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Published: August 25th 2008
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Cambodia - read below if you want to get a feeling for what it’s like in Cambodia
BOREY
I met Borey when we arrived at the Small Green Hotel where he was working. After explaining what we were in town to do he suggested that we visit with Mr. Hendrix his old boss at the Small Hotel where we could learn more about The Help the Cambodian Foundation. During the next few days I visited with Borey and we became fast friends.
Borey is very outgoing and visited with staff from LICADO (a Cambodian and Canadian NGO) while they were staying at the hotel. LICADO was investigating the forced eviction at Otres Village and he helped to translate for the Khmer people. . This interaction led to a job in Phenon Phen where Borey is translating for this Human Rights Organization. He also went with us to the Circus and he laughed so much that mom and I were so happy that he had come with us. Borey is young, hardworking and honest he is doing a job that he finds very challenging and also frightening at time. He is working very hard and will continue his education if at all possible. Borey and I are staying in touch by email.
Wages - According to the World Bank, 45 percent of Cambodians live on US$1 a day or less. Workers in textile factories usually make about US$45 a month. Government figures say an average couple with three children needs US$300 for a decent life in the capital Phnom Penh and US$200 in other areas.
The force of gravity was greater here, it seemed, pulling everything toward the hard dirt: the haunches of old women squatting, the heavy hulls of hammocks, the swaying roofs of thatched huts.
The afternoon sun seethed out a dizzying heat.
Driving through the streets past children playing soccer with a sandal, past tiny faces peering from dark doorways, past shops with amputees on crutches posed out front like partially disassembled mannequins.
Once we were out of the downtown area, the city slumped into a series of tin-roofed shanties and lopsided buildings.
Children squatted in the dirt and mud and cow manure chewing on sugarcane stalks. They had big, searching eyes, matted hair and beaming smiles, even though some of their teeth had already turned brown. Their tiny galloping forms and the anxious patter of their feet gave the village its life.
We joined the throng of motorbikes, some carrying whole families, three people or more, and sped through the faded concrete suburbs of Phnom Penh down back streets and small alleyways, past fly-covered fruit stands and children playing with women wringing clothes and men talking.
As the bustle of the city tapered, we were riding past straw huts and people slumped at picnic tables in the shade and chickens that spilled onto the road. Old women vendors eyed us from behind their stands, the fruit, candy and Fanta they were selling displayed like forlorn objects in still life.
Many people in villages that had never felt the exhilaration of a first car ride, watching trees and mountains scroll by. They had never felt that hop in the throat at seeing, for the first time, a building reach as high as a plane could fly. They had never watched big-screen movies or skied or gone to the dentist or leapt off a diving board or attended a concert, or celebrated a birthday with cake and ice cream and probably never would.
Local open-air market, a tangle of bamboo and leaf-thatched booths where you could buy- among other things bottles water, candy, gum, ice cream, makeup, batteries and cigarettes.
Many huts, constructed of bamboo, coconut leaves and the occasional plank of plywood, sat on stilts a few feet off the ground and featured two modest levels one for sleeping and the other for eating. Possessions include; neatly folded mosquito nets, blankets, rusty tools, a few pots and pans and a few extra pairs of sandals.
The dirt road pocked with holes followed along the rice fields. There were many huddled clusters of roadside shanties under which dogs and chickens and naked children scampered.
Occasionally a tin shanty or bamboo hut sprang from the lush darkness and with it a cacophony of yipping dogs and clinking pans and grunting pigs and odors of fish and burning things. Children in tattered clothes, or no clothes at all eating, playing or swinging in hammocks, some of them waving.
Stunned by the business, by the motorbikes swarming through narrow streets, braiding into dizzying knots of noise and speed; by orphans who clambered along the crumbling side-walks selling bracelets or gathering cans, plastic metal or aluminum to exchange for a few riel, and the skeletal frames of new buildings going up and sound of the construction.
The city was recovering from old wounds, and at the same time, it seemed, bracing for new ones.
The market was a maze of plywood booths and glass display cases and fly-swarmed carts and tall shelves stacked with blankets and bright clothing.
While infrastructure is now making trips to major sites a breeze.
Corruption is a word on everyone’s lips these days and after spending time on Cambodia it crossed ours.
Cambodia is at a crossroads on its journey to recover from the brutal years of the Khmer Rouge rule. While it is clear that the people want long term progress, the powerful elite seem stuck on short-term gain.
While on the surface Cambodia appears to be a nation full of shiny, happy people, a deeper look reveals a country of contradiction. Light and dark, old and new, rich and poor, love and hate, life and death; all are visible on a journey through the kingdom, but most telling is the glorious past set against Cambodia’s tragic present.
There’ll be stories of endless personal tragedy, of dead brothers, mothers and babies, from which most Cambodians have never been able to recover. Such suffering takes generations to heal. Meanwhile the country is crippled by a short-term outlook that encourages people to live for today, and not to think about tomorrow because a short while ago there was no tomorrow.
The defining influences for many older Cambodians are the three F’s: family, faith and food. Family includes the extended family, they stick together to solve problems collectively, listen to elders’ wisdom and pool resources. Faith is another rock in their lives of many older Cambodians, and Buddhism has helped those Cambodian people rebuild their shattered lives after the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge. Most houses contain a small shrine to pray for luck and there are wats everywhere. Food is more important to Cambodians than to most Southeast Asians, as they have tasted what it is like to be without. Rice is a staple with every meal.
In 1998 Cambodian census counted 11.8 million people with 40% of the population under the age of 15.
Cambodia 1/3 of the population is living below the poverty level of $.45 a day or $164.25 per year.
National Parks comprise 23% of Cambodia.
In the 1960’s almost 75% of Cambodia was rainforest now only 30%.
Phnom Penh is at the crossroads of Asia’s past, present and future, where extremes of wealth and poverty are a daily diet, and hope and desperation are never far apart.
“Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go in search for work in the cities”, (and send money home), “But the girls stay home, become leaders of the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.” Greg Mortenson
The most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life
by Greg Mortenson author of “Three Cups of Tea”
and founder of Central Asia Institute.
“We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought the ‘shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”
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