Foreigners welcomed with a smile in Cambodia

We live in the Cambodian equivalent of Mayfair. A house in Boeung Keng Kang 1 can cost $2m, in a country where GDP per capita is nearer $1000. Apartments with swimming pools can be rented for $2000 per month; coffee shops with air-conditioning can charge $5 a cup; food can cost $30 in a restaurant; and flash cars are parked everywhere. This is ex-pat ville.

This is one is definitely more than $2m - owned by the family who have the license for Tiger beer.

Amidst all of this are the cheap local market, street food stalls and Cambodians eking out a living, often by serving the needs of wealthy foreigners. My sense of inappropriateness if eating a lavish dinner or drinking an expensive cocktail comes from my fear of what these people will think when they see me.

They see us come to their country, mangle their language, remain ignorant of their culture and spend exorbitant sums on things that are strange and foreign to them. They see the places that they know change to look more like the places we come from. And then these places remain too expensive for them to access.

People in developed countries get annoyed when people from developing countries live in their country and take the low paid jobs. Can you imagine what it would feel like if it were all of the high paid jobs that they took?

Whilst they would become doctors, engineers and bankers, you would work as a waiter, in a shop or as a taxi driver. You would practice for hours without books or teachers to learn their language, whilst the foreigners are pleased with themselves because they can say no and thank you in yours. 

You would copy phrases that you hear to greater endear yourself. Everybody becomes a sir or madam and you never stop enthusiastically offering your services because it might help you get another dollar. Any feeling of resentment is submerged by the need to earn money and the knowledge that it is through serving these foreigners that your family can eat.

What do you think that this would do to your feeling of pride? Yet, I do not see any resentment but instead have experienced kindness from people we work with, tuk tuk and moto drivers who take us places, staff who serve us and people who we see in the streets. A smile as wide as their faces is usually what greets us.

In other countries, tourists can complain about being ripped off and taken advantage of. So far, that does not happen to a great extent in Cambodia. Either, the Cambodians have not worked out how much they can rip people off or they are just not willing to do it. Sometimes, if you ask for a price, you can sense a hesitation whilst they consider whether they could get more than normal and if so how much more. Could they try to eke out an extra 500 riels (less than 10p)?

In fact we have experienced the opposite; people giving us stuff because we're foreign. Children at a pagoda in Kratie gave us fruit for no reason other than that we were foreign guests in their village. Teenagers in Battambang made a grasshopper from coconut tree leaves and gave it to us because we were talking to them. A food seller in Takeo gave us extra snacks whilst we were resting after climbing a hill. They gave to us even though they had less than us.

Our local moto taxi driver invited us to join a family celebration at his house, where not only were we treated to as much food my belly would allow, but he also gave us how home brewed wine that he had kept special for years.

As more tourists come, attitudes may change, but maybe not. I do feel that we are lucky to have been here at this time though.

Gordon

Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll

During the Khmer Rouge regime, nearly two million people perished including most of the country's artists, musicians and intellectuals. It's estimated that Cambodia lost 90% of its artists - particularly devastating in a country where the traditional arts are taught orally. This meant that much of Cambodia's artistic history was nearly destroyed. There are organisations who are working hard to preserve and revive the arts, including the company I work for, Amrita Performing Arts. Another organisation, Cambodia Living Arts, found Master Artists (four to begin with, 15 years ago) and helped to support them and start them teaching again.

Musicians also perished during this time - not just the traditional artists, but the 'kids' who were playing rock 'n' roll. I hadn't appreciated quite what a modern music scene there was in Phnom Penh until I saw the film Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll.

In January 2014, Gordon and I, along with my folks, were lucky enough to be among the 700-ish people (it seats 550) who squeezed into renowned Cambodian architect Vann Molyvann's Chaktomuk Theatre for the premiere of Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll. As the film's Facebook page describes, far better than I could: This documentary film provides a new perspective on a country usually associated with war and genocide. By celebrating this powerful music, and the people who created it, Cambodia's musical heyday emerges from the shadows of tragedy into the light of history.

Seven years in the making, this film features interviews with surviving musicians or family members of those that didn't survive, plus amazing footage of vintage Cambodia. The film had only just been completed - if memory serves, they were still doing the subtitles on the day of the premiere!

It was a very emotional night with lots of history in the room. Vann Molyvann, architect of the theatre and architect of some of Phnom Penh's most striking buildings was there. As was Rithy Panh, director of, among many other films, The Missing Picture, which narrowly missed out on an Oscar a few days ago. A handful of musicians that survived had made the trip, from Cambodia and from abroad. The family of some of the artist's featured in the film but who didn't survive the regime were there: Ros Serey Sothea's sister, Sinn Sisamouth's son.

It was a real privilege to be there. Please see this wonderful film if you can - this trailer gives a little flavour of it.

But… there's more…

After the premiere we went outside for some music - I didn't really know what to expect.

Some of the musicians, who had been the equivalent of The Beatles or Bay City Rollers in Phnom Penh in the 70s, had come back together three days before the premiere and started to play the old songs. Some younger musicians joined them, to fill the gaps left by the Khmer Rouge, and what proceeded was one of the most fun, and emotional, concerts I've been to. I don't know how much these musicians still play, but it was amazing to think that they could rehearse together for such a short time, after such a long time not playing the music, and then give a three hour concert. To be clear, these musicians weren't from the same band. I don't think they were necessarily playing songs that they'd have played the first time round. It was awesome!

It was standing room only in the theatre - it's amazing how many people you can
squeeze in when you don't have fire safety laws…

Shoe shining and paper aeroplanes

It's easy to mock tuk tuk drivers or moto top drivers, with their incessant shouts of "tuk tuk?!?" or "moto?!?" As soon as you appear around the corner, they will spring up with the hope of a puppy at dinner time, eager to take anything that you may offer. Our answer of having a bike already or just being out for a walk can cause a slump worse than any stock market has witnessed.

In Europe or America, to earn a living you look for an employer to give you a job. In developing countries, there are very few employers and if you want money to eat, you have to think what you can do to earn money yourself. The question is: "What can I do that will persuade people to give me money?"

I've had 13 years at school followed by 5 years at university and I have no idea what I  could do or produce that would persuade people to give me money. I made a wooden chair once when I was 12 but wouldn't remember how to do it now. Judging by my hairstyles, I don't think offering to cut people's hair for them would be an option. My restaurant would only be able to serve cheese toasties and I get a sore back when ironing for too long (the board is always too low). Imagine how hard this could be when you are illiterate and find it difficult to count and then add in the consideration that you are trying to sell to people whose monthly income is $100.

In my opinion, I can make the best paper aeroplanes ever, but they don't tend to last very long so I couldn't charge very much. I was pretty good at polishing my school shoes though so I guess that is what I could do. I could be a shoe shine boy. Put me into a situation in Cambodia where I would have to be self-employed and my best idea is to earn some money by shining shoes, with a paper aeroplane business on the side.

One lunch time a few months ago, when the heat scares people indoors, I watched my moto dop friend paced around his moto. He would wipe his seat, inspect his face in the wing mirror, look down one street, then another and then another. He would look down all four streets that can be seen from the intersection but there was nobody there. Without any customers, he didn't know what to do other than what he had been doing for two decades.

We have phrases in English that have become so common that we have lost an understanding of what the words mean. To counter this, when we do actually mean what we are saying, we insert the word "literally". In Cambodia, there are literally some people who do not know what to do with themselves. They don't have skills or ideas and they only know what they've done before. If that stops working then what else can they do?

Sometimes, I become slightly tired of tuk tuks offering you a ride or market sellers asking if you want to buy something and when I do I feel a bit ashamed. Despite the vast majority of people saying no, they keep on asking, they keep on offering, they keep on putting themselves out there for a disappointment. If I was a shoe-shiner or a paper-aeroplane seller, I don't think I would be able to keep going like they do.

Gordon

In Cambodia, nobody can be perfect

Cambodian’s have accepted the notion that “nobody is perfect” to such an extent that they do not even have the word “perfect” in their language. You can say that something was good, very good or even extremely good. But you cannot say that it was perfect.

We learn our mother tongue without thinking about the rules that structure our language; we follow the rules almost naturally. When learning a language, not only do you have to learn new vocabulary, you also have to learn new rules. Rules that sometimes can seem strange.

Cambodians pluralise words in a totally different way than in the English language. For instance, we would add a ‘s’ onto the end of the word such as: “he owns expensive cars”. In Khmer, you would say the word for expensive twice to indicate that there is more than one expensive car, so the sentence would be structured as: “he owns cars expensive expensive.”

Cambodians also seem to be so far advanced in eradicating gender bias that they do not even have different words for he/she, him/her or his/hers. The same word is used for them all. When I was trying to describe to colleagues that I was going to visit a friend and her wife in Viet Nam, it took minutes of confused sentences before they understand that:

1. my friend was a female (not helped by platonic friendships with the opposite sex being abnormal here)
2. my female friend was married to another female (again, a scenario not that common in Cambodia)

Such experiences have opened my eyes to the deficiencies that languages can have. In that conversation, understanding was made more difficult because the language cannot differentiate between she and he. Languages enable us to communicate concepts but if we cannot even communicate the concept of perfection, can that concept even exist?

I remember learning, rather sceptically, about how language can restrict our knowledge, but now I have seen how this can happen and how it is harming the education of Cambodian children.

In Khmer, they do not have a word for a lesson or period, such as a period of maths in school. Instead they use the phrase “study hour”. However, in Cambodian schools, a study hour is not the same as an hour. In primary schools, a study hour is forty minutes and in secondary schools it is fifty minutes.

At this point, I would like you to pause, ensure that you have understood the paragraph above and then consider this question: if a primary school child has five study hours in a day, how many (normal) hours does that child study for?

If you can answer that question correctly, then you are doing better than one of the Secretaries of State for Education in Cambodia, and indeed a host of senior directors in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

In the Cambodian national curriculum for primary education, there are 950 study hours per year. If a study hour equals 40 minutes, then this means that there are 633 hours and 20 minutes in a school year, which is one of the lowest in the world and below the internationally expected 800 – 1000 hours per school year.

However, because the concept of a study hour equalling only 40 minutes has not been grasped, the Cambodian government reports internationally that there are 950+ hours in a school year. At a meeting with the top people from the Ministry of Education last week, I heard (yet again) that Cambodia compares well to other countries.

Now that I see how the structure of Khmer affects their knowledge and understanding, I wonder how the structure of English has affected my own knowledge and understanding.

Gordon

Us = Cambodia, Them = Vietnam

It happened when I was out with a Khmer friend for dinner. We were sitting at a street corner discussing the election and my friend was talking about how the Vietnamese controlled the Cambodian government. She had heard that they controlled the Lao government too. As she talked more, I realised that for Cambodians, the Vietnamese were "the other" who were feared.

We form social bonds by creating common identities, and one of the most powerful can be the sense of nation. This identity allows us to claim things for ourselves that we had nothing to do with. For instance, when Mo Farah won the Olympics, I was delighted because "we" had won a gold medal. It even allows us to claim things for ourselves that happened before we were born. "We", being James Watt and every Scottish or possibly British person since, invented the steam engine. We even feel proud of ourselves for this. Well done us. 

The identity of the "we" can be strengthened by not just defining who the "us" are, but also by defining "them", or "the other". We even sometimes give "them" names. In Cambodia, they have given the Vietnamese the name Yuon. The Cambodian opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, has consistently decried the influence of the Yuon in Cambodia during his speeches, which appears to energise his supporters and the public.

Despite various conversations with friends and reading about politics here, I only recently grasped the depth of hate for the Vietnamese that exists within the Cambodian psyche. We were watching a film that included interviews with the late King Father Sihanouk. After Cambodian-Vietnamese forces defeated the Khmer Rouge in 1979, freeing him from their arrest in the process, he sided with the Khmer Rouge against them. He helped persuade countries that the Khmer Rouge should keep Cambodia's seat at the UN, rather than the seat be given to the Vietnamese installed government. For him, there was no other option but to side with the Khmer Rouge even if they had killed some of his children.

Vietnamese sign: "Determined to firmly safeguard national sovereignty"

This intrigued me and made me begin to understand more what people were thinking during the civil war of the1980s, and also now. But I was still not prepared for what the King Father said next. He said that he would rather have died as a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge than his country be saved by the Vietnamese. 

The man who became King, achieved independence for his country, ruled as Prime Minister, saw sons and daughters die, returned as King to a unify a destroyed country, said that he loved his country so much that he would rather that the Khmer Rouge continued its destruction of Cambodia, than Cambodia be saved by Vietnam.  I don't think there could be a clearer sense of "us" and "them" than this.

It is this division that is evident in today's politics and is galvanising opposition to the Prime Minister,  who first became Prime Minister during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia in the 1980s. Cambodians cite history showing that Vietnam has previously tried to take over territory by movements of people first followed by formal occupation. Cambodians fear this now because of Vietnamese people in Cambodia whilst believing that the people of Vietnam today are closely linked to the people of Vietnam hundreds of years ago; just like I believe that I am linked to a guy who invented the steam engine in 1765.

Hoi An, Viet Nam: These girls sell little lanterns that float on the river.  Who can resist buying one? Depends on what you think about child labour I guess.

Feeding this fear is the real loss of some territory to Vietnam, for instance the island of Phu Quoc, and large Vietnamese companies controlling industries such as rubber and timber. Sam Rainsy has called for immigration controls of Vietnamese people despite only being two years away from Cambodia and Vietnam becoming part of an ASEAN community. This community, like the EU, seeks to forge a new common identity, a new "we". And in this "we", people will be free to live and work in any of the ASEAN countries they wish to.

The driving motive of European integration was (and still is for some) that nations will have more security because countries i.e. France and Germany, are less likely to go to war with each other. Nations are protected not by strengthening separate identities but by retaining them whilst promoting a second common "we" identity. Some would say that it's worked. Peace for Cambodia might come through this route rather than one emphasising difference.

Gordon

Fight corruption? Send volunteers not money

A few years ago, the head of the Kenyan anti-corruption unit was hiding in a dorm in Oxford University, on the run for his life. He had secretly taped Government ministers and officials discussing stealing millions of dollars. A lot of this was aid money.

The Global Health Fund has just released a report alleging that the Cambodian Ministry of Health has potentially misused $12m of $87m aid money. Officials asked contractors to inflate costs to then give kickbacks to the same officials. Transparency International has announced that Cambodia is perceived to be the 17^th most corruption country in the world.

It didn't take long for this guy to count his chickens. He was just sitting there waiting for a bus. With his chicken. 

Understandably, people in donor countries see this corruption and feel that their money is being wasted. I hate seeing this waste too, especially when you can see so clearly the difference the money could make. Some think that because some money is being wasted, donors should stop giving money. However, this is akin to turning off all the lights because the light bulbs lose some light energy through heat.

Embezzling money is a type of waste and waste happens in all governments, and all organisations. However, wasted money can still create some benefits as rather than the money simply disappearing, it is being used for other purposes. In Cambodia, for instance, it used to buy Lexus or Range Rover cars, expensive watches and big houses. This is disgusting but it is undeniable that this spending boosts the economy and creates wealth.

By now, you may have gathered that these photos have nothing to do with the blog. But I thought that you might find them interesting. These are coconut sellers with their carts about to spread out and start selling. 50 cents for one. 

Now, obviously this is not the optimal outcome; the money would have greater benefit if used for other purposes and contributed to more equal development. But a lot of the wasted money is being spent in the developing country, injecting millions into the economy and creating jobs. 

Corruption and waste should not be ignored however, as the negative effects on society are clear – just read It’s our turn to eat, which documents the corruption scandals in Kenya mentioned above. Donor and recipient countries should find ways to reduce corruption and waste.

November was the end of the wet season, and there was a lot of flooding, and deaths, this year. I was out for an early morning cycle with the aim of crossing the bridge and coming back down the other side. It was there a few months ago!

I believe that part of the answer is looking at VSO. VSO does not send money, VSO sends people. The aim is not to spend money and build things, but to spend time and build skills. The value is greater and the opportunity for misuse of funds, as there isn’t any, is small. VSO volunteers can also help build systems of working that make it harder for corruption to happen.

VSO can also waste money by having ineffective volunteers but there is not the same damaging effect on society of corrupt officials grabbing huge amounts of wealth. Also, working with a volunteer is hard; taking aid money is easy. Whether they want to work with volunteers is a good indication of whether they are serious about improving working methods and systems or not.

Gordon