Even after forty-five of these volunteer assignments in so-called ‘under-developed countries’ (which, incidentally, seems to be a record for the organisation), I rarely get into a situation of being discouraged or depressed in spite of (sometimes) unmet schedules, limited cooperation, language restrictions, promises of meetings or actions that never happen, not seeing another ‘westerner’ for weeks, no television or news for months, etc, etc….
On this one: my watch stopped working (battery I presume) - then the little alarm clock I carry decided it would be fun to irrationally jump forward an hour in the middle of the night, the mouse on my computer died, both zippers on my laptop bag decided that they would not mesh (a visit to the internet found how to fix that). I have a curved little stand for my laptop with an inbuilt fan so it does not keep overheating and turning itself off - the fan died. I was thumb-twiddling for days waiting for translations of my surveys, rats were charging around the kitchen at night, mice were fossicking under my bed and in my medication, drunken neighbours were shouting until all-hours, dogs yapping all night, walk up to the toilet in the dark in the wee small hours to push open the door and a rat ran across my foot; walk into the toilet and a frog leaps in front of you; put a hand on the toilet light switch in the dark and connect with a frog, cook dinner and sit down to eat it and a frog leaps into your lap (by the way: where does your ‘lap’ go when you stand up?); stand under the shower at 6am and confidentially turn on the tap - no water. The frog in the loo liked to play ‘silly buggers’ and hide in the core of the toilet paper … So: I reach up, grab the paper and a small frog jumped onto my hand, I shook by hand to dislodge said frog and it jumped onto my left cheek (no - this was the cheek on the face) - now remember this amphibian has suckers on its feet that enable it walk effortlessly up a smooth tiled wall - grabbed it, pulled it off with little suction sounds and flicked it onto the wall ……still: it’s all ultimately surmountable, ‘soldier on’, ‘let a smile be your umbrella’ and all that nonsense….?
Then there was the wildlife - we had the usual rodents (rats and mice), frogs lurking in the toilet and shower, mosquitoes (possibility of malaria or dengue but never heard anyone succumb), geckos running up walls and across ceilings (chirping merrily away, but at least they eat mosquitoes), cockroaches, large spiders, roosters crowing at any time, dogs barking all hours of the day and night and running out of houses to snarl at you when waking along the road (every house seemed to have at least one dog, and I never heard an owner reprimand one or tell it to “shut up”).
Plus the infamous Tokay - a larger gecko, about 30cm (a foot) long; the name is onomatopoeic because it has a rather loud call which sounds like ‘tok-ay’. Although the US soldiers in Vietnam renamed it the ‘f**k you lizard’ because that’s what they reckoned the call was. Our kitchen had concrete walls, tiled floor with a corrugated iron roof but no ceiling, so it acted like a large sauna and echo chamber. Tokay would climb in under the roof to settle in the kitchen and their very loud call would reverberate throughout the house, making them sound just a wee bit smaller than a distant cousin, the Tyrannosaurs Rex - makes a good heart starter the first time you hear it yell out- repeatedly- in the middle of a dark night.
I asked the client to pick up some rat poison when he went to the ‘big city’ and he returned with some ultra-sticky concoction that you spread around a (supplied) aluminium dish, and place a tempting bait in the middle. So … I did all that - a rat attempted to purloin the ‘bait’ that night, got trapped in the goo and proceeded to bash around the kitchen all night trying to escape - it did not! Later, we caught a mouse the same way.
There’s no ‘four seasons’ here, or even ‘summer and winter’, there’s just ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ seasons. The temperature escalated, the longer I stayed - even the locals were commenting … in the office, sitting at my desk by an open door and all the windows and shutters open, under a whirring ceiling fan, it was 36°C (99°F). At 06.30 it was 29°C.
The rooster next door with the speech impediment either went on annual leave, or saw a speech therapist, or got laryngitis or was in a cooking pot as he went silent. The neurotic dog that would bark repeatedly and continuously continued and, while trying to sleep, I figured out that he was asking questions as the bark had inclination (seemed to go up) at the end of each ‘sentence’, so it became interrogatory; maybe he was asking for psychiatric help?
Just before I was selected for this assignment I was feeling a bit bored at home so went online to a site that seeks local volunteers and saw one for the Headache and Migraine Association who were looking for someone to assist with producing and editing their e-newsletter. I was interviewed and, to cut the story short - I’ve now produced three newsletters for them and the members seem happy with the result. Keeps the little mind active: researching articles and information on migraines while carrying our surveys and writing reports on the detailed intricacies of agriculture and farming in Cambodia….?
I wandered across the dusty track from the house to the office as usual around 06.30 on Monday, 25th February - no one else seemed to be coming in. So, I went on line to discover that it was yet another public holiday; this time for Meak Bochea Day - a Buddhist commemoration of the meeting of over 1,000 monks who went to a sermon by Buddha, some 2,550 years ago in Valuvan Vihara, India. A few days later another holiday was for International Woman’s Day.
There was an inordinate amount of what is generally termed to ‘hawk and spit’ (as in: ‘to clear the throat of phlegm’). There would be an extremely loud ‘hawk’ (often just outside my office or bedroom window) that would make you physically wince and one would brace for the inevitable and strident ‘spit’ to follow… Often the ‘hawk’ would be of such volume and intensity that it would sound like a prelude to voluminous vomiting. OK: ‘too much information’? It also seemed to be a prerequisite obligation for either gender that when sneezing, one needed to equate the level of volume to match a 747 taking off…..
The temperature every day was consistently around 35°C (95°F) - but our cleaner gal and the gals in the restaurant (where I went to lunch each day) wore: underwear (well, presumably), socks (with separate toes), jeans, a roll-neck long-sleeved skivvy, a tee shirt (usually with some obscure slogan in English) or a winter-type blouse, plus a cardigan or hooded, woollen garment! Apparently the basic reason is that they do not want to get any ‘tan’ (even from the ‘heat in the kitchen’!) as tanned or brown skin would indicate that they could be lowly farm workers!
The office and accommodation on this assignment were in rather a rural setting - farm implements would trundle along the dusty, rutted track past the office - plus wandering white cattle and regular motorcycles (the primary source of transport). Poultry were wandering around the office grounds - including some loud crowing - now and then a chicken would wander into the office and look around, seeking sustenance (unsuccessfully). The office windows had shutters (no glass) and every now and then a butterfly would flutter by to check us out. Several times, I watched two rather large lizards following each other - nose to tail - walk across the floor and out the door.
In accordance with my usual practice I was in the office before 7am, seven days a week (I had the key). However, after a few months the local agency manager offered to take me to the amazing Preach Vihear temple a few hours’ drive away. We stayed in a hotel overnight (where I watched television for the first time in over two months). You may have heard about this temple on the news as ownership was in dispute between Cambodia and Thailand and they have exchanged artillery and rifle fire (resulting in over 40 deaths) to underscore their respective attitudes. There were several extensive army installations located around the area. The International Court of Justice had decreed that the temples belonged to Cambodia.
The complex is located atop a 525 meter (1,722ft) cliff - a truly amazing feat of construction, particularly as work commenced in the 9th century! We approached up an extremely steep road into what seemed like a war zone. Many police of various branches and soldiers with machine guns were wandering about; most structures were underground with the entry behind heaped sandbags, and there were burrows with mountings for large machine guns. Adding to the ambience was a warning not to venture too far off pathways because of the likelihood of lingering land mines. The top of the cliff overlooked a valley way below and on a peak opposite we could see the Thai encampment - each side were checking each other out through binoculars. When I lifted my camera up to take a photograph of the ‘fortifications’ I was rather strongly discouraged from taking such action.
The architecture was reminiscent of the other Angkor-era structures, but this large complex encompasses four major buildings, requiring viewers to climb a series of inclined pathways and steps. As usual, it was really thought-proving to wander around and through the complex wondering what it was all like to have lived there so long ago. The roofs are all gone now but, presumably, there was furniture and decorations inside that have long since rotted away. The view in any direction was amazing! I could not help but think how the heck they’d managed to build such a complex set of major buildings, on top of a steep cliff …. and they did it over a thousand years ago - a truly staggering engineering accomplishment.
I accompanied one of the staff to the local bank one day and was mildly amused to see a sign displayed on the front door: a red circle with a diagonal stripe (as in ‘not permitted’) with illustrations of a revolver, an automatic rifle and a grenade. Well, I thought, THAT will certainly stop any potential robberies?
When they ordered a canned drink, I watched friends and associates wipe the top of the can with a tissue (even if pouring into a glass) and it was explained to me that there was a very real risk of contracting diseases from mice wandering over the can. Diseases with lovely names like: leptospirosis, murine typhus, rickettsialpox, tularemia, and lymphocytic choriomeningitis. It’s all part of life’s rich tapestry…! Of course, the other warning to visitors to this part of the world is to never accept ice in your drink - I declined for a while but others were having no problems at the restaurants we knew, so…. Could be risky from a street vendor though?
I sometimes have cause to appreciate that the common language of the world, and my primary language, are one and the same. On this assignment, I was dealing and discussing a wide variety of subjects with nationals from France and Cambodia - and the lingua franca was, luckily, English. Sometimes it would be interesting to hear conversations that were not in any participant’s native tongue. Sitting in the office, staff would often pause at their computer to ask me the meaning or spelling of a word in English.
In mid-March, we had a visit from the President of the French Red Cross - Professor Jean-François Mattéi (a doctor [Paediatrician] and a former Minister of Health in the French government) - nice guy; and a contingent from Paris accompanied by the Cambodian director - with whom I had a long chat and he expressed thanks for my work in Cambodia (always good to feel ‘wanted’, eh?). We had a bunch of meetings and they asked about my endeavours and conclusions. Luckily, all presentations were in English. Then we did some roaming through the bush looking at projects to assist very poor farmers with vital access to water for irrigation for their crops during the dry season.
In the Philippines the local farmers would use the edges of the roads to dry their rice - sometimes leaving just enough room for one car to traverse without running over the rice. In Cambodia it was cassava (or manioc). The local farmers harvest the small tubers, and then they (usually women) would chop them up into ‘chips’ that would be spread along the road verges to dry. Kilometre after kilometre of road verges would be adorned with chipped cassava. The farmers would bag the dried product which was collected by huge trucks and conveyed to Thailand to be made into animal feed or bio-fuel. One hectare of cassava is able to produce on average 6,000 kg of ethanol. This cassava is not used so much for human consumption as improper preparation can leave enough residual cyanide to cause acute cyanide intoxication.
I commented previously on the vagaries of a ‘taxi’ from where we were in Anlong Veng to Siem Reap - 120kms (75 miles) away. They cram half a dozen people into a small sedan. When I asked how much a taxi was for the journey, I was told $5, which seemed amazing for 120kms until the penny dropped - that’s ‘per person’, so the more people the driver can cram into his tiny car….
I was told stories of small sedans travelling for two hours with four adults crammed in the back seat, two in the front passenger seat and possibly even an extra passenger sharing the seat with the driver! Some vehicles have karaoke (with a video screen) - that the driver also watches while doing 100kph through traffic, smoking and chatting on his mobile phone!!!
Towards the end of this assignment - I went with another staff member (a local female agronomist who had worked in Japan) and the driver (of course) and, over three days, we went to a village in the morning and then one in the afternoon (six in all). The exercise was to advise them of the results of the surveys and condense my 160-page report into as few words as possible for them to understand and ask them to contribute their thoughts and comments. The exercise proved most interesting, and they were keen to learn about our findings and suggestions and contribute their experiences. I was rather amazed at the consistent depth of concern about chemicals (pesticides, fertilisers…) on their food. In fact: every group interviewed for the survey about what they rated most important to them when buying (or selling) produce was that they wanted ‘organic’ produce.
There sure is some basic living out there - we were way off the main roads, down some narrow rutted tracks to villages with ‘houses’ of wood with thatched roofs. They had no electricity (or generators) and all their water was from a communal well (that could dry up towards the end of the dry season!). Outside some villages, we passed very young children (perhaps eight years old) on the tracks struggling with a 20-litre open plastic container of water suspended on a pole on their shoulders - the only water for their household.
The participants in the meetings were primarily the women of the village, and there were young children around (along with fossicking poultry and dogs). The women were listening and contributing and some were breast-feeding their babies. Although none quite like a meeting I had hosted in Papua New Guinea - I sat on a huge rock in the centre of the very basic and rustic village among grass huts with the locals all gathered around. The local women mostly wore just a grass skirt - anyway, what I’m getting to is: one of them in the front row was also breast-feeding her young child, except that the child was on the woman’s back and the milk container went over her shoulder! Then there was a guy stoned or drunk charging around yelling and waving the obligatory fashion accessory: a meter long bush knife. A bunch of the guys wrestled him to the ground and sat on him and the meeting proceeded as if nothing had happened - still, that’s all another bunch of old stories……
I’d done a PowerPoint presentation on my iPad to highlight the findings from the surveys, to show the villagers, but there was really no point showing anything in English! There were some young kids hanging around, so I opened a game (Angry birds) on the iPad and gave them a quick basic lesson. I was truly amazed that they got it straight way as I image that these kids had never played a video game in their lives!!! Then of course, they all wanted to play…. I had another program where you can use your finger on the screen to write or draw. I showed a young girl how it worked and she drew (with her finger) an impressive and pretty picture of a woman with long hair!!!
I was scheduled to finish the assignment just before the office closed for a week to celebrate Khmer New Year (in mid-April). You are thinking that it’s 2013, when it’s actually 2557 in the Buddhist calendar. ANYWAY they decided to have a New Year/farewell Bevan staff party, so we got to inflict loud ‘music’ on everyone else in the village!
They acquired a set of huge speakers and proceeded to blast us and the village with local ‘pop’ music, which degenerated into off-key karaoke as the night wore on! The sounds seemed to be vaguely based on western music and the ‘dancing’ was that shuffling gait that seems international - except our lot were dancing in a circle around a tree in the office grounds! Lots of beer consuming and clicking cans, in the ‘cheers’ fashion, every few minutes.
SO - time to go home again. I was flying out at noon on the Friday before Khmer New Year when most inhabitants migrate to their ‘homeland’ (village), so I expected the roads to be busy for the 120km drive and planned accordingly. The driver arrived half an hour early; there was very little traffic on the road so the trip was shorter than usual and I arrived at the Siem Reap airport FOUR HOURS before the flight was due to leave!
Nice to be home in the QUIET! Time to build back up to my morning 8ikm walk…and time to ponder….”what’s next?”
I was wondering if I’d been in the one place for too long! I'd been in and out of the local markets so much doing the surveys, following-up and buying supplies of vegetables that stall holders tended to smile or wave to me (there was barely any English at all). I’d go in with a staff member (Ms Moy) and we had struck up a friendship with a woman who was selling second-hand shoes. She’d grab a chair for me and insist that I sit - then a girl would turn up with mugs of iced coffee for us! When I went to buy my vegetables they would start getting out what I wanted before I’d even ask. There were lots of friendly smiles and chatter (it all works in any language, eh?).....