Dispatches From a Dilettante (30 page)

The de-licing clinic run by two incredibly tough and resilient young American women.

My most enjoyable small group English lesson to date. A sample of my abysmal communication skills can be summed up from the following pupil/teacher dialogue: “What are you doing?” “I am Cocking linch". “No you are COOKING LUNCH". It must be the Yorkshire accent.

A tuk tuk ride (they are supposed to hold four) with eleven kids the driver and me. There were also two kids on bikes hanging on the side to get a free tow as we went across town to see a film.

A funeral, which I was very privileged to attend and observe. It was a visceral experience. There was a long lead up the day before at the temple where friends and relatives gathered for conversation food and reflection. This was itself a lead in to a dramatic cremation the day after with wailing and drama. Pitifully it was all for a forty eight year old parent of one of the kids who had a minor heart complaint that would easily have been treated in the West without hospitalisation.

On Saturday I ran a morning session at the University for nineteen Cambodians and two Americans on Staff Management (…Yeah Yeah). I was introduced as a ‘visiting professor’ (stifle the guffaws) but had a great time and a lovely lunch with them afterwards. The result has been lots of invitations to do further work which I cannot commit to.

After all that I awarded myself some downtime and headed by coach to Siem Reep and the temples of Anghor Wat. The six hour journey, which some of you will have done, was enlivened by my front seat view of the driver texting his mates for a good part of the ride. I totally wimped out on arrival and booked myself in to a luxurious hotel as $30 buys a lot here and I needed to recover from the severe intestinal challenges I have been having for the last couple of days - enough information already!

The sun is now going down and the red dirt roads are turning to streams. My first mojito is ordered and I’m all templed out.

Your Cambodian correspondent

Rats Religion and Real Estate

Hi All

I was walking home last night at around 9.30pm when a huge rat scurried past and into a drain. A second rat strolled past and as it drew level with me said "Hey old man, remember this is my town and I can go where I want, when I want". OK I made the last bit up and I’d had a couple of beers but it certainly gave me a look.

In a city full of Buddhists the Cambodian administrative assistant in our ‘office’ is a Mormon searching for a Westerner to marry who is also a Mormon. I think she may be single for some time.

Real Estate prices are sky high here which is why the eviction of people from the slum areas is such an issue. The city centre land they occupy is ripe for development, so they are shunted off to relocation sites and families split up in the process. The re-location site where some of the people from Dey Krahorn, who were Aziza school pupils, have been moved to is eighteen kilometres out of town and has no running water or sanitation.

The contrast between the ‘’haves and have nots” is writ large every moment of the day, but before I get too preachy it can be funny. I was in a tuk tuk stuck in gridlocked traffic next to a Government car - a top of the range Mercedes. Next to that was a boy wheeling a severely disabled guy on a homemade trolley device. The government minister put the window down and gave some coins and just before the darkened electric window went back up I watched his driver hand him a tissue from a silver holder to wipe his hands.

Your Cambodian correspondent on rodent patrol

Paul

Spitting as Art Form

Hi Friends and Generous Donors

In order to contextualise the spitting I should describe where I am currently staying. It is in a fifty metre long dead end alley in quite a nice district. All the eating takes place in the open area (grilled at night) on the ground floor in of the three story houses. Typically the downstairs has the moto or car and this is bizarrely often in the same tiled room that has the TV and seating. The same ‘room’ also has the two ringed cooking device and additionally is where the kids are washed. All this is ‘open’ that is to say it is almost on the street. Upstairs is a huge balconied area and the third floor open roof rooms are often unused. Washing is hung on tailors’ racks to dry in the street in front of the houses where a few tuk tuk drivers snooze in their vehicles.

To get to ‘my’ second floor apartment I have to climb up a metal fire escape. There is no other entrance or exit. Behind my bedroom at the back, a mere ten feet way across the next alley, is another building and all sounds from it are clearly audible. It is in this apartment that the mystery ‘spitter” starts at 6.30am by rolling the contents of his throat around for a good twenty seconds. There is then a pause as he build up to the ‘big one”. There follows a huge spit and an instant later a ‘PING’ as it hits what I think must be a spittoon. It is now my official alarm clock.

However a much more classy ‘spitter’ is the old woman who is probably my age, as the life expectancy is only fifty seven for women and fifty three for men in Cambodia. She lives across from me. While squatting in front of the house she casually spits a good three metres with minimal foreplay, and does this several times an hour. All the neighbours are friendly and smiley and I wave every morning to the family across the way.

On a much more sombre note we took some of the older kids to view the Khymer Rouge trials currently taking place in a UN built building outside Phnom Penh. There will be more about that in the next missive, together with details of the nearby shooting last night. A moto driver hit a Lexus and the moto driver pulled out a gun and stuck it in his belt to begin ‘negotiations’. These eventually ended with him killing the driver and wounding four others - as I said at the start it is quite a nice district!

Your unarmed correspondent

Paul

Female fisticuffs, Rural Ramblings and Bucolic Bliss

Dear All

At the risk of over blogging I thought you would like to see two photos. The one of the old guy doing an NGO Saturday workshop at the University you can ignore, but Simmoy in the second photo is the Cambodian girl that some of your money is helping pay for an internship,

The final one hundred metres leading to Aziza Lakeside ‘school’ is down a dusty narrow track with tin and wooden shacks cheek by jowl. It is inaccessible to vehicles and tuk tuks and a struggle for motos to get along. At the end there is a steep incline to the railway track and then to the two room school. Incredibly the lake is going to be drained and the land used for ‘development’ which means that the Lakeside community again face eviction. However I digress. We had gone on Drew’s moto to the Health Clinic, which takes place in a classroom there and then to see the launch of a photography project initiated by an inspirational Polish woman.

With Darkness closing in I climbed on board Drew’s moto ready to depart only to find our way blocked by two women fighting in the dust. It was hard to follow the action in Khymer but either way we were blocked. Every time they paused we edged forward and then scuffling broke out again. When we eventually got through there were comments, I am sure, along the lines of ‘look at those two wimps on the moto’.

It is a distinctly rough place at night but not at all typical of Cambodia, where I’m usually greeted with are smiles and shown huge generosity from people who at the bottom of the pile. As ever it is often those with least that give most - a well worn phrase but one that has always proved to be the case here.

Yesterday was the highest of ‘highs’ as we went deep into the rural Prey Veng district which is one of the poorest areas of Cambodia. The Rough Guide to Cambodia describes it as ‘A place seldom visited by other Cambodians let alone foreigners’. Cambodia is one of the world’s poorest countries with the average income $480 per annum.

Srey Rot, an English teacher who lives in a one room place above the classroom at Dey Krahorn, had suggested that we take a couple of kids in a car to visit her family in her village. When I arrived for pickup at 7.30am this had turned into nine kids, one adult and a van, which thankfully had air conditioning. We set off into the dust and pollution of the Phnom Penh rush hour, crossed the Monovong bridge and slipped into the countryside along Highway One. For highway think forty year old ‘B’ road packed with oxen, cars, lorries, tuk tuks and cyclos. One unstable lorry in front of us in the slow moving traffic had forty three people sitting on top of its’ already tall load and at least two pigs.

The kids, unsurprisingly were brilliant, the driver good and cheesy Cambodian Pop kept us going as we went deeper into the countryside. A ferry crossing over the massive muddy Mekong resulted in gentle hustling from disabled orphan kids as we waited to drive on. We left paved roads and went onto dirt tracks and soon we were the only vehicle around. After three hours we arrived at the family compound of about thirteen people, several chickens, various dogs and loads of mango trees. Sleeping areas were on small stilts with slatted wood floors and cooking on the ground was with wood charcoal. At the front by the track one of the family sold deep fried bananas to infrequent passersby. I was offered one, accepted and will never feel bad about eating chips again. It was seventy five per cent fat and twenty five per cent banana.

A visit to the market followed and, with not a foreigner in sight, we became the friendly focus of attention. We drifted back to the compound and the produce we had bought was cooked for lunch. Dog was on the menu but I declined and opted for the chicken, who I felt I had bonded with when it was running around as we arrived. Twenty people sat down to a convivial lunch after which we were told to relax on the wooden slatted open sleeping areas. I obeyed, fell into a deep sleep and am still bitter about the accusations of snoring. I may also have drooled.

Srey Rot announced that we were now to visit a close friend who was a rice farmer. We drove for half an hour and, as we approached the house, hordes of kids came out to meet us. Srey Rot asked who has seen a ‘barang’ (foreigner) before, and just three put their hands up. The children followed us languidly, the heat was cloying, adults slept in hammocks, there were no sounds of vehicles or music……a dog barked half heartedly in the hazy distance…….time was slowing down….. and I felt great.

As we got back into the bus and made a slow start to the return journey along paths which became tracks, which turned into bigger tracks. Finally they became dirt roads and eventually, as we reached Highway One the driver cranked up the CD and on came a Cambodian version of ‘Puppy Love’ which was somehow both appalling and weirdly wonderful.

We stopped for a swim in the dangerous Mekong. We stopped for noodles at a roadside stall and gradually we were drawn into the urban sprawl of Phnom Penh and back to Dey Krahorn. I was so lucky to get a look at below subsistence rural living and Srey Rot, who has the mental and emotional strength of ten people was gracious, funny, accommodating and patient. It was day like no other.

Yours

Rural Rowson

Ladyboy Love-in, Medical Mayhem and Fifty Nine Year Old Soccer Sensation

Dear All

It was 3pm on a dripping hot Phnom Penh afternoon and I was in the middle of the six, seven, and eight year old English class at Aziza Lakeside. It’s a one room school with no doors and the view is of the one track railway line, the slum and the lake which is about to be drained for ‘development’. We were concentrating on the letters K, L and M. Just as we got to ‘words beginning with L,’ the local ladyboys, who live adjacent to the classroom, walked by. The kids screamed hysterically as one - ‘LADYBOY’ which resulted in camp chaos outside. We moved swiftly on to ‘M’.

Of all the staggering and varied things I’ve been lucky enough to see and do the most enjoyable was the soccer in the rain at ‘New Frontiers’. This is a community of forty three orphans run by eccentric but brilliant ‘Nev’ from Nottingham in a sprawling ramshackle town a hundred kilometres south of Phnom Penh. Nev is helped by Cambodians and various international volunteers who have passed on the word about his great work. He and they have created a happy place of bright articulate kids who are inspirational to be around. I went there with Dom (Tasmanian) and Benita (English) Sharpe who are trustees of CamKids, the UK organisation holding your donations until I disperse them. They are here for a year and this is their sixth visit after adopting a Cambodian girl. They are ebullient optimists.

After the walk around, a strong breeze picked up and storm clouds hovered menacingly overhead. A monster rain storm started and in seconds the tiny dirt five a side pitch was flooded in three inches of water. Kids instantly started a game and Dom stripped to shorts and joined in. I could not resist as, despite the fact that it is twenty five years since I’ve played, I reckoned that the conditions would be a great leveller as John Motson might have said.

Within thirty seconds of coming on I had stubbed my toe and performed a backwards somersault into a drooping bush at the side of the pitch. Kids rushed to pick me up, amazed that a man so old could demonstrate such tumbling ability. I was amazed that a man so old did not scream with the pain of a cut ankle. The match went on and every time a goal was scored the conceding team had to do ten press ups in the water…the torrent continued….the game continued but I ‘subbed’ myself after a fifteen minute cameo performance. For an hour afterwards at least a dozen people came up to me to ask in broken English ‘You OK Paul?’ Parts of me moved in that storm that hadn’t move for a while and getting up the next morning was done in stages.

For the trip back Dom bought several beers or ‘travellers’ as the Tasmanians refer to beer drunk en route, which helped dull the pain and relax me. After the fifth one the pain was so dulled that I was in fact relaxed as a newt and fell deeply asleep after a blissful day.

There was no respite and another early start for what proved to be a sobering day at a country clinic run by two American paramedics. On the hundred kilometre journey to it we passed four other clinics which, according to the government, were treating many hundreds. In fact they were empty, yet at the place we went to they were camping out overnight to be seen.