Week 4 - animals, shopping and religious holidays

Staff are constantly bringing in snacks for me to try. So far; boiled, salted cassava which look like long skinny little potatoes and taste similar; corn on the cob which is white and not nearly as sweet as ours; sweet potato cut into large chunks and stir fried with palm sugar to create a sticky, sweet coating; sticky rice, coconut and banana wrapped in banana leaf and steamed. Seeing a pattern here? No processed sugar, lots of vegetables eaten as snacks, much healthier than the average Aussie snack of sweet, sugary, processed, empty carbohydrate ingredients.

I’m looking for a little video camera you can attach to your helmet, a cheaper version of a GoPro and I am getting the distinct impression that they are not for sale in Siem Reap. After work on Tuesday I battled the peak hour bikes and cars into the centre of town and went to a computer shop I bought some adaptors at another time. When the guy figured out what I was trying to ask for, he told me no, but sent me to two different shops a few blocks away. I eventually found them, (its hard going slowly along the edge of the road and trying to read shop fronts in another language whilst avoiding busy traffic!) Tried the first one, she just laughed and said, ‘oh no, we don’t have those, try a shop upstairs”. I went upstairs and they looked at me like I was strange and said, ‘oh no, we don’t have those here, try the Fuji shop further down the street”. So off I went looking for the big Fuji sign. Went inside the very large, but empty shop and had a look around. There were glass cases lining the walls with little cameras sitting inside them and they all looked pretty sad, dusty and unloved. I reckon some of them have been sitting there for years. I asked a girl at the counter and she shook her head no and kept talking to another shop assistance. I hung around looking in the counters myself because I didn’t think she understood what I was asking for and eventually she wandered down to where I was and took me further down to the back of the shop and showed me a glass counter filled with GoPro accessories. I got all excited for a minute until she said, “this is all we have, no camera, just things to go with camera”..….um, why? Note to self, don’t question anything in this town there are always reasons, not necessarily good ones, but reasons all the same… I will be in Phnom Penh next week for one night on my way to a little island holiday mini break (more on that later), so I’m going to try some of the larger electronics shops there and see if I have any luck. Suffice to say that shopping for anything in this place takes time, commitment and perseverance and it all goes much better if you start off with a very low set of expectations.

Saw my very first road kill this morning, a large squashed flat rat. It looked like it was about 25cm long with the same length tail, in other words, pretty scary! There wasn’t much of it to be seen, only skin and tail, I presume cats or dogs had already made short work of it, which isn’t a bad thing. In any case a rat on a road is far better than a rat anywhere near where I work or sleep!

(Eight hours later…). Ok, so by the end of this day I had seen two rats in one day! And the second one was more disconcerting….I was walking over to the checkout at the fairly new and modern supermarket that sells everything including some imported Aussie brands of food, along with fresh fruit and veggies and meat and dairy. Anyway as I was waiting my turn I saw something out of the corner of my eye and looked down and a large rat scurried across the floor and under the next checkout area….I looked around to see if anyone else noticed as it was pretty busy, but no one batted an eyelid…..One has to just grin and bear it silently because there is nothing one can do about it…..Mind you this is inside a large, air conditioned shopping centre….At some point I might get to the point of nothing surprising me anymore but I’m not there yet. I think it would take longer than eight weeks.

Animals are generally in surprisingly good condition here, thin, but not scary thin. Considering that almost every pet owner in Australia overfeeds their animals, these ones are probably actually healthier, apart from diseases, fleas etc. There is a huge range of dog breeds here, ranging from larger, yellow dingo looking dogs down to smaller types with kind of wavy, curly fur and then I saw a very small chihuahua looking dog the other day. They are all mixed of course, no two look the same, but considering the amount of dogs free ranging around the place they never seem to fight or cause trouble, (from what I have observed in any case).

Cats are a different matter. They all look very similar, short fur, kinked tail and long nose. They are all similar tortoiseshell colours as well. And they do fight, I was woken up the other night to a very loud cat argument somewhere nearby. Thankfully that was the first and last time I heard it, so they must have sorted their trouble out.

Had an interesting lunch time chat with a fellow staff member the other day. He lives close by to work, rents out a one room space (around 6m x 4m) within a kind of unit block for $70 per month. This space houses himself, his wife and three school aged nephews….. He used to rent out three separate spaces, (other rooms in the same complex but separate to his own room) when his daughter and other two nephews lived with them, (so he was supporting seven children for a number of years), but has recently been able to let two spaces go and save some money as his daughter has moved to PP for university and his son works 60km away and just comes home for the weekend. This idea of town or city based family members taking on and caring for their siblings children appears to be fairly common, whoever is richest in the family raises the kids and sends them to a private school if possible to try and improve outcomes for the whole extended family. It puts a lot of pressure on those who on take their nieces and nephews, some of whom are only five when they leave home to move in with relatives. We would consider it a terrible sacrifice on behalf of the parents, but they seem to think of it as a great opportunity and the kids end up thinking that as well it seems. Family here is not just the immediate parents, its whoever can afford to pay for better education and more food, whether that’s aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. Once the children are older, ie, finished school or university and working, they go back to their village to visit their parents and other siblings every few weeks or every few months, whenever they get a day off work.

It also seems that people are having fewer and fewer children, which again is a typical sign of what occurs as a country heads towards being more developed. That and you can only fit two kids on your motorcycle with their mother. I saw a mum this morning with three primary aged children behind her, all with their backpacks on and dressed nicely for school. No helmets, not even hanging on to anyone or anything. I also see women riding scooters with one hand whilst holding a tiny baby in the other, how you can ride a motorbike one handed I don’t know…The richer families buy cars as they are safer and can carry the whole family as well as relatives.

I’m not sure what my workmate’s monthly wage is, it’s been a bit difficult to get it out of any of the staff members, seems to be in the order of $USD300-400 per month. It’s certainly reasonable for Cambodian standards and he and the other more senior staff members here are all living semi-middle class lives, and by that I mean they have a car, they send their children to a school of their choosing and hope to send them to university, they buy expensive western food products, ie, sports drinks, iced coffees, fresh milk and yoghurt to eat at work as snacks. They are the newly educated professional generation. They find themselves carefully traversing the line between retaining religious and cultural identification and traditions and seizing whatever the world is offering them. Religion is something they hold dear only in so much as it’s a way of connecting with their families. Unlike their parents and grandparents they understand that praying and giving the only food you have that day to the monks at the Pagoda is not actually going to bring you good luck and better income for the rest of the year. I would suggest that committed and ‘practising Buddhists’ are going to become very rare in this country over the next decade or so. Young adults and parents know that their own children are going to be even less likely to follow the religion of Buddhism, but they continue to pass on some of its mantras because they believe in the basic teachings:

1. Act with Loving-kindness;

2. Be open hearted and generous;

3. Practice stillness, simplicity and contentment;

4. Speak with truth, clarity and peace;

5. Live with mindfulness.

Cambodian NBN!

This place is truly a dichotomy, extreme poverty but everyone looking through an open window to what is available and achievable for their future. They are excited for the opportunities their children will have that they didn’t and they throw everything at giving their children the best education and the best start, massive sacrifices on their behalf to push their children out and upwards, trying to escape poverty. The problem I can see happening is that those same children are less likely to want to come back to the villages or smaller towns to look after elderly parents and the current set up of multiple generations living together under the same roof will become less common, similar to what has happened over the past few generations in western countries, to their detriment usually I might add. I hope there is a middle ground that they discover where they remain physically close to family without having to live on top of each other, unlike Australia where it has become common for children to live hundreds of kilometres away from their parents. There is certainly no pension here, so currently elderly parents are often shunted around from adult child to adult child, living with one in one place for a few months, then going to the next. This puts extra pressure on families struggling to feed their children, but there is a benefit. It allows the woman to go back to work outside the house whilst her mother stays home and helps raise the littlest children. That is the case with a number of the women here at Plan, children are looked after all day every day by the grandmother. I see and hear about grandmothers a lot, but not about grandfathers. There seems to be a distinct lack of older men, ie over 60 years old. I presume they were more likely to be killed during the regime.

I have included a document with a map of Cambodia and some statistics, just for your info. Some interesting comparisons with Victoria, just shows how vastly different Australia is to Cambodia and how lucky we were to be born in such a rich and healthy country.

Data

Land Area – 181,000 square km’s. For comparison, the closest Australian state is size is Victoria at 237,000 square km’s, Thailand is 513,000 square km’s and Vietnam is 331,000 square km’s. So it’s a pretty small country compared to those in its immediate vicinity.

Population – 15.7 million. For comparison Victoria has a population of 5.7 million, Thailand 68.8 million and Vietnam 92 million. So again low population compared to those surrounding countries.

Gross National Income per capita - $1,140 per person. For comparison Victoria’s is $65,000, Thailand $5,640 and Vietnam $2,050.

Poverty Rate – 17.7%. Thailand is sitting at 10.9% and Vietnam is sitting at about 13.5%. Note that Cambodia was up around 50% 13 years ago so it has come a long way in a relatively short time, one of the quickest changes in any South East Asian country in the past few decades.

Considering where Cambodia was 40 years ago they have actually improved incredibly quickly, but still so much to do here. Half the primary schools in the Siem Reap region don’t have proper toilet facilities or clean running water, stunting and malnutrition amongst children under five is still very high and many children still don’t finish primary school in the smaller villages. There is aid money pouring into this country, but not necessarily getting to those who need it most. I get the feeling if there was a democratically elected government that was run in a truly open, honest and transparent way Cambodia would have been in a much better position by now. Corruption is incredibly damaging to development. Reliance on the hundreds and hundreds of national and international non government organisations is what has helped the country most I think. Last count there were more than 2000 operating in the country, all pumping donations and gifts from foreigners into the local towns and villages. No government is going to say no to that are they?

It turns out that one of the most important series of holidays in Cambodia hits next week so the office will be closed next Tuesday through to Thursday with most staff taking the Monday and Friday off as well to make a full week of it. Then the following Monday is also a public holiday. So I’m suddenly faced with either hanging around a very quiet and hot and stuffy Siem Reap for six days or I go on a little trip. A trip it is. I’m travelling six hours by bus down to Phnom Penh next Tuesday, then catching a train the following morning and travelling six hours over to the western coastal town of Sihanoukville where it appears all the old, feral Aussie men go to retire and open a bar to attract back packers. But don’t worry, I’m not staying in that town for more than one night, I’m getting on a little boat the next morning and travelling two hours out to an island with just a few resorts on it. And I’m going to the western side of that little island which has just one resort on it! Beautiful beaches and little timber and bamboo huts, a laid back restaurant and nothing else except snorkelling, swimming, reading and eating! For three days! Then I go back by boat to the mainland and catch a direct flight from the coastal town back to Siem Reap.

I’m really looking forward to the train trip, they opened up the train line earlier this year after closing it more than ten years ago. The carriages are very basic, re-furbished ones from the 1960’s with the old style opening windows and padded bench seats. All very ye olde worldy. Supposed to be a lovely trip through the countryside getting to see small villages and people going about their daily work. I also hear that there have been loads of accidents with cars not understanding that you can’t race a train to the crossing! They assume that if they are in a big truck or bus and moving more quickly than the slow train they should have right of way, not realising how long it takes a train to slow down….A generation of testosterone fuelled young men who haven’t learnt about trains and how its best to avoid them when they are moving….

Would you believe it I had the flu most of this past week, boring I know. Surely thats me done now in the sick department....so not so many photos this week. But I have taken a few in the past couple of days walking around that show some the quirks of this fascinating place.