We have just one day left in Cambodia. The visit here has been wonderful, and confronting. There is so much to say, and not enough words to explain the way this country has weighed on my little brain. Some little vignettes:
The history: Historians would not call it history, but really, just the recent past. Most of the population here is too young to have known the Khmer Rouge period, as the vast majority of people are under 30. We saw a documentary about Phnom Penh just after Pol Pot’s regime was kicked out by the Vietnamese. It’s called “Death and Rebirth, ” and was directed by (then) East German filmmakers. I struggled with its wholesale support for the Vietnamese. But the images of a completely abandoned city are extremely powerful. Aerials of Phnom Penh show overgrown streets with not a single pedestrian or moving vehicle. A city frozen in time. When the Khmer Rouge took over on 17 April 1975, they sent everyone, everyone, out of the city. A man who happened to be in the north side of the city at that time was sent north. His wife and children, living in the south, sent south. Almost all of the educated people were executed – doctors, teachers, engineers. Pol Pot drew his base from the countryside, and made the city-dwellers his enemies.
The “genocide museum”, Tuol Sleng is harrowing. The set of buildings were a high school, but converted into a prison and torture chamber. About 17,000 people were held and tortured there. They were taken to the “killing fields” to be executed. The museum is simple. It displays the original iron shackles, the airless cells, the barbed wire and instruments of torture used just 30 years ago here. It also displays the photographs of hundreds of the prisoners. Women with infants on their knee. Young men. Old men. Children. Adolescent boys and girls. Each of them staring straight at you from their prison photograph. I tried to pass my eye over every single picture. But the monstrous number of photographs overwhelms even the best intentions.
The food crisis: Here, the food crisis is playing out in front of our eyes. The price of rice in the markets has tripled or quadrupled – and is now about 55 cents a kilogram. Many people here make 20-30 dollars a month. They eat rice every single day. Because of rising prices, the World Food Programme had to cut a very successful school breakfast programme about two weeks ago. The Cambodia Daily newspaper is already reporting a drop in students attending school in the rural areas. The paper has also started a fundraising drive, asking its readership to pitch in. This food crisis seems to truly be putting some hard-won gains in education and development at risk here.
The kids: It’s been years since I’ve been confronted with really, really poor kids. The most difficult time was at the Angkor temples. The little postcard sellers. “Hey, lady!!” Three of them pounce on the tuk tuk before it’s come to a halt. One is no more than five years old.
“You wanna buy postcahhh? Ten for one dollah.” And they count them out and show you each picture. “See: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One dollah!! O.k. lady?”
I’ve heard many times not to support children working this way. That they are likely lorded over by some jerk who takes all of the money they earn. That the jerk knows that these cute kids are the perfect little selling machines, because it’s hard to resist the pleas of poor kids.
And it is. The kids speak some English. They joke with you. “Ok, ten postcards, just a million dollahs! Ok lady?” Followed by a little giggle fit. If you hesitate, or say “maybe later,” they’ve got you. “Ok, I see you lay-tah. I remember you lady. Ok!”
One girl, no more than 10 years old, wearing a tatty little green dress decorated with Winnie the Poohs, amazed me at the Angkor temples.
“Where you from?” she asks me.
“Canada.”
“Canada. You have two official languages. Capital, Ottawa. Thirty-two million people.”
“How did you know that?”
Giggle fit.
“Ok, how about France?”
“PAY-reese,” without missing a beat.
“Switzerland?”
“Berne.”
“Germ..?” “Berlin,” back at me.
“Unit..” “Washington D.C., population, 330 millions!”
“Zimbabwe?” “Um….” “Ha, gotcha!” We both have giggle fits.
One five year old was helping with her mother’s fruit stand. The girl brought me the options – one bag of pineapple in each little fist. When I said I’d like to buy one, she put down the two bags, and smiling crazily at the potential sale, said “O.k., lady. I get you cold one, ok?” , and she raced to a little cooler where more pineapples were keeping chilled.
Most of these kids seem to be in school. At least, they tell you they are, maybe because it’s what you want to hear. But maybe they really are. School starts at 6 am, and finishes about noon. You see dozens of kids on the road then riding their bikes home. Big brothers, stoic and determined, doubling a little sibling, eyes half clamped against the dusty road.
Phnom Penh has its share of street kids. I was very impressed by one organization called Friends, which has all kinds of programming for them. Truly inspired, the programme offers “remedial” schooling to bring kids up to speed so they can enter school at the appropriate grade for their age. It gives direct training in different trades. For mothers, Friends purchases specific handicrafts they have made, but only if they have sent their children to school all week. It runs a shop and exports the products internationally.
It also runs restaurants. Here, student servers train under experienced teachers, who themselves are graduates of the Friends training. At the café, very nervous trainees will take your order, carefully set the places, and teeter over with a drinks tray, and really delicious food. They are serious, and visibly proud of their work. Many of these trainees have gone onto work in some of Phnom Penh’s best restaurants.
After just 11 days in Cambodia, I have everything to learn about the country, the people and development. But based on the excellent recommendations of many people who have lived in Phnom Penh for years, I would not hesitate to donate to Friends. The model has been so successful, it is running programmes in six countries.
The driving: is truly, the worst I have ever seen. There are “rules” of the road which are evident in many countries. Like, the largest, most expensive vehicle has the right of way. Not fair, but just the way it is in many places. If you’ve got a big vehicle, just pull out into traffic and everyone else must slow down and make way for you. But Phnom Penh is the only place I’ve seen these vehicles actually pull out into the opposite traffic leading up to traffic lights and pass 10 vehicles, just to get to the front of the line. People also do uturns everywhere. Across six lanes of traffic. Without signalling. At all. Or, motorcycles and tuk tuks will just drive down the wrong side of the road for several blocks, because… because? Of course, entire families do share one motor scooter. Two adults, with three kids sandwiched in between. Mother holding an infant in her arms. Three year-old sitting in front of dad, hands on the handlebars. Not so many helmets.
Last Tuesday, the Cambodia Daily reported that six people were killed in separate car accidents in Phnom Penh alone, in one day.
Random things: One kind of funny last thought about driving. Lexus SUVs are all the rage in Phnom Penh. They look brand new. There are different models of them – with smaller and bigger engines, but all very powerful compared to the tuk tuks, motorcycles and Toyota Camrys. Hard to know where these come from, or how people pay for them. But one source said he had seen a “new” one from a lot with a Virginia number plate…
As I write these last few paragraphs, I’m sitting in a café in Vientiane, Laos. I was here about 12 years ago. In that time, the city has completely transformed and except for the Mekong river which still passes by, I don’t recognize it. Then, I think just a few main roads were paved. There was one European-style “bakery” tucked on a dusty back lane. The whole city felt like a sleepy backwater, all dust and badly built concrete buildings. The areas by the Mekong smelled malarial.
Now, the place outside the old bakery has been transformed by a fountain and park, complete with manicured palm trees and hedges. There are public spaces along the Mekong, with lawns where school kids eat fruit from vendors and sip sugary drinks. There are guest houses everywhere, including transformed French colonial buildings with high ceilings, polished wood floors and lovely old fans. There are interlocking brick sidewalks along the major roads (new in the past three years apparently).
On the downside, a friend who has been coming here for some years reported that when he’s walking alone, tuk tuk drivers now ask him if he wants a “lady”. And this café I’m sitting in, while perfectly charming and employing about 15 people, could be anywhere in North America. Wifi, excellent lattes, clean surfaces. The local market, which really does sell just about anything you can think of including thousands of Lacoste knock-offs, has a new neighbour – a boxy shiny air conditioned mall selling the real thing.
Twelve years ago, I took local transport and bumped along for hours in the back of trucks. The drivers would stop from time to time to cut through trees which had fallen across the road. I’ll never forget the joys of riding a bicycle around one of the islands in the Mekong in the far south. People were fishing, weaving baskets, preparing meals. And many were just lounging in their hammocks, under the shade of the trees in their gardens. Everyone waved hello. I know, falsely idyllic, but it was nice.
This morning, we are about to board a plane to Luang Nam Tha, in the northwest. That region now has a brand new road running from China, through Laos to Thailand. We will go trekking for three days – well off that road of course. I think there is still much to see.
