| Saturday, May 27, 2006 |
| Kobe-- more than beef and earthquakes! |
 Benefits of being an occasional minion of the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science, Magic, Improper Use of Muggle Objects, and Technology: staying in fancy hotel rooms, being paid in crispy 10,000yen notes, and breakfasting with a view of sprawling cityscapes. Also, I keep stealing my namecard holders.
I went as a CLAIR lackey to the conference for recontracting JETs in Kobe for 3 days, which I mostly missed last year due to being in the hospital, so it was lucky to get a second chance to soak in the fun and general busyness. Nikki (my partner-in-crime/moderator) and I were stressing like crazy, but we had well over 100 people at every session, and a few people told me that hers was the most inspirational workshop they attended. (Hell, even I was motivated to be a good second year ALT after clicking through for her powerpoint!) Amazing Nikki has been running the JET Habitat for Humanity group this year, and has a position on the Peace Boat this summer when her contract ends. I also finally met Sylbeth, who took over Go MAD (the charity group) in the middle of last year, even though she was already coordinating the peer support network and a volunteer program in Vietnam. Sylbeth is a rockstar beyond belief! She took us to a great Turkish restaurant, which may have been my first. In general, I met so many neat people this past week that my head is still spinning.
My workshop topic was quietly changed in print to "Volunteering in Japan," minus the "social activism" segment under which I had applied. I couldn't officially do "social activism" as a representative of The Salaryman, especially since I was addressing topics such as whaling. Moreover, whaling is not a controversy because the whales are used for scientific research, and thus no one has the need to oppose it. No need for social activism when there's nothing ethically/morally/environmentally wrong to activate against. Apparently. Or at least in print. It wasn't really censorship, but more of a chance for me to make an awkward stab at being diplomatic. (I still brought up whaling, though under a thin veil of neutrality.)
 On top of being overstressed and underslept, I stayed out far too late in the shiny lights of Kobe both nights, which helped with the stress issue but compounded the lack of sleep problem. I was knackered when I had to show up at work on Saturday morning! In a complete daze on Friday before heading home, Clairette and Vickywhiki and I stumbled across this Hostess Piggy-chan in Chinatown, to you who know true value. The area was an even bigger disappointment than Yokohama's. You'd think that Japan is close to China, and the food is similar, and a Chinatown would have decent shopping/eating, but Vancouver and San Francisco have the added advantage of lots and lots of Chinese people. Just like Japan to focus on style and forget the substance, like actual grains and nutrients in the bread, or permitted independent thought in schools after the age of 10... |
posted by Raychaa @ 9:45 PM  |
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| Friday, May 19, 2006 |
| Motos and marriage and farewells to Siem Reap! |
 Our last day of building was on Saturday, so we finished up the houses, did lots of thatching, attempted to lay bricks, nailed things, and did other random tasks. A storm in the distance threatened to drench us by late afternoon, but the rains never came.
 We spent the lunch break cruising around on motorcycles, for which I discovered I have no natural ability, and was an accident waiting to happen. Hanudane, our trusty moto-sensei, gave me advice something along the lines of: "Whatever you do, don't speed up if you get into trouble." Easier said than done! I didn't hit anything, but think next time I'll ride tandem with a more competent driver. The best moment was when we were all standing out in a field in the blazing sun, and Amy-chan took off confidently down the path. Ah, she's from backwater Nova Scotia, we noted. She has clearly done this before and doesn't need instructions! She proceeded to ride straight into a large bush. The workers, laying in hammocks and watching us in amusement, burst out laughing, along with the sweet granny who cooked us lunch every day.
 I think every single one of us has posted a nearly identical picture of a moto driver with drugged pigs, because it is so perfect and characteristic of Cambodia. They feed the pigs marijuana, and then tie them up with twine and transport them. They look dead, but you can see them twitch when you get close.
We raced back to the guesthouse for showers and headed straight out to a wedding reception of one of the guesthouse staff's friends... we think. Still not clear on whose wedding it was, but it's considered good luck to have everyone you've ever met attend your reception dinners and parties, so we went as a good luck gaijin squad. The food was a bit sketch, neither friendly for vegetarians nor anyone else. It was all meat or shellfish, so the two kosher/vegetarians and I were out of luck. I also think tripe was on a platter at one point, but none of us were really sure.
 Mama and Papa Bear get crabby!
 Had nothing all night long except 3 Coca-colas, which meant I was high as a kite for the whole evening. And these empty shells didn't offer much sustenance.
 The music choice was bizarre-- karaoke meets The Wedding Singer meets bad bhangra meets dying mammals meets bar mitzvah rhymicity. They had members of the wedding party rotating onstage to sing karaoke covers of Cambodian pop songs, which sound like Indian bhangra (dance/club) mixes if the DJ happened to be a narcoleptic cat with one paw. (Landmine victim, maybe. Shouldn't joke.) Even better was when they did covers of English songs, such as "Hey sexy lady, your body's bangin'..." and "California knows how to party", but with the verses in Khmer. And the tempo slowed down to halfspeed. And Cambodian beat tracks in the background, played by the DJ Kitty's deaf cousin.
 The stage crew in action! Dancing involves step-left, step-left, step-right, step-right, while moving your hands in a Cambodian fashion. It didn't seem that any of the songs (except "Hey Sexy Lady") had enough energy or a fast enough tempo for proper dancing, but group dance moves were usually just some type of simple stepping, moving around in a circle. And that's it. We tried to start something different, and were directed into the flow of the circle. There were several rhythmically-challenged men that kept trying to dance with us, which was alright for awhile but then got sort of awkward. Glam and I were pulled up on stage by the groom at one point, which was a convenient respite from the sweaty men, as we had danced ourselves into entrapment up against a gate and couldn't retreat any further. We did our best to imitate the girls in the prom dresses.
 The gang: Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Rocky, Amy-chan, Gaia, Jossss, the bride, Granny Bear, Watson/Wilson, Young'n, Glam. (front) Hanudane, the groom, some guy.
We had farewell drinks and Clay-Pictionary in town, and hung out on Bar Street for an hour before crashing at the hotel. I do imagine Mama Cindy Bear has a Mary Poppins-esque suitcase. Who else shows up in Siem Reap with bags of alphabet beads and elastics so that we can all make nametags for our water bottles? Who else would pull out 2 containers of colored play-doh in a bar, so that we can have a final fun activity? Who else was prepared with every single type of medication you could possibly imagine? That's our Mama Bear-- Practically Perfect In Every Way, and clearly born into her profession as an elementary school teacher!
 Monks on tuks! HanuDane jumped out of the window of our van to get this picture, and then dove back in headfirst into our laps as the traffic lights changed. Our charismatic Royal-D was often disappearing off by himself, but was never alone, since he made friends with just about everyone in the country just by being his spontaneous and friendly self.I can't imagine the trip without him!
 We also visited the landmine museum while in Siem Reap, which I forgot to put in an earlier post. Very sobering, as were so many aspects of this holiday. The museum is also a children's home, and looks like a tiny village, albeit a village filled with deactivated mines. It was set up by a man (given the name Akira by his Japanese patron) who was forced to lay mines while in the Khmer Rouge army, and has now devoted his life to disarming the mines and providing a home for children that have been orphaned, maimed, or otherwise affected by mines. Many people out in the countryside do not know what mines look like, and it's especially common for children to come across mines, play with them out of curiosity, only to be seriously injured or killed when it explodes. The museum was just past the downtown touristy areas, along rutted dirt roads lined with shabby karaoke bars. Karaoke is very popular all across Asia it seems, but karaoke bar is a euphemism for brothel in Cambodia. Does that put Big Echo Herro Kitty in a different light? Is it only in Japan that we think it makes perfect sense pay exorbitant amounts of money to disappear into a small darkened room for several hours with soft couches and really only expect a catalogue of random songs and watery drinks? Are we all so naive? The girls standing outside were wearing loads of white-face makeup and lipstick, geisha-in-hooker-heels style. Our tuk-tuk driver warned us that the path to the museum was "funtastic", but I suppose he meant the bumpy roads as well as the local human flair.
On Sunday morning we all split up and began to head Japanwards. Emma and I cruised the old market before splashing out on amazing brunch food at a French-style cafe. Given the chance, I will eat (my version of) breakfast morning, noon, and night, and got through most of 2005 on oatmeal, bananas, and imported Cheerios. However, breakfast in Asia usually revolves around rice and fish, which is not really my way of greeting the day. This was my idea of a perfect meal: smooth scrambled eggs, crusty bread, homemade yogurt, fresh fruit, muesli (or what D-ran refers to in combination as 'fruesli'), tangy lime juice on crushed ice, milk tea... mmm heaven. I have yet to find breakfast this good anywhere in Japan besides the $25 buffet at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, which was paid for by the ministry of education, so it was lovely have one proper morning meal before coming back to Japan. In general, I liked the taste of Cambodian food, as it was rather mild, but everything was either drowning in oil or coconut milk, which made me feel ill the entire trip. Back to supporting my tofu salada addiction here in Japan!
I flew back to Phnom Penh on a propeller jet with The Siblings (Mia and Noah), and spent one last night having dinner on the PP riverfront with Amy-chan and 2 other JETs we met in the stairwell of the hostel. I need to be careful with speaking my opinions too directly around strangers, since I find myself sticking my foot in my mouth too often and feeling like an insensitive fool. At dinner, one girl said she had wanted to fly directly to Phuket for the winter holiday, but it was too expensive, so she stayed in Japan.
Me: "Really? You wanted to go to Phuket? Ick, I was there on New Year's. I wouldn't ever ever go back again. Ever. I disliked it even more than Bangkok, if that's possible. Why Phuket?"
Girl: "For the one-year tsunami anniversary. We were there when it hit."
Me: "Oh... um... so, you were in the area?"
Girl: "In the water. I was sucked a kilometer out to sea. And one of our friends drowned."
Me: "Oh..."
Right. Must remember to think first, then speak. I flew out in the morning, but my flight was delayed in Hong Kong, which means I missed the only chance at getting home, and had to spend the night in a stuffy capsule hotel in Osaka. I could hardly sleep, and when I packed up at dawn, I was moving so slowly that I missed the first Shinkansen. Arriving home hours later to find my aparto still standing, I raced to work in my Guppy, already horrendously late. Considering that I have never even seen a cop in my town, and that I usually get overtaken on the winding roads by much speedier cars, karma was clearly NOT working in my favor that day when I was pulled over a kilometre from my house by a cop hiding in a bush. Already running late and on no sleep, I was forced to sit in the hot police van for 30 minutes, unable to stop crying, as the policeman yelled at me in incomprehensible Japanese, took a million fingerprints, and generally made me feel about 2 inches tall. I was on the verge of hyperventilating by the time they let me leave with a 15,000 yen fine ($150), 2 points on my Japanese license, and a huge dose of condescension. I was still crying when I got to junior high school, which was the complete opposite of the entrance I intended to make, and had to pull myself together in a hurry to teach 5 straight classes.
Everything has been similarly on-stop hectic since then, as work has been uncharacteristically busy, and it seems that every project I am involved with has something that is imminently happening. I'm presenting on Volunteering and Social Activism at the conference for recontracting JETs next week in Kobe, so I've been swamped with trying to get that ready along with everything else that is going on, but it is great to be putting energy toward something I really care about. Of course, come Wednesday night when my fear of public speaking comes back to haunt me with a vengeance, I'll become a vibrating force-field of stranxiety, and might swear off orphans and charity work for life (but rest assured I don't mean it). I'll be much more relaxed when the conference is over and I can actually digest more of what I saw in Cambodia, along with cleaning my house and writing letters and seeing long-neglected friends and spending time with anyone besides myself and my laptop. My lone social venture has been a "TGI Wensday" dinner at Joyful with Bae-yon, and the laptop came along since we spent an hour editing my powerpoints and some brochures. (I swear, I'm fun from time to time...)
I hope these entries have been coherent enough, though I don't think I've really expressed how much being in Cambodia affected me. I think about it all the time and am obsessed with plans to go back for a longer period of time, as so many things I saw have settled into my bones. Tourism is skyrocketing at the moment, which could help the economy, but also has potential to destroy the culture. Everything in Cambodia could change so drastically so quickly, but that seems to be how modern history had proceeded. Sorry so long and rambling-- thanks for reading! |
| posted by Raychaa @ 10:00 PM |
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| Thursday, May 18, 2006 |
| Ankor What? No, what's on second! |
 Most Japanese people that I know who have visited Cambodia flew into Siem Reap, spent 3 or 4 days touring Ankor Wat and the surrounding temples, and left. This sounds ridiculous, until you actually see Ankor Wat and realize how gigantic and overwhelming it is, and how many days you need to get the full experience. Granted, you'd be missing out on most of the country to do just this, but seeing this blew my mind and I can't wait to go back again and spend more time touring the whole area. We only had one day, so we spent a full morning at Ankor Wat (which is one main temple, but all the others in the area are grouped under the umbrella name), and the afternoon at Bayon and Ta Prohm temples. We wore deathly bright yellow T-shirts, very reminiscent of the neon orange ones from Tokyo orientation, except these were not to prevent idiot JETs from getting lost in Narita airport, but rather to prevent idiot JETs from getting lost in Cambodia. Like faux-animal-print, acid wash, slap bracelets, and so many other milestones of our generation's regrettable fashion history, neon may have died a prolonged and painful death, but it does still manage to serve its purpose. Thank god Daniela didn't ask us to wear leopard-print.
    This is the highest tower at Ankor Wat, which involves walking all through several levels and stages of the temple before a steep climb up worn steps to reach this top courtyard. The monks consider the journey an analogy for living a good life and seeking enlightenment. It is a long and arduous journey up, requiring time and concentration, but takes no effort to fall. To amend dear Marcus Whitman's famous words for the Ankor Wat life experience: "My plans require time and distance... and steps... and giant Buddha heads... and blazing hot sunshine... and ladylady postcardsonedollar cheapcheap ifyoubuyyoubuyfrommeokay... and malaria." (Really, I don't think that will fit nicely on a statue placard, but they also ignored the "... and then the entire settlement was massacred..." notion when they gave Whitman College the unfortunate Missionaries mascot.)
 The PEPY Nearly Dozen (Heads) and Nearly 2 Dozen (Arms)! We are standing on the edge of an empty rainwater-collection pen, with an elaborate drain system that used to take water all throughout the vast complex.
 Bayon Temple: full of ominous faces carved into rock towers, and collapsed tunnels and gates.
 We went with all the 6th grade students from the PEPY Ride School, and they were beyond excited. For most of them, this was the only time they had ever left their village (2 hours away), and probably they were the only ones in their family to see Ankor Wat. Admission is free for Cambodian nationals, but the expense/inconvenience of transport and the abject poverty in many communities means most have never visited the most amazing man-made structures I've seen yet. (How quickly the Wat trumped the Wall in my mind. Wall, you were really, really, really, really... great. But something greater came along. Sorry.) Being with the kids was loads of fun, considering we were able to share the excitement of something so exciting and new with residents, and it also diffused and confused our walking-ATM status to many around us. Our tour guide said that the beggar children around the temples were really baffled by the presence of the PEPY students, since they had a tour guide, were treated like tourists, ate at the restaurant with us, and hopped onto the air-con minibus with us to get to the different temples, yet probably most of the PEPY kids were poorer than those living in Siem Reap and making money at the temples.
When Adametal and I were in China last month, Chinese tourists outnumbered foreign tourists 100 to 1, and hawkers are just as (if not more) likely to get a sale from an out-of-towner as from an out-of-country-person. Thus, people selling things there will treat you as an anomaly or nuisance or someone to blatantly manipulate, rather than their sole chance at earning an income. Very few Cambodians have the means to be tourists in the same sense as we were, so foreigners are the sole target for souvenirs around the entrances to each temple. It is not permitted to sell things on the grounds of the wat, so the children pestering you with crafts and postcards inside would only leave you alone if someone more gullible wandered into their line of sight, or if they spotted police and had to dash into the woods. There were several wedding party groups having their photographs taken at Ankor Wat, and were small clusters of sightseeing Cambodians, but otherwise it was mostly foreigners.
 One of the older girls from the PEPY Ride school and her little sister. This was primary school, but the kids ranged in age from 12-18, so this was the final year for the older ones lucky enough to make it this far without already dropping out to earn money for their family.
 Ta Prohm was all overgrown and falling apart, as a temple should be after a thousand years, and it's where Tomb Raider was filmed. Didn't see Angelina Jolie, but now that Cambodia has banned adoptions to the US, she has to look elsewhere for children to steal. Her new Pitt baby will nearly complete her United Colors of Bennetton clan...
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| posted by Raychaa @ 7:07 PM |
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| Friday, May 12, 2006 |
| I like it when you call me big PEPY (Ride) (School). |
 We had a free day on Thursday, so five of us went to visit the PEPY Ride school, which was built through the support of the PEPY Ride last year. It was a fundraising and enviromental-education bike ride across Cambodia last year, organized by former JETs: Daniela (the PEPY Ride founder/president and leader of the trip) and a girl named Greta. It stands for Protect the Environment, Protect Yourself. They built a whole new building, provided a salary for an english teacher, brought in computers and computer classes, and are still making a ton of other improvements to the school. The trip was a huge success, so Daniela has stayed in Cambodia to organize additional bike rides and volunteer trips, and the PEPY Ride is now an annual event. Furthermore, she is branching into PEPY Tours as well to cater to volunteer/tourists from around the world, and it will soon be established as an official NGO. PEPY won a competition last month at University of Notre Dame for a social venture business, which is a huge honor, and she now has the support of ND alumni donors as well as a connection with the travel agency at Notre Dame, and thus a huge pool of trip-goers. Ganbatte, PEPY with the move into the big time! Daniela is so amazing and motivated and wonderful and my life is richer for having met her. It was great to be a part of the PEPY team, and I hope to be back again within a year. The school looks great, and the kids are super friendly and keen to drill you with every English question they know. (What's your name? Where are you from? Where do you go in Cambodia? What's your job? How old are you? I miss you, do you miss me?)
 Saisho gu! Janken....
  
 The school is in a village area outside of Chanleas Dai town (main drag, above), way out of Siem Reap. The government does not have the roads paved because it would decrease airline travel, so this major thoroughfare between Siem Reap and Thailand is rutted and potholed, with creaking and nearly-rusted-through bridges, and turns to tire-stealing mud if it should rain. Most pick-ups and trucks we passed were carrying about 20 or more workers, so we were riding in semi-luxury with just 5 of us bouncing around in the truckbed like jalepeno poppers in a frying pan.
 Two hours each way in the back of a pick-up on this road will get you... bruises, a sunburn, motion-sickness, and a lovely smokers' cough. More importantly, Cindy and I decided to do as the Cambodians do, don a scarf or towel, and become sand people!
I've had a hard time explaining at work what I did during Golden Week, since we went to so many various places. We played with kids at the CCF orphanage (in Phnom Penh) and hung out with the kids at the dump, but our building project was at the Sangkheum Center orphanage (in Siem Reap). Our group was officially called PEPY Ride, and half of us visited the PEPY Ride School (a state-run institution), but we didn't do any bike-riding. We took the 6th graders from that school (which is not an orphanage) with us to Ankor Wat. My attempts at explanations and picture-sharing keep getting scrambled, particularly in Japanese, so I think there is the misimpression that we built houses for the kids at the dump (which we didn't) and then took them to Ankor Wat (which is halfway across the country). Oh well. Even though we only spend one day at Stoeng-Meanchey dump, my teachers and students get most excited over those pictures, because I'm told that apparently that site (or somewhere similar) is featured on TV in Japan. After teaching a thrilling episode of Write Your Golden Week Diary, my teacher said to me, "That student says your vacations are like watching TV!" I think that might be a compliment. Ah, the confusing vacations of better-than-television ALTs...
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| posted by Raychaa @ 11:57 PM |
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| Building and Sangkheum Center |
 After 4 days in Phnom Penh, we flew to Siem Reap to start our building project with Sangkheum Center. Thank you so much to everyone that donated to help this project happen! We covered the full costs of 2 houses that we built ourselves, plus funding for a third as well as additional funds for the center. To clarify about the organization we were supporting: Sangkheum Center is a children's home in Siem Reap that provides housing, education, and job training for abandoned or orphaned children. It was founded by a man (above) named Sunsoley, who decided to start an orphanage while he was in a refugee camp during the Khmer Rouge period. The center was initially funded by an Italian NGO, and is correlated with a Siem Reap guesthouse run by a small group of Norwegians that provides volunteers on a regular basis. The current goals for the center are centered around expansion and sustainability. The houses we built are a few kilometers farther out into the countryside from the center, and will be for kids who turn 18, and must move out of the orphanage, but have nowhere else to go. On the site, we also helped to build a large animal pen and drainage pond, which is for the organic farm. The kids will live here for a year or two while learning how to farm and raise animals. They will thus have a safe home, transitional housing before they move out on their own as adults, job skills, and a chance to generate income to support the center.
 Joss and the architect, Rithy. He was really funny and told us dirty jokes in Khmer and helped out with anything we needed. He and Sunsoley both attended university, which puts them in the top 1% of the population in terms of education. ("The Architect" does sound like the villain from a Batman film.)
 Mia and I helping to put the roof on the first house. The fact that these houses had concrete foundations and a wood frame makes them nicer than most houses in the area, which are only made of thatch.
 Glam and Eimi-chan carrying dirt the Cambodian (translation: "inefficient") way. We were there to assist, not take jobs away from workers, but that sometimes meant there were too many of us and not enough jobs we were capable of doing. Hammering and bolting everything was tons of fun, but my favorite was thatching banana leaves onto bamboo frames because that is how most houses are made in the area, so it is a useful skill. It was like going back in time to only have hand tools for building, nothing electric or battery powered. It was horridly hot and humid the entire time we were there (ranging from 30-40C), as this was the peak of the hot season, which will soon give way to torrential-downpour season.
 The animal pens-- we put up fences and thatching, and laid lots of bricks for the drainage ponds behind and for troughs in each pen.
 The Sangkheum Center: it means "hope" in Khmer, and is a beautiful facility with wonderful teachers and caregivers. There is no electricity, though they do have a few computers that can be used with a generator. We went there most days after building, and spent a morning there playing with the younger kids and watching English classes. They also do agriculture and sewing training with the older kids, and have a metalworking center.
 The children are grouped into "family" units of 6, and live in a cabin with one caregiver. There is a separate bedroom for the teacher, and one room where all 6 children sleep together on the floor. 
 Dinnertime! It was a little disturbing to see flies swarming everywhere in the kitchen and dining area, but it didn't bother the children or teachers. Typical Khmer food is rice, vegetables, and fish, and sometimes meat. Fish amok is the most famous dish, which is like a non-spicy curry, and is delicious. My favorite Khmer dish was pumpkin and coconut milk soup. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 8:07 PM |
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| Wednesday, May 10, 2006 |
| Phnom Penh |
 On the riverfront in Phnom Penh just before an afternoon storm threatened to carry away our token Aussie. There is trash galore in the river, but people bathe there and wash their clothes. Phnom Penh is dirty and crowded, but feels like a real city where real people live. The markets were pretty cool, because the sellers weren't as aggressive as in Thailand or as outrageously foreigner-price-gouging as in China. My favorite thing was that everyone would wake up early and be out and about on the streets and sidewalks and alleys by 5am. There was a 10-person card game going on in the alley under our hotel window that went from sunrise to sunset every day we were there. We went to a phenomenal restaurant called Friends several times, which is run by and for former street kids, and populated exclusively by fellow bleeding-heart tourists. (It was very similar to KOTO in Hanoi- there seem to be operations like this everywhere.)
 We took a boat up the Mekong river one morning to an island famous for its silk weaving. The girls and women selling there followed us from when we got off the boat until we were picked up on the other side a few hours later, but we all ended up with lots and lots of scarves and cloth for about $1 cheaper per piece than we would pay in the markets.
 
 The Royal Palace-- very ornate and awe-inspiring and Buddha-filled and pretty much like every palatial building I saw in Thailand.
 I'm With Stupa: A Dane wanders into my photo.
 With Emma at the National Museum. Inside, there are all sorts of Buddha statues in different poses and made of different rocks, in rooms placed around a garden courtyard. Our guide was very nice, but spent 15 minutes in every single room babbling on about the value of pre-Ankorian versus post-Ankorian Buddha carvings, which none of us particularly cared about or could differentiate, and everyone smarter than myself ditched him until it was just me trying to politely divert the tour away from pre-post-concurrent-Ankorian overload.
 Out on the town in PP-- clearly, I am beating Joss at Connect Four. Was it wrong to take his money if I never revealed my status as captain of the national Con-4 team? Hope he never sees me play on ESPN 8, "The Ocho", or else the jig is up.
 How beautiful is this? Coconad! I'm resigned to being a sober roamer indefinitely, so must get my buzz from Coke and any other tempting (?) options... |
| posted by Raychaa @ 10:06 PM |
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| Thursday, May 04, 2006 |
| CCF and Stoeng Meanchey |
 We went straight from the killing fields to CCF (Cambodian Children's Fund), an orphanage in Phnom Penh run by a former Sony bigwig named Scott, who retired from the Californian corporate life and now lives in Cambodia. There are a ton of orphanages all over Cambodia, and many of them are exploitative, unclean, or no better than the situation from which the children came. CCF is clean, beautiful, and stylish, and it is a fantastic organization that is doing amazing things for the abandoned kids in the city. Granted, CCF has a larger operating budget than most, but it is founded on the idea that all children have a right to a safe home and education. It gives kids the chance to be healthy, educated, well-rounded children, with all sorts of cultural and language education opportunities (one little girl is sponsored to learn Japanese because that is her dream), and has the ability to have a huge impact on the population of street kids. It is expanding into CCF2 (as of May) and CCF 3 for later next year. The kids are clean and so polite and happy, and were a joy to be around. They did a dance and drama performance that would have been phenomenal for kids of any training or guidance, and even more so when you understand where they are from.
  
 This was a comedy skit: with the boy in drag, he'd fit right in at culture day in Japanese schools! However, this kid has a geniune flare for the stage and we were all cracking up despite not understanding anything he said.
 Joysey boy Josh (or rather "Joss", as is it pronounced in Khmer) with his chatty and precocious buddy.
 My hotel roommate, Emma, learning Cambodian dance moves. Notice that we're wearing the same shirt? It kept happening all through the trip-- twins of different continents!
 The not-yet-acquired art of the assisted self-shot...
Eighty-five percent of the kids at CCF are from Stoeng Meanchey, the municipal garbage dump in Phnom Penh. All were working, trying to eke out a living for themselves or for their family, by searching all day, every day, for anything in the trash that could be sold back for profit, and many lived in shacks or shelters right amidst the trash and waste. For a family, earning $1 a day would be a good day, but most could not make that much. Kids as young as 3 were expected to work, and most did not go to school. Drug use is huge for those living at the dump, and many kids were forced to try local stimulant drugs in order to make them work faster, but in turn they become addicts. Many of the girls were sold into prostitution by their parents, or were forced into the sex trade. In the Stoeng Meanchey community, rape is a huge problem, since police will not bother to file reports without being paid, and there are no medical resources to deal with the consequences. Any medical problem you could imagine from living in those conditions is present, though many are derived from severe dehydration, as there is no access to drinking water. Not all the kids there are orphans, as some were simply abandoned, and many were seriously abused by their families or other caregivers. So, seeing these happy, well-adjusted kids made the next day even more shocking, when we went to Stoeng Meanchey with a group of kids from CCF.
 This little girl at CCF (with Natalie Glam and Emma) was friendly and adorable with a lovely smile, and can't be more than 8. She was taken in by CCF within the past month, because her stepmother sold her to a Stoeng Meanchey pimp, and she was working as a prostitute.
 We went to CCF on Sunday morning, and from there headed out to Stoeng Meanchey with Scott and a group of kids from CCF. Some of the children with family relations will live at CCF during the week, and either go home on the weekends, or for short visits. They have to sign a behavior contract that says they will not work, though, since by becoming a part of CCF they are full-time kids. The dump is about 15 km out of town along roads that turn from pavement to potholes to red dirt and mud. It is 13 acres of any type of trash you can imagine, with garbage trucks constantly bringing in new loads.
 The dump is surrounded by falling-down shacks that form the villages where the dump workers live, though some people live in cloth/wood/cardboard/tin shelters right atop the rubbish piles. Several small fires burned, turning the air to turn to greasy smoke. Scott gave us a few instructions: watch out for glass, nails, syringes, and sinkholes. The hospitals dump their waste here, too, which includes used syringes, medical supplies, and body parts. The CCF kids were all casually strolling by in flip-flops, whereas most kids living there were running around barefoot. You walk around and just feel your heart breaking to think of these families breathing in the stench all day long, lucky to even make $1 combined off the things they can find to sell back. Kids on their own don't have a chance of survival. Most of the workers here are from the outlying provinces, and would say that working here is better than starving to death out where they came from, and that it's a better life.
 My CCF guide for the day-- her name was something like Sroy Leay. (Khmer is hard to romanize!)
 Cute kids living at Stoeng Meanchey.
 Scott checking up on a girl that was home with her father for the day. She was working when we arrived, and was so ashamed to be found out by Scott that she huddled over a magazine, crying, and wouldn't talk even with her friends all around her. There are 3 families living in this house, and one is well-off enough to own a pig and piglets.
 Dane and a CCF girl in the village around the dump where most of the workers live. It started to pour rain just as we were leaving, so we had to race out or else our bus would have been stuck in the mud. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 12:14 AM |
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| So wrong it's right. And then wrong. And then wrong again... welcome to the inaka. |
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Name: Raychaa
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About Me: “No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.” (Florence Nightingale)
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