Loving and leaving Phnom Penh

It seems appropriate to start our last blog talking about the birth place of Phnom Penh, our home for the last two and a half years.

Wat Phnom is a pagoda standing on a mound that is meant to be the founding spot of Phnom Penh. It stands 27 metres tall and its lit-up pristine whiteness ensures it stands out as a landmark at night. A decade ago, no building in Phnom Penh was allowed to be higher than the top of Wat Phnom. A friend described how you could look out across the skyline of Phnom Penh and see a canopy of trees only punctuated by the spires of pagoda. Phnom Penh was a pearl of South East Asia.

Wat Phnom. The stark white stone against the night sky is quite majestic. You don't have to be tall to stand out from the crowd.

From our rooftop (our building has ground to second floor) I can see 18 tall buildings being constructed. These are easy to spot because of the green mesh netting they have around them to stop debris falling into other properties. I would probably be able to see more if it were not for two already constructed apartment towers on the other side of the street blocking part of my view.

If you're living next to it, the noise of construction can continue seven days a week, starting early in the morning. The doors and windows, open to let cool air into the house, also let in the noise of grinders and machines. Foreigners, particularly, are irked by this but as a Cambodian friend replied, Cambodia is a developing country so what else would you expect but for development to be happening. Development appears as concrete, lifts and air-conditioned apartments.

The planning laws were changed and apartment towers have replaced the pagodas as the highest thing in the sky. These buildings replace old wooden houses on stilts, and rather than shade being provided by trees in the garden, it is provided by even taller buildings close by. The wooden houses seem romantic and more in tune with nature’s environment, but the reality for one friend living in a wooden house was termites, creaking wood and a dodgy roof (not to mention rats in the floorboards and mice in the cupboards!) She has recently moved into a modern apartment and is wondering why it took her three years to do so.

Trees and golden spires. How Phnom Penh used to look?

Cambodians are also moving en masse as suburbs and gated communities spread into Phnom Penh. I visited one recently which is called “New World” and saw rows of buildings ignoring the cooling virtues of wooden houses or even of ceiling fans, preferring concrete and air conditioning units instead. However, it was also a more open community with fewer gates barricading houses in and children were out roaming the streets.

Phnom Penh is a noticeably different city now to the one we arrived in on 13^th February 2012. If we come back in the future, it will have changed again. The streets will have changed, and the street sellers changed with them, and maybe some of the attractive French colonial buildings will have vanished too. Our hearts may fall, but why would Cambodians care about preserving the memories of a foreign, colonial rule?

As a sentimentalist, there is a part of me that hopes Phnom Penh will remain the same as I know it. But this is a selfish and harmful wish.



This is the view from the back of my roof, which may not last very long. The one in the distance is the unfinished tower and the one to the left has just been finished. The one away in the distance in the back right is the tallest of the lot. 

When counting the towers being built from my rooftop, I can actually see a 19^th building that has green mesh and the look of being constructed about it. However, if you look again tomorrow or the day after, or even if you had looked at it on 13^th February 2012, you will notice that nothing has changed in years. This unfinished, giant concrete tower of 34 storeys stands in the middle of Phnom Penh at the junction of two of the main roads. It is an unchanging scar on the city.

A city that is not changing is a city that is not living or breathing. Phnom Penh is an exhilarating city because it is living and breathing, and changing. The Phnom Penh that we have known, and will leave today, will exist tomorrow only in our hearts and memories. For tomorrow it will have changed again and other people will be falling in love with it.



Last sunrise over the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Bassac rivers in Phnom Penh this morning.

Goodbye, from your Phnom Penh Pals

Claire and Gordon

A fearless life in the White Building (Bo ding)

I originally wrote this piece on 25th February 2012 before I had been back to the White Building after that first time. I had forgotten about it until recently and it seems a symbol of how Claire and I built a life as part of Phnom Penh. 

The White Building is the longest building in Cambodia. The claustrophobic flats cram hundreds of families into a series of concrete blocks connected by unlit walkways and stairwells. The White Building is notorious rather than desirable.

Anna in the blue shorts was the fearless adventurer who took us here. Ellen in the pink was equally at ease. I am sitting at the edge, unsure of how to join in I think.

On our first weekend in Phnom Penh, a fellow VSO volunteer took a few of us to an arts exhibition being held there. We struggled to find it as in Khmer it's called Bo Ding (which doesn't translate as White Building) and were a little nervous as we tried to find the safety of the exhibition amidst the dark clamour of normal White Building life.

The exhibition was called The White Night and showed the work of local residents who had received eight weeks of teaching in photography, visual and audio art and other "mixed media". The first art piece that caught my eye was a sculpture made up of random household objects like clocks, a lamp and a turtle.

I ended up speaking to the artists - 8 teenagers - who lived in wealthier areas but had created this art by asking inhabitants of the White Building for stuff. They used to be afraid of the White Building but could not believe how generous its inhabitants were in giving them stuff for their sculpture. They now viewed the people and the building differently.

This was one of Claire's favourite pieces and it really is amazing the skills and patience this woman must have.
Below is the description of the piece. 

The exhibition was spread out in disused flats, corridors and back alleys. And it was whilst winding our way through this warren that we passed a flat, which like many, had its doors wide open so you could see the main living area.Staring at me from over the dinner table was a blackboard with the present perfect tense at the top and various English phrases written underneath. Scrawled in chalk on the outside of the house's concrete wall were a list of English words and grammatical rules.

I could not help but stare. I never saw any of the family but I began to imagine what kind of people give their whole house over to helping their kids learn. Were these the type of people who would live in a building that deserved notoriety?

I then began to feel slightly fraudulent. The exhibition seemed to give a sense of pride to some of the White Building's inhabitants. They were no longer pariahs, heck even wealthy white foreigners were coming to their homes. Despite only meeting friendliness and character, I still felt uncomfortable there, uncertain if I was enjoying this forced experience or just surviving it. I wasn't sure that I would ever go back and felt shameful to be this kind of voyeur.

Claire and Boramy, who works for Amrita and dances for Khmer Ensemble Arts

It took a while, but we did go back. Claire worked for Amrita right beside it and made friends with many dancers who live there. There's been further arts exhibitions and dance performances that we've attended, and I've enjoyed the odd meal there recently. $1 for pork, rice and a fried egg is pretty hard value to beat.

Me getting food before going to see Boramy dance. Taken by Isabelle who read about the White Night Exhibition just before coming to Cambodia and now lives close to the White Building. 

Whilst I am now a lover of the White Building, others love the prime city centre location it sits on. There were rumours that a company were secretly buying flats one by one and then the Government recently announced that the building is unsafe and everybody will have to leave. A similar building nearby was violently evicted five years ago and the owner of the food stall above wasn't happy at that prospect or the low price being offered. Maybe the more we go, the safer it will be.

Gordon

Cambodia: A Kingdom of Wonder

I had previously done research that showed that schools received 65% of what they expected and that because of ring-fencing rules, they received money for things that they didn’t need and no money for things that they did. For example, schools may receive money for electricity even if that school didn’t have electricity. I had created a budget planning and disbursement tool that would help provincial offices of education (POEs) avoid these problems.

In March and April, I travelled around 10 of Cambodia’s 25 provinces, some of which are not renowned for their beauty. Each one though provided me with moments of curiosity and awe that could justify the proclamation that this is a Kingdom of Wonder, and not just a Siem Reap of temples.

My two colleagues Vutha and Nipun sitting at the River Mekong in Kratie. Kratie may have the best sunsets I've ever seen. Either Vutha or Nipun did all of the training with me. Absolute stars

I started in Kampot, which is one of my favourite places. It’s a town on the river, has beautiful rice fields set against sharp, jutted hills, and sunsets that leave you at peace with the world. It also had two young female teacher trainees sitting all day at the entrance gate to the teacher training centre. 

People often joke that Cambodia really is the Kingdom of Wonder, because you can only wonder at some of the ridiculous things that happen here. 

Judging by their polite smiles as I entered and again when I left, they had obviously not been ejected from their class for bad behavior so I asked them what they were doing sitting outside all day. They told me that they were the guards for that day. My face must have conveyed slight astonishment as they reassured me that it was ok because they didn't do it every day; tomorrow it would be the turn of two other students.

How can you not love Banteay Meanchey, when this is the view from the Provincial Office of Education?

Cambodia has their own currency (the riel) which is used interchangeably with the US dollar. If something is 5000 riel, I can give $1 and 1000 riel to equal 5000 riel. Banteay Meanchey near the Thai border threw me a little as they began quoting prices at me in Thai Baht. It also surprised me with its love gardens. These lush manicured gardens were where people went for wedding pictures, romantic walks and just for general hanging out. Which this concrete little dwarf seemed to be doing.

More excitedly Banteay Meanchey also had a pop concert and fayre when I was there. I threw darts which bounced back off the balloon without bursting them, and was hung onto, for a full ten minutes, by a drunk woman who didn’t seem to be speaking Khmer or understanding my desire to keep my arm attached to my body. 

Battambang is famous for its cultural heritage, fertile land and beautiful women. But for those in the know (my colleague Nipun), it also has a famous place for duck noodle soup. The reason that it is only for those in the know is that it doesn’t have a name. It is simply called ‘three buildings’ because it has expanded to be housed in three consecutive buildings from its original one. Battambang also has various temples atop hills and one has a cave out of which millions of bats fly out every sunset darkening the sky immediately above you and drawing a weaving black line through the sky as they all fly in formation.

Another wonderful thing in Battambang is the bamboo train. Get two axles, put a bamboo flat bed on it attach a motor and zoom down a train track. The problem is that there is only one line, so when another person comes in the opposite direction, one train has to be dismounted from the tracks - as we did here. 

A cave at another temple is where there used to be an escape route to Thailand during the Khmer Rouge regime. There was also a drip of water being collected in a bucket in the ice cool underground cauldron. Many times in Cambodia, we have found ourselves unsure of what do when given something but aware that you are expected to do something. So, imagining that I was in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I gently put the cup to my lips before being shouted at to stop. I had not chosen wisely - it was not for drinking but washing my face with.

In Ratanakkiri, Vutha and I had a weekend to explore and had our own guide, the wonderful Kagna - a friend of Vutha's. We swam in waterfalls, picked fruit at her family's farm and even drank a little of her father's potent home brew, which did wonders for my ability to follow conversations in Khmer.

Yeak Loum - a volcanic lake for a refreshing dip

Vutha, Kagna and me

Just before we jumped in for swim

Vutha and I had a guesthouse with a bar that overlooks a lake that the sun rises onto. In the evenings, we drank cocktails and played Khmer chess, which is slightly different to the international version. My record at Khmer chess is nearly unblemished - I drew the first game I ever played and have lost every one since. The magic of Ratanakkiri is the colours though. The red dirt, mixed with a setting sun and green hills casts a haze over your senses that Mark Rothko has never done.                                                                                                      

Sunrise in Ratanakkiri, and me getting beaten chess. Again. 

I was in Stung Treng for less than 24 hours. The training with the POE went well although the Director of Finance was unable to stay for the whole time. We understood why after returning to our guest house at lunch time to find her, as the owner of it, sitting in the reception area. 

Sekong Bridge and the River Sekong, Stung Treng. Vutha will leave Cambodia the day after me to study in Japan. 

Before going to Stung Treng, the thought of being there for such a short time would not have displeased me but that was before I saw the river and sunset from the Sekong Bridge. Stung Treng, a place that was previously so bad that it was characterized by requiring you to travel 3 hours to Kratie for a good breakfast suddenly became a place that made me so happy that I became sad to realize that I may never be back.


Cambodia: a Kingdom of Wonder, and that was only half of it.
Gordon

Can garment factories be a liberator for women?

In Cambodia, there is literally one rule for girls and a different one for boys. When they are pre or early teens, girls will be taught the Ch’bap Srey – the women’s law, which prescribes ideal female behaviour and their subservience to men. 

The rules for boys are much more lenient and they generally enjoy a higher status in society. There is a saying that boys are like a bar of gold and girls are like a white, linen cloth. A bar of gold can be bashed around and still retain its value, but when a white, linen cloth receives even just a tiny stain, it is forever ruined.

The discrimination between boys and girls is evident in education levels of adult women. The literacy rates of women aged 65+ is 25% compared to a male rate of 75%. Seventy percent of women aged over 25 have not completed primary school compared to only 47% for men. However, these women are suffering from discrimination of the past and there are signs that girls of today are getting an equal chance. Literacy rates for girls aged between 7 and 24 are virtually the same as for boys (1 percentage point different) and net enrolment rates in primary school is equal to that of boys.

There are still gender roles and expectations of appropriate female behavior but the rise of something usually considered negative may challenge these. Those exploitative, faint inducing garment factories are creating a huge demand for employed labour, something new for Cambodia, and that demand is being filled by women.

Every morning, you can see trucks crammed with standing women, being taken to the factories. When a shift ends, you see a mass exodus of women in pyjamas.  While their husbands may be picking up work here and there, the women are earning a regular wage. The effect of this is important even if the wage is low. Women hold the money in Cambodia but it is men who control what it is spent on, and how much is given to her in the first place. With women now earning a wage, that control of how much the woman receives may diminish.

Traditionally, women would not leave the home, and even after marriage the husband would move into the in-laws house. Women may grow up, marry, parent and grow old in the same place. But garment factories are pulling young women from their rural homes and moving them into a new world; a new world with new rules.

Unmarried, young women are moving into urban areas where garment factories are and leaving behind their parents. They may still be living with relatives - brothers, uncles, aunts etc - but they are far enough away that the rules parents may impose lose their strength. This extends to escaping from the pressure of an arranged marriage, something still common in Cambodia. Girls can have the chance to find somebody themselves (with parental approval) and a happy couple find their own place to live together, as it would be impossible to live with the in-laws hundreds of miles away from work in Phnom Penh.

As this new industry may challenge traditions, there is an older industry that also pulls girls from their homes and draws them into labour. The sex industry is rife throughout Cambodia, driven by Cambodians rather than expatriates. Some young girls, not finding jobs or income in their villages, may follow the dirt path to Phnom Penh and find themselves in karaoke clubs or massage parlours, rather than garment factories. In all of these workplaces, young girls will be working and sending money home, but unless it is the latter, they are probably having to lie about where they get it from. The boys who gave them the money in the first place are still gold though.

Gordon