PART ONE
So - off to Perth airport to fly back to Siem Reap, Cambodia.
In another of those ‘small world’ events, I was standing in immigration in Siem Reap waiting for my visa to be processed, where your passport gets handed around a dozen or so imposing immigration officers in full uniform arranged in a semi-circle. A western woman looked at me and said: “Hi, Bevan, you are back.” I really did not recognise her, but luckily she was travelling with two friends and she introduced me to them, saying: “This is Bevan, we were working together at Grace House” - then the penny dropped … a bit!
My new client was two hours (120km) by road north of Siem Reap (15km from the Thai border) but he was in Phnom Penh and arriving in Siem Reap the day after I arrived. I had booked a hotel (a former client of mine) and was met at the airport by a tuk tuk driver, who said: “Welcome back Mr Bevan.”
I arrived at the hotel to be told by the owner that they had a group of French tourists who had extended their booking and the hotel was fully booked. He had booked me into another hotel, right in town but quiet and air-conditioned. It was interesting to see a group of saffron cloaked monks sitting on a mat on the floor under the hotel stairs and eating meals with their fingers from communal bowls.
Under new guidelines, volunteers are not permitted to refer to our organisation, our client or any government without notifying head office and getting pre-approved clearance - so this missive will be devoid of such references.
I managed to get an email message to my client, about the change of hotel; he flew in next day and we met up on Saturday afternoon, then he went off for lunch. We get used to ‘waiting’ rather a lot when we volunteers are on assignment in foreign climes. I saw an unusual sight in front of the hotel while waiting: a small frog jumped out of the garden onto the paving, it was pursued by a rat and they proceeded to wrestle each other for a few minutes until the rat gave up and dashed back into the garden; the frog probably had an alternative fatal appointment on the road.
When my client returned, we had to do some shopping, I had been informed that I would be catering for myself and doing my own cooking on this project; although, it was a bit awkward endeavouring to estimate the needs without actually seeing what was available at the destination. We then met up with another person from the host and travelled (in a hired car with driver) the 120kms north to the remote village where the client was based.
Cambodia snapshot - the country ranks 137 out of 182 countries for ‘human development’, the gross annual income per capita is US$1,802, 34% have access to water and 16% have access to sanitation, 45% of children under 5 years are malnourished, life expectancy is 58 for women and 54 for men, there is 69% adult literacy……
‘Home’ for the next 120 days was a reasonable two-story Cambodian house, behind fences, locks and barbed wire. There was even a ‘sit-down’ toilet (not one of those malevolent squat models), but no cistern: a large trough of water and a plastic scoop to ‘flush’. Interestingly, there was a small resident frog that seemed to want to call the toilet ‘home’. The frog could be doing a few laps of the trough of water; or, a bit more surprising: lurking inside the roll of toilet paper that was stored on a clothes hook on the wall (reach up and grab the toilet paper and a frog jumps out). One night in the pitch-dark I was feeling around for the light switch and put my hand on the frog - what startled me most was the thought that it was a huge spider.
My client had been domiciled in the only downstairs bedroom (two more were upstairs); and he kindly moved out for me to take that bedroom. He had informed me en-route that he was actually leaving the next week for a three-week holiday back to France, a rather surprising revelation as he was my primary contact.
Life in a Cambodian village was pretty much as expected - loud chatting and music from the neighbours until late, full-scale dog fights in the wee small hours (including cries of pain, cringing and whimpering) where it seemed like every dog for miles around joined in the cacophony (a Bach concerto, to speak) and then the cockerel chorus from around 4am - one night from 11pm - (I swear that the rooster in the tree in our backyard was the Choir Master and was using a microphone, or at least a megaphone he was so loud, I could picture him as being two meters tall!).
The village was ‘equal opportunity’ and even roosters with a distinctive speech impediment could join in. If you accept that a rooster ‘says’ ‘cock-a-doodle-do’, then one was ‘saying’ more like ‘cock-a-doo…squawk.’ The effect was 360° stereophonic sound with added depth created from roosters right outside my window - to those that were way off in the distance, over in Thailand, or Laos!
The office was conveniently located almost opposite the house, just across the unpaved, dusty track. Day one of the assignment was yet another ‘public holiday’ so it was very quiet working in the office; however, in the afternoon the next door neighbour cranked up his sound system so loud that we had to shout in our office to be heard. A few weeks later that building was vacated as the NGO renting it had presumably run out of funding.
In spite of the public holiday, the staff (all guys) wanted to welcome me with a party. So: there were twelve of us sitting outside a private cottage out in the boondocks in the semi-dark amid potentially malarial and Japanese Encephalitis carrying mosquitoes. Of the twelve guys, ten were smoking (perhaps it deterred the mozzies) - with cigarettes from around .50 cents a pack of twenty it’s not too surprising. The repast involved chomping on chunks of roughly chopped up chicken (with shattered bones I threw to the marauding dogs) plus the inevitable rice, and consuming lots of beer....and you have to keep 'clinking' cans for the equivalent of ‘cheers’ every few minutes. Amazingly, the client’s driver actually knew Pol Pot and he was revered for his age. As they always do (eventually) they asked my age - which they guessed at 60 (always flattering) - so I considerably usurped the 'old' guy who was only 65...much to everyone's amusement. Then I became ‘Bu’ ‘uncle’.
A few days into the assignment, the zip on a pair of trousers died - a guy took me to a shack off the ‘main street’ - new zipper neatly installed in half a day for R2,000 (that’s .50¢).
I was working with a French organisation and, after my primary contact left for his 3-weeks holiday, there was another French guy (then his young girl-friend arrived), plus another French couple doing a hydrology study for two weeks. I rarely saw another western face. The problem for me was not the lack of speaking Khmer; it was not understanding enough French! After two weeks there was just the young couple and me in the house and they went away on occasions, leaving just me and the ‘natives’.
The procedure at the house to discourage rodents and ants in the food included: storing as much as possible in the small refrigerator, hanging packaged food in plastic bags from nails near the ceiling, sugar was kept in a screw-top jar sitting in a saucer of oily water. When making coffee with the machine; firstly, one needed to remove the ants that were using the water supply as a swimming pool. One night I took some frozen chicken out of the refrigerator and left it on the stove to thaw out a bit to cook for dinner while I read my Kindle in the lounge area. When I went back to the kitchen - the chicken had disappeared (searched all over, thought I was going nuts because the doors were locked and there are bars on all the windows). All I could figure was that it must have been pilfered by a large lizard or a rat? I took a pork chop out of the freezer as a replacement and, after dinner (as an experiment), I left the bone on the stove….that also disappeared!
On another occasion, I was sitting quietly on the loo when a rat popped out of a drain in the floor by my feet; it headed for the door and objected that it was closed; it looked at me quizzically, shrugged its shoulders and disappeared back down the drain!
This assignment involved considerable detailed research into local agricultural practices, endeavouring to solve the farmers unique set of problems and successfully market their produce (my life tends to be somewhat varied, if nothing else). Some aspects caused me concerns, like a survey on pig production - when asked what they did with pigs that had contracted diseases; some they said that they just sold them. Or learning that they use human faeces or pig manures as feed when fish farming. Made me wonder about buying pork, or choosing a pork or fish dish at a restaurant?
One Sunday, we (the four French contingents and I) drove about 15km to the border with Thailand to a restaurant for lunch. An opportunist is building a huge, multi-story hotel and casino right next to the border. We turned off the main road onto a dusty, rough track (which would be mud in wet season), passed a sign saying ‘Pot Pot was cremated here’, drove through some garbage-strewn slums and bounced along for about fifteen minutes to the restaurant that was located by a massive escarpment featuring a dramatic 180° scenic view of the countryside way below. The restaurant was famed for serving large ‘pancakes’ stuffed with diced chicken, bean sprouts and other vegetation - rather delicious!
Our ‘home’ and office were located about 600m from what could be called the ‘main road’, (down a narrow, dusty, bumpy track) in a local village. A regular occurrence would be some function in the village and they always involved very loud amplified ‘music’ (now, I use that term rather loosely as it was usually what I could most likely approximate for you as being like that shrill, discordant noise emitted from an Indian snake-charmer’s flute). The volume was so loud that the ‘music’ became distorted. This frighteningly loud cacophony would be accompanied by an even louder commentary by a guy who must have been breathing through his ears; I mean, really: those guys could talk continuously under water!
The neighbouring house was, allegedly, an R&R stop for the military. So there were often several guys drinking copious quantities of beer and chatting loudly into the wee small hours and, like people anywhere, the drunker they got: the louder they became!
I purchased a carton of local beer for our household consumption - 24 cans for $10.00: .42¢ per can - can’t be bad?
One day, amplified discordant ‘music; was wafting through the village and our office and I made the mistake of asking if it was for a wedding? Response: “No, a funeral.” Seems a young local man was bashed and stabbed and died a few days later. The funeral went on for two days, on the second day the repetitious, continuous loud chanting started from 5am; a ritual that they repeat a week later. A few weeks later there was a rumour that a mechanic in the village was endeavouring to fix leak in a car’s fuel tank…. three dead from that.
All the food that I’d bought in the supermarket in Siem Reap had run out and there was no ‘supermarket’ in the village – or anything remotely like one. The French folk seemed to tend to live on tinned and dried stuff, but I wanted some meat, vegetables and fruit…..
SO – the French hydrologist’s wife (Alexia) and I went to the local market several times (you can just imagine what the conditions were like) for me to stock up! We went early in the morning (I reasoned that I did not want to be buying unrefrigerated meats in 35°c in the afternoon)! I bought some chicken a small fish, potatoes, carrots, long beans, pineapple and rambutan – spent less than $6. That night, I cooked and ate some chicken and vegies … and I was still alive in the morning! On another occasion I purchased: about 10 potatoes, three large carrots, a pineapple, a large bunch of long beans and (from another seller) a bottle of cooking oil - total: $5.30!
An interesting observation in Cambodia is what they wear. It is relatively common to see women in particular wandering around during the day wearing pyjamas. And, even in temperatures of 30°c+ they commonly wear jackets or jumpers.
In many areas of Cambodia it is still not wise to wander off common pathways because of the lingering prevalence of unexploded ordinance. Villagers endeavour to collect ‘metal’ to sell as scrap and it could still explode. If farmers graduate to full-size tractors; the incidences of triggering bombs can increase due to the added weight of the machinery traversing land that may previously have only endured the weight of a bullock, or a wandering farmer.
As is reasonably common in my personal sphere devoted to volunteering, both Christmas and New Year were ‘just another day at the office’ for me. I had advised staff that the cooking gas in the house was running low and I was alone in the house on New Year’s Eve. SO – started to cook dinner and the gas ran out! I packed up and started wandering along the dusty, potholed track to a local restaurant for dinner. The office manager was trundling along on his motorcycle and he invited me to a “friend’s place for a party”. What the heck – so, I got on the back of the machine (not usually a recommended action).
There were only four other guys (the women were in the house) – they sit cross-legged on a large wooden low table arrangement…I can’t squat like that any more, so they got me a chair. We drank beer (clinking cans every few minutes) and nibbled on rice and chunks of some indeterminate meat with shattered bones. Two of the guys had some English (when not on their ubiquitous mobile phones) - they offered to find me a Cambodian wife. I asked to be taken home about 8pm. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Recommendation - say ‘thank you’ every day for YOUR circumstances
The local farmers borrow money from a bank at 3% per MONTH, get into trouble repaying so take out a loan with a 'shark' at up to 100% pa - pay back the bank who then say 'thank you' and promptly give them ANOTHER loan - it’s a vicious cycle.! I was wondering about defaults and it seems the more ruthless check with banks on overdue loans; pay off the loan and takeover the family farms!
I was entering data from a survey on local farmers and most were depressing. I recall a woman whose husband had died - she had virtually nothing but somehow invested in 100 chickens to fatten to market - 90 of them died!!
Village life could get a little quirky - I usually arose around 06.30 and was in the office before 07.00 EVERY morning. One morning, I turned on the shower: no water! There was a tank on a stand by the house for water pressure and a bore hole/well and a pump out the front of the house and I assumed (never ‘assume’!) that was the water source. Wrong: the water came from the house next door to the house next door through a complex series of switches, pumps and pipes!
From just after Christmas there was ‘entertainment’ for the locals about a kilometre from our village that continued until around midnight. The volume of the noise (I refuse to call it ‘music’) was so loud our house windows were virtually rattling - you’d think that those actually on the site would be bleeding from the ears? Unfortunately, in keeping with current international ‘music trends’, the cacophony usually consisted of nothing more than a consistent and repetitious thumping beat accompanied by limited vocabulary vocals. It’s a pity really that the youth seem obliged to relate to that ‘sound’ to the exclusion of their own rich heritage. SURELY ‘our’ rock-and-roll did not sound THAT bad to our parentsJ?
There were days when a local villager would host a party for something or other for several nights, and THAT involved what could be loosely termed ‘music’ cranked up so loud that the sound was distorted, plus there would be long periods of just talking by a male and female voice that sounded rehearsed, like a two-person play! Then the woman would ‘sing’ in that trembling falsetto style. The amplified sounds resulted in the army guys next door shouting even louder to each other to be heard. The cacophony would persist until around midnight, a few minutes later, the void would be filled by ‘our’ choir-master rooter initiating another round of crowing, and then the local dogs would start a ‘mine is bigger/louder than yours’ competition. Sometimes, around 5am, a neighbour would decide that they’d like to hear their radio at a volume that would make the walls on their little shack look like it was breathing in and out!!! Conversely, just occasionally, there could be a few days of relative silence (not counting the roosters or dogs, of course). Actually, after nearly six weeks, the particularly very loud rooster that perched in a tree in *our* backyard ceased … a neighbour must have had roast chicken on the menu - good riddance!
I often have occasion to be grateful that my first language is English, and it has become the lingua franca of the world. I was working with French and Cambodians; but the common language was English. It could be interesting hearing a conversation between them, both conversing in a tongue not their primary choice.
Here endeth the first lesson .......