Culture vulture

After nearly ten years working the arts, and being lucky enough to see some form of great performance at least once a week for the last seven years at Horsecross, I wondered how I'd get on with a reduced dose of culture in my life moving here. I wasn't expecting that there would be nothing cultural to do here, far from it, but I knew that I wouldn't have as much or as easy access to it. Sitting at my desk at the Concert Hall I would regularly be able to listen in on rehearsals or walk a few steps and pop my head into the auditorium to see what was going on onstage. Knowing some of the great music and theatre performances I've missed since leaving Horsecross has made me a little homesick so I've really enjoyed the cultural fixes I've had here in Phnom Penh.

Unsurprisingly, the Khmer arts had a rough time of it during the Pol Pot regime. Artists were killed, along with other intellectuals, and there was no place for the arts, unless you count propaganda songs. After the overthrow of the regime the arts slowly, slowly began to come back to life with the handful of survivors who remembered the traditional dance, music, arts and crafts.

A few weeks ago we went to Sovanna Phum Theatre to watch one of their shows. Sovanna Phum have resurrected traditional music, dance and shadow puppetry. While there was sadly no shadow puppets in the performance we saw (next time!), there was drumming - all the musicians looked like they were having a ball -  dance, and the monkeys. Who were hilarious ...

This last pic shows me trying to play the Sralay - the guy to the right is the musician and he was really kind, letting me have a go. It's a bit like an oboe but you play with the reed actually in your mouth and it's perpendicular, not horizotal. Hard to explain, even harder to play. AND you need to be able to do circular breathing to play it! Fascinating to try.

Another night we went to the circus! A tent had been specially built and acrobats from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos came to the city for three nights to perform.

never a good sign when there are
more performers than spectators

me and the circus tent

The show was meant to start at 5pm but when we got there at 4.50pm, to make sure that we got good seats, only about 20 people were there - in a 1000 seat tent... We waited till after 6pm and still nothing had started. We also wanted to go the opening of an arts festival that happened to be on the same night. Our City Festival is ten days of mostly contemporary visual art and architecture. I'd been helping them with press, and giving my two cents worth about design, so was invited to the private opening at the beautiful UNESCO building.

UNESCO building

So, we decided to scoot over to the opening, hear the speeches, watch the dance performance, look at the art, scoff some brownies and a glass of wine and then head back to the circus for just after 7pm.

We still saw over an hour of circus action - some of it amazing, others less so, but all in all a great night for $3!

amazing feat - firing an arrow from a bow into a balloon using your feet while doing a handstand! (Cambodia)

clowns from Laos

aerial silk acrobatics from Cambodia

the finale, complete with hula hoops covered in tinsel. Love it!

The next night we went to see Khmer Arts Ensemble, which was part of Our City Festival. The Ensemble are a Khmer traditional dance group who only perform in Cambodia every now and then. As this was part of the Festival the tickets were free and there was a bus to take us out to Takhmao (in Kandal province - one more province ticked off!). Their outdoor theatre is absolutely stunning - this is the backdrop

photo from Vinh Dao taken from Our City Festival Facebook page

We weren't allowed to take photos of the performance but I've borrowed some from the Festival's facebook page (all photos by Vinh Dao). All the dancing was done to live music and, while there wasn't a lot of jaw dropping 'how do they DO that?' moves, it was quite beautiful. 

The really unbelievable thing was the hand movements, or more specifically, the back bend of the hands. Hopefully you can get an idea of them from this photo. I can't even force my hand into these shapes, never mind do it while dancing!

And so, we hopped back on the bus and on to our other event of the night. And talk about one extreme to the next.

We went to a fundraiser for Tiny Toones. The website explains properly what TT do but basically street kids can go every day, for free, learn break dancing, hip hop, English, Khmer, computing and maths. These are some of the most disadvantaged, marginalised kids who don't really have great prospects in life - many will be begging or scavenging to help what family they have. Lots will take drugs. TT really does prove the power of the arts in transforming people's lives.

And so for the extremes. We went from a very sedate, beautiful structured evening to a hip hop night in a dark, smoky (yup, those rules haven't quite reached here) pub. It's very strange seeing eight year old kids in a pub...

We didn't see their whole show but did manage to see the older TT members do their final show (video above). They had a space about 3m square to dance in - very impressive!

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It's taken a while to write this and since then we've been to more cultural goings ons. And like buses, they all seem to come along at once!  On Friday we saw Tiny Toones again, this time dancing with a French company called Racines Carrées. It was another free show (loving the free stuff!) and absolutely brilliant. Gordon said at the end that he thought it was the best dance thing he'd ever seen. There were no pictures allowed and I'm not even going to begin to try and describe it - suffice to say, smart, impressive, funny and great hip hop dancing. And there was a tuk tuk on stage. Excellent stuff.

Then the NEXT night (which is actually last night as I type) we finally got to see the Battambang circus school, Phare Ponleu Selpak (which means, the brightness of art). They're another organisation that is using the arts for social good, helping young people out of poverty by training them to become professional artists and performers. They've got a temporary website here as their other one had been hacked (even this temporary one is one of the best websites I've seen in Cambodia...) I think the Cambodian performers we saw at the circus (in the big circus tent) were all from PPS.

The show was about a girl called Sokha who survived the Khmer Rouge regime, escaped to the refugee camps (I presume) moved abroad but then came back to Cambodia to help other survivors. Or this is what I took from it as there was no talking. It seems strange to say this about a circus, but it was one of the most moving things I've seen. Simple facial gestures, body movements and symbolic actions conveyed so much and I really found myself welling up at points. 

he's balancing on a board on a metal tube. With two people standing on his shoulders!

that's five men being held up by one...

The girl who played Sokha, and frankly the star of the show for me, was also the girl that we saw shooting the arrow into a ballon, with her feet, while balancing on her hands, at the circus night above. She did the same trick in this show but it was so much more impressive. The segment showed her falling asleep after she had left Cambodia and then the, really rather scary, Khmer Rouge invading her dreams and giving her nightmares. She then proceeded to 'dance' with the dream Khmer Rouge soldier, finally overcoming her dark dreams (symbolised by a balloon draped in dark material) by shooting them with an arrow. From her feet. While balancing on her hands. As you do.

She's sort of upside down here - face down into the ground,  body curved up and over
 then with the guy balancing on her hips!

beautiful acro-balancing

shooting a balloon while doing a handstand. I never quite managed that one in the playground at school...

It was impressively acrobatic, the live music and live painting (!) were brilliant and the acting was also top notch. Another fantastic night out.

So, I'm really pleased to say that I'm managing to get my cultural fixes here in the Penh. What's been great (and this is not meant to sound patronising) is the best things I've seen are the Cambodian arts. The Western arts I've seen here have been lacking. We went to one classical recital by a European trio which left me a bit cold (and not just because of the extreme air conditioning) and heard a European jazz duo which was frankly terrible (and cold - what is it with excessive air-conditioning!). There's a European jazz group who I really liked, even if the lead singer was doing his best to be Jamie Cullum, however, they perform in a bar on the Riverside which is full of old, generally fat, white men dining and drinking with young, generally beautiful, tiny Cambodian girls/women which is all a bit depressing. I'm a big fan of Khmer arts and looking forward to exploring it more. I'd love to give some of it a go so I'm off to start bending my fingers backward. If you hear squeals of pain, you know what it is!

Birthday fun at the Olympic Stadium

Sam and Gilly are two volunteers who are based in Kratie. They are the couple who've inspired our competition to see who can visit the most provinces (Gordon is currently in the lead after his work trip to Siem Reap).

A few weekend's ago it was Sam's birthday and and we were invited to the celebrations here in the big smoke! It started with drinks and snacks at the VSO office (ok, that was actually to welcome the new volunteers who had just arrived but it couldn't have been timed better), then headed out for dinner on the Friday (pics of the fantastic ectoplasm cake plus Sam's take on his birthday weekend here). Saturday afternoon Sam and Gilly were off to the Olympic Stadium and invited us to join them for some fun at the pool.

Gordon is a massive fan of the Stadium and has been wanting to swim there for ages. We went a few weeks ago after work, finally determined to take a dip. Sadly the pool was closed. We did get a chance to see the Cambodian Olympic team in training. There were just swimming laps so it wasn't particularly inspiring to watch however there were two guys there who must be potential (or previous?) Paralympians. One had no legs and one had half of one leg. And they were the fastest in the pool! Now that was inspiring.

Anyway, this was the day for swimming. But first we decided to watch Sam throw himself off the 10 metre diving board and take some pics. And then I took some more pics. Rather a lot more. I'd forgotten how much fun my DSLR is (thanks dad) and took one or two more than necessary thanks to the joy of burst mode!

Sam at the top of the 10m diving board

cowabunga!

You have to look pretty closely to find Sam in this photo. Fluke capture!
(I know this doesn't fit on the page but I had to make it big enough that you could see it)

There were loads of young Khmer guys jumping off the 10m board so I ended up taking quite a lot of pictures of them too...

Some of the jumps were jaw-dropping and squeal inducing (on my part, not theirs). After spending so much time taking photos I only ended up swimming for a short time - and 50 metre pools are knackering so after three lengths I was happily done (I haven't been swimming properly since I came here - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

The swimming pool - where there wasn't much swimming action from Gordon or I

Slightly later in the evening - after swimming - with the sun starting to set

There were some young kids in the pool who decided they wanted their photo taken too

not quite as impressive

After the pool we went to watch the sunset in the main part of the Stadium

Samean and Gilly

aerobics... 

 aerobics...

and more aerobics! Plus lots of people walking or running along the steps/seats
 (the swimming pool is just behind this bit)

our next subjects muscling in on the photo action early

We met some more photogenic kids who we persuaded to have their photos taken...

And as the sun set over the Stadium we headed off our separate ways... Sam and Gilly for birthday steaks and Gordon and I for fantastic pizza with Ken and Samean. Happy days. 

With these Rocher you're really spoiling us!

Gordon pipped me to the post a bit with his earlier blog about his job here - I'd been planning one about what I've been up to work wise for the past few weeks. Great minds think alike (and before you ask, no, we don't discuss what goes up on the blog. And, yes, it would make sense if we did.) However mine is still not going to tell you a lot about what I do - mine's more post-work socialising with my colleagues.

Here's a picture of my desk (the messy one on the left) - these are the only pictures I've taken of the VSO office as I've been more likely to take pictures of one of the many fun things we've done as a team.

and the view further into the office upstairs

And this is the upstairs bit outside at the office.
The white marks you can see against the green roof are giant raindrops

I'm really lucky to work with such a great bunch of people. I really feel at home in the team and every week that goes past I feel like I get a bit closer to another team member.

Karaoke
A few months ago Sokchea was leaving the VSO finance team. For her leaving party she decided we should go and do karaoke. Karaoke here normally involves men singing, young girls in short skirts serving beer and then possibly some paid-for sex afterwards. There are quite a few karaoke bars near the VSO office - small shack style affairs where the singing ranges from painful to downright appalling (partly to do with the Cambodian fondness for having everything amped to the max). However, for this night out we were off to the Rock! A giant, fancy and more expensive KTV (karaoke bar).

Now, let me confess. I wasn't really looking forward to this. I love karaoke in the UK but I can't read Khmer and, at that time, I couldn't recognise any Khmer songs. Also, I wasn't sure how sleazy it was going to be. Gordon was just recovering from his bout of dengue fever so I invited him along, secretly planning that he was our ticket out of there should we need to scarper early.

Our own private room, complete with scarily empty dance floor 

the singing begins! That's Sokchea in the blue. And looking at the camera is Sochea. Yup, their names are that similar - and they both work in the finance office! Confused me for a while...

Needless to say, we shouldn't have worried. While there were beer girls in our private room it didn't feel sleazy. And it was one of the best nights out we'd had in a long time. The choice of songs was impressive, both in Khmer and English. After the first few songs Vantha, the Country Director, got up on the dance floor and that was everyone on it for the rest of the night.

a picture of the dancing - even better is the video of it below!

Olympics
Another fun work outing was for our Olympic PDD (personal development day, that's actually only ever half a day).

Gordon and I had been following the Olympics as best we could. Sadly, our local  Chinese TV station had a penchant for ladies football, ping pong and basketball with the occasional glimpse of synchronised swimming. We did have luck the night that good old Andy hammered Federer - the TV was showing the match and, with that on mute and the commentary on the BBC through the internet, we had our own little Olympic atmosphere in the flat. To feel a little more involved I'd organised a sweepie in the office which basically gave me freedom to chat about the Olympics at every break, to anyone who would listen. Then Dawn, our programme support manager, had the bright idea to do a team building PDD in honour of the Olympics. And so we decided to take part in that famous Olympic sport - ten pin bowling.

the office gang (minus a few who had to leave early)

Hardly anyone in the office had been bowling before. Therefore I was quietly confident that I at least wouldn't humiliate myself. How wrong could I be...

Nearly everyone picked it up within the first few throws of the ball and were soon getting strikes galore. I hit NOTHING in my first few attempts. Ah well. There's nothing like a little humiliation to bond a team together.

l-r Chamroeun, Kamonn, Reth and me.
Reth won silver in the individual competition while our team also came in second

Ambassadors, royalty and a Scottish MC
I do actually do some work in the office. I recently took a break from my day job, writing up the research looking at the motivation of health workers in Cambodia, when I was asked to organise the launch of our new country strategy.

It's amazing how late everything is organised here. The first I heard about the launch event was two weeks before - when I was asked to organise it. That was everything: deciding who to invite, finding all their contact details, designing and printing the invitation, finding a venue, planning training on networking etc. We were holding this event jointly with the British Embassy so we also had to coordinate with them, checking wording of invitations, backdrops (see the blue thing in the pic below).

My partner in crime for all this was Pisit, our office manager, who's an absolute star. The only slightly scary thing was that his wife was pregnant and due to pop any day. The day of the event was actually her due date. I was only partly joking when I repeatedly told him that he had to tell her to cross her legs.

Me and Pisit

Somehow, with only ten days notice, we managed to get 40+ guests to come along including ambassadors, government ministers, country representatives from some of the big development agencies, a guy from Coca Cola, and a Princess!

the uber glam and super friendly Princess Soma Norodom

I was asked the day before if I would MC the event - here's me in action. And before anyone asks yes, I did speak slowly. Yes, really slowly. And I had lots of compliments on my MC skills (it still makes me think that I should have been rapping whenever I hear or write MC)

The only disappointment of the evening was that, with more Ambassadors there than you could shake a stick at, there wasn't a Ferrero Rocher in sight. Ah the hardships of life in the Penh.

Take a step into my office

So, six months in and there's not really been much said about what we do. There's been a few pics of some nice places in Cambodia, the odd commentary on some issues facing the people here and a brief discourse on beer. But since so many people raised funds and donated money for us to come to Cambodia, I feel that I should at least give you a hint as to what I'm doing.

Come on in to my office. That's a mango tree you can see the trunk of by the way. 

NGO Education Partnership (NEP) is the association body for educational NGOs working in Cambodia. Their two primary goals are to represent the sector in policy discussions with government and to support NGOs by providing training, supporting cooperation and sharing information and best practice.

My role is to build the capacity of NEP to be successful in these goals, and specifically in terms of advocacy and fundraising ability. The key bit in that sentence is "build capacity". To help NEP achieve success, I'm not meant to lead people, direct work, or even do anything by myself in isolation. I'm meant to use my skills to make the people of NEP create that success themselves.

Me and Rithy, CEO of NEP. Constantly amazes me about how much he knows about things like Thatcher, Princess Diana, Falklands War, and English comics of course (see previous blog).

Mostly, I do this by sitting down with staff and working with them on their tasks and how to plan, implement and evaluate their work on these tasks. And because I am not meant to simply tell them what to do but actually to help them work out what to do for themselves, I basically ask a lot of questions. You know how 8 years olds go through phases of replying to every answer with "why?", well I'm kind of employing the same tactic.

I ask question after question to push them to think about what they are doing, why they are doing it and whether it will help them achieve what they want to. The one thing I try not to do is offer my opinion, which must be infuriating. It's also pretty hard for me!

Imagine having every question answered by a question, and then a guy who is meant to be there because is he knowledgeable about a subject refusing to give his opinion. I think it may be because they cannot reach up to my face that has saved me from a punch in the face. Even I want to punch me sometimes.

The room where it all happens - my desk in the far right corner, and Rithy's desk on the left. I broke one of the blue plastic chairs in my first month. Never learnt not to swing on chairs. 

However, the staff at NEP show a real willingness to work with me and in doing things this way, which I hope will mean that after 2 years they will not need another me, nor think that they do.

At our fundraising quiz/goodbye party, one of Claire's friends (mine too but you know what I mean) called Alasdair (not you Kipper) and I were chatting about the low enrolment rate in secondary school (35%) and that it would be a great achievement if after 2 years I had helped push that up a bit. But now, I'm realising that the real measure of success will be if it's the Cambodian staff of NEP who are pushing that up for years to come after I've gone home.

Every Friday at 4:30pm - party time! All the staff eat together with two different people each week responsible for choosing and buying the food. I'm going to hunt a haggis for them soon. 

I will leave Claire to explain how she's getting on as a newly found health expert who moonlights as a MC for Embassy receptions.
Take care
Gordon

Cambodian comedy

I'm sitting at my desk typing away when my boss steps out of the bathroom in our room and says "Mr Bean. He's from England, right?" Slightly hesitant of where this was going and what had happened in the toilet, I replied that yes Mr Bean was from England.

"Aaah, so you have two famous comedians in Cambodia."

This did not give me a clue as to what had happened in the loo to prompt this conversation, but now I was trying to guess who the heck might be the other famous English comedian in Cambodia. Michael McIntyre sells more DVDs than people in China but I didn't think it was him. Billy Connolly's accent would definitely have barred him from being understood, so I wondered whether it was somebody like John Cleese, given the international following of Monty Python.

"Charlie Chaplin. He very popular here. I think even funnier than Mr Bean. Oooh, very clever, smart things."

Sitting back in wonder, I agreed that yes Charlie Chaplin is very funny and clever. One thing bothered me though. My boss's English is amazing but he was talking about Chaplin in the present tense. It could be that Chaplin is still alive in Cambodia and I wasn't going to kill him.

I should have guessed it would have been Chaplin as I had seen a TV in a restaurant with a Chaplin film on, and having seen Cambodian comics on TV, they definitely favour physical comedy. So while England has given Cambodia Chaplin and Bean (and yes, my boss, Rithy, was the first to tell me about Mr Bean in the Olympic opening ceremony - as well James Bond and the Queen), their favoured American comedians are......Tom and Jerry.

Whilst in Kompong Cham when we first arrived the night receptionist and his mates used to settle down and watch a good Tom and Jerry cartoon. Fair enough I thought, he might not be that educated and TV might be a bit rubbish at this time of night. However, I was surprised to see my boss (who has two degrees and travelled internationally) watching it on the internet in the office one day, having a right good chuckle to himself.

In keeping with how this blog started, here is a picture of a sign in my toilet at the hotel I was staying in last week. It might give us a clue as to what had happened in the toilet to prompt this little exchange.

The signs says - please do not stand on the toilet. In English of course, although most folk who can read English are probably not the same ones who might be tempted to stand on a toilet. 

Gordon

Also, in another blog, I wrote about a family in a poor neighbourhood who were devoted to teaching their kids English. Well, Claire found the picture (voyeurism I know...) that we took of the scene. You can see it on this blog posting:

Six months? Already?!

For our six month anniversary in Cambodia, Gordon and I thought we would do something completely unprecedented. A joint blog. 

Controversial we know and likely to lead to arguments but we're going to give it a shot. 

Things we have learned so far:  

Road lessons

The majority of drivers (read, every single one I've come across so far) have never heard of that great mantra 'mirror, signal, manoeuvre'. Not for them checking before taking off, pulling out or overtaking. No no. Just go for it and trust the person behind you has reactions like lightning. We know a volunteer who's working at the National Road Safety Department (or similar - it always raises a look of disbelief when she says it. I don't think anyone believes it exists) and I think, if there was one thing that I would introduce if I was there it would be 'mirror, signal, manoeuvre'. I'm not saying it would solve all problems but it might foster a more caring, thoughtful and considerate driving population, save some lives/injuries therefore meaning people can still work, earn money, eat and therefore live longer and happier lives. Just saying!

(I, Claire, am genuinely thinking about patenting ‘mirror, signal, maneouvre’. Watch this space)

on your marks, get set...

Thankfully, the roadkill we see are mostly rats, which get squashed with alarming (or reassuring) frequency. Given that in the UK we’re never meant to be more than three feet from a rat (or whatever the statistic is), one can only assume that British rats have more road sense than Cambodian ones. Said squashed rats then lie squashed completely flat on the road for days and days and days (identified by grey, ratty looking fur (pun intended) with a long, thick tail sticking out). Sadly, the same is also true when it's a little black and white kitten...

However, after six months here, cycling in the traffic of Phnom Penh, we've also realised that, somehow, it just works. Cycling the wrong way down streets against the flow of traffic, dodging round cars and tuk tuks to sneak through small gaps, pushing your way through gridlock at a crossroads - somehow it all moves along (eventually). Now we’re not saying it's not chaos - sadly we’re sure it's a case of 'when' one of us has a bike accident, not 'if' we have one - but it does just sort it itself out with very little intervention. It's a marvel really. Part of this is an almost complete lack of road rage. Part of it is that rules do exist. They mostly go - the bigger you are the more important you are. And, if you have no licence plates, your car beats any old beaten up bigger lorry or truck, even although said lorry or truck could squash you. Other useful rules are, trust no one, believe that everyone is out to get you and have eyes in the back, side and top of your head (honestly, traffic comes at ALL angles here).

The lingo

The translation for thief is gangster. We were warned the other night to watch our bicycles, and especially our bicycle helmets, as there are gangsters here (in the park with all the families!). However, we've also learned a surprising amount about our own language. It seems that Cambodians know English grammar better than we do leading to some embarrassing moments when a pleading Cambodian asks us to explain some tense we've never heard of. 

Hotter than the kitchen when you open the oven

A Ugandan volunteer who arrived with us really struggled with the heat and an Ethiopian guy we know here says the heat is unbearable in Cambodia. We're Scottish. We stand no chance. It is actually possible to sweat more than we thought possible, including from your eyelids.

A sense of the past

On a more serious note, the people talk about the Khmer Rouge time with surprising frankness and honesty. They generally smile when they talk - emotions are not really shown here. We’re never sure if they smile so as to show that they're ok talking about it, or to reassure the people that they're telling that it's ok. It's very humbling hearing these stories.

Plus, you then realise that it wasn't 1975-79 that Cambodia was in turmoil but that throughout the whole 1980s people were living in refugee camps amidst civil war. And the 90s saw tanks on the streets. But I think the really surprising thing is that the Prime Minister was relatively high up in the Khmer Rouge as were other people who are now in senior positions and that the Khmer Rouge still had a lot of support even after its fall.

Heart attack on a plate (Come on, you didn’t think we could get through a blog without talking about food at some point, did you?)

Being Scottish, we thought we were the masters at deep frying. Not so. The range of deep fried goods here are amazing, regularly bananas (see below) or bread-type goodies.

What is that? UMO

Unidentified Meat Object. Claire’s favourite descriptor for all the random foodstuffs that are cooked on most street corners. On a brighter note, the question of ‘what the heck is that’ often pertains to fruit. There are fruits here that we have never seen or heard of. Amazing stuff. And bananas – who knew that there were so many ways to cook bananas?!

And there you have it. No great insights but more a collection of thoughts that don’t quite warrant a blog unto themselves.

Gordon on his dengue fever visit to hospital, trusty drip at his side

Neither of us can quite believe that six months has passed so quickly. We’re having a great time (if you ignore the dengue episode and even that is really just another story for the re-telling) and are sure our year anniversary blog will be upon us before we know it. Thanks for sticking with us on this folks!