by red-roofed clinics. Some of these birds will stop to land less than a kilometer away near our house, attracted by the prospect of a quick snack at the garbage pile generated by our buildings.

Storks near our Flat

At the end of the day we follow the same route on the ground, returning to an apartment in this anonymous block of brown flats. Peopled by Ugandans, South Asians, and even the occasional white foreigner, it’s an open, friendly, and welcoming community.

Our Flat

This evening we’ll walk up the hill, along the wooden shops that line the road outside. At the top is the hotel from which we access the Internet. On the way back down the sun will have set. With no power tonight, the road will be left in darkness, creating an effect I have seen in no other city on Earth. Buildings powered on distant hillsides will shine in small patches of light as they salute a vast field of stars above.

The Dark Continent

2006-06-11T13:48:00.000-04:00

The first thing noticeable when flying over Toronto by night is a vast patchwork quilt of lights, twinkling in grids and swirls, condensing into the heart of downtown, and fading into distant farmland. Flying over Dubai in the daytime, I had been greeted by a city rising out of endless sand dunes to confront a tranquil sea. From the moment the captain had announced our descent over Entebbe, I had been eagerly peering out the window, awaiting my first sight of the sparklings lights that would outline my new home.

The first thing noticeable when landing in Entebbe at night is that nothing is noticeable at all. There was neither the vast Ugandan landscape, nor the sparseness of the airport. In fact, until the moment the plane touched down on the runway, I remained in that same position, peering out the window, wondering when the cloud cover would part. It took me a moment to register that the bumps I’d felt were the plane landing and that the few small rectangular lights I saw approaching us were the main airport building.

My classmate, Amna, and I were met at the airport by Fred, our driver for the thirty-two kilometer journey into the capital, Kampala. It was around the tenth kilometer that I became aware of the street lights. They were along the meridian in the middle of the road, looking much as they do anywhere on Earth, with one important exception. Not a single one of them was on.

Kampala is a city of contrasts. Populated by apartments and villas along its main streets and hilltops, the bulk of its citizens live in metal-roofed shacks. It contains the potential for nearly every modern convenience. There are restaurants serving everything French to Indian cuisine, a bowling alley, movie theatres playing the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and street vendors selling roasted maize. There are large illuminated billboards and traffic lights that drivers mostly ignore. One can only partially blame the drivers though as half the time, the lights are not on.

Power generation here is unable to meet the city’s demand. The result is a series of scheduled rolling blackouts throughout the area that from what I understand are becoming more, rather than less, frequent. Imagine the effect on a small business office, government department, or even budding young restaurant when refrigerators, computers, and lights are only operational every other day.

Amna and I will be here over the coming weeks, learning everything we can about how medicine is practiced in Uganda. Having arrived here only ten days ago, it’s still a novelty for me to live by candlelight every second night. For the hospital workers, government employees, and budding Ugandan entrepreneurs, I can only imagine the frustration.

Last week we began shadowing Mulago hospital’s orthopaedic residents as they made rounds through the casualty wards. There are diseases and injuries here that one would never see back home. Most of them we would consider unnecessary and preventable. The doctors here, with knowledge, textbooks, and communications from Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia are aware of it. They’re also disturbingly matter of fact about it. “Come here. Have a look at this. In your country this infection would have been caught in the early stages. Here it has progressed for six months before the boy’s family decided to send him for treatment.”

The children are perhaps the most surprising, both tough and resilient. We saw a boy last week. The middle third of the bone in his lower-right leg was completely exposed from an open fracture linked to infection. He barely flinched as the doctors removed his bandage to probe the wound. He moaned slightly once or twice. After several minutes, I think I saw a single tear from the pain. There was another young boy the following day in the admissions ward. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. He smiled ear to ear when he saw the strange white people arrive. His right leg had been amputated the previous day.

The people here are some of the friendliest I have seen anywhere. There is a warmth to them that is sometimes guarded but very genuine. I’m wondering how much of it comes from their faith. Every small minivan bus sports a sign with slogans from “God makes wealth,” to “Jesus saves.”

For now, just a short note to let you all know that I’ve arrived safely and to apologise for the long delay in restarting my posts. Though there’s much to tell, I once again find myself in the process of trying to think my way around a new country, context, and culture. Pictures, anecdotes, and thoughts will hopefully start to flow again once I’ve begun to work out how best to convey the experiences here. For those who would like to be in contact, please don’t hesitate to send an e-mail or post a comment to the blog. We’ve purchased a cell phone and can also be reached at 011-256-71-206-1040. The time difference is seven hours.

I hope this finds you all well. Misnamed though it now is, welcome back to the blog.

Map of Uganda

Presentations

2006-01-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

It's been a little while. Med school has been both very interesting and very work-intensive. Though it's kept me far more occupied than I might have liked, the studies and the work are both very rewarding. Some days, I miss Cambodia a lot. Still, I remain happily convinced that I made the right choice in deciding to return to Toronto for my studies.

For those who are interested, I'll be giving a set of three talks, based on my work in Cambodia, in January at the Adath Israel Synagogue: 37 Southbourne off of Bathurst just north of Wilson. You can find a map here and a short outline can be found here. A more detailed outline follows below:

Tiqun Olam in Cambodia

International Development and Tiqun Olam: A Contradiction?
Monday January 9, 7:30pm
What does Jewish Law say about international aid? About development? What practically can we, living in Canada, do to provide help to those who need it most? Drawing on experiences in Cambodia and elsewhere, this talk will provide a practical outline of Jewish law and philosophy as it relates to Tiqun Olam, bettering the world, as well as a critical view of the charity and aid industries.

The Cambodian Genocide from a Jewish Perspective
Monday January 16, 7:30pm
When referring to the Holocaust, the Jewish response is an emphatic 'Never Again!' What does this phrase mean for other peoples? This talk will explore the parallels between the events of the 1975 to 1979 Cambodian genocide and the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.

The Other Side of Tzedakah
Monday January 23, 7:30pm
Where the first talk addressed the problems of charity and aid on an international scale as well as how best to lend one's support to a good cause, this talk will focus on what happens directly in the field. How is charity money spent? What is the most efficient way in which to help the impoverished to achieve sustainable livelihoods and freedom from vulnerability? Examples will be taken directly from my work and experiences overseas in Cambodia.

For those of you attending the Engineers Without Borders National Conference, I'll also be facilitating a two and a half hour session on the practical aspects of International Development work in Cambodia on January 19. I'm looking forward to seeing a few old friends there, recently returned from their own work overseas.

All the best in the New Year!

Moving Vegetables: Just the Beginning

2005-09-08T22:30:00.000-04:00

Below is the final entry from this online journal. It contains a last update from my work on the vegetable packaging and transport project. My apologies for the delay. I’ve been in classes at the University of Toronto Medical School for nearly two weeks now. Life has become very busy very quickly. For anyone wishing to contact me, starting Monday I can be reached at:

69 Ontario St.
Toronto ON
M5A 2V1
(416) 703-4136.
Email: adam dot kaufman at utoronto dot ca
Just replace the ‘dot’s with ‘.’ and the ‘at’ with ‘@’.

Thank you to everyone who offered support, donations, and encouragement during my time in Cambodia. A big thank you also to those of you who helped to disseminate these articles to a larger audience.

There’s a Jewish saying of which a friend of mine is very fond: “Yours is not to complete the work [of repairing the world] but neither is it to shirk from it.” There is a lot of work out there still to be done. There is also a very real power to effect change from here at home.

I remain convinced that the first step in making positive changes in the world around us is through humility and learning. For those who would like to continue to learn and become a little more involved themselves in the kind of work that’s been described here, please click on the links below. Join a workplace campaign. Make a donation. Continue to take a little time on the Internet to learn, disseminate, and encourage others to become a little more socially active.

A small warning though: Knowledge is a two-edged sword. Knowing more means being less able to ignore the problems around you. It means greater responsibility. To borrow from another often quoted Jewish saying: "If not me, who? If not now, when?"

Online Learning
Workplace Campaigns
Getting Involved
Donate to EWB
(If you wish to specify that your funds be allocated specifically to Cambodian work, you must send an e-mail to office@ewb.ca after donating.)
Donate to IDE
(If you wish to specify that your funds be allocated specifically to Cambodian work, please make this request when completing your donation.)

I’ll be giving talks about my work overseas in the coming months. I’ll try to keep this site updated with dates and times as they develop. For now though, please enjoy the last entry.

Moving Vegetables: Just the Beginning

Knowing the countless ways that vegetables are moved about the Cambodian countryside, we had decided to focus on the most popular means of transport: giant one-metre-wide wicker baskets, metal crates, and plastic bags. Collectors moving vegetables from farm to market used the first two. Wholesalers and retailers traveling between markets used the latter one. Sunday, our head of R&D came up with a whole slew of possible designs to counter the excess weight, poor ventilation, and trapped heat and moisture that cause spoilage.

Coming up with an inexpensive way to modify the plastic bags seemed easy. We punched holes in them to increase ventilation. Modifying the baskets and crates was more difficult. We played around with ideas that involved inserting perforated plastic pipes into the baskets to increase ventilation. We tried to find ways to divide one crate into two so as to limit overloading. We even combined ideas, layering the baskets with a combination of plastic pipes and bamboo platforms. In the end though, the most important part of the design process was to consult with the collectors who would actually be using the baskets. Here’s what they told us:

“We don’t care about spoilage. Our problem is that we pay too much for everything: gas, crates, baskets, vegetables. All of it.”

Given our funding was directly tied to reducing spoilage, this was some pretty demoralising news.

One way or the other though, it was also too important to ignore. We asked them for design ideas. We showed them some of ours. We asked them if they’d be willing to pay for a basket that reduced spoilage and therefore decreased some of their costs. In a fairly grudging manner, after making it clear that they would never consider paying more than an extra 5000 Riel ($1.25USD) for it, they voted for the simplest design as the most preferable, a completely ordinary wicker basket with a bamboo platform on the lid to divide the weight of the vegetables in half and provide increased ventilation.

Adam’s Artistic Talent: Prototype Illustrations from the Meeting

I later learned that Sunday had learned something during our encounter that had completely escaped my attention. A giant wicker basket holding 200kg of vegetables is not a very durable invention. It tends to break after only ten to the market. At 13000 Riel ($3.25USD) per basket, that’s a big expense to someone who quite literally needs to count every penny.

We designed the baskets with extra bamboo reinforcements secured on the outside with metal wires to better support the new platforms. The resulting baskets were so durable that they could hold 400kg for over sixteen hours at a time.

Weight Testing the Baskets

We sent our survey team to the market to begin testing them. The plan was simple. Hire a collector already transporting two baskets to the market. Have that collector transport his or her vegetables using both an old basket and a new basket side by side. Allow retailers purchasing his or her crop at the market to throw away any spoiled vegetables at our expense. Measure the weight of vegetables spoiled in both baskets at the end of the evening. Use some of the vegetables from the baskets to perform similar tests in two sets of plastic bags, some perforated with holes, some not.

It seemed simple enough but this was Cambodia. With a plan that stringent, problems were inevitable. The bamboo made our baskets rigid and hard to manipulate. It poked and scraped the faces of the labourers carrying the baskets. The metal wires poking out of the sides and occasionally gouging them didn’t help matters. Wholesalers were unhappy too. Though we’d paid them a fair rate for their time, we wouldn’t allow them to add water to their vegetables at the market. It would have corrupted our weight measurements.

They also hated the plastic bags. In an effort to make them extra snazzy, Sunday had used a more durable thicker plastic than was normally available. We hadn’t realized that because plastic bags are usually sold by the kilo rather than by the bag, this made them significantly more expensive.

No one was happy. Our survey team spent a sleepless night enduring repeated jibes about their pointless and irritating little experiment that was losing collectors far more money than it was worth. It was painful to watch.

We gave them the following day off to recuperate. It was the least we could do. In the meantime, we rethought our strategy. We rebuilt the baskets. We purchased thinner lighter plastic bags. We placed the bamboo on the inside. We made sure that the metal wires were tied off in a position that would harm neither vegetables nor people. We rebuilt the platforms to be sturdier. We rearranged the entire experiment so as to ease the concerns of the collectors with whom we worked.

Collector Koom Chanee and Surveyor Lao Vannaroth Help Fill Baskets for Testing

We arranged a new meeting with the surveyors to discuss the changes. All seemed to be going swimmingly until I asked the inevitable final question: “Does anyone have any other questions or comments?”

A hand was hesitantly raised. A question of procedure was haltingly asked. It was answered. Another hand was raised, another question asked. Things rapidly went from halting to enthusiastic. The floodgates had been opened. Question after question, concern after concern, criticism after criticism came flooding down upon us. Sunday frantically translated for over an hour as we adapted our plans to the rapidly growing list of concerns.

But it didn’t end. As soon as one concern was addressed, another would be raised. Though Sunday seemed blissfully unaware of it, I soon noticed a recurring pattern. We’d been stuck for an hour addressing the same three problems in an endless loop. I was not in my best form. My project seemed to be crashing for no explicable reason and I was becoming both frustrated and angry. I turned to Sunday and asked him to translate for me for me word for word.

“I’ve noticed we really just seem to have three problems here…” I began.

Wholesalers will refuse not to add water to freshen their vegetables during sale.
Retailers purchasing the vegetables don’t care if they’re spoiled or not so they can’t be relied on to separate out spoiled vegetables.
There’s simply not enough room in a crowded market to be constantly checking the plastic bags for spoiled vegetables

“My Khmer is horrible and I know I’m missing a lot, but are there any other problems being raised…?” I asked.

“Well, the markets are very crowded and I just don’t see how…”

“Problem 3,” I interrupted.

“Not to mention there was this wholesaler who was very angry about the weight he lost from not adding water…”

“Problem 1,” I interrupted again.

A blissful silence filled the room. Linear logic applied in this manner is not part of Cambodian culture. No one was prepared for it. Even Sunday seemed taken by surprise. Everyone sat in a sort of stunned silence as I confidently continued, “With respect to retailers not finding spoiled vegetables,” I continued, “Since the retailers are the ones who define what is or is not sellable, if they don’t think a vegetable is spoiled, for our purposes, it’s not spoiled. This means that there is no problem 2.”

Some surprised murmurs occurred before head-nodding and silence again filled the room.

“With respect to not having room to make measurements,” I once again began, “there are lulls in the market. Don’t worry about making measurements regularly. Just make them when the crowds thin a bit.”

“We can’t do that!” one surveyor cried out.

“Why not?” I inquired, smiling manically, as is customary in Cambodia when one is about to explode with frustration.

“The wholesalers wouldn’t be comfortable with it. They don’t want us getting in their way,” was the enigmatic reply.

“I’m sorry…” I responded, “I’m failing to understand… if you do it at a time when no one is around, there will be plenty of room. You won’t be in their way. Where’s the problem?”

The conversation again went in circles until finally one surveyor forcefully declared, “Even if they’re comfortable with it, we wouldn’t be!”

I now understood what had happened. The surveyors were unwilling to say it, it would have shamed them to do so, but they understandably wanted nothing to do with another failed experiment. To avoid that shame, they were instead trying to dodge the problem by raising enough roadblocks to make it hopefully disappear on its own. I, with my dirty foreigner logic tricks, had nearly ruined this plan. We were at an impasse. The meeting was adjourned.

It was mid-July. I had only one month remaining to my time in Cambodia. The project was already running late. Sunday, Kimsan, and I stayed very late that day, trying to find a solution. Having rebuilt the prototypes, we now needed to rebuild the whole experiment again.

Working overtime that night, we eventually found a solution that was both workable and affordable. Starting the next week we sent three of our surveyors to work alongside a single collector by the name of Koom Chanee. We gained her permission to purchase vegetables from farmers with whom she already had agreements to buy.

Since we owned the vegetables, we could dictate what was done with them. We asked the surveyors to sell them once they’d completed their measurements. They refused point blank. They felt that as literate employees, selling vegetables in a market was beneath their station. This was another cultural roadblock that in my ignorance I had not anticipated. Nevertheless, this one at least was easily overcome. At the end of the night, Koom Chanee made use of her connections to sell off all of the remaining vegetables, giving half the revenue to us and keeping the remainder for herself.

Koom Channee Sells Vegetables at the Night Market

Our collector was overjoyed. She was earning three to five times her normal income. We were overjoyed. Our measurements were reliable and easily obtained. Our budget was not overjoyed. It could only afford to subsidise ten trials before disappearing.

Luckily ten trials were all that was needed to gain results that were nothing short of remarkable. Our new modified baskets cut spoilage in half. The bags cut it down even farther. While an ordinary basket would have been useless after ten trips, I recently received an e-mail telling me that ours are still going strong after 20.

In the meantime, the remaining two surveyors were sent off to distribute prototype baskets amongst collectors working in the area. After using the prototype baskets for between two and three days, their opinions were collected. The collectors loved them. They all wanted to be able to purchase their own. The unusual design of the modified baskets even seemed to attract curious customers at market who later stayed to buy more vegetables.

We took two days to run a blind Pepsi Challenge type test in the market asking people to compare the quality of unspoiled vegetables from both kinds of basket. 75% of people instinctively by look, feel, and smell could tell that the vegetables from the new baskets were better.

By the time the survey ended, word about the new wonder-baskets had spread amongst collectors. Simply because a friend had told them about it, people were able to anticipate their benefits without ever having seen one. For those of you interested in the finer points, the final project report can be found here.

As things stood just before my return home, AQIP, was planning to begin refining and manufacturing these baskets on a wider scale, increasing consumer exposure to them and creating a demand for them that could easily be filled by one or several entrepreneurs. I've since heard that IDE has again be contracted to work on this project on their behalf. There are still many challenges to be overcome. It will be years at best before this project can be said with complete certainty to be a success. Nevertheless, right now, it’s looking very good indeed.

Difficult Topics

2005-08-19T13:28:00.000-04:00

I departed Cambodia on Monday at 2:30pm local time. Forty-two hours, one misbooked flight, and some delayed luggage later, I arrived home Tuesday at 7pm. I’ll be staying at my parents’ house until UofT Meds orientation begins next week. Back on this side of the world, I can be reached at 416-449-3228. I’ll post a final update about the vegetable transport project and contact info about my new place next week.

There are two topics that are central to understanding life in Cambodia about which I still haven’t written. I didn’t want to try and tackle them until I felt I could do them proper justice. Though I’m still not sure that I can, I’ve tried my best to do so below.

Genocide

There is one aspect of Cambodian society that makes it almost unique on Earth. Here every native over the age of twenty-six is either a genocide survivor or a perpetrator of genocide. Many are both at once. Consider the respect with which Holocaust survivors are treated in the Jewish community and the absolute contempt reserved for perpetrators of the Nazi genocide. Here both groups live side by side. They have to. They have no choice.

I have a friend in Phnom Penh, an old man with whom I drink coffee or soda every couple of weeks. He worked as an official in the Lon Nol government until the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975. He was one of the few lucky ones. Displaced anonymously far into the northwest, no one around him knew his history. He managed to hide his education. When the Khmer Rouge asked him to read, he feigned ignorance. His younger brother was not so lucky. A young engineer, he was obviously just a little too bright. It got him killed.

A Victim of the Genocide

A short glance at most survivors’ stories reveals the twisted combination of a boring day-to-day existence in which the only constant is suffering and exceptional cruelty: a boy’s mother led off to be killed for daring to warn an old woman not to stumble, families forced to watch as their loved ones were summarily gutted for stealing food, mass starvation, cannibalism, and death.

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodian life rolled onwards between these shocks. Mr. Lang, the oldest employee at IDE, told me over cobs of corn one day about how he had grown fat during the Khmer Rouge regime. He was lucky enough to be in charge of cooking for his group. When rice wasn’t available, corn was distributed. He took advantage of the situation by snatching bites while cooking. Another friend once told me over a bowl of soup about how even after the Khmer Rouge regime, fish was so scarce that her family used to have tiny sword-fights for it with their utensils as they reached into their shared soup bowl.

In a blaze of paranoia that consumed not only peasants, former officers, and intellectuals, but even members of the Khmer Rouge’s elite centre, those accused of spying were brought to Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. There they were tortured for several months, forced to write detailed confessions of their role in a global conspiracy that by the end included the CIA, KGB, and the Viet Cong, transported to the Chinese cemetery at Choeung Ek, told to dig a pit, and then struck at the base of the head with a metal bar, their throats later sawed off with palm fronds. Infant children of those brought to the prison were treated no better. They were seized by the legs and hurled headfirst against a tree. Sometimes they were thrown into the air to be shot or to land on an upraised bayonet. Those named in the confessions soon replaced their unlucky and unwilling accusers at the prison. Of the tens of thousands brought to Tuol Sleng prison, only seven were still alive when the Vietnamese arrived in 1979.

Tree on which Babies were Killed at Choeung Ek

How do Cambodians put such insanity behind them? How could any victim live alongside the perpetrator of such crimes? The answer itself is very Cambodian. With a unique flair for avoiding unpleasantness, the perpetrators have learned that it’s far easier to blame a mysterious superior than to accept responsibility.

Here, no one is responsible. Former Khmer Rouge cadres will all swear that though they saw their superiors commit atrocities, they themselves were never involved. Usually, those superiors have mysteriously disappeared, leaving nothing behind but their revolutionary nicknames and a string of atrocities. Victims, realizing that revenge is impossible, generally wait for Karma to settle the matter in the next life.

This philosophy can be taken to the highest extremes. The man in charge of leading the transports from Tuol Sleng prison to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek has been recorded on video crying out for justice against the perpetrators of the genocide:

“The victims used to say to me, ‘We do not want to go on the truck. You will kill us.’ ‘No’, I reasuured them, ‘we are taking you to a new facility.’ Their arms were tied behind them. They would stand or kneel by the pit. Someone would strike them here, just below the head. Sometimes, Comrade Duć [Chief of Tuol Sleng Prison] would come and say to me, ‘Are you ready to kill?’ I would always answer ‘Yes brother.’ I knew that if I ever failed, I would be next. I did not enjoy the killing but when I had to do it, I would do nothing so big, I would just hit them as I had to do.’

Painting Made by One of the Survivors at Tuol Sleng

Comrade Duć for his part was found about five years ago, working as a medical orderly with a Christian group. I have no doubt that if and when the Khmer Rouge tribunal begins, he will merrily tell of his role and blame his superiors too.

Eventually all of the blame shifts to the only man left, the one at the top, Pol Pot. Luckily for him and those blaming him for their own crimes, he died years ago, an old man in the jungles of the northwest. Here in Cambodia they never speak of the Khmer Rouge regime, only the Pol Pot period. It’s so much easier that way when so much of the population, including many of the highest-ranking government officials, amongst them the Prime Minister himself, are former Khmer Rouge.

This may go a long way to explaining why even now, after nearly three decades, the upcoming Khmer Rouge tribunal keeps encountering unexpected difficulties. The corruption of the judiciary aside, the government has repeatedly pleaded a lack of funds. The international community has by now offered to cover the bulk of the costs, leaving the Cambodian government to supply the final $11million.

Though they have recently found the means to support a $30 million loan towards the creation of a new phone company, of which there are already several operating in Cambodia, they still cannot spare even one third of this to fund the tribunal. Donations from private individuals are quietly being discouraged or refused, while the government continues to plead with foreign nations to foot the bill.

It’s a good strategy. Most donating countries are already fed up with the lack of will on the Cambodian side. They’re generally sick of being asked to pay more. The trial is thus delayed as long as possible, avoiding any unpleasantness for those who are still involved in politics. It’s a Cambodian solution to a Cambodian problem and it’s depressingly efficient.

Corruption

Every year, an NGO known as Transparency International publishes a list ranking corruption among the world’s governments. This year, Canada was ranked twelfth out of 146 countries. Bangladesh and Haiti were last. Cambodia wasn’t even ranked. I guess that some things are too big to be worth quantifying.

To put Cambodian corruption in perspective, I asked Mike during my farewell lunch to compare it to Bangladesh. He told me, “I’ve done no work in Bangladesh myself, but friends who have worked in both countries tell me that on average Cambodian businesses pay twice as much money in ‘corruption fees’ as do their Bangladeshi counterparts.”

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the government agency responsible for overseeing how our foreign aid budget is spent, recently named Cambodia to a short list of priority countries. This means that Cambodia will be eligible to receive far more money from our government. It’s a bit of a mixed blessing.

Currently Cambodian farmers can’t work for two-thirds of the year because of the alternating rain-driven cycles of deluge and drought. Properly planned large-scale irrigation could help to change that. Though Cambodia’s roads are fun for adventure tourist motorbikers to visit, you wouldn’t want to live with them.

Either of these problems would require a sizable investment to fix. A central government is needed to coordinate such large-scale projects. Funding is needed to start them. Unfortunately, simply handing that money to the Cambodian government is virtually a guarantee that it will be funding someone’s new villa, the well-paved private road leading to that villa, and the unnecessary Landrover to drive that person to and from that villa on the days when he or she bothers to show up for work at the Council of Ministers building in Phnom Penh.

In a typical travesty, a private corporation recently tried to purchase some land in Phnom Penh from the government and demolish the homes of those living on it. The homeowners refused to leave. Rare as this is in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, the residents had papers proving their right to the land. They faithfully provided these to their commune chief, who sent these land titles to the government as part of a petition. Within two weeks, the petition and the land titles had both been ‘lost.’ These people’s homes, I can only assume, followed suit soon afterwards.

If corruption amongst the elite has run amok though, corruption amongst the poor is no less of a problem. A low-ranking Cambodian official earns about fifteen to twenty US dollars per month. In Phnom Penh, if you slept on the street, that would be just enough with which to feed yourself and occasionally hire a motorcycle taxi to go to work. A friend working in the ministry of tourism once explained it to me this way: “The first time I took money, my boss had one hundred dollars left over from the budget for a conference. He kept eighty and offered me twenty. I didn’t want to take it but I did. I later asked my father if I’d done the right thing. ‘Of course you did!’ he told me, ‘If you hadn’t taken that money, he would have fired you anyway.’ My father was right. I worry for my country though. Now, I hate corruption but if I continue I will accept it and come to think that I deserve it. Corruption will never go away.”

No one is responsible for it. Everyone dislikes it and hopes it will go away… except it won’t. It can’t. It’s endemic.

Given that half of the national budget, and thus half the money embezzled by corrupt officials comes from international aid, CIDA and Canada have a disproportionate amount of power in Cambodia. High-ranking government officials give donor countries the perception that progress is slowly but surely taking place, that necessary challenges are being overcome. The longer this process takes the better. The donors can continue to publish studies, reports, and pamphlets about their wondrous successes while government officials continue to stick their fingers into a whole slew of lucrative pies. If the poor are inadvertently helped along the way, well, that’s neither here nor there but at least it’s an added bonus.

The problem for donors is that their influence extends only to the end of the next paycheque. Our representatives from the Canadian government are aware of the problem but their priorities may not necessarily be strictly humanitarian. Aid is too often tied to promoting one’s own businesses, international image, and stature. The goal of improving the lives of the poor is secondary to publicizing one’s own role in doing so. One thing that could help immensely in Cambodia is the political will in countries like Australia, Britain, Japan, the US, and Canada to change this process.

It’s been done before. About five years ago, when it became clear that even the first and second prime ministers were more concerned with pocketing bribes than ending the illegal logging that was threatening the livelihoods of countless Cambodians, several donors pulled their aid. The result was a change in policy that nearly ended the practice. An NGO, Global Witness, was appointed as a monitoring group, to guard against future improprieties. They did a thorough job. The aid money returned.

Two years ago, they were fired. They did too good a job. Though they continued afterwards to research and publish reports that grew increasingly alarming, the government has begun to crackdown. Several of their representatives were recently refused entry to the country. At about the same time, for the first time in years, high-ranking officials have signed two large logging concessions away.

And so it goes…

All of International Development in 1800 Word or Less: The CWP Project

2005-08-05T08:10:00.000-04:00

Sustainability is one of the biggest buzzwords in International Development. There’s a reason for this. The plains of Africa are littered with rusting tractors transported there by good intentions but maintained with empty promises. The migration that started the slashing and burning of the South American rainforests began over twenty years ago with a Brazilian government project to move the poor out of the way of progress in one place and into a supposedly better life in another. There are similar stories here in Cambodia. A project to bring infrastructure, water, sanitation, or education to a community is a great idea in theory but one of the first questions asked should always be, “Once we’re gone, will it still be here?”

The second question after this one is, “If it is still here, is that necessarily a good thing?”

To answer the first question positively, aid agencies and donors alike have become expert at sifting through census data, analyzing and re-analyzing socio-economic indicators, and offering their predictions in the form of reports. Unfortunately, often enough the net result of all these reports is a project that takes into account every detail except one: Who will maintain the hydroelectric dam, latrines, schoolhouse, or water treatment plant after the donations stop?

If there’s no satisfactory solution to this problem, everyone involved scratches their heads and tries to think of one, promising that as soon as a good answer is found, the need for external funding will end. This can continue indefinitely with no solution in sight. In international development terms, it’s called "Creating a Dependency." It’s the charitable equivalent of a man in an alley saying, “Psst. No worries. The first hydroelectric dam’s free.” It’s how they get you hooked.

Assuming this first problem can be resolved, the second question is a little more subtle. Getting a project to be self-sustaining can take years. In the meantime one needs to ask, what will be its effects? That unexpected consequences will crop up is virtually guaranteed. Wrapped up in terms like “Gender Empowerment”, “Education”, and “Pro-Poor”, an international development project is more often than not a politically correct exercise in social engineering, directed by a group of influential foreigners with at best, a limited understanding of the society that they’re trying to tweak. With colonialism supposedly behind us, this alone should give pause for thought.

Enter the Business Services Development (BSD) approach. A fancy acronym in a sea of fancy acronyms, it expresses the idea that by training people to manage businesses whose products and services are affordable to the very poor, wealth can be generated and expanded even among those with almost no purchasing power. Better still, instead of rusting tractors that no one has the resources to maintain, these goods and services can support themselves.

It’s an interesting idea, especially in light of the two questions above. Instead of dictating a future in which they have no say to a faceless mass of poor people, this offers them the opportunity to use the resources they have, limited though they may be, to begin choosing their own path. They can choose to be entrepreneurs. They can choose to use their purchasing power to invest in the resources around them. In short, they can start to build their own way out of poverty without outside interference.

All of this sounds great in theory. The problem of course in practice is that when one is living on less than a dollar a day, there are only so many things that can be made cheaply enough to be afforded. It’s at this point that tools like microfinance come into play. When you’re earning fifty cents a day, a loan for ten dollars can give a pretty powerful boost.

The Market Creation approach to development goes one step further still. If the very poor can be empowered to run businesses, offering products and services that are affordable for their neighbours, then it should also be possible to encourage a certain type of business or sector of the impoverished economy to flourish. Market Creation asks the question: Is it possible not only to generate wealth amongst the poor but also to help direct that wealth into socially-positive directions?

The use of a term like “socially-positive” is a bit of a tip-off though. This added twist takes us clearly back into the potentially dangerous realm of social engineering. There is, however, one new and important check; though development in one direction can be encouraged, it can no longer be dictated.

IDE is a big proponent of the Market Creation approach to development. As a concrete example, consider the Ceramic Water Purifier (CWP) project in which my predecessor Selena and I have been involved (her more so than me). It’s a textbook example.

According to the most reliable data available, more than half of Cambodians still lack access to safe drinking water. About one in eight Cambodian children will die before the age of five, largely because of water-borne illnesses. This statistic has remained nearly constant since the end of the Khmer Rouge genocide twenty-five years ago.

Over the past few years, IDE has been pouring immense amounts of energy into making their Ceramic Water Purifier (CWP) technology as cheap and effective as possible. Consisting of a clay filter, coated with an antiseptic chemical known as colloidal silver, and housed in a plastic bucket, a single CWP unit can provide twenty litres of clean drinking water per day for more than two years time.

A Ceramic Water Purifier

Direct exposure to poverty here teaches an important lesson. It is not a matter of emaciated children covered in flies and staring into a camera with pleading eyes. It is a matter of vulnerability and statistics. The world’s poor are quite capable of living with dignity and taking care of themselves. They work, laugh, cry, argue with their parents, and comfort their children. Unfortunately, if a war, outbreak of disease, or corrupt politician decides to drive them from their land, they may have no other resources left with which to live. They’re averse to risk for a reason. When you have almost nothing to lose, that last little bit is everything.

For this reason, I wasn’t totally surprised when I heard that upon seeing a demonstration of IDE’s Ceramic Water Purifiers in the market, one man began shouting, “Don’t believe them! Why should you pay eight dollars for this thing? They’re here to trick you! I’ve been drinking the water here for years, my parents drank it before me, and my children drink it now, and we’re doing fine!”

After the Khmer Rouge and nearly thirty years of rampant corruption, it’s hardly surprising that trust is a commodity that can be in short supply here. When you earn less than a dollar per day, eight dollars is a lot of money. When you’ve spent your whole life drinking from a stagnant pond, it seems as clean to you as tap water does to us.

Similarly, it’s no surprise that with four out of five Cambodians lacking access to a toilet, after a lifetime of squatting in the bush, Cambodian women don’t look to latrines for hygiene. They look to them for privacy and protection.

Ordinarily, because of propriety, they can’t do their business in the fields during the day. They’re forced to wait for nightfall. Having walls around them means not having to hold their bladders for twelve hours at a time before risking their safety by traveling alone outside at night. Though you can educate about hand-washing to your heart’s content, hygiene isn’t the priority. Why should it be after a lifetime in which the concept never applied? Installing a latrine that won’t fall apart costs about fifty dollars. Though going to the bathroom more often and in private would be nice, few of Cambodia’s rural poor would part with even a fraction of that cost for the service.

Applying the Colloidal Silver Coating to a New CWP

So, getting back to our original problem, here’s the immediate question: Why should an impoverished Cambodian trust a man with a cell phone and a snazzy new watch making claims that a clay pot in a plastic bucket will magically keep his family from getting sick?

It’s at this point that Market Creation and Business Development Services part ways. Business Development Services is about giving people the tools that they need to get something they want. Market Creation is about teaching them to want something that they need, providing the tools necessary to make it accessible, and generating enough wealth in the process to keep it available to them indefinitely. Ideally, donors and NGOs are only involved in setting up the manufacturing and supply chain, creating a demand for the product, and ensuring that things are running smoothly before they step out of the picture.

Of course this can take years.

Baking the Ceramic Filters in the Kiln

Until both the manufacturers and the rest of the supply-chain can stand on their own two feet, they will continue to be subsidised. Their efforts are supported by an unusual alliance of business savvy marketers and altruist NGOs. For the past six months, IDE has had Liz, an Australian marketing executive with decades of experience, directing their marketing campaign. By the time she left, print, radio, and television advertisements were already being arranged. The television ad campaign begins on August 20. Ironically, despite the lack of water and sanitation, in 1999 20% of rural Cambodians already had a television in their homes.

In the meantime, a ten-woman cooperative operates the factory where IDE manufactures their filters. They earn about eighty-five cents for every filter they make. (You can see how they do it here). Selena, my predecessor in Cambodia, was responsible for setting up a similar factory to be used by the Cambodian Red Cross. (You can read about her experiences by clicking here or on the link on the right).

Distributors take the filters from the factory and transport them to retailers throughout the country. For this service they can expect to earn about forty cents per filter. Retailers at pharmacies and health stores sell the filters directly to those who use them. Though at eighty-cents, their profit is small compared to other products, they are often happy to help provide something so positive for their customers.

By the end of the chain, the cost per unit is seven dollars and fifty cents, a sizable but attainable investment for most of Cambodia’s poor.

At present, over 30 000 households have been reached by the CWP project. With IDE’s National Rollout Strategy just getting started, the potential exists to reach a whole lot more.

Cultural Snapshots

2005-07-25T00:17:00.000-04:00

Better late than never, after repeated requests from some of you I’ve set up an e-mail list to notify subscribers when the blog is updated. Please send an e-mail to adamincambodia-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to subscribe.

Though it’s impossible to relate the intricacies of an entire culture in a short blog entry, I hope that the items below will give some idea of the subtleties involves in learning one’s way in Khmer society. At the most fundamental level, everything is the same. People love their children, worry about the future, reminisce about the past, and try to find comfort in the present. Much is also the same on the surface. People eat, sleep, work, play games, clean their homes, wash their clothes, and generally go on with the business of life. It’s everything in between that at first defies explanation.

Soccer on the Beach

I still don’t know if it’s poverty or simply a very different set of cultural values that causes it but child nudity is perfectly acceptable in Cambodia until about the age of four or so.

Taken while on a break at the beach in Sihanoukville the weekend before last, if there was a Cambodia’s Funniest Home Videos, I’d be sending it to them. Click on the picture to see the movie.

Naked Soccer

The Language

Khmer writing has roughly one hundred symbols. One of the greatest joys and challenges I’ve had since coming to Cambodia has been learning how to speak, read, and write in the local language. It’s very different from English. There is no word for you. Addressing someone requires that they be referred to in the third person. There are endless ways of doing this, including ‘little brother’, ‘young miss’, ‘older brother’, ‘older sister’, ‘auntie’, ‘uncle’, ‘great uncle’, ‘great aunt’, ‘mister’, and. ‘madam.’ Foreigners don’t fit anywhere in the social hierarchy so we’re generally just referred to as ‘person.’ If you’re both drunk and angry outside a karaoke bar in the north of Phnom Penh, ‘despicable one’ is also an option.

Though the words for he, she, and they are all the same, there is still a distinction depending on if the person or group needs to be formally respected or is a close acquaintance. There is no verb conjugation. There is also very little distinction between nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc. The same word may fill three of these functions at once. For this reason, sentence order is often very important. Consider the words ‘baan’, ‘neung’, and ‘hai-ee’:

Khmer	English
Neung hai-ee.	That’s right.
Hai-ee neung.	And
K’nyom jong bai hai-ee.	I already wanted rice.
K’nyom neung jong bai.	I will want rice.
K’nyom baan jong bai.	I wanted rice.
K’nyom jong baan bai.	I want to get rice.
K’nyom jong bai baan.	I am able to want rice.
K’nyom neung jong bai hai-ee baan.	I will have been able to want rice.

That last one is just a guess…

When speaking, pronunciation is key. The difference between ‘great uncle’ and ‘despicable one’ is the difference between ‘Om’ and ‘Ah.’ Dog, distant, and tasty are ‘ch’gai’, ‘ch’ngai’, and ‘ch’ngain’ respectively. Even more difficult are table, water, and boat: ‘toc’, ‘dteuk’, and ‘touq.’ After these the differences sometimes become too subtle for English writing to convey. Things are especially difficult when riding on a motorcycle taxi since the words for ‘stop’ and ‘quicker’ both sound like ‘cho-op.’

I Call This Little Fellow, “The Gouger”

Living in a completely foreign country with no language skills, even buying simple household supplies becomes a challenge. I purchased this item from the market near my home for a very specific purpose. It took a little figuring out, but eventually, I got it to work. Anyone have any idea what it does and how it works…? Post a comment. First successful guess wins a prize after my return. I’ll post the answer in the comments sometime next week.

The Gouger

Bracelet Making

Two weeks ago, Phalla, the receptionist at IDE, requested that I find her a string bracelet during my trip to Sihanoukville. I spotted a young girl on the beach selling them during my last morning in town. “How much for one?” I called out to her in Khmer. “Two dollars,” she responded in English.

“Whoa! That’s expensive!” I exclaimed in Khmer.

“Not expensive at all!” she rejoined. “Do you know how long it takes to make one of these?!”

“Yes. I know exactly how long it takes. I’ve made many just like it,” I responded.

She and two of her friends were soon testing my bracelet making abilities. After I had proved myself by making a small ring out of six strings, they showed me a variety of stitches, asking which ones I knew how to make. When we found a simple one I had never seen before, they offered to teach it to me. The bracelet-seller held one end of the strings in her hand while I began knotting the others to begin the work on Phalla’s bracelet.

As we sat together in the sun, we began to learn a bit about each other. I asked her if she went to school. “No. I have no time for this,” she replied. Working on her own, this young girl had taught herself English by selling bracelets and beauty treatments to foreign tourists. She used these skills to support herself, her elder sister, and her elder sister’s young child. Though obviously bright, she had no thoughts for her own education. At thirteen years old, the several dollars a day she earned from foreign tourists must have made her richer than most of the adults she knew.

She and her friends told me that I looked like I was from Israel not Canada, commented that the Israeli tourists seemed rude, and asked me if I was a “lady-boy,” the popular term from Thailand for traditional transvestites. “No. I just like making bracelets,” I replied. After a little off-key singing of popular Khmer pop songs, a brief lesson in Hebrew to help them with the next batch of rude Israelis, a few laughs, and a new bracelet for Phalla, it was time for the girls to go back to earning the money that would support their families.

“Can I give you something for your time teaching me or at least for the string?” I called out to her as she left, “Is two thousand riel okay?”

“Ot ai-ee!” she called back kindly but brusquely. Don’t worry about it. I’ll earn more soon enough.

Moto-Drivers

If there’s one thing that’s easy to find in Phnom Penh, it’s someone who wants to give you a lift on his motorbike. You can hardly throw a rock without hitting a motorcycle taxi in this city. Odds are he’ll be pretty surprised when you do. With his hand already raised as he called out to offer you a ride, the rock wasn't necessary to get his attention.

When fields are flooded during the rainy season or cracked and dusty during the dry, those men from the provinces who are lucky enough to own a motorbike often come to Phnom Penh to seek their fortune as taxi drivers. Despite the high demand for their services, there is still a glut of supply that keeps prices very low.

Until recently, my policy when hiring a moto was simply to hand the driver the appropriate fare at the end of the ride. Though prices vary with time of day, distance-traveled, and number of riders, it doesn’t take long to learn the system. When you’ve underpaid, the moto-driver will let you know and politely ask for more. Haggling before the journey, or worse still after it, demonstrates that you don’t know the system and usually results in the price being doubled.

For all of these reasons I was shocked when a few weeks ago, after handing my driver the going fare for a journey home from the market, he demanded that I triple it. We asked a woman manning a nearby phone booth to mediate the dispute. “Going from the new market to here, I say 1000 riel, he says 3000 riel, how much do you think it should cost?” I asked her. A little taken aback at being involved in our affairs, she suggested 1500 riel. The motorcycle driver was having none of it. “2000 riel!” he insisted. “1500 I can do but 2000, I will not,” was my reply.

The standoff continued. Eventually, realising that I was running late for my friend Sunday’s engagement party, I placed the fare on his bike and turned my back to walk away.

“Hey!!” he shouted.

I turned around. The moto-driver grabbed a thick metal chain from off his bike, threatening to hit me with it.

Cambodia is the only nation in this region to tax gas rather than subsidise it. This has made life difficult for the poor in many sectors but soaring gas prices seem to be hitting the moto drivers particularly hard. Given all of this, his actions were understandable. Still, leaving a taxi driver with the impression that threatening foreigners is a good way to earn extra cash is the beginning of a very slippery slope. I stared back at him, inwardly relieved that it was a chain and not a knife that he was holding.

“You are only asking for more because I am a foreigner. This is not good!” I told him emphatically. “Gas is very expensive. You’re not good!” he retorted. Luckily for me, we were in my neighbourhood. Two friends who work across the street soon came looking to see what the problem was. The moto-driver began explaining angrily to them about the cheap foreigner.

My home is near the old brothel district. Making the obvious assumption, I suspect the moto-driver couldn't figure out why all the locals were supporting the strange prostitute-seeking foreigner instead of him. In any event, frustrated and bewildered, with a growing crowd surrounding us, he eventually relented and accepted the 1500 riel fare we had had mediated before.

I certainly shared responsibility for the conflict. I should have haggled the price in advance. As some coworkers later told me, “It’s not about how much is fair. It’s about the expectation.” Poverty is a terrible thing. The 500 riel, which was so important to this man that he felt justified threatening me for it, is worth about 12 US cents.

Fortune Tellers

They burn incense, read cards, look at palms, and are consulted for everything in this country. They seem to fill a role somewhere between marriage counselor, psychologist, and priest. Though I have yet to visit one myself, everyone else from my co-workers to the Prime Minister does. One friend of mine, due to fly out of the country soon, was told, “You should try to be as good and kind as possible or their may be a disaster coming to you soon. I see you possibly falling from a great height.” As she summarised succinctly later, “Be good or else!”

Though it’s recognized that no fortune-teller is always right and that some are more accurate than others, their influence can be very powerful. Sunday, with whom I work closely at IDE, had his marriage dissolve after consulting one. He and his wife were arguing constantly. They spoke to a fortune-teller who told them that for the next year they would be unable to be in the same house without arguing. She advised them to separate for that time. Afterwards, if they chose to do so, they could move back together and continue the marriage. One year later, Sunday’s now ex-wife refuses to let him see or speak to his daughter, who is beginning to forget him,. Instead, he finds himself engaged to a new girl named Monika.

There may be trouble brewing though. During a joint consultation with a fortune-teller, Monika was warned that she should keep a close eye on Sunday as he has a wandering eye. The fortune-teller may have been on to something. Sunday is quite the lady’s man.

In the meantime, they’ve already consulted another fortune-teller to find an auspicious date for the wedding. He’s told them that despite the recent death of a close relative, it should be done in the next ninety days. They plan to consult yet another fortune-teller for a second opinion shortly.

The House Call

In this country, the brightest students all want to learn English. If you want to be one of the few Cambodians lucky enough to have a stable well-paying job, it’s a necessity. To me, it seems painfully unfair. Imagine if employment in Canada required a working knowledge of Khmer.

The practical upshot is that as a foreigner living in Cambodia, people on the street will randomly approach me and try to converse with me to practice their English. Some are ominously eager to establish friendships. I’ve had the following conversation several times:

“Hello, what is your name? Where are you from?”
“Hello. How are you? My name is Adam. I come from Canada.”
“What do you do in Cambodia?”
“I work with an organization in Phnom Penh. I’m an engineer.”
“How long will you stay in Cambodia?”
“A few more months.”
“I would like us to be good friends. What is your phone number? Can I call to you?”
“Okay… This card has my phone number on it. If you call me, maybe you can practice your English with me and I can practice my Khmer with you.”
“Wow! I am so very happy to meet you! Next time when I call to you I would like to see your house.”

For a seasoned traveler, this kind of eagerness to make friends and potentially see where they keep their valuables sets off countless alarm bells. The conversation was repeated so many times though that I eventually asked some Khmer friends about it. As it turns out, in Khmer culture, cementing a friendship involves touring each other’s homes. It helps both parties to know that the other is being honest.

I’ve completed this ritual with four or five different friends. One of them was a high school student in his final year named Whin. The first time he tried to start a conversation with me while biking on a major city street. Given traffic conditions in Phnom Penh, I admired his determination if not his sense of safety.

On our third meeting, we exchanged house visits. He lives with his parents and siblings in a three-room wooden shack in the north of town. They’ve lived there for ten years. Each family member sleeps on a wooden palette covered by a reed mat. Some of the floorboards in the kitchen have completed rotted through to the point where I was warned to be careful where I stepped lest I fall into the swamp below. Whin’s mother is a seamstress and his father a mechanic. Though the home is modest, they’ve done their best to make it nice. Old cigarette ads and strips of linoleum have been used as posters on the wall. The two altars to his father’s and his mother’s ancestors are well maintained, stocked with fresh offerings of bananas and incense. Photographs of relatives past and present reside in frames along the wall.

Whin’s a bright guy. He’s smart enough to have taken the one dollar a day it costs him to attend school and used it to its fullest. He’s hoping to get good exam results so that he can obtain a scholarship for university. Without it, he won’t study again after high school.

Back at my place after visiting his, I introduced him to my new roommate, Greg. Greg’s an MBA graduate from Kellogg in the States, working with IDE for one month to consult on the marketing plan for our fertilizer pellet program. I think they both fascinated each other. Whin with his stories of Cambodian life was a new experience for Greg and Greg with his explanation that WWF Smackdown, a surprisingly popular TV program in this country, is not actually real, was astonishing to Whin.

Whin’s Visit to our House

Cost of Living

I’ve heard that many Cambodian families living in Prey Veng province survive on $100USD per year. I’ve also seen countless rich Phnom Penh residents flashing the latest cell phone and cruising about in private Landrovers that may never venture outside city limits.

Living in Cambodia, I’m painfully aware of just how much more my money is worth here than at home. Working for EWB, I’m also very aware that my income originates with the charitable donations of others. With that in mind, I conducted a bit of an experiment, recording every expenditure I made throughout the month of May. For the activists who clamour for greater transparency amongst charitable organizations, this may be a rare glimpse of what would usually be summarized as “Volunteer Expenditures.”

You can find the resulting budget here. The short version is that 30% of my costs went to rent, 30% to exploring and learning more about the country, and the remaining 40% mostly to food. Bearing in mind that here in Cambodia, there are three long weekends in May, and that I took advantage of every one of them to explore, that first 30% is probably a little disproportionate.

Moving Vegetables Part III

2005-07-18T23:39:00.000-04:00

For those who have been interested specifically in my projects here, let me start by apologizing for the delay since my last update. I’m hoping to have a posting related to the status of the Ceramic Water Purifier program completed in the next couple of weeks.

The time since my last update has involved a near constant study of the methods by which green leafy vegetables are transported in this country. Stuffed into rice bags, loaded on top of lotus leaves, packed into wicker baskets one on top of another, or simply arranged in the back of a cart, they’re moved in dozens of ways. The only common denominator seems to be that the roads are bad, the packaging unreliable, and the rate of spoilage high. The predictable consequence is that it is often very difficult to try to earn one’s living supplying green-leafy vegetables in Cambodia.

Farmers and Collectors are only able to work for a limited number of harvests and a limited time during each harvest. When they do work, their profits tend to be about five cents per kilogram. If they and their families could live comfortably eating only what they grew, a not-quite-cabbage-not-quite-spinach crop called Spey, they would still earn only $300USD each year. With that money they would need to clothe themselves, maintain their homes, educate their children, and invest for the next crop.

A Basket Full of Spey

After the writing of my last update in May, we completed a series of open questionnaires with farmers, collectors, wholesalers, and retailers. Each questionnaire was about 35 questions long, targeted at a specific group. Our survey team spent nearly two weeks gathering the results. I spent another two weeks desperately training several of my bilingual coworkers to put that information onto the computer for me. The results were sometimes predictable, sometimes surprising, and sometimes absurdly correct.

It’s truly amazing what can be lost in translation between languages, cultures, and viewpoints. While trying to determine the financial consequences of farmers feeling pressured to sell their crops early despite low prices or insufficient demand, 5 surveyors asked 32 different farmers “Have you ever harvested too late? What were the consequences of this?” We got the following responses:

“Yes. The leaves become red.”
“Yes. In the hot season, the plants start to flower.”
“Yes. Bad leaves. Becomes smaller.”

This was still more surprising because we had previously spent a full day reviewing the meaning and purpose of each question with our survey team. About half of farmers were happy to describe in various levels of detail, just what an overripe vegetable looks like. The other half simply told us curtly that they wouldn’t make such a mistake. These weren’t the results for which we’d been aiming but they were interesting nevertheless.

In many ways, that became the theme of the survey. The answers we received gave us a better insight into what was important to those responding. If the questions we asked were aimed at an area they felt was unimportant or irrelevant, they changed the meaning slightly so as to give us the information they thought was necessary. In addition to descriptions of red leaves and flowering plants, several responses to our question about late harvests pointed out that waiting longer made insect and rain damage more likely.

In the last update, I wrote about farmers trying to solve the insect problem by using nearly seven times the recommended dose of pesticides on their crops. By the end of this survey, I’d tracked down an extensive study by the Centre d’Étude et de Développement Agricole Cambodgien (CEDAC) on pesticide use in Cambodia. From that study and from conversations with farmers and contacts in the field, I learned that pesticide use in Cambodia is horribly unregulated, that farmers often continue to apply pesticides with a hand-pumped backpack right up until the day before harvest, that they and the retailers selling to them generally have no training, and that soapy water and a clean towel goes a long way to ensuring a healthier diet. I also learned that though bugs decimate crops during the dry season, they are thankfully less rapacious during the rainy. Instead, they are replaced by flooding and by damage caused directly by the rain itself. This leaves only a very small window each year during which green leafy vegetable crops can actually be considered in season.

Spraying Pesticides in Saang District

Collectors, Wholesalers, and Retailers, were all happy to estimate how many of their vegetables spoil during storage and transport. Combining all of their perspectives led to some surprising results. Together, they estimated that about one third of their produce spoils on the way to market. Farmers told us that only about 85% of their crop is of good quality at harvest time. Put these two findings together and the result is that only about half of what’s planted is finally sold for human consumption.

Those involved have of course found a way to compensate for this. Collectors often purchase whole fields from farmers rather than individual crops. They dictate the time and amount collected during each day of the harvest. When selling their crops to wholesalers, no detailed inspection is allowed. Business relationships here are based on trust and mutual support. After seven hours in scorching heat with hundreds of kilos if vegetables piled on top of each other, handling the crop to inspect it would only cause further damage.

Collector Neou Parang Directs the Harvest

Of course, not being able physically to handle the crop made our job of trying to measure temperature, weight, and spoilage a little difficult. We provided some compensation to everyone with whom we interacted but when we asked collectors and wholesalers to evaluate spoilage at six key locations in their own containers, they always told us none had occurred. When we tried to take weight and temperature measurements ourselves at the same locations, they were understandably irritated at the lost time and the possible damage to their crops.

Surveyor Lao Vannaroth Measures Crop Temperatures at Takhmao Market

One day, when I accompanied the surveyors into the field to see how work was progressing, they were a little uncomfortable. “Do we really need to measure in six places??” they asked repeatedly. “Can we maybe just measure in only three places this time? Or better yet, can we just not do it at all…?”

Not doing any measurements at all wasn’t an option. By the end of the day though, I had been haggled down to only four locations. It seemed a good idea. I got some of the information I needed and everyone else felt less put upon.

Predictably, since making these measurements just didn’t fit into people’s comfort zones, our records of temperature and weight were often unintelligible garbage. By the end of the survey, I was able to use them to conclude three things:

Adding water to a vegetable crop while it’s losing mass from heat and spoilage, makes it look fresher. It also makes measuring spoilage through weight loss an exercise in futility.
When you pile 250kg of vegetables into a wicker basket, it tends to be a few degrees hotter near the heart of the pile.
Sometimes, you just can’t physically measure things and need to take people’s word about them.

With all of this information collected and analysed, I drafted a report summarizing the results for the Agricultural Quality Improvement Project (AQIP), the Australian group funding this project. For those of you who are a little more curious and/or want to see pictures, tables, and diagrams, AQIP has been kind enough to grant me permission to post it electronically here.

After the report was approved, the next step to me seems to have been the most important one. We arranged a meeting with the people who actually work in the green-leafy vegetable supply chain: farmers, collectors, wholesalers, and retailers. We spent an afternoon with them, discussing the results of the survey and seeking their opinions on how to improve the system. Two of the more promising options were selected. Construction began the following week.

Meeting with Farmers, Collectors, Wholesalers, and Retailers

Now, a month later, we are halfway through field testing these prototypes. The hope is that they will provide a cheap easy means to preserve crops, thereby bringing more money back to those in the rural economy who need it. We’ll meet with the surveyors to see the data they’ve already gathered this afternoon.

Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Monsoon nor Flood...

2005-07-11T03:35:00.000-04:00

I’ve been trying to find the time for three weeks to write an update about my work in vegetable packaging and transport. I hope to have it ready next week. In the meantime, I wrote this one back on June 23...

The streets are flooded and I’m sitting at my desk drinking from a small bottle of Québec maple syrup. Life is surreal sometimes. In this case that surrealism is due to just how small our world has become and just what a difference a proper drainage system can make to public roadways.

My family sent me a care package three and a half weeks ago. It arrived today. I think the most difficult leg of its journey was the last few kilometers after the post office. I was wobbling down the street on my warped back wheel, the giant parcel from home wedged lopsidedly in the basket in front of my misaligned handlebars, when the skies began to darken. Something was in the air. I could feel a big downpour was on its way. I altered my plans, quickened my pace and started heading for home rather than the office.

A bike repair man called out to me from the side of the road, pointing at my misaligned rear wheel. Since suffering a minor hit and run at the hands of a reckless motorcyclist on Sunday, after friendly bystanders, moto drivers, and passing children, he was the umpteenth person to call attention to the problem. “Luckily, this guy might just be able to help,” I thought. “Can do?” I asked. He pointed to his pump. “I’m a bicycle repair guy, aren’t I?” seemed to be the implication.

I pulled over and watched him set to work. He deflated my rear wheel and re-inflated it. The skies continued to darken and I was running out of time to get home. He seemed satisfied. I didn’t have the patience to try to explain through gestures and monosyllables that I had already given the bike a small once over myself and the problem was that the metal frame of the wheel was warped, not that the tire was deflated. Instead, I smiled, pointed to the handlebars and said, “Not straight.” He fixed them right up, a service for which I paid about twelve cents.

By now it was too late. The rain began to fall. With a sense of fatalism, I pulled out my rain coat shaped plastic bag, draped it over the package, slipped my cell phone into a small Ziploc bag, and continued on my way, defenseless against the what was coming.

The rainy season began over six weeks ago. With this downpour though, you could tell the monsoon had finally arrived. Five minutes after the first drizzle began, I was soaked in a way I had thought until then could only be caused by jumping fully-clothed into a lake. The sides of the road began to cover in water. By the end of ten minutes, half the road’s surface was under water and a quarter of my bike wheel was submerged. Water sprayed in all directions as I ploughed on blithely ahead through newly-forming ponds and streams.

The Flood Begins

The streets were a riot of children playing in pond-sized puddles, splashing, rolling old tires, and kicking balls, while the adults huddled under the roof of a nearby gas station. As I pulled onto my own street I noticed that the people living in the shack on the corner had already begun fixing funnels and plastic tubes to the gutters on their roof. Small waterfalls were cascading down from as high as three stories, plunging out of PVC piping eaves troughs, off of tin roofs, and into buckets along the street. As I biked to my home, everyone around me, dry and soaking wet alike, was smiling and laughing. I began to notice for the first time how many of my neighbours had water collection tanks as people scrambled to open plastic valves, and replace full buckets with empty ones under funnels, pipes, and random jets of water. Rainwater here is safer than tap water, cheaper than bottled water, and less effort than boiling water. I became acutely aware of how despite massive marketing and sales efforts in the provinces, not a block away from IDE headquarters in Phnom Penh, I was probably the only one to own a water filter. I resolved to bring this up later with the folks at the office. In the meantime, some of the children were washing themselves under the falls. I brought my bike, package, and cell phone upstairs onto my porch where it was safe before rushing down to join them.

After showering under a three story waterfall, I wandered back into my home to dry off, laughing and trying along the way to explain to Srey Put, the little girl next door, that we never have rain this strong in Canada. By the time I finished changing, I was already ten minutes late returning to work. It was package opening time.

My family, in a display that had put love well ahead of a sense of proportion, had sent me the book for which I’d asked, nine small bottles of pure maple syrup, dozens of vector cereal bars, piles of candy, organic grain bars, M&M’s, and even a bag of soy-jerky. It was everything a hungry young vegetarian intellectual could ask for in faraway Cambodia.

Within thirty minutes the rain had stopped. I left my clothes on the line to dry, picked up a bottle of maple syrup on impulse, grabbed the book to read for later, and jumped onto my bike. The rain was gone but the road was now eclipsed by puddles half the height of my wheels. I arrived at work tired but refreshed, sat down at my desk, maple syrup in hand, and toasted my introduction to the monsoon.

The Results Are In!

2005-06-30T21:41:00.000-04:00

For those of you still following my ongoing quest to decide what to do with my life, the final results are in…

Medical Schools:

University of Toronto: Accepted, Deferral Refused
MacMaster Universiety: Refused

International Development Programs:

University of Sussex: Accepted and Deferred
University of Cambridge: Refused

With all of the applications to different programs and scholarships before my arrival, I had already spent months trying to figure out what would be the best path for my life. When I first arrived in Cambodia, I had a lot of time to sit and think, something I could do at home only rarely. Weeks passed and I was still uncertain.

There were ample good reasons to follow any given path and I could not choose between them. As so often happens in cases like this, especially when one is far away from home, I met some people who helped me reach a decision. The first was a wandering motorcyclist from Quebec. He had sold all of his possessions, to embark on a three year journey across Canada, Asia, and Oceania. His name was Jean-Marc. Speaking with him helped me immensely in trying to figure out what I wanted from my own life. He was followed by two medical residents working at the University of Toronto's health outreach program in Kep. I discovered them and the centre at which they were worked on a weekend in May. They joined me the next day on an excursion into Bokor National Park.

I spent much of that day in the back of a pickup truck, speaking with one of the residents, a man named Shaun who had lived and worked at various times in Africa, South America, and Asia. He was pursuing pediatrics in the hopes of making his career in impoverished areas. We talked about the joys and difficulties of development and the rewards and pitfalls of medicine. We were joined by a British traveller named Paul who, after a year of working in India, also had a fair bit of insight to share.

After a day spent speaking with Paul, Shaun, and Savita, the other University of Toronto resident, I came to realise that what they were describing sounded like exactly the kind of work I wanted to pursue. I wasn't ready to pursue it just yet though.

When news of MacMaster’s refusal reached me, I was scared and depressed. When the acceptance from the University of Toronto arrived, I was relieved and elated. I was also determined to continue my work here for as long as possible. My existing projects were well underway and a new project in sanitation was just beginning. The more I have learned about Cambodia, the more I have wanted to learn. There are massive problems here but also massive potential. Given the country's history, its people's hope, friendliness, and resilience, never ceases to amaze me.

I requested a deferral from the University of Toronto. They declined, citing a policy of which I had never previously heard: only those wanting to complete ongoing academic programmes were allowed to defer. I wrote an appeal by e-mail, essentially begging them to reconsider. EWB offered to make a phone call on my behalf. We must have given them pause for thought. It took them nearly a week to respond. When their response came, though it was kindly worded and the request had obviously been considered, it was again a refusal.

That news arrived two days ago. Though I still feel immensely disappointed to be leaving Cambodia so soon, I am also very excited to begin a whole new phase in my life. As many people have been telling me recently, they really need good doctors here. One with an engineering background, an understanding of some of the potential pitfalls of development work, and a grounding in the local language and environment could be very useful. I may be back one day. I hope I will.

On a practical note, if anyone knows of affordable (but not too ramshackle) housing opportunities near the UofT campus or a nearby subway stop this fall, please let me know.

Of Mewlings and Meowlings and Things that Go Bump in the Day

2005-06-20T03:42:00.000-04:00

Somewhere between my bed and unconsciousness, in that half-awake state that comes when I’m too tired to wake up but too overheated to fall back asleep, I was dimly aware that light was starting to seep in through the window. The hammering would begin again soon. A shockingly loud crash broke through the silence. The workmen rebuilding the apartment two doors down usually like to get an early start. Today it was earlier than usual. I drifted back to sleep.

I awoke a little while later, stumbled out of bed and began staggering towards the bathroom. It was hotter than usual and I hadn’t been sleeping well. I made it as far as the door to my bedroom before a dangling seven-meter long strip of corrugated plastic blocked my path. Looking up, I realized this strip had once been part of my ceiling. Two of its neighbours were already on the floor, while another hung loosely beside it.

The roof of my flat is made of identical strips of plastic, all laid side by side. The structure is similar to the corkboard ceilings one finds in school classrooms. Between these strips and the metal roof above, a crawlspace is formed. It provides a convenient place to store electrical wiring, plastic water pipes, cobwebs, dust, and discarded animal hair. Previously, I had been unaware of the last three items on this list. Now, I found myself breathing them in with the morning air. The workman really had been more enthusiastic than usual today.

Still, something else seemed out of place. It wasn’t just the dangling bits of ceiling and the dusty furballs covered in cobwebs floating lazily in front of me. I blinked my eyes. Yes, that was it. A fresh series of paw prints was neatly laid out in the dust covering what had once been the upper side of my ceiling. I pulled on the hanging strips, loosening them from what remained of their grip.

They fell, adding their voice to the clamoring hammers nearby. The floor was a mess. Resolving to clean it later, I headed for the shower.

Srey Hem was at work that morning. I told her about the problem. “The cats again?!” she exclaimed. “This has happened before?” I asked. “I’ll call my sister,” she replied. Srey Hem’s sister is my landlady. She doesn’t speak a word of English. It took her two days to arrive.

In the meanwhile, I returned the following afternoon to find a mysterious urine-like smell had taken up residence in my kitchen. I poked my nose into the bathroom adjoining the kitchen and inhaled deeply. A plethora of smells greeted me but urine wasn’t one of them. I had eliminated myself as a suspect. Back in the kitchen, the plastic bag in which I keep my rice was mysteriously open. Some animal seemed to have been pawing through it. Was it the cats again? I quickly dismissed the thought. If some intrepid cat had leaped into my house via the ceiling, he or she would never have been able to leap back out again. As there was no cat now trapped in my flat, there was no reason to suspect one had been there before.

Eventually, I tracked down the source of the smell. Whoever was responsible for eating my rice had also taken liberties both on and under my kitchen sink. I threw out the rice, mopped under the sink, and scrubbed its top thoroughly. I settled down to cook dinner, eat, and read a book. A few hours later, I re-entered the kitchen, flicked on the light switch, and headed for the sink to clean the dishes. There was a clatter of noise to my right. I turned my head, glanced around, and saw nothing. Slowly my eyes fell on a large cardboard box in the corner, under the table where I kept my rice. Hesitantly, I shuffled towards it, nudging it with the edge of my knuckles. The curtains that my landlady had left in the box were far too light to account for the weight that I felt inside.

With trepidation, already knowing what I would find, I peeked into the darkness under the table. Two glowing eyes stared back at me. I jumped back. “Raaa-eeeenh-rrrrr!” growled the cat as it leaped out of the box and bolted for the front door, returning soon afterwards to stare at me from the entrance’s edge, its eyes full of hurt innocence. I don’t know which of us had been more frightened.

Taken During Friendlier Days: One of the Neighbourhood Cats

When Srey Hem’s sister arrived the next day, she had an interpreter and several of the workmen from the flat two doors down with her. Rather than searching for contractors, she had offered to hire them to fix my ceiling during their off-hours the next day. I explained with some difficulty that I would be away then, visiting ruins in Takeo province. Using the interpreter to work out the finer points, we arranged for me to leave my keys with the neighbours. Happy that all was resolved, Srey Hem’s sister left, complimenting on me on my Khmer on the way out the door. “You know a lot of Khmer.” she said. “No. I don’t,” I replied, “I’m learning.”

By the next evening, my roof was repaired.

Two weeks later, it happened again.

I came home for lunch from work. As I opened the door, the welcoming sound of a vicious catfight erupted from my kitchen. The ceiling in my kitchen had fallen in and two or more cats were obviously fighting over the spoils. I was frustrated, angry, and unarmed for fighting cats. The broom that I wanted to use to shoo them out was trapped in the kitchen, in the heart of the battle. I improvised.

“Raaaaeeeerrrrr!!” I meowed. The fighting stopped. “Raaaaeeeerrrrr!” I growled at them again. The fighting became more intense. There were bumps and crashes. Before my astonished eyes, the ceiling fell down on top of my kitchen table. Apparently, the fight had, until recently, been taking place not in the kitchen, but above it.

A cat leaped from the end of a newly dangling plastic ceiling strip and bolted past me towards the front door. His erstwhile opponent soon followed on his heels. I was left alone in the flat to contemplate the stunning mess in my kitchen. I resolved to spoil myself by eating at a restaurant that night.

The pattern was repeated. I called Srey Hem. Her sister arrived the next day. Confident in my ability to discuss the problem in Khmer, she had neither interpreter nor workmen with her. This was a bit of a mistake. I looked up the word 'cat' in a dictionary, added the words for 'again' to it, and mimed the actions of walking and falling, before pointing to the kitchen. Between my inability to conduct a conversation and the workmen’s inability to arrive on schedule, it was another week before they stopped me at the end of a lunch break to ask to be let in to do the repairs.

Leaning against a wall in my kitchen, I watched two of them, bouncing up and down on a two by four. One end of the wooden plank rested on the metal bars of my kitchen window. The other had been propped onto a massive triangle made of plywood and protruding nails. In the middle, these two men reattached my ceiling and wobbled, while two others provided them with moral support.

My roof was again repaired.

In the meantime, I occasionally hear noises from the ceiling above my bed. I suspect it’s nothing to worry about…

Siem Reap in the News

2005-06-16T23:20:00.000-04:00

I gather Cambodia's been making the front pages of the world. I arrived at work this morning to find a pile of e-mails about the hostage-taking in Siem Reap yesterday. I only learned of the incident yesterday at 5:30pm when a friend e-mailed me about it as I was leaving work.

Despite being far closer to the event, there’s not much extra news that I can provide. Today’s front page article in the Cambodia Daily contains a lot of speculation and lists several of the children involved but provides very little additional information. From the different links I've received, I’ve started to piece together a bit of what happened. The most detailed article that I've yet found, both within Cambodia and from foreign services, is this one from the CBC, http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/06/16/cambodia-school050616.html.

As near as I can tell, between four and six impoverished and none-too-bright young men from Kandal province just outside Phnom Penh drove to Siem Reap with a single gun and through unmitigated callousness and stupidity briefly made international news. They took control of a school, demanded $1 000USD, assault rifles, and enough grenade launchers to explode a small city. Control of the situation was sporadic. At least one child escaped simply by running from the building towards his waiting uncle while the hostage-takers were distracted by police negotiations. A two year old Slovak-Canadian boy was killed.

The hostage-takers demands were partially met with $30 000USD and a van that they hoped to drive across the Poipet border to Thailand. Police stormed the van. Two of the perpetrators may or may not have been killed. The others were arrested. None escaped. Selena, my predecessor EWB volunteer with IDE in Cambodia, just posted her thoughts on the subject. I think they're pretty apt.

Earlier in the crisis, the Information Minister tried to link the incident to the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF), acting in retaliation for their leader’s recent arrest in California. That being said, the CFF have no history of harassing foreigners or hostage taking and their goals are strictly against what they perceive to be Vietnamese elements controlling the government. They also haven’t launched an armed attack since 2000. The Minister’s comments weren’t entirely surprising though as the CFF has provided a useful excuse for suppressing opposition and/or explaining inconvenient problems before. The Prime Minister, to his credit, stated this morning that the perpetrators were bandits, not terrorists, and offered his condolences:

"On behalf of the government and the Cambodian people, I would like to express regret and share condolences for the death of a young Czech-Canadian... who was shot to death."

A Chance to Help

2005-06-10T06:47:00.000-04:00

Since my arrival in Cambodia, many of you have written to me. Some have expressed support for my work, others have offered sympathy for the complexities of trying to alleviate poverty in any environment. Some have told me that they wish there was something simple that they could do to help, others just wanted to say thank you for a good read. I’ve enjoyed every letter. They’ve kept me connected to my life at home and reminded me of why I’m here.

So, three months after my arrival, what conclusions have I come to? I’ve learned that development is complex but that even complexity can be overcome by an acceptance of one’s limitations, a willingness to learn, and genuine commitment. I’ve also learned that though my work here is important, much of the power in international development rests not in developing countries but in developed ones. That’s us.

In the words of a friend working in Zambia, “There are two very important campaigns on right now that I believe have the potential to help far more people than I could ever dream of over here … Mr Martin recently announced that Canada cannot afford to meet our own Lester B. Pearson’s target of contributing 0.7% of our GDP to foreign aid. We’ve committed to it every year for the past 3 decades, not having come close to meeting it. If our government, with a huge multibillion dollar surplus cannot afford this now, when will we ever be able to? …Its time we as Canadians used our voices as one to let our government know that we are willing to sacrifice a few dollars a year to make a difference in the lives of millions.” It’s not an unrealistic goal. “Five countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – have met the target. Six more, including Britain, France and Germany, have committed to do so by 2015. As a wealthy nation, we can do no less.”

From where I sit now in Cambodia, Canada’s name is everywhere. It’s on the benches built to seat visitors at the Angkorian ruins of Phnom Daa. It’s on the sign in front of the University of Toronto health outreach program in Kep. It’s even on the budget funding the Ceramic Water Purifier program on which I work. In a country where nearly half the population can’t trust the water they drink, EWB and IDE together have already brought clean water to thousands and are hoping to do so for the whole nation.

None of this would continue to happen though without a Canadian government foreign policy that accepts our limitations, is willing to learn, and remains genuinely committed to alleviating poverty. So this is me, getting on my soapbox, asking you all to help. You don’t have to come to Cambodia. You don’t have to give up so much as an hour of your day. Click on the two links below. If you agree with what either site has to say, sign its petition. If you don’t, you’ll have seen another perspective and taken part in the debate. That alone makes it worth the effort.

http://www.makepovertyhistory.ca/
http://www.acpd.ca/acpd.cfm/en/section/campaign/email/1

Something Lighter

A friend of mine, also working in Phnom Penh, is posting one photo from her life here for each day of the week. Check out http://www.scenefrommylife.com/. It's a really interesting site. Previous photographers have been in places ranging from Ottawa to Antarctica and from Lebanon to Japan. There is even a series of photos taken for each of an anonymous American soldier’s final days on a tour of duty in Iraq.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

2005-06-07T00:14:00.001-04:00

In between the stories of adventures, strange meetings, angst over my work, and hope for its success, is the place I come home to at the end of the day. It’s a neighbourhood where half the residents call me “Daam” because they cannot pronounce my name. It seems so similar to the ones back home to me now that I often forget the differences until they creep up on me unexpectedly, leaving me frustrated, shocked, embarrassed, or just scratching my head in puzzlement at the strangeness of day to day life.

My house is on the second floor of a two-storey set of flats, populated by middle-class Khmer families. To my right lives Sotha, a motorbike taxi driver, with his wife, his son, and his daughter. Sotha, with nearly a hundred nouns and about twenty verbs, is by far the best English speaker in the family. We’ve been communicating by gestures, bits of English, and bits of Khmer ever since I moved in. One of my fondest memories here is of the evening when he knocked on my door unexpectedly, strolled in, nervous and bold at the same time, and began to teach me the Khmer words for my furniture, food, and household knick-knacks. His daughter, Srey, about eleven years old, was with him that night. She used to come by my door and glance inside curiously whenever I lay down at the end of the day to read a book. In the evenings we’d occasionally sit outside on the second floor porch exchanging smiles and watching the world go by beneath us.

My House (Second Floor, Hidden by the Blinds)

When he’s not driving a motorbike, Sotha is also the neighbourhood chief, a government appointed position that seems to consist almost entirely of long hours in which he and his wife complete identification papers for a small fee. Despite the cultural differences, language barrier, and educational gap, they’ve become a little like an adopted family, always watching out for me. When a wandering cat caused a large chunk of my roof to fall in just as I was due to leave on a trip, they held onto my keys, letting the workmen in to repair it. I came home late one night to find that though the pegs were still on the line, my laundry had entirely disappeared. When I woke up the next morning, it was back again, neatly hung and eerily exactly as I had left it. I later asked Sotha, “Laundry, what happened?” “My wife,” he responded. Unable to go into any further detail thanks to the language barrier, we both shook our heads and laughed.

Compared to Srey’s quiet contemplation, Lita, the little girl living in the flat on my left is a hellraiser. Instead of gazing curiously as I used to read, she would run past the door, wearing ever-changing bits of cardboard, cloth, and miscellaneous junk, playing every Khmer child’s favourite game: Spot the Foreigner and Shout ‘Hello! What’s Your Name?!’ as Loudly as Possible Over and Over Again. Lita liked to adapt the rules of the game though to keep it interesting. One time she sprayed me with water whenever she ran past. When her grandmother confiscated the spray bottle, she decided that he hitting me was more fun instead. The new kids who have just moved in across the street seem to lack her enthusiasm. After only one week, they’ve given up on shouting “Hello! What’s Your Name?” entirely.

Lita’s grandmother was at first a little skeptical of my presence in the building. She’s warmed up a lot though as we’ve gotten to know each other. Before she learned my name, she used to call me “Thom-Thom.” It means big guy. When I accidentally leaked water on the apartment below me, she was the one who asked me if I didn’t have a wife to keep my house clean. When she noticed my apartment was too dirty, she marched in like a soldier with a mop ready to do battle. It took all the polite effort I could muster to get her to release it and allow me to do the job myself. She came by afterwards with her daughter. They chuckled at my efforts and told me I was free to borrow their mop again anytime. Theirs was the first and only Khmer home into which I’ve been invited outside of work. She asked me in to see her newborn grandchild. Trying to be culturally sensitive, I sat with my feet pointed outwards from the group. As it turns out, this is how women sit on a floor in the home. Men sit cross-legged. Everyone had a good chuckle and I learned a valuable lesson.

Below them lives Khon, the woman from whom I buy my vegetables in the market, her husband, and their family. I discovered she was a neighbour while investigating the renovations going on in their flat. At present it resembles the after-photo from an article about an exploding gas line. The family that used to invite me to join in playing traditional New Years games when I first arrived lives two doors down from them, under Sotha’s apartment. They run a small business selling soup, sauce, toothbrushes, and other small items. They’re also some of the most hospitable and friendly people I’ve had the pleasure to meet here.

A Nearby Gated Villa

Across the street is another business, an old man who sits on a small bamboo platform, bare-chested, his waist wrapped in a plaid Khmer sarong, staring at the road from morning until evening, selling green mangoes, snacks, and small packets of shampoo. It was through this old man that I went to investigate an apartment for rent across the street from me a few weeks ago. I can still remember the look of dismay on Sotha’s face when he spotted me from his balcony inspecting the vacant apartment. It was similar to the look I received when I later told him I had begun taking meditation classes at a Wat near the Independence Monument. Exceptions to the rule in a Buddhist country, Sotha’s family and a few others in the neighbourhood are Christian. Since he doesn’t grasp what Judaism is, he still assumes I am too. Both situations involved some hurt looks and a lot of explaining, especially with the language barrier.

Near the end of the street is a middle-aged woman who sets up shop selling deep-fried rice cakes, sometimes with banana filling. We’ve gotten in the habit of smiling at each other and she always makes an added effort to sell me what she’s got, throwing in an extra cake or two for free, when we see each other at the end of the day. Beyond her is the end of the street, a wooden shack, home to a family that sells knick-knacks and rents out time on a mobile phone for a living. They use a series of massive clay pots to store their water near the back of their house. I passed by one evening only to find a middle-aged naked man. He was washing himself with water from the pots and a bucket. I looked at him casually. He looked at me casually. Given this is how people in wooden shacks tend to wash, I was unsure of how awkward his nudity should be. I smiled a bit and averted my eyes. When I turned around a few moments later, he was gone.

Deep Fried Rice Cake Vendor

Things change a lot beyond our middle class block of flats. The gated villas of the exceedingly wealthy are within a fifty metre walk. The market is a short stroll in the opposite direction, past Sop the monkey, the neighbourhood pet. Sop spends his days leashed to an upturned metal stool, playing with children and bored moto drivers alike, begging for food, and far too often dodging abuse from young boys who have never been exposed to the concept of animal cruelty.

Sop the Monkey

Beyond the market are the beginnings of countless rows of wooden one room shacks, with room enough for a bed, clothes, cooking supplies, and sometimes even a motorbike or a TV. A fire broke out over a month ago, gutting about fifty homes only a kilometer or two away. The wooden-shack ghetto is un-navigable for a foreigner. I would have had no idea if not for news articles on the subject.

Wooden Shacks

Taking a stroll in the evening, I pass laundry services, hair stylists, and multiple NGO offices with names I sometimes recognize and sometimes don’t. I also pass children playing soccer, young adults playing badminton, and burning piles of garbage. About a month ago, I saw that a bag of garbage containing used hypodermics and assorted medical waste had exploded on the sidewalk. It’s probably better they should burn it.

With all of my focus on the problems facing Cambodia, it’s easy to lose sight of the day to day lives of the people living here. I was out for a stroll the other night, fleeing the endless shouts of “Hello!” when I realized that here was something central to my life, something neither adventurous nor development related but perhaps worth sharing all the more because of it.

Some Lighter Stuff

2005-05-24T03:33:00.000-04:00

A lot of things have been happening here recently. Unfortunately, one difficulty of an interesting life is a lack of time with which to write about it. With that in mind, here are a couple of quick anecdotes to carry you through the week…

(For those of you sending me e-mails this week, I may take longer than usual to reply. Sorry in advance for the delay but I’m hoping to dedicate as much time as possible to analyzing the data from the vegetable transport survey completed last week.)

My Reputation Precedes Me

Two weeks ago, Sideth, one of my co-workers, and I went to the small restaurant a block away from the IDE office for lunch. As we were chatting, waiting for our food, a group of five twenty-something foreigners wandered in. With so many NGOs operating in the neighbourhood, foreigners don’t raise too many eyebrows. A crowd this large, this young, and this obviously not from a single family was a bit unusual though. I must have been staring because Sideth asked, “Do you worry that maybe the other foreigners will see you eat lunch with me and will think you do something wrong…?” Khmer society is pretty strict about unmarried couples.

“No,” I replied, “I just have not seen so many foreigners my age in a long time.”

One of the girls from the group approached our table.

-Excuse me, are you from Canada?
-(Surprised.) Yes…
-Did you by any chance go to the University of Waterloo?
-(Do I know this person?) Yes….
-Were you in Prof. Snyder’s History of Christianity course in Fall 2004?
-(Understanding.) Yes. I was the loudmouth you’re remembering.

I though most of you (especially former classmates) would appreciate that one. Small world eh?

Development Math

Given

Under-Developed Country = Transport animals on major city streets.

South-East Asia = Elephants are transport animals.

Now

Developing Country + South-East Asia = Cambodia

Therefore

Cambodia = Elephants on major city streets.

Elephant on Sisowath Quay, Phnom Penh

Hobnobbing Amongst the Elite

Wednesday through Friday last week, my friend Sonya’s mother, Françoise, was in Phnom Penh participating in a conference of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, an organization promoting cooperation amongst French speaking universities throughout the globe.

The visit was a fun one. On the first day, she brought me maple syrup from home and I took her for lunch at a nice restaurant in town whose profits go to sheltering and educating street youth. On the second day, she invited me along to a reception being held at the Canadian Ambassador’s residence.

I did my best to dress appropriately, tucking in my shirt, wearing hiking boots instead of sandals, and briefly brushing my hair. It was the best I could do. On the way out the door, my neighbour, Sotha, noticed my efforts. “You look pretty,” he commented. “I go to eat dinner with a big person,” I responded. It was the best explanation I could manage in Khmer.

Unfortunately, in Khmer meeting a big person generally implies a government minister or equivalent. Sotha was a little surprised. I back-pedalled. “No, no. My friend from Canada. Her mother come to Phnom Penh. She know big person from Canada. She say to me, please you come to dinner. Will be around forty people there. I don’t know Cambodian big person. These Canadians sort-of big people.” Sotha looked at me strangely, asked when I’d be home, and called over one of his fellow moto drivers to take me where I was going.

I met Sonya’s mother at the Hotel Intercontinental, a five star, Western-style hotel, where she and several of her fellow delegates were staying. As a police escort with sirens blazing led our francophone minibus through the streets of Phnom Penh, I began to think that perhaps my description to Sotha hadn’t been as inaccurate as I’d thought.

The ambassador was waiting to greet all of the delegates at the door. My brief culture shock at the Hotel Intercontinental was as nothing to my shock on entering her home. It looked and felt exactly like a middle class dwelling in Canada. The differences in the construction, decorations, and furnishings were subtle but overwhelming. It took me a few minutes just to orient myself. Sonya’s mother was extremely helpful and made it her mission that evening to help me establish as many contacts as possible, bringing over new people to meet me every few minutes.

I spent the evening brushing up on my schmoozing skills, in conversation with university administrators, ex-pats, and eventually the ambassador herself. She was very friendly, stopping to offer me some good advice about pharmacies in Phnom Penh. I left that evening as I’d entered, surrounded by a police motorcade, richer by one ambassador’s business card, and hopefully having left a good impression of EWB with a variety of university bigwigs.

The Ambassador, Myself, and Sonya's Mother

How Can I Help You?

2005-05-13T06:27:00.000-04:00

Tonight I met a woman begging for money along a lamp-lined avenue with her two children. Initially, the lamps aroused my interest more than did the destitute family. They were a rarity, well-built and well-maintained. By contrast, the woman’s face faded into those of the countless other beggars I had already passed today. On second glance though, she seemed a little more shy, a little less likely to ask again, a little ashamed perhaps. She asked softly and I didn’t see in her eyes or her childrens’ the contempt that usually comes from a life of begging amidst an endless swarm of rich white foreigners.

I had just refused two other children with that same look of contempt. Normally, had I been in a market, I would have offered to buy them some food. Walking along the street late at night though, I simply didn’t have the energy for it.

The problems of street youth here are similar to those at home. Living in a poorer country, the only difference is that crystal meth, cocaine, and heroin, have been replaced by glue sniffing. I was thinking about something a friend I met in Sihanoukville had told me. “I never give money to children. It could go to glue or to someone exploiting them. I keep with me the toothbrushes and paste from a dozen hotels. I give these to children who don’t ask. It’s a surprise. It’s something they know is just for them. Every mother and every child for whom I’ve done this has been both incredulous and overjoyed. Sometimes, if I can, I buy them food. I make sure that they decide what they want though.”

It seemed like good advice. I turned, walked towards the woman, and told her in Khmer, “Money, I can’t. Have you all eaten dinner yet?” “No, we haven’t eaten,” was the reply. “I pay,” I offered, “Please come.” I motioned for her to follow to a restaurant across the street.

Stretching my language abilities to the limit, I asked her to tell the cook what she wanted, and asked the cook how much it cost. The woman kept trying to talk to me. It was too difficult. I couldn’t understand a word. I paid for the meal for her and her children. “I have no rice,” she ventured as I began to pocket my change. I handed it to her. “Rice,” I said. Feeling slightly awkward, I smiled, told her she was welcome as she thanked me, and left quickly.

The disappointment in her eyes as I left had been genuine. I’ve come to recognize the other kind. The awkwardness came when I realized too late that though the money I gave her was enough for nearly two kilograms of rice, I had just spent three times that on a single meal. Had I trusted her to manage that money herself, she could have stretched it into several meals for her family. I suspect she had hoped to convince me to let her do so, or at least to use the money more effectively myself. I, on the other hand, felt rushed, confident in my plan, and embarrassed by the language barrier.

It seems to me an apt analogy for some of the pitfalls of development work: A well-intentioned foreigner decides to help. The motives are genuine, a desire to do good, and a desire to feel good about doing it. The approach is pragmatic: Let the recipient decide what they want. Unfortunately, there are always constraints. The use of funds is restricted to choices that the donor feels is appropriate. There are barriers to the recipients offering genuine feedback on what they think of this process. Maybe the donor cannot understand. Maybe he or she assumes he or she knows best. Maybe it’s both. The end result is that some good is accomplished but not nearly as much as what might have been.

What could I have done better? Sadly, not much. I didn’t know this woman and still don’t. She might have a drinking problem. She might be keeping her children from going to school in the hopes that cute faces garner more money. I don’t know what my money would have been supporting. I could have bought rice to feed the whole family for a week and still not have solved their problem. Eventually, I or my money would no longer be there.

To really help her and her children I would need to give them the resources to keep themselves secure. Finding the woman a job as a housekeeper, though paying only fifty cents a day, could help her to support her family. Teaching her children to speak English, a skill that would help them to find work in business, tourism, or government might be another option. Both would have taken far more time and resources than I, with my fitful desire to help, was willing to give. This was not unreasonable on my part. On a larger scale though, it’s what can make development so difficult.

There are a huge number of problems here but also a massive potential to do good. Realising that potential requires that commitment and a willingness to listen exist amongst everyone involved. I don’t know how much I helped that woman and her two children tonight but they certainly helped me. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded just how easy it is to think one is listening to the poor while all the while ignoring what they say. Given my goals here, I can’t think of a more important lesson to learn.

Moving Vegetables Part II

2005-05-12T00:44:00.000-04:00

Storing, transporting, and selling produce in tropical heat using Cambodia’s “roads” can be a pretty daunting task. Given the limited tools available here, it’s a given that a substantial amount of food will be lost in the process. In Cambodia, where forty-five percent of children are malnourished and the World Food Program is once again trying to ward off starvation by distributing rice to drought stricken provinces, this is no small matter.

To improve the supply of food and increase incomes in rural areas, one can try to raise more crops or one can try to improve the distribution network. Both options have their positive and negative points. Recently, some groups here have started to take an interest in how crops are packaged and transported for sale after harvest. The Centre d’Études et de Développement Agricole Cambodgien (CEDAC) just completed a year long study. Still, the details can be sketchy. This is especially the case for one of the most perishable types of produce, green leafy vegetables. For the past six weeks I’ve been working on a research study commissioned by AQIP, a division of the Australian Assistance in International Development (AusAID) program. The hope is that by knowing where damage occurs, we can develop a simple affordable solution to the problem.

Our first step was a series of unstructured interviews with farmers, collectors, wholesalers, and retailers operating in the Kien Svay and Saang districts just outside of Phnom Penh. Thanks to Cambodia’s annual cycle of droughts and flooding, farmers in Saang can use their fields for only about five months of the year. Farmers in Kien Svay are luckier. Their fields usually remain unflooded for nine months of the year. On my first day in Saang I met a farmer named Ol-ong. Kimsan, Sunday, and I found her sitting by the side of her field with her children, cutting out the white cores from the lettuce plants she’d just harvested. She had two fields that she harvested about three times each year. Based on what she told me that day, her family income from these was about $1.32USD per person per day. Unfortunately, when we found her that day, insects had recently devoured both her fields. In one stroke of bad luck, $1.32USD became about eighty-eight cents. Her children, helping her husk what was left of her crop, were the first I had found here who didn’t smile back. Ol-Ong, for her part chatted amicably with us, telling us about her livelihood, commenting that next time she would farm long beans instead.

Ol-ong and Her Children

The interviews continued for another week. We learned that in the time a green-leafy vegetable crop is harvested until the time it reaches market, there is a twenty-four hour window. After one day, the crop withers to the point of worthlessness. For this reason, transporting and selling is a twenty-four hour process. Crops are harvested during the daytime, stored at the home of a collector until about 1:00am and then transported to the market to be bought in bulk by retailers and wholesalers. By 6:00am, shops in the market begin to open and produce is sold throughout the following day.

The Night Market at Ta Khmao

Because of this twenty-four hour schedule, we needed a team of surveyors capable of conducting our initial researches both day and night. We had just enough of a budget and connections to get a team of five men assembled quickly, with two days initially scheduled for training. On the first day, the whole team quit.

Veasna, was translating some information for me when one of the surveyors interrupted with a question. “What security do we provide for working at night?” I was completely unprepared. “Hmm… we don’t have any,” I replied, “There’s no budget for that…” Veasna and the surveyors began laughing hysterically. “Three of them just quit,” he told me between chuckling gasps for air. I began giggling too. In Khmer society, it was the only possible response. Veasna fled the scene to seek help from Kimsan. Kimsan arrived, managing about two sentences before he too was laughing hysterically.

“The others, they quit too and I told to them that since they cannot work for us, we cannot pay them for today,” Kimsan told me, slapping me repeatedly on the shoulder to make sure I got the joke. Chuckling with the same hopeless laugh I used to use before an exam for which I hadn’t properly prepared, I asked, “Why did they all just quit?” and “What do we do now?”

“They say they did not know they have to work nights. I tell them because cannot pay, we buy for all of us lunch together.” Excessive awkward giggling aside, the lunch was tasty and happily, by the next week, we had found a survey team composed of three men and two women, willing to work nights, with a very good knowledge of both the Saang and Kien Svay districts. All of them had previous experience consulting for AQIP. Unfortunately, this seemed to mean that rather than quitting on the first day, they found a thousand and one reasons to explain to us why none of our questions, measurement plans, or other items in the survey could work. In many cases, I was grateful for their greater experience and insight. In others, their worries bordered on the ridiculous.

“But how can I measure weight at nighttime, while writing down measurements with one hand and holding a flashlight with the other? I would need three hands!”

“Can you maybe hang the vegetables from the portable scale with one hand and hold the light with the other? Then you could put scale down, pick up the pen and remember the number you just saw.”

During the countless times in which we were told that there was no way to take even the most essential basic weight and temperature measurements for the study, the giggling never stopped. We eventually settled on a simple, let’s try it and see if it’s possible approach. We’ve now completed a little over half the study, and though we’ve had to reduce the number of people to be interviewed, we’ve nevertheless managed through regular meetings and supervisory assistance in the field to collect the most essential data.

Surveyor Samboeun Talks to a Farmer

In the meantime, my experiences with Ol-ong and other farmers have left me skeptical about the relative importance of packaging in addressing the problem. Though from the initial data I’ve seen, rates of spoilage may be close to 20%, most of the people with whom I’ve talked insist that little to no spoilage occurs at any point from harvest to market. Even if we do find a big problem with an easy solution, this raises the question of how do we market it to a group of people who don’t see the need?

Surveyors Khemrin and Chantoeun, and Sunday Talk with Farmers and Collectors

My current feeling is that insects are one of the biggest problems. While interviewing a farmer last week, Kimsan spotted a discarded Thai insecticide box covered in warning symbols. “Use 20cc for 20 litres,” he translated for me. “Still, you can see insects have eaten his crop,” I responded, “Maybe we should ask him about this?” Kimsan chatted with the farmer for a moment before responding, “He say that he use 20cc for 20 litre but still have insect, so instead he take one whole package, 100cc and mix with only 15 litre.”

A nearly sevenfold increase in pesticide use! We both took a step back from the vegetable patch.

“Still it do not work well,” Kimsan added. Judging by this man’s crop and others I’ve seen using similar amounts of similar products, he was right. IDE’s recently started investigating an alternative organic pesticide, a by-product of burning fuelwood, but more on that if and when I have some results to share.

In the meanwhile, thankfully, we’ve embarked on this study without many preconceptions, acknowledging a problem and trying to see if a viable solution is possible from this direction. On the still more positive side, I made certain to include a few very open-ended questions in the questionnaire regarding problems in our respondents’ livelihoods. Though the answers may have nothing to do with packaging or transport, they'll help us to know if we’re going down the wrong path and may even give us a hint as to what the right one is.

My Birthday Cambodian Style

2005-05-09T06:27:00.000-04:00

Cambodians don’t celebrate birthdays. From the day they’re born, each of them is already one year old. When New Years comes around at the end of the dry season, everyone becomes one year older. This can lead to some confusion as a two-month old born in February might already be two years old by the end of April. Thanks to the Khmer Rouge’s systematic campaign to wipe out all forms of personal documentation, many Cambodians don’t even know their own birthdates. Mr. Lang, IDE Cambodia’s Administration Manager only had his birth certificate re-issued a few weeks ago. This is not an uncommon occurrence. I have no idea if he knew his date of birth but I gather it’s not uncommon practice to just create one out of thin air.

In recent years, some younger Khmer have apparently started to celebrate birthday parties too. Like Hip-Hop and (unfortunately) Britney Spears, if it’s Western, it’s trendy. I normally don’t do much for my birthday. It’s never seemed that important to me. Still, copying an idea that I had read on Selena’s blog, I invited the whole office out for dinner on my birthday on April 29. (Selena was my predecessor working for EWB in Cambodia. She’s now working for IDE in Sri Lanka. You can find her blog here.) From what she’d written, this looked like an excellent opportunity for some extended cultural exchange and integration outside of the usual work setting.

Almost everyone I invited seemed really enthused, more so than I could have anticipated. I had to turn down about a half-dozen offers of presents and questions about appropriate gifts. They insisted at the least on all chipping together to buy me a cake. Previous stories aside, I didn’t have the heart to explain to them that since it was still Passover, I shouldn’t be eating any baked goods. They were all far too enthusiastic about the cake for me to turn them down.

After some consultation with my coworkers here, we settled on a visit to Samaki restaurant in Prey Leap. Prey Leap is home to a string of restaurants with live music just outside of Phnom Penh. Phnom Penois go there for celebrations or just to unwind, breathing air with a little less grime in it. The meal was a big one. There were over twenty people in attendance. My friends ordered and I sat back and watched a seemingly endless train of food arrive. It was a great opportunity to sample some of the local food, chat, and even meet some co-workers’ families and children.

As the meal wound down to a close, Mike, on behalf of everyone at IDE presented me with a big wreath, the kind I had only seen previously placed as offerings on images of the Buddha, made by stringing together hundreds of small Jasmine flowers. The cake arrived. Only Mike’s family and I knew the words or even more than the first couple of notes of “Happy Birthday” but there was a spirited, and in some cases slightly intoxicated, attempt made. Mike’s children seemed to really enjoy the cake. For everyone else it was a bit of a novelty. We sat and chatted for another hour or so before realizing that it was getting pretty late and we should all be heading home. The time was about 8:30pm. After all, cakes aside, this is still Cambodia.

Phalla Brings the Cake

A Passover Miracle

2005-04-25T21:55:00.000-04:00

I had intended for this to be an update on the status of my work but recent events seemed too surprising for me not to share. I promise an update on my work soon.

The Jewish holiday of Passover began on Saturday night. For the uninitiated, this is one of the biggest events in the Jewish calendar. Celebrating the story of the exodus from Egypt and the receipt of God’s revelation at Sinai, it’s akin to Easter for Christians, and maybe Eid for the Muslims, or Holi for the Hindus. For eight days Jews abstain from all leavened bread and instead cook massive amounts of food using a large unleavened cracker called Matzoh. Families gather together on the first two nights for a ritual meal known as a Seder. The last supper of Jesus was one of these. It comprises a long set ritual of prayers, blessings, and consumption of symbolic foods. Wine for celebration. Eggs for renewal. Bitter herbs to represent the harshness of slavery. Salt water for tears.

For the past several weeks, friends and relatives have inquired what I planned to do to celebrate the holiday. E-mails from my mother in the weeks leading up to it were a little concerned: “Do you have any plans for Passover? Is there maybe a Seder you can join in Phnom Penh? Do the Lubavitchers at least have a community there? If not, can they maybe send you some Matzoh??”

Lubavitchers are perhaps the world’s most unique group of evangelists. They proselytize only to their own people, trying to make religious converts out of secular Jews. To that end, they’ve set up missions, often known as Chabad Houses, throughout the world. My answers were invariably the same, “The nearest Chabad is a day’s ride away across an international border in Bangkok. Asking them to ship me some Matzoh just seems ridiculous. There is no Jewish community here with which to have a seder. Only the Muslims and the ex-pats even know what a Jew is. I for one plan to have some stir fry on rice with a side of mango and maybe some eggs in salt water for my seder. Sorry Mom. I’ve got a siddur (prayer book) here that I can skim through but that’s about it.”

On Saturday night I skipped the Seder, hard-boiled the only egg I had, and, feeling full from my stir-fry, decided to save it for the next night. Sunday I went to the Cambodian National Museum, a beautiful building in which ancient images of the Buddha and the Hindu deities spanning fifteen hundred years of Khmer civilization reside in four corridors surrounding an open-air courtyard. As I wandered amongst the statues, politely refusing the jasmine flowers proffered to me by museum staff to be used as offerings to the Buddha images, the irony was not lost on me that I was spending my celebration of the victory of God over idolatry surrounded by idols.

At the center of the courtyard sat a stone Buddha meditating under a stupa in the center of a pond. Around this pond were four larger ponds filled with budding pink lotus flowers. It was quite beautiful. I relaxed nearby in the shade, alternately napping on a wicker chair and chatting with a young monk. As the museum began to empty, I stopped to take some photos. Next to me, I thought I heard someone speaking in Hebrew.

Lotus in the Museum

“Shalom,” I ventured to the woman walking past. “Shalom,” she replied. This was followed by a string of Hebrew I could barely discern asking where I was from, how I had learned Hebrew, and was I Jewish. After weeks of focusing on Khmer, I was unprepared for the onslaught. I stuttered, muttering in tree languages simultaneously, “Ani moak bee Canada… Crud! Ummm…. Somtoh…. Knyom lomed ha’lashon Khmer ve’lehoshev be’ivrit achshav zeh kasheh me’od. Okay… ummm… Hayom zeh Pesah?” To a Hebrew speaker, this translates roughly into “I [Khmer words] Canada. [English cursing] [More Khmer] learning the tongue is Khmer and to thenk in Hebrew now, this very hard. Okay… [awkward pause] Today is Passover?”

She was nonplussed and responded in Hebrew that yes it was Passover, she and her tour group were on holiday though and didn’t much mind missing the rituals and then switched to English and said, “Okay. Bye-bye.” I was dismissed.

I spent the next ten minutes amongst the statuary abusing myself in Hebrew for my inability to communicate. This helped me remember how to speak properly. I was sure that, limited as my abilities were, given another opportunity, I’d be able to use them. On the way out, as I put my camera in my backpack, the man in front of me mumbled something garbled in Hebrew that sounded like “…. speak Hebrew.”

“I can speak a little bit,” I responded, “You are all … Israeli?” From there, with slightly clearer Hebrew, I attracted a crowd. “You’re the first Jews I’ve seen in two months,” I told them. Between English and Hebrew, I explained about my work, life in Cambodia, and my mother’s questions about my Seder plans.

The whole tour group took an interest. They had already had their Seder but one of them had leftover Matzoh, wine, and bitter herbs to offer me. He gave me the name of their hotel, his name, Ranata, and a room number. “Stop by at eight o’clock,” he told me, continuing with a little snarkiness, “You can tell your Mother that it was Israelis not Lubavitchers who were able to help you.” When I arrived, I was immediately recognized and greeted by the members of the tour. Ranata had no wine or bitter herbs to give after all, but he did supply me with enough Matzoh to last the rest of the week, some rabbinically certified cookies, and even a large Kosher for Passover Toblerone bar. I was amazed and very grateful, thanking him and everyone else in sight profusely before merrily biking home.

Searching for juice at the market as it was closing the day before, all I had been able to find was grape drink. I had never seen grape drink here before and wanted a different flavour. None was available. So, I bought it. Arriving home that night, I soon found myself in conversation with my next-door neighbour. As we chatted one of the young men from the neighbourhood arrived. We had never met but his English was good and the conversation went on for some time. An essential ingredient of the Passover Seder is four cups of wine or at least grape juice. I offered some grape drink to both my neighbour and our guest before quietly starting a ritual of my own as we talked. The only English on the bottle assured me that it contained “25% real juice.” This was good enough for me.

Afterwards, lacking many of the tools for a proper Seder, not least of which is a Hagadah, a prayer book containing the proper order and wording of the various prayers and rituals, I nevertheless threw on my skullcap, put my egg, a hot pepper to substitute for the bitter herbs, some soup spices in place of green leafy vegetables, and my matzoh in a bowl. It wasn’t quite a ritual seder plate but I figured it would do in a pinch. I mixed up some salt water for dipping in a glass and recited what blessings I could in what was almost certainly the wrong order. Afterwards, I followed what prayers I could from my general all-purpose siddur (prayer book).

Adam’s Seder

So this was my Passover miracle. Was it Kosher? Almost certainly not. Still, between all of the unlikely events leading up to it, purchasing the grape drink, preserving my only remaining egg an extra day, and obtaining the matzoh from the Israelis, I’m loathe to call it all coincidence.

Hill Tribes of Ratanakiri

2005-04-18T21:18:00.000-04:00

One week later and I’m back in Phnom Penh. The trip was one new experience after another. I departed early Saturday morning on a small minibus from Phnom Penh to Kratie, a province a little to the north of Phnom Penh. An overnight trip by pickup truck on Sunday brought me to Ratanakiri, one of Cambodia’s most remote provinces where, I’m happy to report, I was greeted by the sight of countless billboards advertising the Cambodian Red Cross’ Ceramic Water Purifier, a product manufactured at a factory for whose establishment my EWB predecessor, Selena, was responsible. I hope my work here is half as successful.

With a week’s worth of backlogged e-mails, a couple of projects back on the go at IDE, and a belly full of the lemon tofu stir fry sandwich I just ate for dinner, I can’t muster up the energy to write all of my stories just now. I do promise, however, that I’ll post the highlights, pictures included, retroactively over the next few weeks. The picture below was taken at the Cha Ong waterfall gorge, about 5km outside of Ban Lung in Ratanakiri.

Adam in Ratanakiri

In the meanwhile, I’d like to try a bit of an experiment. Working here is continually changing and shaping my perspective on development. With more time to think and plenty to ponder, my views on poverty, education, gender equality, nepotism, corruption, the role of technology, the role of NGOs, and especially my own role as a development worker here in Cambodia have been constantly in flux. Many of you will probably already have seen this in my e-mails home. Thinking is fun but less productive alone. I’d like to be able to share some of this process with others. This is where the experiment begins.

During EWB volunteer training we focused a lot of time on analyzing the cycle of poverty. Poverty has many causes. Each cause has many effects. Some of these effects may cause other problems that lead to greater poverty. It’s a hard cycle to break. I’m going to try to focus on one or two of these causes/effects and explain the problem. There is no single good solution to any of them, only options and ideas. I’d like to see if I can get a discussion going in the comments section of the blog. This is my attempt to share with you some of what I’m learning here in between posts about the life and culture here. I’d also love to see what others thing.

This time, in keeping with the Ratanakiri theme, I’m going to talk a bit about the problem of development versus indigenous rights. Ratanakiri is home to Cambodia’s hill tribe minorities, known collectively as the Khmer Loeu. There are a variety of tribes, including the Tampuon, Chunchiet, and Krung, each living in their own villages with their own tools and traditions. In post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, their livelihoods were upset for many years by Cambodia’s illegal timber trade. Corrupt members of the government and military, including both Prime Ministers would award massive illegal logging contracts to the highest bidder. They were quite brazen about it. Land used and occupied by these tribes would be appropriated, exploited, and left. Villagers who attempted to interfere were turned away at gunpoint by army personnel brought in by generals who were also involved in the scam.

Eventually, through the effort of several NGOs, the Khmer Loeu were educated regarding their rights to the land and their legal rights and abilities to fight this problem. Through a combination of well-timed pressure from international environmental groups and their own efforts, they were largely successful. Logging is no longer a major problem in Ratanakiri. In the meanwhile, however, other landowners have been busily purchasing land that once used by the Khmer Loeu, driving them further into the jungle. To sustain their rice farming, they have begun a campaign of slash and burn agriculture. At the end of the dry season, the they now light massive forest fires to clear land so that they will have fields to cultivate during the rainy season. On my visit to Ratanakiri province, I lost count of the number of burned and/or burning fields that I passed. They were everywhere.

This is especially unfortunate since, thanks to years of massive sustained illegal logging, Cambodia is nearing a crisis point in its deforestation. The fields cleared in the jungle are good for maybe three years before they become uselessly depleted of nutrients. In the meanwhile, as the dust in the ground gradually turns former forestland into a desert, the waterways are choked by sand. One government group, I believe it’s called the (
National Timberwood Authority (NTA), is attempting to educate the hill tribes regarding the devastating results of this practice. Still, the Khmer Loeu need a means by which to eat and the NTA does not seem to have provided one yet.

Some would argue that they should take modern jobs. These are unfortunately already in short supply in Cambodia. The increased interaction with modern Cambodia has also begun to erode their traditional way of life. Already they wear modern clothes. I met a Tampuon working for the NGO, Care, in Ratanakiri. He was involved in educational and retraining programs for the tribes in and around Ban Lung, the capital of Ratanakiri. He was also working on an illustrated Tampuon-Kreung-Khmer dictionary. Seeing their culture gradually erode, programs have begun to increase communication and help them preserve it. Still, there is some tension between Khmer and Khmer Loeu. The only time I have heard of Cambodians not making an effort to smile at each other occurs here. A Khmer Loeu will almost never smile at a Khmer.

Cambodian roads are the worst in South East Asia and may be some of the worst on Earth. A trip of 100km can be a six hour journey through craters, across bumpy tracks surrounded by sixty centimeter deep crevasses, and over hills that more closely resemble sand dunes during the dry season and swampland during the rainy. Miraculously for Cambodia, despite the ubiquitous government corruption that has until now hampered all such efforts, the roads in and out of Ratanakiri are beginning to be repaired. With improved roads, a massive influx of businesses and tourists is starting to begin. Already the Internet, albeit slowly and intermittently, has reached Ban Lung. The number of guesthouses seems to have roughly doubled since my Lonely Planet guidebook was published two years ago. The benefits of improved roads are many: better access to health care, ease of transportation for food, increased business across the Laotian border. In other words, as the roads continue to improve there will be an overall improvement in the standard of living of most Khmer in Ratanakiri. Unfortunately, the already endangered Khmer Loeu way of life will be under greater threat.

Reducing their culture to a tourist attraction may help the Khmer Loeu financially but will hardly be of lasting cultural value to them. Retreat from encroaching modernism no longer seems like a viable option either. Slash and burn agriculture is proving a stop gap solution at best to their food needs and in a country starved for firewood, it also seems very wasteful. So, what action should be taken? What is the role of the government? Of NGOs? How is this affected by government corruption? I’ve got some ideas on the subject but I’d love to hear yours. Click on the comment link just below and let me know what you think. Cheers.

Ratanakiri - Day 1

2005-04-12T00:51:00.000-04:00

Dusty and exhausted from our night on the road, Kamil, Aska, and I soon found our way through an ad in front of a motorbike rental shop to a small $2/night guesthouse. The guesthouse was actually the bikeshop owner’s home, a wooden building across the street from a small lake. There were two restaurants by the lakeside, the larger one staffed by several waiters, and the smaller one owned by a family of Cham Muslims.

Aska and I left an exhausted Kamil behind, hiring a moto to investigate one of Ratanakiri’s biggest attractions, Yeak Lom, a big round crater lake, about three hundred metres wide and about fourty metres deep, surrounded by forest. The water was clear, refreshing, and cool, cold but not too cold. Beer and mango stalls awaited us by the small dock at the side of the lake. Happily, the mangos were their usual reliably tasty selves as was the beer. For some inexplicable reason, not only d the Khmer love beer but they do heck of a good job brewing it too.

On the Shores of Yeak Lom

We spent so long at the lake that by the time we were ready to depart, the sun was nearly setting and the last moto-taxi had left. Aska and I began the 5km walk back to the guesthouse in the dark, hoping we wouldn’t make a wrong turn. About two-thirds of the way there, a taxi pulled up beside us, asking in clear English, “Do you need a moto to go to Ban Lung?” We haggled a little and were soon on our weary way. “I’m not actually a moto driver,” our unexpected rescuer told us, “but you looked very lost. I work for an NGO, Care. I help with training and education for some of the tribespeople. I’m also working on the final touches for an illustrated Khmer-Tampuon-Kreung dictionary. My name is Samoeun. Do you need a guide? I have no work right now because of Khmer New Year and would be happy to show you through Ratanakiri.”

Ratanakiri is home to the bulk of Cambodia’s hill tribe minorities, several different groups known collectively sometimes as Chunchiet, sometimes as Khmer Loeu. The Khmer Loeu have a long history living near to the Khmer but have maintained what we would consider a more aboriginal mode of existence, complete with their own languages and religious beliefs. Samoeun we soon discovered was from a local tribe of the Tampuon group. I took down his phone number, promising that if we needed a guide, we would contact him.

By the time we returned, Kamil had given up waiting for us at the guesthouse. Politely turning down an offer to join our host for dinner, we went in search of him. When we found him, he was finishing a meal at the Cham Muslim restaurant. We sat down to join him, discovering as we did so that one of the family members, recently returned from work in Phnom Penh so as to be with family during her pregnancy, was nearly fluent in English. I took advantage of the opportunity to ask her some questions about her people, their history, and how their Muslim beliefs were affected by the dominant Buddhist culture. She was happy to answer the questions and left me with an open invitation to have her son or one of her other relatives accompany me on a visit to their mosque.

One day in Ratanakiri and I found myself living in a Buddhist home for Khmer New Year, being offered tours by a guide from the hill tribes, and receiving an open invitation to visit a Cham Muslim mosque. The Religious Studies major in me was very pleased.

On Top of Things

2005-04-10T06:52:00.000-04:00

Four weeks ago I told EWB’s Director of Overseas Projects, Russ, that I was planning on crossing the border into Vietnam to change my visa status in Cambodia. “No problem,” wrote Russ, “I just need to know the dates you’ll be away so I can adjust your insurance.” I had no idea that crossing international boundaries would affect my insurance. Engineers Without Borders eh? How ironic.

“Anything else that I should know about that will affect the insurance?” I asked, “Motorcycles with too many passengers? Travelling in the back of pickups?” “Motorbikes are fine,” responded Russ, “Just don’t do anything too stupid like travel on the roof of a bus.”

In retrospect, I wonder how he knew…

It started innocently enough. I was in the province of Kratie, working my way towards Ratanakiri near the Laotian and Vietnamese borders. Share taxi service was infrequent, pickup trucks apparently more so. Buses were non-existent. I was doing some quick shopping in the market while I waited for my share taxi to fill so that we could depart. Lounging nearby at the guesthouse where I had been staying were two Poles, waiting for a pickup to depart. We chatted a bit while they convinced me that their pickup would be the cheaper, quicker, and more culturally authentic means of transport to Ratanakiri. Together we went to the taxi park to alter my travel plans.

Waiting for the Pickup to Fill

After about two hours of waiting, the pickup began to fill. “We should probably go reserve ourselves some seats,” I said. “Don’t worry about it,” my new friends responded, “We are barang (foreigners). They’ll tell us when we should board.” An hour later, twenty-six people, their luggage and even some furniture were crammed onto the back of the pickup. “Maybe we should board,” I said again. “You’re probably right,” they responded, “You’re the engineer. Where will we fit?” Already dreading the answer, I examined the situation. “Nowhere left but the roof,” I told them.

We climbed onto the roof. It was already somewhat occupied. The only seats left were on a hard metal grill covered by a tarp, facing nothing but the hood and the empty air above it. Ninety minutes of forty plus degree direct sun later, we began to move. I felt like a fool for being on the roof. Still, this was an adventure and I was excited!

Soon, the dust started. In front of us, sitting calmly on the hood like a Buddha with sunglasses, legs crossed, one hand on a windshield wiper, was an employee of the truck company. At sixty kph, the only way to breath while surrounded by Cambodian dust is with a mask. I had two. I offered him one and took the other for myself. Both immediately broke. I tried to hold mine on with one hand while hanging on for dear life with the other. Unable to see through the flying dirt, I put on my sunglasses. I reviewed the road as it passed underneath us. The sunglasses fell off. “Easy come easy go,” I thought. I was about to spend the next eight hours with my hand over my mouth and my eyes tightly shut.

Only it was going to be closer to fifteen hours.

Next, the rain started. The pickup stopped. The tarp that had been our cushion came out and became our shelter. I was now wet, holding a tarp against the sixty kph headwind, with my butt resting on a hard metal grille. Going over Cambodian roads, the worst ones in Asia, the potholes resembled bomb craters. Given the history of civil war in this country, some of them may have been. To avoid these, our pickup swerved constantly from one end of the road to the other. When our driver made a mistake, the pickup would crash into a pothole, jarring my behind, and causing the whole truck to tilt as much as thirty degrees to the side. My underside took a beating. I hung on for dear life. The man behind me sat with one leg to the back of the pickup and one over the side. His daughter sat on his lap, dangling precariously over the edge. No one seemed very surprised by this.

Kamil, Aska, and I Reserve our Seats

Eventually the rain stopped. The tarp was refolded so that it no longer covered my seat. I repaired my dust mask. I cushioned my underside with several cotton sarongs and a copy of Lonely Planet Cambodia. The ride continued. After an hour, the sarongs and the Lonely Planet were no longer much help. “Are you regretting not taking the share taxi?” the Poles asked me with some concern.

The ride continued. Every forty minutes we stopped so that the driver could pour water on the overheating engine. My butt hurt. Night fell. I wanted to sleep. This was not a good idea. The roads were getting worse. We stopped twice for about an hour to doze and let the engine cool. I lay down in the dirt on the side of the road, stared at the stars, and wondered when the journey would end. We arrived in Ratanakiri at 7am the next morning, fifteen hours after our departure.

As an aside, four days later, on the return journey, I took the share-taxi to Kratie and a nice air-con bus to Phnom Penh. This time, all I had to contend with was a woman, seated underneath the driver, who seemed to be involved in a domestic dispute. She would alternately yell at a nearby motorcycle carrying a man and boy, or throw up out the driver’s side window.

Kratie

2005-04-09T06:09:00.000-04:00

I awoke at 5:30 am so as to be absolutely certain to be on time for my bus. I felt a little sick. I had been at the office throughout the previous evening, learning traditional dances, eating, drinking, and, with keyboard accompaniment, repeatedly belting out a tacky French love song from the 1960s. I had only begun to solidify my New Year’s travel plans during lunch the previous day, biking to the waterfront to purchase passage on a boat to Kratie, halfway between Phnom Penh and Ratanakiri. In an encouraging albeit inconvenient sign of Cambodia’s development though, boat service from Phnom Penh to Kratie no longer exists. The roads have improved and busses have undercut the whole industry. Improvising, I shaved one dollar off the extravagant $9 bus fare to Kratie, by agreeing that I would travel in a bus peopled not by tourists but by locals. That last was hardly a concession. I had spent the last four weeks studiously avoiding tourists in the hopes of increasing my integration into Cambodian culture.

Adam Sings ‘Aline’. Kressna Accompanies.

Arriving at the bus station, I found my ticket vendor waiting for me. He took my bag, loaded it into his car and drove me to the central market. I was confused. We exited the vehicle. He led me to a minibus and promptly disappeared. An eleven year old boy loaded my backpack onto the roof and I hopped into the overcrowded vehicle through a window. I was soon making friends with my fellow passengers as they helped me with the Khmer reading exercises in my grammar book. With some difficulty I asked them how much they had paid for their passage. Four dollars, they told me. No wonder the ticket vendor had disappeared. He’d bought my place on the minibus for half price and pocketed $4 for himself! I didn’t mind though. This is how business is done here and his crafty business skills had helped me to slip from tourist back to quasi-local foreigner status.

Seven hours later, and a stop at which I helped some farmers to remove yet another large piece of furniture from the roof of our van, we arrived in Kratie. Fending off the touts and moto-drivers with some polite Khmer, and some friendly support from my fellow passengers (“Oh yeah. This barang’s okay. He can speak Khmerm”), I had soon found a nice little guesthouse and secured a moto-driver for some sightseeing. My driver was one of two sons helping to run the family guesthouse. His name was Sua. His English was great and he was happy to help me practice my Khmer. His mother, for her part, never seemed quite to believe that I couldn’t understand her when she spoke and always greeted me with new questions that I could not answer.

My first stop with Sua was a dock from which tourists rent boats to see endangered Iriwaddy River Dolphins as they swim through the Mekong. I hired a small boat and driver for myself and was soon underway. As we floated on the Mekong, my boat driver would break the silence every thirty seconds or so, pointing and saying in perfect English, “Over there!” but knowing virtually no other vocabulary. The dolphins were spectacular. They surrounded us on all sides, occasionally hinting at their presence with a fin pushed out of the water or a head appearing twenty metres away. The hour-long ride was incredibly relaxing and the Mekong itself was beautiful.

Twilight on The Mekong River

Photographing the sunset, I was joined by another tourist, an Englishman named Ashley. He and his driver soon accompanied Sua and I to visit the nearby Pagoda on Mt. Sambok. Leaving our drivers at the base of the hill, Ashley and I climbed the steps to the Pagoda. Entering the grounds, we found some of the first paintings I had ever seen of the Khmer Buddhist interpretation of hell.

Paintings at Wat Sambok

Climbing still higher, we met two monks, one of whom spoke some English. He asked us to help him in pronouncing some of the Buddhist scriptures that he had just translated from Pali into English. We chatted amicably. Though his name now escapes me, I remember that he had been a monk for over ten years and was one of the first I had met who seemed genuinely devouted to meditation, discipline, and hopefully enlightenment. I’ve since learned that the reason for which monks in Phnom Penh often seem young and slightly less interested in English than they are in their cell phones is because Phnom Penh is the center of Buddhist education. Young monks come here for the free education. The monks here in the countryside, however, seemed genuinely devouted to their scriptures, beliefs, and personal quests. In exchange for our help with his English work, this monk offered to lead us in a ten-minute meditation session. We both agreed enthusiastically, entering a small nearby shrine to learn the Apasana method of Theravada Buddhist meditation.

Monks on the Mountaintop

The meditation was restful. Our concentration was interrupted only by his mantra-like repetition of the English scripture with which we had helped him. Afterwords we walked and chatted further, learning of Buddhist beliefs and the monk’s own views on enlightenment and the Sangga (the Buddhist community of monks). Ashley and I proceeded onwards to the top of the mountain to photograph the countryside in the rapidly fading light. We climbed back down, agreeing to meet for dinner later that night.

As we left, half-an-hour behind the schedule to which Sua and I had agreed, an event with which many of you will be familiar occurred. I realized I no longer had my Tilley Hat. “Chop! Chop! (Stop!)” I shouted to Sua. “I forgot my hat,” I bashfully explained. I ran back up the mountain, taking the steps two at a time. Motioning to the workers at the entrance that I had forgotten something, I tore inside the shrine where we had meditated, searching for my hat and reminding myself constantly, “Don’t worry. Monks can’t steal. It’s one of their vows. They wouldn’t want your stupid hat anyway.” I gave up in the shrine. Climbing to the very summit, I found my hat stuffed into a crack in a fence along the side of a stone shrine. Right where I had left it while taking a photograph. Exhausted, out of breath, and feeling silly, I jogged back down the steps and hopped on the moto, looking forward to a nice cold shower before dinner.

The next morning, Sua and I departed early to make the 37km journey to Cambodia’s largest Pagoda, Wat Sambor, with time enough for me to return and find transport to Ratanakiri that afternoon. Also known as the Wat of 108 columns, this temple is quite the sight to see. Inside, I once again found the locals very appreciative of my rudimentary Khmer. They politely offered me an illustrated English biography of the Buddha as I sat in front of the central shrine admiring the beautiful paintings all around me.

Wat Sambor

Outside, a ninety year old man, who acted as the temple’s caretaker, greeted me in French. We spoke a little. Unfortunately, though he could understand me, between his thick accent and lack of teeth, I could barely make out a word he said. Sua and I soon sat down to a glass of sugar cane juice before beginning the return journey. Stopping along the way at some rapids over which had been constructed an endless series of roofed platforms for picnicking, I began to appreciate why Khmer couples and families so enjoy lounging in places like this as a type of national weekend pastime.

Sua Dips his Feet at the Rapids

Unfortunately, when it came time to depart, we found an accident blocking traffic in both directions for over a hundred metres. A car and a construction truck had both almost but not quite collided on a bridge. The result was a mess in which a move by either one would almost certainly result in some serious damage to the car.

Accident on the Bridge

We waited for over an hour while I observed local means of shipping livestock a little more closely than I am usually able to do. Piles of chickens were stuffed onto a motorcycle, some hanging from the handlebars by their feet, all of them still alive and clucking to keep them fresh for market. The animal rights activist in me wanted to cry, especially because treating animals in this manner here is not so much an act of cruelty as necessity and convenience. The Khmer lack food. Animals are a protein source. They’re busy enough trying to survive themselves that concepts like animal cruelty can be difficult to convey in this situation and completely alien to their understanding.

Chicken Moto

I gave up hope of reaching a pickup truck before it’s departure. I needn’t have worried. Arriving back in town, both a share taxi and a pickup truck were still available to go to the capital city of Ratanakiri, Ban Lung. Given it required fewer people to depart and I would already likely be arriving long after dark, I opted for the more expensive share-taxi and returned to my guesthouse to await news that it had filled.

Happy New Year!

2005-04-08T05:33:00.000-04:00

The biggest holiday of the Cambodian year, Khmer New Year, begins on Wednesday next week and continues until Friday. Playing games and dancing in the street started around the time I first arrived in Phnom Penh and has been going strong ever since. I've been joining in when when the opportunity arises. There's something really heartwarming in these crowds. Twenty-somethings play alongside three year olds, everyone laughs hysterically, and people dash about in games that loosely resemble tag, bowling, and duck duck goose.

To make things extra interesting, this is the biggest statutory holiday of the year, meaning that I get the week off from work next week! (Don't get me wrong. I love my work and am eager to have a positive impact here but this will likely be the most time that I will ever have free simply to explore Cambodia. I'm pretty excited about that. :) ).

I was hoping to have an update about my experiences during the unstructured interviews we've conducted over the past week to learn about the livelihoods of farmers, crop collectors, wholesalers, and retailers here in Kandal province. For those interested in the nitty-gritty aspects of both the post-harvest green leafy vegetable cycle here and our work researching it, I've posted a document relating to our plans for a systematic survey:

Basic Information and Measurement Strategy

Unfortunately, the office New Year's party begin's in half an hour. So, it looks like I've run out of time to do more than that right now.

In other news, I received two good personal responses to my hand laundry post. For those of you interested in how to actually perform this task properly as well as some of the development issues it raises, I've reprinted both e-mails with permission here.

In the meanwhile, I'm off on the early-morning minibus to Kratie province tomorrow. From there I'll probably work my way up by boat, bus, and pickup truck to Cambodia's wild North, the provinces of Ratanakiri and/or Mondulkiri.

Happy New Year!

A Weekend of Firsts

2005-04-07T01:08:00.000-04:00

I paid my first bribe this weekend. That came last though. Beforehand I visited my first Communist country, met my first razor artist, and saw my first traffic fatality in Asia.

I’ve had some visa troubles here. When I arrived at the airport I purchased a Business visa for $25USD. I was issued a default E class business visa. For some strange reason, the government has recently decided that these are not extendible. I needed to cross an international border and re-enter the country to correct things. Mr Lang, the Administration Manager at IDE contacted the government for me and received a formal certificate, stating that I was employed in Cambodia and should be granted a B class visa. I was to present this at the border.

Saturday morning I took the bus to Ho Chi Minh city. Alicia, a good friend of some good friends of mine, happened to be in Vietnam on a conference from her job teaching English in Hong Kong. We’d agreed to meet that night for dinner. In the meantime, she’d booked me a room at the hotel where she was staying.

Fields of Dust on the Cambodian Side of the Border

Just crossing the border, one notices an immediate change. Vietnam is hardly the most developed of nations but while on the Cambodia side of the border, a drought held sway and fields lay cracked open by the heat, in Vietnam greenery lined by electric poles stretched into the distance and every house seemed to have a massive TV antenna. I arrived in Saigon and checked in to my room, a cozy little number with dozens of English satellite TV channels, including HBO, air conditioning, and even hot water! I collapsed, slept, and decided to go for a walk.

Television and Fields of Green on the Vietnamese Side

Saigon is not what you’d expect from a Communist country. From every side, neon signs for products ranging from LG appliances to Coca-Cola assaulted me. The latest Brittany Spears song blasted from a large screen TV in front of a department store. I left the main strip to walk along the riverbank in search of some peace of mind. Unfortunately, the shores of the river were being used as a garbage dump. There were several children there flying a big kite. I took out my camera to take a photo.

Children here always seem delighted to have their photo taken. Several offered to take pictures of me with the kite. My gut told me something was amiss. I moved to exit the dump and continue my walk. On my way out, one of the children made what seemed a playful grab at my camera. I dodged aside, laughing with him. In his hand he held a razor blade with which he was trying to slice the camera’s strap away from my wrist. Perhaps not so funny.

I wandered the streets, the markets, and the memorials near the backpackers strip before returning to the hotel to meet with Alicia. After some introductions and conversation, we went in search of a vegetarian restaurant. Along the way we passed a crowd, gathered by the side of the road. Hundreds of people had stopped to stare at a body covered with a white sheet. From my brief experience here, Saigon drivers are a lot like Phnom Penh drivers when it comes to ignoring basic traffic laws. Unfortunately, they seem to lack the courtesy and/or the ability to look where they’re going of their Cambodian counterparts. It was a sad sight. Alicia told me that there are an average of twenty traffic casualties in Ho Chi Minh city every day. I responded that the leading cause of death amongst Peace Corps volunteers is traffic accidents. It makes one wonder about just how much a seatbelt or a good bike helmet is worth.

Alicia and I at the Hotel

The restaurant was superb. The conversation was great. Alicia and I traded stories using our digital cameras. The next day I returned to the border where I presented my certificate and passport to the visa-issuing officer. He stamped the form and gestured for me to pay him. I dutifully handed over the $25USD fee. He returned twenty dollars to me, handed me my passport, and put the remaining five into a small pouch in front of him. “For drinks,” he said with a big Khmer grin.

I looked at my new visa. In the price field the word 'Gratis' was stamped. Apparently Mr. Lang had already paid the processing fee on my behalf. For my part, I had just made my first contribution to Cambodia’s corruption machine.

Tastes Like Chicken...

2005-04-05T03:22:00.000-04:00

This one’s not for the squeamish.

There’s a volunteer at EWB who has become something of a legend for his ability to integrate into the local culture. I’ve never met the man. His name is Paul Slomp. I gather he not only does development work but plants his own crops and milks his own goats somewhere in Zambia. During volunteer training several of us were swapping stories about our most uncomfortable culinary experiences. Someone told the following story:

Paul is sitting down to a formal traditional meal with several prominent members of an African community. They are serving a type of chicken soup. As his soup is poured, a decapitated head, complete with beak, plops into the bowl. “You are lucky!” exclaims the man next to him. “You got the head!” Not wanting to offend his host, Paul dutifully eats it. Beak, skull, and all.

He won in absentia. Sarah, director of EWB’s SCALA program in the Philippines came in a close second with her account of the Century Egg, a fetal chicken egg that is left to ferment for one hundred days before being cracked open and swallowed whole and raw in a dark corner somewhere, the reason being that no one wants to see what they’re consuming. Wisely, she’d abstained from the practice.

I just met the Cambodian version.

Being a vegetarian in Cambodia is difficult. They just don’t have the concept for it. If you say “I don’t eat meat,” they locals will stare at you with incomprehension before responding, “Okay, but you should try this. It’s made from pork. You eat pork right?” Eating from local vendors is always something of a meat-eating risk but supporting local business is a priority for me. Less than two hours ago I finished a long day in the field. I have to be awake and ready to work at 1am tonight. We’re surveying vegetable distributors at local markets. 1am is the time when most of their buying and selling occurs. I didn’t have time to cook dinner. Instead, I wandered down to the market for a big bowl of soup from a vendor I’d visited before. She speaks English, so I felt relatively safe.

The street-soup system is simple. Choose a type of noodle. Choose a meat. Sit. Wait. The last time, I chose a flat noodle and asked for hardboiled eggs, explaining that I didn’t eat meat. The vendor looked at me like I was crazy but agreed.

The two eggs that arrived in my soup had been broken into small bits. I mistook some of these bits for mushrooms at first because they were dark gray. I saw that everyone else who was eating eggs was eating them with spoons from small stands as though they were soft-boiled. “Oh,” I thought, “She looked at me oddly because the eggs aren’t for soup. The dark colour must be the result of the soft egg white being boiled in the dark soup broth.”

Tonight I ordered the same. This time though, both eggs came whole, not in small bits. The yolk looked a little veiny but I wasn’t too concerned. “Must be the broth again,” I thought. I saw the egg-white was coloured gray again. I was proud of myself that I no longer thought it was a mushroom. I noticed that the eggs split into smaller pieces only along certain seam lines. That seemed odd. They tasted a little stringy. It made me think disturbingly of feathers.

My soup was two thirds gone. With a sense of foreboding, I swallowed. I dipped my spoon back into the bowl, raised it, and looked at its contents. Next to a small feather, a decapitated fetal head and neck looked back at me. In retrospect, that veiny yolk should have been a bit of a giveaway.

I quickly realized that I’d already been through this with three other eggs. Mechanically, I finished the last of my soup. I paid, queasily strolled home, took a big glass of orange drink, and promised myself I would never eat the ‘soft-boiled’ eggs here again.

I’m pretty sure they’ll be revoking my vegetarian membership card soon.

Graduate Studies

2005-04-03T22:53:00.000-04:00

So, rather than sending out the many e-mails necessary to convey this to all those of you who have been supporting and following my post-graduate application, I thought I'd post the most recent update on my blog.

Unfortunately, the University of Cambridge decided to decline my application for their Master of Philosophy in Development Studies program. This leaves the current score as:

Development Studies

University of Sussex - Accepted
University of Cambridge - Declined

Medical Schools

McMaster University - Undecided
University of Toronto - Undecided

In more upbeat news, updates on my work in vegetable packaging and transport as well as my weekend in Vietnam to follow just as soon as I have time.

The Leak that Launched a Thousand Complaints

2005-04-01T06:08:00.000-05:00

Speaking of laundry, doing mine on Sunday, I found several stains on my white t-shirt. I couldn’t scrub them out so I rubbed in detergent and left the shirt on the floor to try and life the stain a bit. Leaving this shirt to be washed last, I begun to hang my wet laundry on chairs just outside of my bathroom. By the time I had finished, I noticed that my permanently dirt-covered floor and wet white t-shirt had combined into an uncleanable mess. I tried not to see it as losing a shirt so much as gaining a cleaning rag.

A mite upset, I went outside to hang my laundry. A woman earnestly speaking to me in Khmer soon approached. I smiled politely, appreciating the advice she was trying to give me on how to hang my laundry, but due to incomprehension responded with “Kn’yon meun yeung dtay,” meaning, “I don’t understand.” My neighbour overheard our discussion and explained that there was a problem. The two of them entered my flat and walked straight to the far end.

Pointing to a wet patch on the floor under the chairs where I had left my wet clothes, my neighbour explained that this woman lives downstairs from me and was being dribbled upon by my laundry water. I apologised profusely. I slapped my forehead repeatedly to mime my foolishness for those who didn’t understand English. I promised it would not happen again. Both woman and neighbour continued to talk. I wondered what was still unresolved. I apologised again. That had no effect. Eventually, my neighbour told me that it was no problem. We all went outside. I continued to hang my laundry on the clothesline. Another neighbour approached me pointing to the laundry and speaking in rapid Khmer. Again I smiled awkwardly and responded with: “Kn’yon meun yeung dtay.” My neighbour overheard again. He explained that she wanted to know if I was married. It seems the only possible excuse for my ineptitude would be if I simply didn’t have a woman to do these things for me, silly man that I am. “Baat, dtay. Kn’yon meun gaa dtay,” “No, I’m not married,” I responded.

A bit embarrassed, I went inside to unwind, using my new rag to scrub the floors. About half an hour later, a young girl in a baseball cap and a middle-aged woman came knocking at my door. The woman introduced herself as “Borng srey Sray Han,” Srey Hem’s elder sister. Srey Hem is the name of my neighbour’s daughter ten year old daughter. With our limited ability to communicate, we’ve become friends. I was pretty sure she has a sister living elsewhere. I invited both of them in, wondering what had prompted the visit. They both walked straight to the rear of the house and Srey Hem’s sister pointed to the stain. The young girl, acting as interpreter, explained that the neighbours were complaining about a leak.

“Yes,” I said, “I know. I just talked to them about it.” A middle-aged bare-chested man walked in, dressed only in a Sarong. He spoke with Srey Hem’s elder sister. I wondered what was happening. Again, I explained about the laundry. Much apologizing and forehead slapping followed. Still no one seemed satisfied. The girl asked me about my other leak. “Other leak?” I responded. She moved aside my garbage can to reveal that the plastic bag had not only leaked, but dribbled a large puddle of decomposing mango, banana, and assorted nasty juices onto my floor and into my neighbour’s flat. Again, my forehead took a beating. In the meantime, the girl grabbed my new floor rag and begun earnestly scrubbing away. “Well, that’s it,” I thought, “It’s definitely not being used as a shirt ever again.” In the meantime, the man began shouting at the little girl walking about and stomping exaggeratedly on the floor.

I felt bad for the girl. As it turns out, my neighbours below were being annoyed by the sound of my walking. I promised to try to be quieter and to cause no more leaks. Everyone, including the irate sarong-clad man from the flat below, said that it was no problem. I was starting to get a knot in my stomach from the constant embarrassment.

Eventually, they left. I continued cleaning. I went to read a book to unwind. Just as I sat down, the phone rang. The call was coming from my boss’ phone. “Hello Adam, this is Srey Hem.” Srey Hem, coincidentally, is also the name of Mike’s wife, whose elder sister, the woman I just met, I now realize, is my landlady. “I heard there was a problem.” I again explained about the leak and apologized repeatedly. This time at least, my forehead remained unharmed as Srey Hem speaks fluent English and wasn’t there to see me hit myself anyway. I hung up and went to take a nap, waiting for the call from Canada:

“Hi Adam, this is Russ [EWB’s Overseas Operations Director]. It’s 1:00am here. Why exactly is Mike calling me from Cambodia to tell me about a complaint from your neighbours…?”

Thankfully, it never quite escalated that far.

How Long Since I Found Jesus?

2005-04-01T06:06:00.000-05:00

A few days after I started working here at IDE, my friend Phalla, the receptionist, mentioned that she was going to the country that weekend with friends. She invited me along. The plan fell through. The conversation went something like this:

Adam – A
Phalla – P
Adam’s Brain – B

A - “Are we going to the country this weekend?”
P - “No no. Sorry. Cannot do this weekend. I go to the country this weekend with friends. Maybe next weekend you come? We help children?”
A - “Help children? Help children how?
P - “Give food. Make show.”
B - “Aha! A chance to help poor orphans in the countryside.”
A - “Sounds good.”
P - “Friends from this group all Christian. This is okay?”
B – “This might be a little awkward. Still, working with orphan children is still good work.”
A – “No problem. I am still happy to help.”

The trip finally happened last weekend. As it turns out, this group was very Christian. They were also very young. I knew something was amiss when Phalla asked me to fill out a form and asked for the name of my pastor and my parent’s permission. Arriving on the bus that weekend, I felt awkward and out of place. I began reading my Khmer grammar book, trying to teach myself how to read and write. The boy sitting next to me started to help. When we arrived Phalla and I were having a new conversation:

P – “You learn Khmer.”
A – “Yes. Your friend is a good teacher.”
P – “He’s good teacher. If you want, he teach you English, yes? When are you free?”
B – “That was a mite forceful. How do I back out of this gracefully…?”

We arrived at what appeared to be a small church with a large outdoor yard. A tent had been setup, the kind that one usually associates with revivalist meetings in the Southern US hosted by a pastor whose name begins with Brother and end with either ‘love’, ‘-iah’, or ‘-iel’. I was assigned with Phalla to the stage decorating group. My ready-made nametag said: “Ädam Kaufman, Stage Decoration, Sex: Female.” No one else’s nametag mentioned sex. I don’t know why.

There were people working as “Cameramen,” “Entertainment,” and “Supplies.” As it turns out, I had agreed to participate in a membership drive for an evangelical Christian group. Oops. Nearly a thousand children from nearby schools, some Christian, many not, were coming for the entertainment. There were hip-hop dancers, English language lessons, a raffle, and many prizes. Several local food vendors set up shop nearby. Phalla bought some baked salted snails, which several of us ate by using a thorn to pull the snail out of its shell. At first I felt like this was a novelty; then I realized the French had beaten me to the punch.

Several men were busily assembling a stage just in front of the tent, using logs and 2x4s. I began inflating balloons and quickly made friends by helping others to practice their English and French. Once the stage was built, I helped to decorate. Along the way, several more fun conversations between Phalla, me, and my brain occurred.

P – “You look tired.”
A – “I am. I could not sleep last night.”
P – “You can not sleep last night. Do you sleep alone? Maybe it’s because you sleep alone.”
B – “What the heck?! That doesn’t sound very conservatively Khmer, or even Christian for that matter. Relax. Figure it out…”
A – “Do you sleep alone?”
P – “No I sleep with friends.”
B – “Now we’re getting somewhere!” ;)

As it turns out, she was referring to her housemates from her all Christian dorm. This led to her asking if I wanted a roommate. I’m still looking to integrate as much as possible here. I’ve been keeping my ears open for some time for an opportunity to find a Khmer housemate who could maybe also double as a cultural informer...

P – “I have a friend. He good to sleep with.”
A – “Okay…”
P – “Don’t trust Khmer boys. They many bad people. But he is good person. He has Jesus. Others don’t. He can stay with you. Can not pay though. Okay?”
B – “That was a mite forceful again. Perhaps I should try for someone less earnest. Again, how do I back out without causing offence…?”

Standing on Stage in Front of the Children

I spent most of the afternoon making friends, teaching English, and learning Khmer. To the usual basic questions of “What is your name?” “Where do you come from?” and “Tell me about your family,” was added a new one: “How long do you have Jesus?” I felt like an awkward interloper when they asked this question. Between my awkwardness and our mutual lack of vocabulary, to my shame I responded the first time with, “A long time.” This seemed okay for them. The second time, trying to be more honest, I responded with “Not very long.” Most of my audience were the only Christian converts in their family. I tried explaining that my family was Jewish as a way of leading them towards the fact that I wasn’t Christian. The conversations went something like this:

C - Christian

C - “What is Jewish?”
A – “It is a different religion. Here you have Christian, Buddhist, Chinese, and Muslim. Jewish also is different.”
C – “Okay but you have Jesus Christ.”
A – “Actually no. Jewish people also have the Bible but we believe only the parts before Jesus. We believe in God, yes, but we don’t believe in Jesus.”

For them, this did not compute. No one understood. How can you have one God without having Jesus? The conversation would go elsewhere and eventually I would be asked again, “How long you have Jesus?” I’ve since met other Khmer Christians, some of whom spoke excellent English. No one seems to understand about the Jewish thing. I did manage to communicate the concept a bit by saying that it was the religion in Israel. They understood that part. It would seem the Zionists had a point in saying that peoples and religions are instinctively tied to nations…

Along the way, I learned two surprising things. These weren’t all children. The reason they looked so young was chronic malnutrition. A few were my age. A few were older. I also learned that not all of the participants were Christian. I made friends with two girls, Sreyna and Sovanly who told me that they were both Buddhist but living at the Christian school so as to get a good education. I’ve noticed that though the Christians here are only 1% of the population, they seem to make up a very disproportionate number of the educated and professional class.

That night, back in Phnom Penh, I was invited me to join them for Khmer New Years games. We ran, stood, and laughed in the middle of the street playing games that would have worked well at any children’s camp. I nearly gave myself a black eye playing the Khmer equivalent of Duck Duck Goose. Once a clutz, always a clutz no?

Your Comments, Development Technologies, and the Blog of a King

2005-03-31T05:34:00.000-05:00

I’ve finally responded to everyone’s comments! My apologies for being three weeks behind in doing it. Thank you all for the feedback. I’ll do my best to be quicker in future.

I’ve also finally found webhosting for all of my non-picture files. I’ve been trying to collect photos to make simple, easy-to-read, summaries of how several of the technologies used by IDE are made and/or are used. I’ve been using them as a memory aid but I think they may be handy for others with an interest in development technologies. They tend to fill in the blanks in the online literature about each technology. This means there will be less about why these things are useful and more about how they’re actually made. I’ve also tried to include the relevant livelihoods information but it’s very Cambodia-specific. I’m hoping this stuff might prove useful as a resource for EWB chapters and undergrads in general. Check out:

http://www.geocities.com/aj2kaufm/Development

Or just click on one of these links:

Manufacturing Ceramic Water Purifiers
Assembling a Drip Irrigation Kit
Livelihood Information for Drip Irrigation in Cambodia
Livelihood Information for Cambodian Traditional Watering
Basic Information for Fertilizer Project

In other interesting news, Cambodia’s former King has his own Blog! (Thanks to my friend Audrey for this news.) This guy is still far more popular than the current king and is viewed as the father of the nation. He posts his own personal comments on Cambodian current events, domestic politics, development, corruption, foreign policy, and even his career as a film director. He also posts letters from his penpal in France. Prime Minister Hun Sen has become so frustrated with this activity that he was cited in Tuesday’s Cambodia daily as saying “[This penpal] would be better off dead.” That’s not an idle threat. The Prime Minister made his attack in a recent public speech saying, “Why don’t you just die?” and “[He] speaks to defend the Khmer Rouge, so [he] is Khmer Rouge as well.” This is particularly ironic since it’s a matter of public record that Hun Sen himself was a Khmer Rouge officer who went over to the Vietnamese… A lot of politicians here have similar histories.

It’s a bit of a mess and you’ll need to speak either French or Khmer for most of this stuff but if you do, I recommend number 41 as a good place to start. Check out:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/17/cambodias_king_sihan.html and
http://www.norodomsihanouk.info/mes%202005/mars.htm

Gender Roles and Wetting My Pants

2005-03-28T23:16:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday I went on an excursion back to the ceramic water factory in Kampong Chhnam. Sunday had commissioned the folks there to build a pipe with a fork in it that could be attached to the base of a large electric blower. The blower was connected at the top to a large funnel. At the base, the fork stuck out into the two firing holes underneath one of the brick kilns. The pyromaniacs in the audience, including my sister the firefighter are going to love this…

The plan was to bake a batch of filters almost entirely with rice husks. Bag after bag of rice husks were poured into the funnel. Thousands of tiny little husks flew, sluiced, dribbled, or occasionally poured through the fork into one of the two firing holes and burst into small patches of brilliant flame. Jams were cleared. Alternative methods of pouring were tried. Husks were thrown in by hand. A variety of tools was used to mix the flames. Massive piles of smoking ash were stirred and removed to make room for more husks. Despite unseasonable cloud cover, everyone broiled in the sweltering heat. I didn’t know to bring a facemask. Sunday forgot his. It’s amazing just how much ash twenty-two sacks, each the size of half a grown man, filled with rice husks can make. The effect on one’s clothes and breathing though are fairly predictable.

The kiln needed to be heated from about 400C to 850C over the course of five hours using only rice husks. It was tiring work. We broke for lunch. I was offered some wine. Watching the other Cambodians down their wine in two and a half ounce shots, I followed suit. This of course meant that my glass was soon refilled. It tasted good. By the end of lunch I’d had about five glasses. I inspected the now nearly empty bottle. The only English on it said simply: Cambodian Herb Wine. I have no idea which herbs were involved.

Throughout the day, the women teased me in Khmer. One woman in particular really seemed to take joy in it, teaching me how to knock ampoul-tet (a bean-like fruit) out of a nearby tree, just so she could steal it from me. She was also a little crude at times, making the kind of jokes that come across with a minimum of translation. We ended the day semi-exhausted and more than slightly dehydrated from the heat and the wine. Sunday offered to purchase some palm wine for us from nearby farmers. Hear they tap their palm trees with a long bamboo tube that serves as both ladder and pipe. They use them for juice, boil the juice for sugar, and ferment it to make palm wine. Twenty-five cents provided enough wine for two. While Sunday busied himself with the purchase, I sat down with the women in front of the factory, grabbed a bamboo club, and began breaking raw clay with them.

Palm Trees Tapped for Juice

They roared with laughter. They continued to tease and I continued to blush and look puzzled. The woman who has displayed such enthusiasm in trying to get under my skin earlier began making girly dancing motions as I broke the clay. It would appear that at a factory operated by women, I had crossed a gender boundary. One of the few men around translated for me, “This one say she would sleep with you. They all think you pretty boy. Which you like?” I responded with, “They are all so beautiful. How can I decide?” I smiled, blushed, and added in Khmer, “Very pretty.” They offered me some candy.

Sunday returned. I continued to joke and make small talk with the women’s cooperative before sitting down under the landowner’s house to drink the palm wine with him. It was stored in a reused thin cheap plastic bottle, the kind the local spring water companies use. This stuff was volatile. Every time the bottle was opened, it made a sound like a champagne bottle shooting its cork and fizzed over the top like pop that’s been through several earthquakes. It tasted strange but good. We shared a glass between us, our small wine shots in turn. Sunday told me the story of his marriage, his separation, and his love for his wife. Two different fortune-tellers had told them that living together would cause them to fight incessantly. They separated. Eventually they divorced. He spoke of his current love life. We exchanged explanations of how love is handled in our two countries. I felt a warm wet spot blossoming on my groin.

“What the heck!” I thought. Looking down, I saw that one of the bottles had burst a leak. I have no idea how farmers brew or ferment this stuff but obviously no mere plastic can contain it. I wondered what I’d just allowed myself to ingest, concluding that it was probably no worse for me than the battery acid we call Coca-Cola. Sunday and I continued to chat for a bit before leaving the factory. I was slightly tipsy and horribly dehydrated. Returning the next morning to the factory, I retrieved the remaining bottle of palm wine from the table under the factory owner’s house to give to Sunday. He looked at me puzzled, sipped it and spat violently. I frowned and tried some. Picture the taste of salty warmed over vomit and you’ll be almost halfway there. I spat violently and reapeatedly. Sunday put the bottle in our pickup. “Good for vinegar,” he said.

How to Wash Laundry by Hand

2005-03-28T00:11:00.000-05:00

Having only had to do it a handful of times prior to coming to Cambodia, I know that I had (and probably still have) no idea how to do hand laundry properly. When I asked others for instructions before I left, I always got the same response: “Use detergent. Scrub a lot. You’ll figure it out.” For those of you, who like me, prefer step-by-step instructions, I’ve now compiled this handy guide. I developed it during the many hours I have now spent using detergent, scrubbing a lot, and figuring it out, in the one place where I do all my best thinking… the bathroom.

1. Get one big container for soapy water and one for rinsing water. Buy a good detergent.
2. Fill your containers, one with soapy water, the other with rinsing water.
3. While scrubbing fold part of the cloth in half and rub it between your hands as if you were trying to warm them. Repeat this action systematically over the whole article of clothing.
4. For stains, hold the cloth around the stain tightly by turning your hands into fists. Scrub the stain by rubbing it quickly back and forth over your knuckles.
5. For big stains, your knuckles will soon start to bleed.
6. Give up. Stop scrubbing. Bloodstains are probably harder to clean than whatever you’ve already dribbled on your pants.
7. Invest in a scrub brush. This makes a world of difference. Sit down. Hold the wet cloth over your leg and scrub away.
8. Eventually your leg will become irritated and develop a rash.
9. Repeat from step 2, laundering your clothes as infrequently as possible (i.e. Until they smell and/or look like you’ve rolled in a ditch) so as to avoid this unpleasant task… OR
10. Give up. Pay the local laundry service the thirteen cents per article of clothing they charge to do all this for you.

The first time I did it, my clothes were cleaned and my knuckles were bloody. I felt a sense of accomplishment. The second time, I still felt pride. By the third time, I realized why people pay money not to have to do their own laundry. It’s a royal pain in the butt. A small scrub brush is a Godsend. If you’re doing your own laundry, find one and buy it. I haven’t reached step eight yet but knowing me, it’s probably just a matter of time. Oh, and in the same way that I’m not using my air con or microwave, I’m avoiding step ten on general principle.

We Apologise for the Inconvenience

2005-03-28T00:10:00.000-05:00

I had hoped to have some writing done by now about the events of my trip out to Kampong Chhnam last week. Unfortunately, my relaxed weekend of typing at the computer somehow seems to have passed with a minimum of actual computer time.

A friend recently pointed out that he’d really enjoyed reading the following from some personal correspondence I had sent. It seems to fit in nicely with where the blog is at right now. So I’ve decided to post it here (hope you don’t mind Mac) along with something a little lighter that I wrote yesterday for a laugh.

"This past week it was a trip out to Svay Rieng province. Spent the first day looking at a program to improve fertilizer delivery. Was led by a village chief on a tour through the rice fields to a paddy that had been set aside for the experimental fertilizer. Several local were harvesting the rice from a distance using what looked like small traditional hand scythes. Afterwards I was driven to a small farm where the machine that makes the fertilizer pellets is housed. The engineer in me was happy. I mostly observed but also helped to tinker a little with a big machine until an hour or two after the stars came out. Beautiful night skies here of the variety you can only see up North back home

Thus far, the constant focus on agriculture has kept me from learning much about the mine situation here. If not for the stream of amputee beggars, it would be almost possible to be completely oblivious to it here in Phnom Penh. The resiliency of some of these folks is astonishing. There was a beggar at the top of the 27m high Wat Phnom in the North of the City who I encountered yesterday. He had no legs. The stumps began and ended at the level of his hips. He ambled about smoothly and almost elegantly with his hands in flip-flops. I can only assume he climbed each step to the top of the hill this way."

Working from Ignorance

2005-03-23T20:12:00.000-05:00

We had our first meeting to schedule work on the vegetable transport and packaging project today. The big tasks to be undertaken were seeking out and informally surveying farmers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers regarding their involvement in the chain from harvest through to sale and hiring a team of field workers to collect data once the study is underway.

During the discussion on how best to collect data, I was politely silent and/or asking questions when I could. In response, others would keep seeking my opinion. My two responses, “I don’t know, what do you think would be best?” and “I think we wrote somewhere already that we would do this,” usually led to a short stretch of laughter, the kind the Khmer use to cover awkward moments, followed by a seemingly sensible decision being reached.

By the midway point of the meeting, I had a suspicion that there was a problem. I’m thoroughly ignorant of Cambodian culture, contacts, and agriculture in general. These people had years of experience in the field yet seemed earnestly interested in my opinion. Kimsan, the operations manager, is one of the most senior people at IDE. In Khmer culture, age commands both deference and respect. At 23, I was the youngest one there. Sunday, at about 30, never ventured a single opinion throughout the whole conversation. Certainly some of the atmosphere was due to the fact that I have a central role on this project. For the rest though, I think I may have just encountered the Khmer version of a development problem I’ve heard countless stories of before. As a Western foreigner, my opinion has far more value than it should.

By the time the conversation had moved onto hiring our team of field surveyors, I was totally adrift.

Colleagues: “We will find candidates through friends of our employees. Do we think we will need a CV from them? How much education will they need? What other skills? How much should we pay them?”

My thoughts: “Do I want to encourage nepotism? With only a week to hire the appropriate people and not knowing how hiring is done here, is there a viable alternative? Are CVs generally used for this type of contract hiring? What is education like here? What skills are needed to survey farmers and distributors, testing the quality of their crops as they are moved to market? What costs will they incur traveling about with the crops? What is a fair salary?”

Outside of some quick questions about procedures and past experience at IDE, I used my fallbacks as much as possible: “I don’t know. What do you think?”

Finally, Veasna, a Project Coordinator sitting across from me suggested that we should be sure to hire some women. Promoting gender equity! In a room full of men, at last a development buzzword of which I could be certain! “That sounds like a good idea,” says I. I had expressed an absolute opinion. Any of you with some previous EWB experience know what’s about happen…? ;)

Well, actually, as it turns out, there are difficulties. Will farmers be comfortable interacting with the women? Is it appropriate for an unwed young woman to stay overnight at someone else’s farm so as to take measurements in the evenings and mornings? If so, is it fair to discriminate and hire only married women? Are such even available for professional work that will keep them away in the field for a couple of weeks? Most day to day farming labour is performed by women. Will hiring women help us to gain an inside perspective?

I’ve had it instilled in me that the key to good development work is to be asking questions constantly, to seek information directly from those involved, to work with local resources, and to have as few preconceived assumptions as possible. I’m ignorant at this stage. I will be for a while yet. I know this and try to accept it, hoping that by trying to learn as much as possible, I can become more effective in the long run. In the short term though, working at an NGO is still work, requiring that I contribute. Finding the balance between working productively and reminding myself to take nothing for granted is going to be a big challenge.

On a lighter note, here are the pictures of monkeys that I promised.

Monkey from Far Away

Monkey Up Close

I took these on my weekend visit to Wat Phnom, a temple on top of a 27m high hill, the only real hill in Phnom Penh as far as I know. The story of the city’s founding is that a woman named Penh found four statues of the Buddha lying in the river nearby. She housed them in a temple at this site and the city grew around it. The temple itself is crammed full of hundreds of statues. I have no idea which ones were the four in question.

Also, for those of you with blog clients, I’ve learned that you can point them to http://adamincambodia.blogspot.com/atom.xml, to keep you updated. This info courtesy of my friend James as I have a spotty idea at best of what a blog client is.

Svay Rieng

2005-03-18T22:38:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday morning last week, at 8:30am, I hit the road again. This time the trip was to Svay Reing province on the Vietnamese border to observe IDE’s new fertilizer pellet and drip irrigation programs. For those of you interested in the finer details of both programs, I’ve included links to the various illustrated summaries I’ve been writing about both of these programs. Don’t worry, it’s simple non-technical stuff interlaced with information about rural livelihoods here in Cambodia.

Drip Irrigation
Fertilizer

On the subject of rural livelihoods though, I’ve decided to forego the possible stories of driving across dried up rice paddies in a pickup truck, drinking palm-tree juice at the home of a village chief, and eating a still wider variety of strange fruits and insects. (See how I subtly slipped the stories in anyway? ;-)).

Instead, I’m going to share with you what I’ve managed to learn so far about the day-to-day situation of farmers during my visit in Svay Rieng province. As near as I can tell, it’s fairly representative of much of Cambodia. Bearing in mind though, as I’ve only been here two weeks, I suspect that this doesn’t do more than scratch the surface of the situation.

Traditional Hand Mill

Svay Rieng province is undergoing a drought. So is Prey Vang province. In a country that saw mass starvation and genocide under Pol Pot only 25 years ago, this is nothing to write home about. The World Food Programme is beginning to distribute food to pre-empt the problem. This is not uncommon. Here in Cambodia when people ask for more rice while eating, they say “World Food Programme, please,” as a joke.

Cambodia has very poor irrigation infrastructure. Some fields are baked so dry that the ground cracks during the dry season. Others are completely flooded during the rainy season. Though farmers are more than willing to work, their fields may only be usable for one hundred days of the year. The rest of the year they must find another means by which to feed themselves and their family.

The government has recently announced a large push in funding for large-scale irrigation projects. Though in theory, projects to distribute Cambodia’s water resources more effectively could vastly improve the lot of farmers, no one holds out much hope of it happening. Corruption ensures that only a fraction of the money reaches its target. In the meanwhile, the reigning politicians of Cambodia’s nominal democracy pay attention to the rural areas near to election time but otherwise play their own game.

Depending on the size and quality of their crop, farmers may earn as little as $125USD per year. I’ve heard that in the very poor areas, a single family can be fed and maintained on only about $1USD per week. I’m not sure if this is true, but certainly, these people are poor by any definition of the word.

Rice is the primary crop. Some farmers will try to grow vegetables for sale as a cash crop. There is an understanding in villages though that if a neighbour asks for a small part of your vegetable harvest, you give it. Thus the farmers who do farm alternate crops lose much of their work directly to their community. There are also difficulties in getting their produce to market. In tropical heat, food spoils quickly. Many farmers, without a distributor willing to visit them, will peddle their produce by bike for sale in a market several kilometers away. The end result: Fewer farmers growing anything other than rice, and widespread malnutrition.

So, with insufficient funds and land that is useful for only part of the year, many farmers seek to supplement their income elsewhere. In Svay Rieng, one popular option is gas smuggling across the Vietnamese border. Gas prices in Vietnam are significantly lower than in Cambodia. I saw a few motorbikes in my drive through the rice paddies carrying enough gas to defy the laws of physics as they drove in from the other side of the border. Others will seek work in the large cities where manual labour pays about $2.50/day. A girl old enough to work as a seamstress (sweatshop) can earn $3.50/day. A skilled bricklayer might earn $5.00/day. A prostitute can earn $15.00/customer/night. In Phnom Penh, prostitution seems to be an accepted part of male culture. You wouldn’t want your sister/daughter/future wife involved but your friends might call a few girls to come join you for a night of Karaoke.

Morals in the village environment are extremely strict and enforced through a community where everyone knows everyone else’s business. When the fields cannot be used, entire villages will be nearly emptied of all but children and the elderly as the population goes to seek work in the city. As people flood out of the community, this restraining force is gone and many will purchase the services of prostitutes, leading to an increase in STIs upon their return.

In Cambodia, education is free up to the end of high school around age eighteen. Effectively this means that rural children will be educated until they are about eleven before being pulled out to help their families earn a living from the land or from work elsewhere. Social mobility in general can be extremely limited. Between nepotism, corruption, and the difficulty of obtaining an education, it’s not what you know but where you were born, who you’re related to, and which wheels you can afford to grease that will determine your success. Hard work pays but only if the circumstances are right.

Now add in the problem of landmines in some parts of the country where farmers are forced by necessity to work land that has not been properly cleared and you have a real mess. In this country, about 1 in 236 people has lost a limb to a landmine. The social safety net here is virtually non-existent. I’ve heard one man angrily tell me of doctors leaving patients who could not pay for services to die in the street. For those who do survive, depending on the extent of their injury, their ability to work is extremely hampered, leading many to beg.

In addition to all of their other problems, nearly every person in this country over 30 is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide. My neighbour has very limited English. We speak through charades and single words in Khmer and English. The other day I asked him what the Khmer word for father was. He misunderstood and made a chopping motion at his neck. It took me five minutes to understand that he thought I was asking after his father. Realisation dawned when he said “Pol Pot” as he chopped.

All of the above should be taken with a grain of salt of course. I’ve only been here two weeks and thus the amount of information and perspective that I’ve been able to gather is limited. I’m sure there are whole other chunks to these stories of which I know nothing.

That being said, to me the most remarkable thing is how the situation here doesn’t seem grim on a day to day basis. In general, the people are cheerful and conscientious. The rural poor are often dressed in old clothes with holes in them but they are always scrupulous in maintaining a clean home, offering tea and/or food to their guests, and taking a genuine pride in what they do have. Wherever I’ve gone thus far, I’ve been greeted with smiles, friendliness, and in some cases very strange new foods. The local equivalent of the maple tree would seem to be the palm tree. They tap its sap for juice and boil away the juice to make sugar, tasty but with a very odd aftertaste.

I’m sure that’s more than enough for now though. I know that much of this read almost like a cliché from a Sunday morning infomercial. I also know that many of you were curious what the situation is like here and I’ve done my best to explain it as I know it. Basically though, the only think of which I’m certain at this point is that the situation is difficult, it’s unfair, and the people here are far more resilient than a just world would expect of them.

In other news, if/when I get around to it, the next blog entry should include photos of monkeys. ;)

For now, I'll leave you with a photo of one of my coworkers taken in our van on the way back from the field.

Kimsan on the Ride Home

Moving Vegetables...?

2005-03-16T02:16:00.000-05:00

My first full day at the office. Finally a chance to get caught up on e-mail. Nothing new to report yet but hopefully I’ll have written back to most of you and/or set up this weblog soon, instead of saving these on my laptop for later posting. I learned today that about 50% of my job will likely involve a project to help transport vegetables from farms to market more effectively. Tomorrow I make another trip to the field. This time I’m going to Svai Rieng province on the Vietnamese border overnight to see one of our irrigation projects and/or a factory producing fertilizer pellets. To think that I was worried about being cooped up in an office before I arrived here. ;) I’m back in the office later this week to begin meetings concerning the vegetable transport project.

Ceramic Water Purifier Factory

2005-03-15T02:09:00.000-05:00

Arrived in the office and finally met the elusive Mike, Country Director and big boss for IDE Cambodia. We discussed my work, my housing, and other such stuff for about a half an hour, before I left with Sunday to visit our Ceramic Water Purifier (CWP) factory in Kampong Chhnum province for the day. From what I’ve seen so far, the CWP project is like a textbook entry for the current International Development ideals. The factory is owned by IDE but operated by a cooperative consisting of ten women (promoting gender equity), whose husbands sometimes help a little with the work but do not direct the finances. IDE supplies and owns but does not direct the plant. The women are paid a commission (about sixty US cents) for each filter. The filters themselves are affordable, though occasionally partially subsidized, capable of turning dirty water from the Mekong or even a puddle, into drinkable water meeting WHO standards. Distribution is handled by several independent distributors (promoting entrepreneurship for sustainability). There are of course problems. Not everyone can afford the cost of the filters. Another NGO does supply them free of charge to the poorer provinces, but I would imagine this solution is hardly sustainable in the long term. The filters are fragile and those who have not paid for them seem more likely to misuse and/or break them, thereby rendering them useless. Free filters also undercut local suppliers who cannot compete. For the development minded out there, it’s a textbook project right down to the end of chapter questions: How do you ensure everyone has clean water without making your project unsustainable and/or creating a permanent dependency…?

I took some photos during the trip so that I could create a bit of a guide for myself as to how the whole process works. It reads something like a children’s storybook meets technical guide, but for those of you who are interested, you can have a look here.

How's The Traffic?

2005-03-15T02:07:00.000-05:00

How did I spend my first weekend in Cambodia you might ask...? Nothing too exciting. On Saturday I walked about ten to sixteen kilometers across most of downtown Phnom Penh, learning the sites, purchasing groceries at the markets, and orienting myself. On Sunday, I did the same thing again, this time by bike. Though the cyclists, bikers, and drivers seemed psychotic at first, going down major downtown streets in the wrong direction, never signaling, and treating some traffic signals as mere suggestions, I quickly came to realize that the secret lies in simply not going too fast and generally being predictable in your movements. At home, we stop so that others can move around us. Here, the attitude is more similar to navigating a grocery store with a shopping cart. You indicate which way you will swerve through body language and then other drivers take note and swerve to avoid hitting you. You also need to be certain that your movements are consistent and predictable. No getting frightened. No sudden stops. Get scared, swerve, or stop too suddenly and others will be surprised and unable to compensate. The secret to safety lies in driving as insanely as everyone else.

Needless to say, I wore a good bike helmet and rather enjoyed myself.

Prey Veng - Day 2

2005-03-12T02:06:00.000-05:00

Day two in the field. Again the demonstrations. This time we visited two villages, attracting a larger crowd and making a large volume of sales at each. We had refined our presentation, attracting larger numbers by holding the demonstrations before the worst of the day’s heat before 10am and after 2pm and handing out fliers to passing motorbikes (some of whom didn’t slow to grab their flyer from our hands), cyclists, and pedestrians. One village runs into another here like one suburb blends into another back home. By the end of the last village, Kimtheng and Kressna had their routine down to an art, cracking jokes like some kind of Vaudeville show. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but the rhythm and the laughter were there. Kressna though shy in English is apparently a laugh riot in Khmer.

Kimtheng and Kressna amuse the crowd.

At one point I was called upon to amuse the crowd by displaying the Khmer that Kimtheng had taught me. “Hello. My name is Adam. My surname is Kaufman. I am 23 years old. I come from Canada.” This gained some laughs. The applause came when I counted from one to thirty on command. I later further made a fool of myself when some of the villagers, seeing my Tilley Hat, insisted on knowing how much I had paid for it. It was a gift but I was forced to admit that in Canadian money, it cost about $50USD. The farmers all looked at me like I was crazy. Kimtheng pointed out that her hat had only cost 1$. Liz explained that hers was $3. The farmers told me that a good new cow was only $40USD. There was no arguing with that. I quickly gave up on trying to explain economies of scale (is that the correct term…?) and was forced to admit that it is a bit of a crazy purchase. A good time was had by all and by the time we finished at third village, we had run out of stock, leaving the chief to take down the names of those still wishing to purchase.

Overall, the trip seems to have been a success. We managed to promote the water purifiers enough to help our Red Cross partners begin to make inroads in Prey Veng province. For my part, I was able to learn a very little bit about the conditions in rural Cambodia.

Oh, and for those of you interested in the crazy stuff that they eat here, Kressna purchased some roast cockroaches from a street vendor at the ferry stop. I tried two. You remove the outer shell, take off the wings, break off the stinger, and eat them whole. They tasted salty, crunchy on the outside, with the consistency of toothpaste on the inside. A nice light snack anyway. I’m still considering trying the much more common snack of snails… and possibly eventually the palm sized roast spiders. Will keep you all posted.

Prey Veng - Day 1

2005-03-10T23:54:00.000-05:00

My first trip into the field was two days of culinary, linguistic, and personal adventure, mixed in with the kind of simple advertising drudgery common to most part-time sales jobs back home. I had brought along my Khmer textbook to pass the time during the drive. Liz, who after nearly ten weeks in Cambodia still loves to take photos of everything, would often shout at Kressna to stop the car so that she could photograph a passing oxcart, bigger oxcart, or fishing boat as we crossed the bridge. I took advantage of the two native Khmer speakers with me to learn more of the language. Kressna, though obviously outgoing and humourous with his fellow Cambodians, often seemed anxious about joining in our conversation, physically covering his mouth for fear of offending when he did speak. I’ve been told that the Khmer are a very polite people and that this gesture, though not very common, is used to avoid causing offence through bad breath or bad words.

In the meanwhile, Kimtheng proved to be an excellent Khmer tutor. Given her limited command of French, we had soon struck a deal, she would help me to practice Khmer and I would help her to practice French. So far, it’s been a very profitable deal.

Village Children and Me

Though we arrived late in the first village, the chief had not yet assembled many people. While we waited, I passed the time by amusing and amazing the local children and their parents by recording them on my digital camera. Never have I had so many children overjoyed to see me so quickly. ;-) I was even able to sneak away for a little while to watch a team of men assembling an ox-plow and yoke using simple hand tools.

The demonstration itself consisted of us setting up a loudspeaker system on our pickup truck to play the radio ad for our filter, a re-writing of a traditional Khmer love song to mean something like this:

Man: Please will you marry me?
Woman: No.
Man: What if I purchase this water purifier…?
Woman: Of course then I will marry you, for our children will be strong, healthy, and well-educated. I love you.

Enticing no? Following this came the real proof with a live demonstration of the filter. Dirty water goes in. Clean water comes out. Unfortunately, we didn’t sell a single one. Several women were interested, but were worried about justifying the $5USD cost to their husbands. To put this in perspective for you, a rural Cambodian family will likely earn between $125USD and $250USD per year, depending on the quality of their harvest. $5USD is a lot of money to these people. To put it in better perspective, there were one or two children in the group with the kind of thin frames and distended bellies I normally associate with bad malnutrition. This is about 100km away from where I live comfortably with air conditioning and a microwave for $125USD/month.

This is not just the case in rural Cambodia. In a medium sized town where we had ferried our way across the Mekong, we stopped for lunch. The daughter of the family who owned the restaurant looked about ten. The son looked about six. They were actually fourteen and ten respectively. The children of farmers and restaurant owners alike can’t afford enough food for themselves.

Hotel Sign. You know you're in Cambodia when...

That night we stayed in a hotel. Using the standard IDE stipend for workers in the field, we each had a room with not one but two beds, air conditioning, and private bathroom to ourselves. The idealist in me died a little bit again.

It Begins

2005-03-09T21:44:00.000-05:00

Twenty-seven hours, three continents, and twelve time zones after saying goodbye to my mother at the airport, I arrived in Phnom Penh. After two weeks of sleep deprivation, with not one but three seats over which to spread myself on the London to Kuala Lumpur leg of the trip, and a flight staff who not only didn’t take offense, but even offered to wake me up for meals, Malaysian Airlines has now surpassed Sri Lankan airlines as my favourite air carrier.

Was greeted at the airport by Krissna, one of my colleagues at IDE. The reception I received from this point onwards was very warm. Krissna drove me to the office where another IDE worker, Kimsan, greeted me and gave me the grand tour, introducing me to all of the IDE office staff, including Liz, an Australian and one of only two other non-Cambodians in the office, and Sunday, director of Research and Development, and in all likelihood, someone with whom I will be working almost constantly in the next several months.

Everyone was extremely friendly, smiling and greeting me enthusiastically. I quickly came to remember why the Khmer have a reputation for huge smiles. Whenever there was a lull in conversation big smiles would inevitably ensue. Much to my delight, I also discovered that Selena, EWB’s previous volunteer with IDE Cambodia had left me not only two new bike helmets and a motorcycle helmet, but also a hammock, a mosquito net, and better still, a bike!

Going to lunch with Sunday and Liz, the conversation soon turned to our families. Sunday discussed his recent divorce and the custody problems he is having with his ex-wife and her family. He also talked of the family members lost under Pol Pot’s regime. It was during this lunch that I began to realize that the Khmer smile and chuckle is used not only to convey friendliness but also to smooth over awkwardness. Sunday laughed awkwardly as he spoke of the loss of family members in the genocide. Of all the possible reactions to a genocide I could have expected, anger, sadness, denial, etc., laughter to me seemed unusually disturbing.

At the time, it seemed that Sunday didn’t want to be rude by burdening the conversation with something as unpleasant and embarrassing as the years under the Khmer Rouge. In the week since, I’ve noticed that when mentioning the genocide, Cambodians always use the name of the former Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge themselves are never explicitly mentioned. It’s only an initial impression, but I now wonder that with so many former Khmer Rouge still involved in politics, including the dominant figure in Cambodian national politics, Prime Minister Hun Sen, it is considered politically inappropriate to blame them for the atrocities. Culturally, there seems to be a desire to move on with life, continue to build, and in some ways try to ignore the nasty history of 1975-1979. Hence the awkward laughter. Why discuss the genocide? It’s something of a national embarrassment. From what I’ve read, initially Jews acted similarly after the Holocaust as have Rwandans since the events of ten years ago in their country.

On a lighter note, after lunch, Liz and Sunday took me shopping in a Western style supermarket for food and supplies before helping me into my new place. I’m now living a block from the office in a flat that is by Cambodian standards large enough for a whole family. I know this because I’ve met and chatted with my neighbours using my limited command of Khmer. It’s also equipped with air conditioning, a fridge, a TV, and a stereo. Thus far I’ve avoided using the A/C on general principle. I’m still a romantic idealist at heart and I’m having a little trouble coping with my sudden excessive affluence.

My boss, Mike, an ex-pat Canadian who doubles as my landlady’s brother-in-law, is on a trip to Sri Lanka and won’t be back until Monday. I’ve been given Thursday and Friday off to acclimatize myself but luckily have discovered an opportunity for a field trip. Liz, Krissna, and Kimtheng, a Project Manager with IDE, are making a trip to the field on Thursday and Friday. They’re hoping to promote our ceramic water filter project in three small villages in Prey Veng province. They’ve agreed to let me tag along and observe. One day in Cambodia and already an opportunity to see some of the folks for whom we’re working. Without being able to speak Khmer, there’s only so much that I can learn from this first visit, but still, I’m really looking forward to it.

Contact Info, Map, and Welcome!

2005-03-07T21:40:00.000-05:00

Map of Cambodia

A short note. The first few blog entries were actually written after the fact. As I post this, it’s about 7:38pm on March 15 and I have yet to set up a blog account. The first few days being some of the most eventful though, I’d rather write now and post later so as to ensure that my memory is as fresh as possible. More pictures will follow once I get the hang of it.

For anyone who wants to call me, the number here for my mobile phone (courtesy of IDE) is 011-855-12-475-845. My mailing address is:

Adam Kaufman
c/o International Development Enterprises
PO Box 1577
Phnom Penh
Cambodia