I’m not even sure where to start today. It’s been a whirlwind adventure of learning, travelling, figuring, reunioning, laughing, meeting new people, enjoying, frustrating, eating, growing, and travelling.
I got myself to Siem Reap, Cambodia, after a long day of travel from Bangkok on many different modes of transport. Train, tuk tuk, walk, wait, walk, wait, open walled van, wait, walk, open van, moto, share taxi, tuk tuk, moto….now I’m at the guesthouse I’ve been instructed to meet my dear friend Anna at. She’s left a note and a key to our room. Off I go, walking, to Le Tigre Papier to find this long since seen friend. The anticipation is invigorating as I find the proper street and draw ever nearer the restaurant…way at the back, working away on her computer I find her!
It’s been three years since we last saw each other. A Kiwi and a Canadian in Sweden find a lasting friendship that carries them through worldly adventures and eagerly awaits global meetings to catch up and share stories! This time we hardly have time to catch up before we’re whisked into a series of fabulous travels together in this country of patchwork memories.
Anna has been here for 9 months, living in Phnom Penh (the capital), and working for an NGO organization called CLEC (Community Legal Education Centre). Looking at land claim issues has taken up much of her year. The trend lately has been for rich Cambodians, or worse, rich foreigners, to stroll out into rural Cambodia and buy up large plots of land from farmers, offering maybe 500USD for the lot. For someone making $350US/year, 500 seems like a fortune! Without any land now, they move to the city, where 500 dollars doesn’t go very far. Soon they live in the slums, as ex-farmers, looking for any skill to sell and continue scraping by.
In the last month, Anna has taken on another project related to this focus. She’s been visiting community based ecotourism sites, with the intent of putting together a document of successes and challenges for each site. This will be shared between current and future sites. A network will begin, the sharing of knowledge will promote country wide community and connection, and villages will hopefully be continually successful in finding many uses for their land and human skills that will make some extra money, while serving to ‘cohesify’ (scuse the laurenism) the village, as they make decisions and work together.
SO….I get to tag on to this project and visit many rural areas of Kampuchea!
Here’s a week in hopefully less than a page:
* Banteay Chmar (NE Cambodia), NGO Agir pour le Cambodge has helped set up an ecotourism project. It incorporates 4 villages and so far has been quite successful! It’s a quick visit, but jam-packed with learning and excitement for me!
In the course of 24 hours I learned (and remembered no less!) about 15 Kh’mai words (man: “moto?” me: ”Oht Day, Au kGun..jong dahl!” [no thanks, I want to walk!]), hitched rides on the back of pick-ups like we saw many kh’mai doing, spoke with SO MANY GRACIOUS PEOPLE (including two of the sweetest old men on the side of the street. They were the dj’s for the town? Choosing which tape to blast over the loudspeaker!), saw the greenest rice fields, and met 4 amazing people who have helped pull together the diverse skills of a community, with hopes of attracting ‘us’. Development some might call it.
The development topic irks me endlessly. The village of Banteay Chmar is everything I could ever imagine idyllic to be. A beautiful clean moat for water. A sweet little red dirt street that runs along the moat, with homes and restaurants placed along it graced with the most luscious view of that tasty colour combo – pure water blue against vibrant plant green. Fresh hot food wafting past your nose with every step. A gorgeous temple for the spiritual seekers. A delightful bunch of youth and old people and children that bring character to this memory laden, weathered village. Children tirelessly practicing a school performance each night with devoted parents offering instruction. Bicycles, motorcycles, cows pulling carts of organic materials. Fresh, delicious, sunny air and zillions of twinkling stars. Breezy wooden homes, toilets that don’t use copious amounts of water to flush (and no toilet paper clogging the system), showers that don’t use 40% of a homes energy to heat the water (it’s a hot part of the world!), and fresh fresh food!
I realize I’m looking at the positives only. There are hardships, there have been immeasurable hardships endured by these brave and resilient people in their recent history. People are poor and often sick. Health care is not so caring by our standards. Land mines still dot the country side and continue to cause crippling injury.
So I guess these are my questions:
where do we fit into this scene? Do we bring in our western demands to this community while travelling in search of that ‘authentic’ experience? Do we (as NGO’s perhaps) introduce an administrative office that runs in a ‘developed world’ way, on western timelines with western values? In catering to another culture, one immediately objectifies their own as they become conscious of the Differences. Inevitably the ‘developed’ way seems initially appealing and infiltrates the desires of a community. What the hell is development anyway? Where is it developing too? There is certainly direction assumed in the term development. A linear progression to some better place. Who determines better? The west? Is our way really that much better? Is the smell of fresh herbs and cultivated flavours just around the corner? Are there 17 locally owned shops just down the street? Or perhaps just one monster walmart…Does your house contribute absolutely zero emissions and use absolutely NO energy from 10pm to 7am? And in the waking hours how many gallons of water go down the drain? Can you see zillions of stars from your front step? Go check.
My experience in the world so far is this:
- People with the ‘least’ appreciate everything they have with refreshing passion.
- People with the ‘least’ give the most without hesitation.
- People with the ‘least’ love their children with tenderness and encouragement.
- People with the ‘least’ have strong community
- People with the ‘least’ have more direction and apparent contentment than I may ever have
And thus it seems to me, the ‘People with the ‘Least’’ have a lot ‘More’ figured out than I’ve experienced people with ‘More’ to have. We in the west keep on searching. Or I in the west do anyway. I assume some others might be with me.
This rant has many holes in it I’m sure. I’m not sure it even makes sense! I tend to rant in circles.
Ranting like a happy dog who loves its tail.
It does keep me going in life for whatever reason! Maybe not forward...but that’s a western idea that forward is good…okay I’m not cutting into that durian fruit tonight (they have a rancid smell...in fact, they aren’t permitted on the skytrain system in Bangkok! If I cut into it, I certainly won’t be able to deal with the smelly repercussions tonight!).
As Anna put it, people spend their lives as PhD students writing papers on development. I guess my blog isn’t going to fix it tonight!
Food for thought.
This food took me off track from catching you up on my adventures over the last few days…but food works that way in my travels regularly…I’m going somewhere to see som…ooo look at that fruit.. What is it? Oh excuse me, ‘tilai pon mon?’ mmmm no too much. Oh for two? Well maybe, prohile…ja ja, okay…oh! Delicious! Anna, try this! Anna? Oh! what did you find?... mmm a feast! Let’s get a smoothie and sit and enjoy!....
…I can always see that monument tomorrow…
Many more stories to come!
With so much love,
lauren
...did you make it through all that?!...
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