Well did you ever…

Or, things I never thought I'd do, never mind do in Cambodia…

(I started writing this post in February, then edited it in March, and now it's June tomorrow. Although when I started this I didn't know I'd be leaving Cambodia, it does have a feel of someone who's moving on. Perhaps this helps give you an idea why it's such a bittersweet decision to be leaving this lovely place)

Sing Christmas carols with the British Ambassador in his house
It's thanks to neighbour Andy that I got to do this (he was invited as he works for VSO). I didn't even know where an embassy was in the UK before, never mind been inside one. Now I've been into the UK, the US, the Indian and the Indonesian embassies here in Phnom Penh and, just before Christmas, I found myself in the Ambassador's residence scoffing home made mince pies and mulled wine and singing along with a choir to Christmas carols.

Sadly, neighbour Andy only had a 'plus one' so Gordon did the gentlemanly thing and let me tag along. (panic not, mince pies were smuggled home to him as a thank you)

Terrible picture, but we'd moved out of the prime photo-taking spot to go in search of more mulled wine. That's the (now ex-) Ambassador in the pale blue shirt and his partner on the right in the black shirt. It's a beautiful old building.

And this just made me laugh - health and safety to the max (watch that 4 inch step up to the pool area!)
 in a country where health and safety are just things that you wish to someone!

Make a dance video
Before you go any further, please watch the video, and then you'll understand how much fun I had helping to make this.



A few months after moving to Cambodia I was delighted to discover the Central School of Ballet had just opened and it was teaching adult classes. Adult contemporary classes! I signed up and have been dancing there ever since (more about that below). My teacher (and the Artistic Director of the school), Stephen, has become a really good friend and he asked if I'd help him with his other project here, Dance Made in Cambodia. He works with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, believing in the power that dance, and the arts in general, has in transforming people's lives.

We were making the video for a project called Dance Our City that Amrita Performing Arts (where I now work) were curating for Our City Festival - an annual festival of art, architecture and ideas. The idea for Dance Our City was to celebrate your city through dance.

The video was shot at the Olympic Stadium, one of me and Gordon's favourite places in Phnom Penh.

You can read more about Dance Made in Cambodia at www.dancecambodia.com

Dance on stage - twice! (I guess the second time round I should have expected it)

Crossing the Bridge Dec 2013

I've been learning contemporary dance for maybe four years now - two years on and off in Scotland and nearly two here at the Central School of Ballet. At the end of year one the School had an end of year performance. And then at the end of year two they had another. I've loved doing both.

Crossing the Bridge Dec 2013

Simple Pleasures Dec 2012

Simple Pleasures Dec 2012

Attend a film premiere alongside a who's who of Cambodian arts royalty (and actual royalty too)
In January, we were lucky enough to attend the film premiere of Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll. I've never been to a bona fide film premiere before. It was strange sitting in a room and going "Oooh, that's so-and-so. And OOOOh, there's what's-his-name." It was an experience made even more special than I imagine most premieres to be because there was just so much history in the room and in the film. You can read more about the night in this blog post (which you should click on just to watch the trailer for the film and see some wonderful old footage of Phnom Penh and all the cool cats getting their groove on in Cambodia!)

Dress up like a Khmer bride

before

after

It's a bit of a tourist thing to do, and I still can't quite decide if it's a little offensive to Khmer people, but it was a fun morning planned as a goodbye to a friend who will soon leave da Penh. $15 for hair, make-up, outfit, bling and three photos ($10 for Gordon - saving on the hair and make-up!). Some great Photoshop action later you have the 'after' photo.
(Sadly, I had to return the outfit and the bling - you don't get to keep them for 15 bucks!)


Attend a swanky event celebrating 65 years of Indian independence
Amrita, the dance company I work for, also do production work. We were working with the Indian Embassy to produce a performance of 35 classical dancers from India. Someone from Amrita got invited to the Embassy's event celebrating 65 years of independence. They couldn't go;  Gordon and I went instead; there was an ice sculpture of the Taj Mahal; never saw this one coming either!

Yarn-storm a cyclo
One of the lovely things I do in my spare time, apart from dancing (see above) and being in a book club, is to Stitch n Bitch. For those not familiar with the concept, it's the modern name for what I've always known as  a knitting bee. Basically, it's a group of people who get together to stitch (mostly knitting and crochet but all forms are welcome) and have a chat (the bitch element of the name, but we don't do that).

One of the cyclo drivers heading off on his newly decorated vehicle

For this year's Our City Festival we decided to yarn-storm something. Normally you yarn-BOMB something but we figured that was not a good choice of words in a country where things are still a little wobbly after the last election. For more information on what a cyclo is, what we did and why we did it, read a great entry on the Phnom Penh Stitch n Bitch group blog here.

An additional note to the blog: when I first spoke to a cyclo driver about this he explained (through someone who translated for me) that he was happy that we were making a 'dress' for his cyclo because it's very lonely being a cyclo driver. He'd been a cyclo driver for 20 years and people are now more interested in using tuk tuks or motos (very few people use cyclos now and cyclo drivers are generally very, very poor). Also, a cyclo only takes one person and you don't sit next to each other so that's lonely too. He was happy we were taking an interest in him and his cyclo as it made him feel warm and cared for. Yup, had me a bit teary at the time too.

Read Address to a Haggis. To a pizza. On our roof.
For Burns' Night we decided to actually do something this year. Sadly we couldn't find haggis. But we could find whisky and friends, and our roof is a great place for parties, so we toasted Rabbie in the only other way we knew how. With pizza. We all took turns reading a verse as we addressed the pizza and then toasted with whisky. And then we even had a wee ceilidh on the roof (a Strip the Willow for those that are interested)

A late entry - attend a King's birthday party
Okay, so I'm taking a little bit of licence with this title but it's almost true. The Royal Ballet of Cambodia is directed by His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni's sister Princess Norodom Buppha Devi. She created a new work for the company, Lights and Shadows (which recently toured Europe), and they gave a performance for the King's birthday. And somehow, again, because I work with Amrita and we helped produce the event, Gordon and I managed to go along. And the King was there. And it was his birthday. And this performance was for his birthday. So that means we were at the King's birthday party. Right?

That's the King sitting in the middle. The King!

This piece was unusual as it also include sbaek thom (large shadow puppets) - a separate art
 form not usually included in the ballet

sparkly costumes and insanely beautiful bent hands

Not the show that we saw, but a sample of work from the company


I suppose my point in this, rather than purely updating you of some of the things we've been up to over here, is that, doing something like VSO has opened us up to new experiences that we never thought we'd have. I truly didn't think I'd ever do half the things I've been lucky enough to do here. We've been so, so lucky to have these experiences and it's definitely taught me to look at the world in a different way. Many VSO-ers (and I'm sure other people too) are quick to point out that they get back so much more than they feel they put in and that's certainly true for me.

Are all explorers lost and is Scotland the best?

When a friend of mine left Scotland to work in France, I was envious of him as I imagined what it would be like to live in France with red wine, croissants and cheese. I found it hard to understand why he continued to insist that Scotland was still the best country in the world. My incomprehension was not resolved by his inability to explain why. Finding it difficult to capture the right words, or even identifiable things that makes Scotland the best, he had to settle for telling me that it was the best because it just is. I was left puzzled and doubtful.

As a child, a day after arriving at our holiday destination, I would ask my parents when we could go back home. Maybe I felt that I would miss a great game of football with friends or that it was the perfect season to be playing golf. Or something else that a ten-year old’s life may revolve around. It was not that I did not like these places or struggled being away from home, I guess it was just that home was where my life was.

It seems to me that the desire to explore is at odds with the desire to be where your life is, unless your life is only what is with you at that particular moment in time. For most people, life is much more than what is in that instant as it contains the people and places that have become woven into our lives over long periods of time. When attempting to fulfill a desire to explore, it can be very difficult to take your entire life with you and I sometimes wonder whether constant explorers are those without much life behind them.

Before coming to Cambodia, an acquaintance approached me at the end of a meeting and shook my hand. He had previously spent four years in Brazil and had done other travelling. A warm, light hearted man, he looked at me seriously, carefully even, and told me “don’t get lost”.

Immediately, I knew what those words meant. They had the same meaning as the fear that was inside of me as a child when I wanted to go back home as soon as I had arrived on holiday. They had the same meaning as the fear that propelled me to go through all of my classmates names during the long summer holiday. It was not that I was scared of getting lost - I remember sometimes dreaming of being alone in a far off country, sitting drinking a beer and reading a book - more specifically, I was scared that I would be lost to others. The further you explore, the harder it is to reach those behind.

Claire has spoken about the feeling that some people have when doing VSO of feeling like they have pushed the pause button on their life. As if when they leave home, everything in their life stops but in a not-quite-real-life parallel universe, they fulfill their desire to explore and seek new experiences, only hitting the play button on their real life when they return. For me, I find that not only is life paused but my identity of who I am is also suspended a little as in this not-quite-real-life-parallel universe my identify forms with different people and events shaping it.

For me a special time in Cambodia is between 4:30pm and 6:30pm when the sun begins and finishes its descent. I sit on our roof, looking into the distance, breathing in the experience of Cambodia. There is a magical light that fills me with happiness, but I have realized that part of this happiness is because the light makes me think of those long, summer, Scottish evenings. They make me think of home. They make me think of my life there and the people in it.

A lot of things, a lot of wonders, go into making a country what it is. Unweaving this wonderscape to explain exactly why Scotland is the best place in the world is as hard as unweaving a rainbow. I write this blog in Guangzhou airport on my way back to Scotland having finished my time as a VSO volunteer, but maybe not having finished my time exploring. I want to see my friend and tell him that now I understand what he means and why it was difficult to explain. But most importantly, I want to ask him to make sure that even if I keep exploring, I am never lost. 

Gordon

Cambodia: more than temples and Toul Sleng

In USA, there are some cities that are now forever defined by shootings at a high school. For many people, Cambodia is defined by its own tragedy of the Khmer Rouge. And that tragedy, like car crashes, draws people to see what happened. But imagine yourself to be from Columbine or to be in a car crash. Would you want the world to come and watch you?

The Missing Picture was recently nominated for an Oscar (best foreign language film), dealing with the director’s experience of the Khmer Rouge. It is a superb film but I felt uneasy asking my colleagues if they have seen it or heard about it because of its’ subject matter. I can understand why some Cambodians may just not want to talk about it.

There is a beer here that promotes being proud and drinking their beer and after years of war, it is understandable to find something that pride can be focussed upon. In Cambodia, pride is focussed on temples from the Angkor Empire when Angkor (ancient Cambodia) covered an area much larger than present day Cambodia. However, I think that sometimes the pride is not just for the temples but also for the Angkor Empire itself, the power it had and the area it covered.

Pride in the past can lead to a desire for a return to the past, which is not always possible. Indeed, it may not always be desirable as it can stoke past rivalry or enmity. It is important to find new things to be proud of.

Claire works for Amrita Performing Arts, which encourages classically trained dancers to explore the creation of a Cambodian form of contemporary dance.  Last week, they performed pieces choreographed by their own dancers to a hall packed with Cambodians and foreigners.

Traditional dance involves creating shapes such as these hands and feet. It is unbelievable how far they can bend fingers and hands. The shapes can be quite beautiful. This is an Amrita dancer in rehearsal.

A piece by two brothers explored their relationship growing up so close but realising that they might not stay so close forever. The final piece, Religion, mixed hip hop, contemporary and classical dance, and dancers, in a message (as I took it) that truth can appear in many guises and that each dancer (or person) finds a dance that is true for them. Each form can be celebrated.

Spontaneous applause, laughter and wonder erupted during the dances as the dancers showed grace, skill, emotion, athleticism, humour and understanding. Cambodia can remain proud of its traditional Apsara dancing but dance can evolve to become something new, created by contemporary Cambodians. You can see videos of their performances online. 

The athleticism shown by the dancers appears to be present in many Cambodians, which has always impressed me. It is hard not to be impressed watching small people leap skywards before powerfully spiking a volleyball down over the net. Similarly, I am in wonder when I see three people balanced on a bicycle cycling along a busy road – and even turning corners!

Athleticism and balance are to the fore in Phare PonleuSelpak, a Cambodian acrobatic circus. I have seen them many times now and each time there are moments when I laugh out loud in disbelief at what I am seeing. After one show during which males had performed gymnastic type acrobatics that I had thought possible only by Olympic gold medallists, I was gobsmacked to learn that they were aged 14 or 15.  Check out these films for extreme fire skipping and mesmerising juggling. 

Be it young dancers or acrobats, Cambodians do not just have to find pride in the past, they can also find it in the present.

Gordon

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