Oly's Cambodia Blog

A new life?

2011-09-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

Betweenus, Katja and I volunteered for over 4 years in Cambodia. We wanted to do something, howevermodest, to help people less fortunate than ourselves to have new, better lives.

Finewords, but not always easy in practice!

Inmy remote village of Thmar Puok, the director asked me to help breathe new lifeinto his hospital, which had gently drifted since it was cobbled together inthe aftermath of the Khmer Rouge nearly 30 years ago.

I offered to help them to improve the care they offered topatients by using a quality improvement system in their ward ordepartment. Happily,the tool we used was not imposed by well-meaning outsiders, but was developedby Cambodians themselves and agreed by their own Ministry of Health. And it wasn’t me doing the assessing –rather, I helped ward chiefs to score their own area against a detailed list ofgood practice.

Anotherbenefit of this approach is that - unusually for hospitals - we could actuallymeasure improvements. We agreedthe present situation for equipment, documentation, hygiene, and patients’views of their care. These scorescould be compared over time, or at one point between wards (healthycompetition!). Where scores werehigh we gave praise, and where not we focused on improving things - a manager’sdream!

Itwasn’t perfect: some of thescoring was strange, like getting hygiene points simply for toilets beingunlocked, or for having a ward free of motorbikes. And some staff ‘played the system’ - from giving their warda rare clean just before the inspectors arrived, to making up documentationsuch as vital signs and medical notes in retrospect (it’s called fraud where Icome from).

Butif staff were playing, so were we - it was a ‘percentage game’, with at leastsome of the improvements made in advance of the assessment continuingafterwards. Some thingsjust dropped back to their original level - even basics like turning up forwork, wearing uniform and washing hands. Yet my heart leaps when I still hear doctors explaining diagnoses and proposed treatments. And many of the issues which affect patients most -hygiene, nutrition, medication, finances - continue to be discussed in wonderfulstaff-led carer education sessions, which continue every Tuesday morning.

Iwould have preferred that staff enhanced care through a sense of empathy orprofessional pride. But if in factthey made things better because they liked to get points, look good or avoidgetting into trouble – well, so be it. The fact is, things still improved for patients.

Appropriatelyfor our planned renaissance, the best progress was in obstetrics. The midwiveswere the most receptive of all staff, and this year they agreed to be assessedagainst tougher (‘level 2’) standards. They did really well – despite having a shabby old ward they kept itclean, maintained decent records, and gave a good quality of care to mothersand their newborn babies.

Thiswas particularly pleasing as maternal health is (in theory at least) the keyfocus for all VSO health volunteers in Cambodia. And it is richly symbolic: if the whole aim was to give new hope and new life to thepoorest people in a poor country, what better way than helping to bring babiesinto the world with more chance of a better life than their mum?

So,after two years, our thoughts also turned towards new lives, this time ourown. Katja returned first to theUK, to continue the theme of re-birth by starting two years further training tobe a midwife herself. The mainreason she gives for taking on this tough extra study is not just that sheloves babies, but also that she feels this is the best way she can help poorpeople in the future. Now you cansee why I admire her so much!

Andfor me too a new life was beckoning: the prospect of discovering Oxford, possibly changing job or evencareer. Importantly, I also hopedI would have a novel perspective on things – a better work-life balance, acalmer outlook, a clearer focus on what is important. And, of course, I would be setting up home with the new loveof my life - a wonderful, totally unexpected bonus of volunteering!

Andso to my punchline. At this pointI had planned to make a happy announcement – of one more new life.

Arounda month before she returned to start studying, Katja and I found that she waspregnant. We were so happy andexcited – this really did mean that a new life would await us back in the UK.

Icouldn’t believe it: “I’m going tobe a daddy!” I chanted. The thrillof the return home was enhanced by debating when and how to make theannouncement, where to live, what marque of superbuggy to covet. Most difficult of all was names. Oliver was firmly at number one in theUK baby charts: what good taste parents have. And these days there is also the issue of the surname, whichpresented a unique challenge for us – would we really risk condemning ouroffspring to a life of ridicule by imposing the easily mispronounced ‘Horsch-Shipp’?

Butit wasn’t to be. Sadly, afterthree months Katja rang me distraught to say she’d had a heavy bleed. After dashing to the emergencyobsterics unit and a further scan it was confirmed she had suffered amiscarriage.

Assuddenly as it had started, our dream was over. Of course I rushed home, and am writing this in the day unitat Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital, waiting for Katja to return from heroperation, a coldly clinical ‘evacuation of retained products ofconception’. The physical evidencewill soon be gone, and all that will remain are our dreams of what might havebeen.

Itwould always have taken us time for us to adjust to our return in the UK. Now, with this wretched, unexpected twist, it maytake even longer. But I honestlyfeel that if we can survive two years in the most rural corners of a developingcountry, then we will have the strength to recover and move on.

Justas we tried to give help and hope of a better future to others in Cambodia, Ibelieve that we too will enjoy and embrace our new life.

The Road

2011-09-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

Justbefore I came to Cambodia my friend and football teammate Jules gave me a bookcalled The Road. It’s about the struggle for survival ina barren, post-apocolyptic wasteland. It was a nice thought, but I decided to wait until I returned fromrural, post-conflict Cambodia before reading it!

Butperhaps that was a mistake: thething I talk about, whinge about, dreamabout more than anything else here is my goddammed godforsaken road.

The50km route from the provincial town of Sisophon to my village is officiallyNational Road 59 - the equivalent of an ‘A’ road in the UK.

Butas you leave town the tarmac abruptly becomes a derisory dirt track. A large, faded sign mockingly pronouncesthat a new highway has been funded by the Asia Development Bank, work to start in2006 and finish 2008.

Infact, the running joke here is that the new road will be completed “in just twoyears”. A rolling two years, thatis, from whenever you ask the question. It was two years when I arrived here, two years ago, and if it’s evenstarted in two years time I’ll be happy.

Sowhat’s the big deal?

Well,clearly the main reason to improve the road is for my personal comfort! This is particularly the case since thesurface got so bad that even the once-a-day bus service stopped last year,apparently as the vehicles could no longer cope with the journey. What about me?

Thereare other, even more convincing arguments. Watching poor local people strugglingthrough the waterlogged clay it’s clear a new surface would deeply improvetheir lives. Everyone works theland, even those with other jobs. If they are lucky enough to have excess rice then they need totransport it to market. Equally, adecent road would open up their villages to new goods and services which havenever made it up the terrible old one. Watching children struggle through the mud or market women cover their faces from the dust makes me feel wretched for what they haven’tgot.

Our focus here is on maternal health,and if an expectant mother is diagnosed with a condition such as pre-eclampsia (basicallypregnancy-induced high blood pressure) then it’s vital this is recognizedand treated quickly. Here, thiscan mean helping to prevent seizure, such as by giving magnesium sulphateinjections and avoiding stimulation. But the only cure is to have the baby. As this is likely to be by caesarian, mothers need to betransferred to a larger hospital for this major operation. And how to get there (still avoidingstimulation of course)? The onlyway is in the back of our ancient ambulance, feeling every bump and rut in thehellish 50km route. It must be anagony for a poor woman in such a condition - another compelling reason for theroad to be improved.

Sadly, some of those who are meant to be helping the poor also seem to be a little shy of thepresent travel conditions. Whereasnearby Siem Reap is heaving with well-meaning charities, very few indeed can bepersuaded to help the real poor people in my area. Is it coincidence that they work where there are already greatnew roads which join the fancy hotels to the amazing temples? I understand why of course - the mostimportant thing for any NGO is to ensure their shiny white four-by-fours don’tget muddy.

Somuch for the poor then. But surelythe rich dollar-earning tourists have more influence?

Yousee, my road is also a key link for anyone wanting to visit the pre-Angkoriantemples at Banteay Chhmar. The siteis being restored by the UN Heritage Fund, and there are impressive plans for a‘’community-based’’ approach to tourism there (no hotels, but rather stayingwith local people and getting an insight into how they live, eat and eventravel – courtesy of an ox-cart ride!).

Butfor now, few tourists brave a 100+ kilometre round trip on bone bashing boulderswhen the alternative is the smooth, straight tarmac direct to Angkor. Surely the tourist income will helppersuade the authorities to build a new road?

Thereis one other factor: the N59 runsparallel to the Thai border, from the south up towards the area of disputedtemples. With a new governmenttaking power in Thailand it is hoped that the will be no more fighting – butthe military’s desire for a good transport link for troops and equipment must makeit of some strategic importance.

Sowhy then does this road – my road – remain the only unpaved national road inthe whole country?

Moneyis bound to be an issue – over 50kms of road doesn’t come cheap, and funding isscarce in the present economic climate. Apparently the original plan was bankrolled by Thailand, who pulled theplug when the recent fighting broke out.

ButI have another theory. The people up here are close-knit, independent and proud. The government in Phnom Penh closelyoversees roadbuilding, knowing the political value of being seen to bring newinfrastructure to a region (Prime Minister Hun Sen is said to insist onpersonally opening every new bridge and highway in the country). So it’s simple – there’ll be a new roadjust as soon as the unruly folk of my area start voting the right way!

There’san upside to all this: a new roadwould certainly help development, but it would cause problems too. Evidence suggests that better roadsactually lead to worse traffic problems – more people will drive cars andlorries, they will go even faster, and they will maim and kill even more people. They will also cause more noise andpollution whilst contributing nothing to the communities they zoom past.

Soas I slither along the mud track to my village backwater I know in my headthat a new road will on balance be good for the people here. But in my heart I’m very glad that, atleast for my time here, I will enjoy the peace and safety of a car-freeexistence.

Apeace I will enjoy on my balcony, watching people walk or cycle by, and readinga good book – anything other than TheRoad!

The Noble Art?

2011-09-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

The evening of June 8th 1985 is clear in my mind for two reasons.

As we gathered excitedly round my granny’s telly, Barry McGuigan finally got his shot at a world title against Panama’s Eusebio Pedroza. It was so exhilarating that even my mild-mannered dad and brother were on their feet yelling ‘hit him, hit him, hit him!’.

But I also remember my mother’s entrance: carrying a tray of cocoa (it must have been one of those summers), she was clearly shocked by the atavistic blood-lust of her menfolk. “What a horrid sport!” was her typically polite criticism. She was right, but we told her to shut up anyway – it was just too exciting.

Twenty six years later, and I finally got round to watching another boxing match (in fact two in a matter of weeks). I'll remember these too, but I will also have the same mix of emotions about both of them.

At the most recent, we again huddled round the tv, but this time the drink was beer, the company soldiers, and grandparent’s house was Ta Mok’s.

Sounds like another cosy evening? Well, not if you’re from this country: Ta Mok’s name still strikes fear into the hearts of ordinary Cambodians. Widely known simply as ‘The Butcher’, he was possibly the most brutal of all Khmer Rouge leaders. He orchestrated appalling massacres in the southern zone from 1973, and led horrific ‘purges’ from 1975-1979.

His stronghold was the small northern town of Anlong Veng. I spent a week working at the (former military) hospital there, and had the dubious pleasure to visit his old home. Overlooking a lake, reflecting the Dangrek mountains, the setting could be beautiful – if it wasn’t that hundreds of slave labourers died cutting the trees and damming the river just to give him the lovely view.

The army commander who had taken up residence gently insisted we stay to watch some ‘pradal serey’ - khmer boxing. So we crowded round the battered old telly - it fact it could almost have been my granny’s old set from a quarter of a century earlier!  

As for the boxing itself, I was struck by the shifting movements, and the use of elbows as well as feet: that’s got to hurt! And this particular bout was between two women - nice to see equality extends to the right to maul each other for public entertainment.  

But I came away with very mixed feelings. It’s hard to relax in a mass murderer's lounge. Watching a boxing match in the home of a notorious killer is certainly one of the most unique memories I will take back with me from Cambodia.  

My other recent experience of boxing, in the infamous Thai seaside resort of Pattaya, was also a memorable but ambiguous experience. Having fulfilled the aim of our visit (Katja’s crazy bungee jump!), we celebrated with a night on the notorious Walking Street. In between the sleazy bars we found a ring, with two young boxers about to put on a show which we hoped wouldn’t stray below the belt.  

This was the first time I’ve seen boxing in the flesh, and it was alarmingly vivid - they pounded each other with frightening power. It was impressive and repulsive in equal measure, and (probably like the clients of the neighbouring girly bars), I felt both excited and a little ashamed to be there.  

Part of me is undeniably drawn to boxing. Whilst I’m not quite sure how Mohammad Ali could liken it to the pursuit of a beautiful women, I can almost see why it has been described as ‘the science of sweet bruising’. I can certainly understand how writer James Lawton concludes that “in its atavistic rages, its often beautiful skill and the implicit courage of the protagonists, boxing takes men and women into areas that are untouched in other areas of legal spectacle”.  

As a cinephile, boxing combines the brutality of Raging Bull, the passion of On The Waterfront, and the simple excitement of Rocky. As a health worker I note it is great for fitness (though not for brain injuries). And as a social activist I believe it offers a positive outlet for kids who would otherwise be punching dolphins or grannies.  

I even had a go myself recently – no sparring of course, but I put on gloves and had a good go at my mate Pete’s punchbag. Throwing a punch is deceptively hard: there’s a whole art in placing the feet, positioning the legs, rotating the hips. It's almost like golf, in that it's much more about technique, balance and concentration than power. And landing a good blow gave the same exquisite feeling as hitting the sweet spot when striking a football or shuttlecock.  

But the main attraction for me is simple. It is that boxing is the most basic of all sports - having a scrap.  

Having said all this, another part of me - the larger, more rational part - really abhors boxing. The health arguments are compelling. And socially, there’s something not quite right about a couple of poor lads knocking lumps off each other for the amusement of sneering cigar-smoking bankers at the ringside.  

In fact it doesn’t really need much debate: let’s face it, boxing is unpleasant, uncivilized and unsafe.  

I guess it will eventually be banned - but not for a long time here in Cambodia. For one, nothing much gets stopped here, however bad it is. But also, it’s a national obsession, and it would take a brave fighter indeed to knock it on its head.  

Perhaps the reason why it continues also reflects my mixed feelings about the whole thing. As Lawton concludes: “You can stop many things, for many reasons. But not included among them is a man's instinct to fight - and that equally compelling urge to watch”.

Free the bears!

2011-08-27T03:36:00.000-07:00

“How we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other”.

So Ghandi got there before me, but I've always believed that how we care for fellow creatures is a good indication of how civilized we are (or are not) as a society.

On this measure, Cambodia had a head start through its buddhist heritage, with a sense of respect for other living creatures.

But these days, few Cambodians fear being reincarnated as a dung beetle, and when they hear me insisting on just veggies with my rice they often quiz me. My view - that it is cruel and unnecessary to kill animals to eat them - is met with uncomprehending stares: “But cow intestine taste so good!”. I learned to say “You know, like monk?”, and somehow it makes sense. (It’s a bit like when I go for an evening stroll and friends press me to hop on the back of their moto to get there quicker – explaining that I like to walk confirms me as a crazy barrang, but somehow “You know, for sport?” does the trick).

My sense is that Cambodians have become much more practical in their relationships with animals, with compassion (squeemishness if you like) now repressed from a young age. Basically, if a beast is useful to them in some way it will not be mistreated – not because cruelty is wrong, just because it makes sense in order to continue the benefit.

Thus water buffalo are well tended given their usefulness for plowing rice fields and pulling carts – but only as long as they work or reproduce. Pigs are well fed as they grow and breed, but are imprisoned and later killed (or transported in a tiny bamboo cage for someone else to do the dirty work). Dogs are tolerated as they help deter unwanted visitors (both real and imagined), but they live outside, scavenge food, menace visiting white men, and are routinely beaten.

The same goes for wild animals – they are valued only in as much as they provide a material benefit. Once the national animal, the kouprey (grey ox) was killed for meat. It is now extinct. Elephants were only useful if tamed, and again are now rare. The main hope for survival of dolphins in the Mekong is if locals can make money from them through tourism.

Cambodia still has a richly abundant animal life, and is home to 14 globally endangered species, including the Asiatic black (moon) bear, Malaysian (sun) bear, Asian elephant, Indochinese tiger and the Pileated gibbon.

Take the bears: these impressive creatures are threatened because until recently their value has been seen here only as a commodity to sell for public entertainment or private pets, for meat (paw stew anyone?), or - even harder to stomach - for farmers to cage them, insert metal catheters into their gall bladders, and sell their bile as dubious ‘medicine’.

Thankfully there is now a sanctuary for bears (along with elephants, snakes, parrots, minor birds and decidedly scary tigers) at the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre, 40km south of Phnom Penh. As a leaving present for Katja we both volunteered to be ‘bear keepers’ for a day. What a fantastic experience!

We made up the feed (green beans, biscuits and jam mashed up in a bamboo pole and stuffed with morning glory leaves), and got to hide them in the enclosures to give the bears a stimulating search for food. A real effort has been made to create an interesting environment in the enclosures, not only with forest and plants, but even pools and hammocks!

We then got right up close to the mix of sun and moon bears, learning their different ages and personalities. They’re beautiful and look so cuddly - though I wouldn’t get too near as they have serious claws! We were fortunate to see a baby, which was of course adorable - but we also loved the dark black adults with the distinctive ‘v’ marking, and an older, more orangey female. Thanks to the sanctuary, these wonderful creatures will be safe from cruel practices, and a release programme begins soon in Cambodia’s western Cardomom mountains, working carefully with the local communities.

I thought it was great, and there were plenty of Cambodian visitors enjoying it too. But I couldn’t help thinking that the reasons I cherish the bears - for their beauty, but also what I see as the intrinsic importance of preserving the country’s natural fauna - may not be shared by many others here. Rather, I think they are valued more because of pressure from foreign aid organizations, or as western visitors like us pay good money to see them. Put bluntly, they are only in the sanctuary as they are worth more there than for pets, meat or bile.

Returning to Ghandi’s point, I feel the moral relativism about animals is now also applied to people here. I often feel colleagues at my hospital care for other humans no better or worse than other animals. If they treat them well it is because it is better for themselves to do so. Is it going too far to suggest that that nurses tend patients because they are told to, and because they risk reprimand if they don’t, but not through compassion to relieve the suffering of fellow beings?

So I think the bear sanctuary has an importance beyond preserving wildlife, giving really important hope for this country: if future generations see animals now being treated with compassion, just maybe it will encourage them to care for each other in the same way too.

Preah Vihear is our temple!

2011-08-19T04:17:00.000-07:00

Temples I have now seen many, but never before have I been led through the ruins with an armed guard. Holding my hand.

Preah Vihear is undoubtedly an important and impressive historical monument. Unusually for low-lying Cambodia, this temple is imposingly perched high on the Damrack mountains which form the border between present day Cambodia and Thailand.

The elevated setting makes access tricky: from the Cambodia side there is not yet a proper road, with diggers and cement mixers still busily building a route up the steep slope. In stark contrast, the wealthier (or more organized?) Thais had long ago built a tarmac access road. But to no avail: as the battered blue and white sign at the entrance proclaims "Preah Vihear is our temple". The Thai road stops abruptly just short of the hill, and visiters can go no further - the border has now been closed to Thais.

Our taxi only took us the foot of the mountain on the Cambodian side, where we transferred to a motorbike, who skillfully maneuvered us up the increasingly steep and treacherous slope. We had to get off and walk at one point, but overall it was an impressive effort!

The mountain is so high it was shrouded in mist – another rare experience for lowland Cambodia. This added a mysterious, atmospheric feel, as it swirled around the ancient Hindu ruins. It also meant that the temple unfolded gradually, each of the five sections progressively taking shape as we climbed.

I call them ruins, though it at least seemed little damaged from the Khmer Rouge period – or indeed little restored since. However, the soldiers took me by the hand (literally) and pointed out new bullet holes and smashed sections of ancient friezes, clear evidence of the conflict earlier this year. It was really saddening to see this happening to a UNESCO world heritage site even now, in 2011.

It was similarly depressing – if hardly surprising – to see the clumsy nationalist rhetoric on signs around the temple: “I have pride to be born as Khmer”. What nonsense! You can’t be proud (or ashamed) over something over which you had no control. It like saying you’re proud to possess opposable thumbs or have an inward-pointing tummy button.

A truer description of what it was really like came from speaking to an old soldier. He showed me where, just a few weeks earlier, he had sheltered from missiles. No bravado here: “I was really scared” was all he said.

None of this could take away from the beauty of the place though. We admired the intricate (and highly phallic) carvings, enjoyed banging our chests with the soldiers in the ‘’echo chamber”, and amused ourselves by haggling over how much we should pay for our ‘tour’.

Fortunately the only fighting now seems to be among the semi-wild dogs who lurk around the shabby military tents and bunkers. And the news from Thailand is positive: with a new prime minister elected, it is hoped people can get back to admiring this temple for its charm and history.

To brighten our mood further, as we started our decent the cloud cover lifted, revealing a fantastic panorama of dark green forest and lowland rice fields across both Cambodia and Thailand below.

As we stood admiring the landscape, I realized there was another view right in front of me, one which summed up my mixed feelings about the whole visit: leaning against the ancient wall was a peace offering of quietly smoking incense sticks; next to them was propped a rifle. Let's hope the incense wins out.

A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree

2011-08-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

I was shocked – horrified – baffled – on my arrival at the hospital this morning. Unbelievably, we seemed to have been attacked by vandals. It was not a pretty sight.

Fires still smoldered around the flagpole, and the shop under the tamarind tree, the social centre of the hospital, had not only been destroyed, but virtually all evidence of its existence removed.

Touring the wards there was more damage: one of our alcohol dispensers at the entrance to obstetrics had disappeared, blue dye had been smeared around the lab, and the bins outside paediatrics had been upturned and the contents strewn everywhere.

Worse still was the scene in the new xray room, only open a few weeks as part of our state of the art surgery unit. Someone had taken to the walls with black paint, daubing every surface possible, including the shiny new sink and once-sparkling white tiles.

It was a scene of devastation, and my heart sank.

Perhaps worst of all, the staff appeared to have been scared away by the attack, with no more than half a dozen to be found in the entire hospital. What a disaster!

This crime spree was all the more shocking as I don’t consider Cambodia to have much of a problem with vandalism, or any other criminal activity.

Although, of course, there has been one almighty crime here, which dwarfs even hospital vandalism: the Khmer Rouge regime committed unspeakable atrocities during their reign of terror from 1975-1979, and it is only this year that the first person was held criminally responsible for their part in it (that was Comrade Duch, who led the infamous S21 prison and torture centre). Four more senior leaders are just beginning their defence in front of the snappily-titled 'Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea'.

As it happens, I had just finished reading the latest of Shamini Flint’s southeast Asia-based crime novels, and this one is set in Cambodia, against these trials.

Flint’s tale takes this backdrop to showcase her likeable detective, the portly, white-sneaker wearing, chain-smoking, curry and beer loving Inspector Singh. There are some telling descriptions of Cambodia, and a plot which skips along nicely despite the dark background. Singh struggles to understand or work with his Cambodia counterpart, Colonel Menhay – a difficult relationship which echoes many of the joys and frustrations I have felt in working in this beautiful, beguiling country.

Thinking of such frustrations reminided me of the crime spree at my hospital - it was time to start some detective work of my own.

After gently interrogating a couple of nurses it appeared that the staff weren’t scared of a ferocious felon as much as taking a ‘well-earned break’’ whilst the Director was at a training day.

In the absence of the normal handyman, a random bloke from the pharmacy had decided to try his hand with the petrol strimmer, burning his mini-mountains of clippings and plastic bags, and starting various grass fires around the flagpole. He had also, he explained proudly, seen off the wild dogs who had been upsetting the bins.

The blue stains also turned out to be staff-inflicted - apparently something to do with malaria testing (my Khmer language didn’t get me any further than that),

Then the man who used to run the shop appeared, looking decidedly unhappy. It transpired he had been made to leave, but by the hospital rather than any vicious vandal. It seemed this was ‘because of the new surgery ward’ – I think as he used the previous building to store his goods and to sleep in when his shop flooded.

My fears of a crazy criminal were fading, but there was still a scene of devastation in the new xray room. Bang on cue the radiographer appeared – not in fury or despair, but rather with an unexpected grin on his face. “You like new paint room Mr Oly?” he beamed. “Need black, no light for develop film”.

My jaw dropped – he had done that to his own room! In fact, they’d all done it: perhaps there weren’t even any crimes to speak of, nor any destructive delinquent (or at least, only the staff themselves).

Though there was still one unresolved issue - what happened to the santizer in obstetrics? On interrogation the midwives shrugged and tutted a lot, wringing their unwashed hands, but there were no witnesses, no clues.

So the absent alcohol gel remains a mystery. Perhaps we will be needing the services of Inspector Singh here after all…

Let's talk about sex!

2011-08-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

A young western guy comes to Cambodia looking for kicks, and – along with drugs and guns – he gets them from hooking up with a pretty local girl in Phnom Penh’s infamous Heart of Darkness nightclub.

Then it starts to go wrong. He falls for her, asks her to stop selling sex; she demands money, asks him to stay in

Cambodia

and get married.

This, I hasten to add, is not about me! Rather, it’s the plot of the recent film Same Same But Different. The girl’s later revelation that she has HIV certainly complicates matters, but the depiction of Cambodia as a destination for sex tourism is undeniable.

So what’s the problem?

Well, much of the debate is the same about the sex trade in any country. When it comes to child abuse or slavery these are clearly terrible crimes.

But why shouldn’t a women (or man) be free to sell her body if she chooses to? Indeed, why shouldn’t a man be free to buy sex, as long as it’s between consenting adults? And by making all or parts of it illegal, don’t we just drive the inevitable (the oldest profession) underground, away from lawful taxpaying and towards organized crime?

Yet where is the freedom for poor, young women with nowhere else to go? And isn’t there something not just distasteful but wrong about the rich and powerful being allowed to buy even the bodies of the poor and powerless? Shouldn’t the most vulnerable be protected, from both abuse and diseases such as HIV? Below the belt it may be, but the clincher for me is the old chestnut: would you be happy if your mum / sister / daughter were a prostitute? Of course not.

The approach here in Cambodia, as with most things, is ultra-liberal. Anything goes, if you have money you can buy it, which is why sex tourists swill around downtown Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville.

Whilst many of the punters are westerners, it is worth noting there are plenty of Asian sex tourists too. And Cambodian men, who by day lecture me about the importance of marriage and traditional values, by night find it totally acceptable to pay for sex in euphemistically named ‘karaoke bars’.

Prostitution is one thing, but what about longer-term relationships between Cambodians and westerners?

Part of me really welcomes these: the cultural exchange, the overcoming of national boundaries, the romance of love beyond borders. Last month I went to the wedding of a young American volunteer with her Cambodian boyfriend, and it was great. I really admired how they stuck with it despite opposition from friends, families, employers and the police (who even tried to evict all the westerners from the village the night before the ceremony, until a call was made to a suitably well-connected acquaintance).

Even with the more common older white man / younger Cambodian woman match, I know a number of very honorable men who have come to Cambodia and genuinely fallen in love with beautiful but also smart and articulate Cambodian women – what’s not to like?

But there are doubts – most such couplings are older, richer, uglier white men with younger, poorer, prettier Cambodian girls. Isn’t this somehow distasteful? Though is it any worse than if they were both western? Or both men? Or a rich woman and a poor guy (that happens too, though less obviously and probably much less often).

Perhaps it is because, bluntly, the relationships often amount to long-term prostitution – the girl gets money (a house, a passport, an income) and the man gets the girl. I confess that my heart sinks at the sight of shuffling ‘sexpats’ and their bored, compromised escorts.

But maybe they settled for the best they can get? Or even feel they made a good catch? And – tellingly – if I were a 60 year old single bloke I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t be tempted to enjoy the company of a stunning Cambodian beauty less than half my age – can you blame me?

So what about volunteers? What are our rights and responsibilities here? Interestingly, a straw poll showed a significant gender split.

Female volunteers seem to be pretty clear that their male counterparts should be very careful about ‘dating’ Cambodian girls. A casual affair for a volunteer may be ruinous for a local girl’s reputation, not to mention relationships at work and the reputation of our organization. And they are generally downbeat about the chances of romance with Cambodian men, who they see as having rather too ‘traditional’ views about the place of a women.

Male volunteers responded rather differently. We’re here to play as well as work, and Cambodian girls can be both stunningly beautiful and irresistibly playful. We’re not here to put our lives on hold – and in fact what better way to learn more about the culture, the language, the ‘real Cambodia’ than to date a native? Those from other Asian countries such as India and the Philippines may be particularly likely to slip into the karaoke bar culture – it may be distasteful to western women, but they can hardly be accused of going against the local values! Meanwhile, younger western volunteers laugh that the girls are just bitter because of their own slim pickings.

So where does that leave us?

As always it all comes down to role-modeling. Put simply, if our sexual behaviour is abusive, insensitive, destructive then it’s bad. If it’s loving, sensitive and productive then it’s good.

If in doubt, we would do well to remember the apocryphal story of the American visitor giving a welcome address in Khmer, who proudly stated he had come “to help the Cambodian people”. Unfortunately he mixed up the verb to help (chooi) with that for fuck (choi).

Let’s talk about, let’s enjoy sex. But let’s not forget we’re here to help.

London, it's the new Phnom Penh!

2011-07-30T03:01:00.001-07:00

I knew something was odd as soon as we landed in London.

It wasn’t just the tropical heat, or even the unusual scent of jasmine. It certainly wasn’t that it took hours for my bag to arrive. It was more basic than that: with no trains or busses - or even black cabs - how was I to get into town?

Then I noticed a group lolling in hammocks and playing chess, under a handpainted ‘Tower Tuktuks’ sign. These were no chirpy cockney cabbies, but a bunch of itinerant Yorkshiremen, come to the big city to drive their battered British Leyland tuktuks.

“Where yer go?” an old guy asked sleepily.

“St Paul’s Pagoda”. I felt I should explain: “To the new exhibition at the Tate T’mai”.

A friendly shrug and we set off. We circled the airport twice before I realized the poor bloke had no idea where he was going. “Just follow the Tonle Thames uncle” I growled.

We chugged along the riverbank with its colourful tourist dragonboats, past the sparkling new Cambodia-Britain friendship hospital at Hammersmith and the Cameron Academy at Chelsea.

Suddenly a monstrous black machine roared past us, forcing us towards the ditch. “Lewisham Lexus lout!” cursed my driver.

At the corner of the Royal Palace a uniformed man with a black breast-shaped helmet stood in the road. It was reassuring to see a friendly London bobby, even with a cigarette on his lip and shirt rolled up exposing his belly.

“Road closed brother” the policeman barked. “MyBoy London Marathon today!”. To my astonishment my driver nonchalantly slipped a dollar bill into the officer’s outstretched palm, and drove on. Surely there isn't now corruption in Her Majesty’s Constabulary?

To recover I asked him to stop for food. Sadly my favorite chip shop at Phsar Covent had developed an unpleasant fish-sauce stink, and a pack of skinny dogs lurked menacingly outside Khmer Fried Chicken. So I went round the corner to Pret a Mango for comfort food - what wonderful sweet sticky rice they now serve!

Finally we reached the pagoda and I thrust a few dollars at my grateful driver. The South Bank was as vibrant as ever, with stalls of pirate DVDs jostling for custom with “”Same Same” t-shirt vendors, tastefully accompanied by the latest asiapop from huge sound systems.

Outside the Tate, gallery staff played volleyball, resulting in an unruly scrum for tickets within. In fairness demand was high: they were cheap thanks to cultural development aid from Cambodia. And the subject was popular – the public gazed adoringly at the beautiful mountain of plastic bags which engulfed the turbine hall.

I soon retired to the Apsara Arms for a litre of imported Kingdom Ale. What a day! This was still the same London, but it was also now so different.

As I swatted half heartedly at mosquitoes and idly pushed icecubes round my glass, I finally realized what was so surprising about all this.

It wasn’t so much that London had suddenly become like Phnom Penh.

It was simply that everyone had started smiling!

Thank you for smoking

2011-07-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

These are challenging times for those of us who love and profit from smoking in Cambodia.

Happily this country remains one of the most free in the world. The ultral-liberal regime may still permit pretty open sale of guns, girls and ganja, but it also means you can still enjoy a guiltless cigarette just about anywhere.

Two key forces ensure such freedoms continue here, in stark contrast to their growing erosion worldwide.

Firsty - well, it’s the Economy, stupid!

Conditions for business here are close to ideal. Staff costs are unbelievably low, workers do as they are told, and there are no irritations such as employment or health and safety legislation. What a breath of fresh air compared with the unionized, nanny-states of the west!

What’s more, there is virtually no tax here! Tell that to any businessman – be he selling cigarettes or lung-cancer drugs – and his greedy little eyes will light up! In the absence of a legal framework, informal payments are necessary to ensure the right permissions and the avoidance of complications – but it’s just business, and everyone has their price. We’re not complaining - and we’re not exactly going to start a moral crusade are we?

This is the crux of our commercial success here. As long as tobacco is understood to be good for the economy, employing staff and contributing to government finances, then we will be allowed to go about our lawful business in peace. In Cambodia we still draw in over 40% of adults and turnover more than a hundred million dollars a year – not to be wheezed at!

Fortunately the alleged ‘’costs’ of smoking - dubious estimates of healthcare expenditure, days lost to work and low productivity of dying smokers - are far less tangible (and largely borne by poor individuals not powerful politicians). Do you know how many Cambodians die every year from smoking-related diseases? Thought not – nor do the Ministry of Health! As long as we bankroll wages and proffer‘’informal payments’ our position will remain strong.

Secondly, Education. Everyone knows cigarettes taste good. They are sociable, and sexy, an ideal cash cow in a country where half of the population are under 30. A pack of cigarettes is cheaper than a bowl of rice – it will even help stave off the hunger pangs!

It’s true that cigarettes aren’t quite as integral to society as they once were. At weddings, Cambodian brides rarely offer their groom a cigarette, nor are packets placed on guests’ tables. In pagodas, it’s rare to see monks smoking, and not so common to offer tobacco on spirit houses. Even prime minister Hun Sen no longer puffs in public.

However, thanks to successful advertising, everyone knows of their choice of products and are reminded of the benefits of particular brands. Advertising penetration is both deep and culturally sensitive – not merely billboards in towns, but traditional banners in villages, and best of all scrolling messages on ubiquitous karaoke videos – genius!

Of course we need to be smart: illiberal western-style legislation is threatened, and even a sympathetic government and a public rightly skeptical of authoritarian measures taken ‘for their own good’’ may be forced by the powerful international health lobby to ban adverts.

Don’t worry – most people here don’t see smoking as bad for their health – after all, with an average life expectancy of barely 60, folk have more immediate threats. Smoking is still widely socially acceptable – even in hospital wards (even by hospital staff in hospital wards!).

Rest assured we will not sit idly and allow the interfering health lobby to prevail. We will protect our profits and the rights of smokers. Nobody does smoke and mirrors better than us! We are already diversifying our message delivery: see if you can spot our sponsorship of soap operas, paid-for magazine features, even teaching awards; look out for more subtle branding of Thai fashion products, subliminal pop and harnessing the addiction to khmer boxing.

Even stronger than adverts are role models. Most children still see their parents or close relatives smoking, quietly preparing our next generation of customers.

Better still, an astonishing number of westerners in Camboida give priceless help in reinforcing the message that smoking is cool. It couldn’t be better: despite countless reasons to think otherwise, white people are still held in great esteem and their actions closely watched and mimicked. So it’s a godsend to our industry to see so many pale puffers (some even working for NGOs with health programmes!) in the trendy bars of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. This is advertising that money simply cannot buy. Thank you so much for your support!

So whilst the smoking freedoms of the rest of the world risk being extinguished by attacks from unelected anti-smoking lobbyists, I’m heartened to report that it’s business as usual here in Cambodia.

So thank you, once again, for smoking.

Go To Jail

2011-07-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

Ever played Junior Monopoly?

For children, it’s a great introduction to the famous game: properties have become themepark rides, but you still have the fun of building houses / hotels and awaiting reluctant guests, albeit in a simplified way.

Money remains paramount - the aim is still to secure a monopoly by crushing all others. You soon know which children will be foolish public sector workhorses and which have the financial incompetence / dastardliness to become bankers!

It’s not quite the real deal though. Coloured plastic counters replace the metal dog, car, iron (what’s the fun without squabbling over who gets the boot?). You can no longer win second prize in a beauty contest.

Worst of all, there is no GO TO JAIL bombshell, replaced with a harmless visit to the restrooms!

Back in Cambodia, a world away from benign boardgames, I spent this afternoon in a very real jail – the provincial penitentiary in my nearest town of Sisophon. It was quite an experience.

It all came about thanks to Mary, a VSO education volunteer who just doesn’t understand that when the schools break for summer that’s the cue to swan off on holiday.

Rather, she stayed behind to dash round with the energy of a seven year old rolling the dice (she’s nearer seventy), trying to cajole and persuade anyone who will listen that they need to help improve the lot of women prisoners.

It’s a hard task. There’s not much in the way of a Community Chest, and I don’t detect much sympathy for prisoners here. Perhaps people have enough to worry about. There certainly seems to be a great deal of shame and lost face if a friend or family member is jailed. And maybe people think criminals get what they deserve: as a victim of a few petty crimes myself I have some sympathy with this view.

But things aren’t quite like that here. Most inmates are young and uneducated. Many are convicted of smuggling drugs from nearby Thailand (they are the ‘mules’ of course, those in charge don’t generally end up in prison). It’s not right, but it’s pretty clear to me they were driven to it through poverty and helplessness, for the lack of any other way to make a living. Or they may be completely innocent - framed, or taking the rap for someone else - but if they are poor they’ll get banged up just the same.

And they are all poor, by definition: in a country which ranks 154th out of 178 in Transparency International’s latest corruption perceptions index, you can be sure that the only people in prison are those who can’t afford to bribe their way out of the so-called ‘justice’ system.

The prison itself is a series of low yellowy concrete buildings on the edge of town. The buildings themselves are fairly new, and on first sight it could have been a school or hospital (two other hotels with generally reluctant guests!).

But inside it’s pretty desperate. There are 12 cells holding a total of 123 women (you can do the maths). Each prisoner has even less than the paltry 2 square metres minimum demanded by international law. The walls and floors are bare concrete, with a shared toilet and sink in the corner. A hose pipe is as near as they get to a shower.

We were kept waiting for half an hour before being allowed to see the prisoners – apparently for them to be searched ‘for your safety’. I’m not convinced we were in much danger from the shy, innocent-looking girls who crammed into the corridor to gaze at us - though like zoo animals in tiny cages I guess such cramped conditions are bound to lead to stress.

We had come so Katja could talk with the women about health, particularly how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. The session was actually really good fun - as we appeared they gave us an impromptu round of applause, and we got big laughs as we put condoms onto cucumbers and I produced a phallic carrot for the demonstration.

But behind the smiles I’m sure were heaps of sadness. The guards were charm itself, but I couldn’t help thinking of stories of brutality once our backs were turned.

Perhaps worst of all was the sight of children in prison - 17 in all. Whatever their mums may have done, they are innocent and seeing them grow up in a prison is heartbreaking.

Their life is a long way from the fun of a Monopoly game. I hope, through the good work of Mary and those like her, they may get out of jail and take a chance at a better life.

Who needs electricity?

2011-07-01T02:44:00.001-07:00

What happens if you don’t pay your electricity bill?

Well your mail from United Utilities may turn a bit red. If you’re not careful you risk a sharp phone call or two. If you really fail to pay you endanger your credit rating.

The ultimate sanction is for the power company to stop their service – to ‘cut you off’. Fortunately that’s pretty rare – after all, we accept electricity as a fundamental requirement for living. We need it to run essentials like flatscreen tellies and hairdryers (along with little luxuries like lighting and heating).

At least, that’s how it is for a householder in somewhere like the UK. But what if the customer is a hospital. And you’re in Cambodia?

Well, one thing is your ‘need’ is pretty great. Your lights aren’t just for reading to the kids, they allow midwives to deliver them. The machines being powered are xrays not xboxes.

And yet, rather than being seen as somehow more important than a private home, when my hospital got into a dispute with the local generator company over unpaid bills, what did those with the power do?

That’s right - they pulled the plug on the entire site! Can you imagine the scandal if a power company cut off your local hospital? It’s unthinkable, and rightly so. Sure, we must all pay our dues. But never should disputes get to the stage that the ultimate sanction is enacted. That would be stupid, not to mention immoral. But it’s exactly what just happened here.

So I now work in a hospital which has no electricity. Well, that’s not quite true – we do have an ‘emergency’ diesel generator, and this is begrudgingly booted if a pesky patient needs an xray (and casually cranked whenever a government bigwig needs fanning).

It's little consolation that I'm now receiving better-late-than-never praise for getting some solar power working in the hospital. Thanks to generous donations from back home we replaced the batteries in 4 wards just last month, and persuaded the donor to install panels on the new surgery unit at the last moment. Why oh why isn’t solar fitted as standard on important buildings in a country with such poor infrastructure yet such brilliant sunshine?

As weeks turn to months we seem to be no nearer a solution, and it’s getting more and more difficult to look after patients. Even a low tech hospital uses electricity for a surprising number of things. When Katja asked the nurses why there was no documentation for a women who had been beaten almost to death by her husband, they had a novel excuse – how could they keep records when they can no longer use the photocopier? Even more basic: the new children’s ward has a scruffy handwritten note on the locked door to its beautifully appointed new toilet block: “no power, no water, no entry”.

What can I do? Well, I’ve tried to understand what caused the initial dispute, but having asked ten times I’ve now heard a dozen different stories, and sense I’m no nearer the truth. The bottom line is that if they thought I could assist they would have asked me by now. One thing I’ve learned here is that trying to impose my ‘help’ when it’s not asked for will only make my colleagues embarrassed and me frustrated.

So I gave a big sweaty shrug (no power means no fans either), and carried on. Maybe it’s not so bad. For one, our hospital doesn’t have much fancy electrical equipment - very few 'things that go bing'. What’s more, electricity isn’t the only source of power - small bits of kit often use batteries, and the fridges in the lab actually run from gas cylinders. We certainly don’t need heating, but cooling would be nice, and the fans do need power - but they weren't turned on for patients even before we were cut off (“too expensive”). And lights aren’t really used much either – when it’s dark you go to bed, don’t you?

Nevertheless, I really hope we get our electric back soon, not least for the selfish reason that I want an office with power. If not, future blogs may need solar internet or gas-powered computers. Dare I suggest my blogging may be a little like my power supply – it may not light up your world, but you might just miss it if someone pulls the plug.

In praise of… A Great Volunteer!

2011-07-01T02:02:00.000-07:00

Like your family, you can’t choose your colleagues, but some of us do get extraordinarily lucky.

This was the final week for my colleague Alison as a VSO volunteer, and today was her bitter-sweat last visit to the hospital at Thmar Puok.

To put it simply, she is the best colleague I’ve ever had. With her, my experience as a volunteer, whilst bumpy at times, has been enormously rewarding and eternally memorable. Without her, well, I’m not even sure I’d be here writing this.

I actually met Alison’s partner Paul first – on our training at VSO’s charmingly creaky Harbourne Hall (the greatest course I’ve ever been privileged to attend by the way – bar none). We had to role-play culturally difficult situations: he depicted a dirty old man and me a heartless young playboy – no typecasting there I assure you!

I then met Alison as we flew to Cambodia – only thrown together in the same group of volunteers at the last minute when placements in Indonesia were withdrawn.

My first impressions were of Alison’s laughter and joie de vivre – something I was to grow not only to love but also rather depend on. She has an irresistibly happy face, and her dirty laugh is equally infectious!

Our placements started inauspiciously – together with another amazing lady, the marvelous septuagenarian Mary, the four of us wedged into an overloaded truck for the 8 hour journey to our northern province. By then we knew that cramming vehicles high with goods is a local sport, so we were surprised to be stopped no fewer than 14 times by the police for ‘’overloading’’ – swiftly resolved by our first introduction to ‘informal payments’ (otherwise known as a bribe).

As we started work in our respective hospitals, I found myself relying heavily on Alison as a respected colleague and confidante. Our focus as health volunteers was (in theory at least) on improving child and maternal health, so Alison’s skills as an experienced children’s nurse were invaluable. I helped make the new children’s ward more child-friendly and advised on quality assessment, but only she had the expertise to advise on administering drugs and the knowledge to tell the right end of a sphygmomanometer.

One of her greatest innovations – inspired by her assistant Sokha – was education sessions for carers, initially at her base hospital in Mongkul Barey. Family members provide personal care such as feeding, washing and toileting as well as vital emotional support, and to tell the truth can spend hours just hanging round waiting for their loved ones to recover or die. As such they are a prime target for an opportunistic health promoter! Soon carers flocked to the events, and not only learned important messages about hygiene, nutrition and preventing disease, but were also given the power to raise issues and even complain – a rare sight in Cambodia.

So popular were the sessions that they soon became a weekly event, and Alison was able to hand over the organization to enthusiastic local staff. In her ever self-depreciating manner she joked that in the end she was only wheeled out to talk about two things Cambodians just can’t get their heads around – stopping smoking and starting wearing moto helmets!

The fact that the sessions are now owned and run locally is no accident – it is a key part of Alison’s approach to volunteering, and one of the most important lessons she taught me. Now, whenever I think of starting a project or running a workshop I hear Alison’s voice asking “and which Cambodian colleague will be leading this with me?” It’s easy but short-termist to just do stuff, much harder but far more useful to build the capacity of others. I knew the theory, but Alison showed me how to do it in practice like no other volunteer I’ve met.

So much for praise about her work. More important than anything was that I could always escape my village to be welcomed into Alison and Paul’s boutique shack, where she would patiently counsel me on the latest frustrations whilst I greedily consumed their home comforts – in particular Alison’s cupcakes and cheese salads, not forgetting Paul’s expertise as trumpet player, piano maestro and whingeing Liverpool fan. They even put up with my all-night internet sessions and squealing whenever a mouse joined me in bed – that goes way beyond just a good workmate!

There may be a useful lesson here for volunteer organizations: if you are clever or lucky enough to find the personal fit, there are enormous benefits in the support, encouragement and camaraderie of other volunteers. I certainly learned a huge amount and believe that the best contributions we have made have been working as a team.

So as we hang around for a ‘taxi’ to take her down the bumpy road to Sisophon one last time I feel thankful not only for the skills and knowledge but also the kindness, companionship, positivity and humanity I have been privileged to enjoy from this exceptional volunteer.

I’ll miss you Alison – Thmar Puok’s loss is Phnom Penh’s gain, but there will always be a welcome for you in this remote corner of Cambodia which you helped so much and which misses you already. Thank you, to the best colleague ever!

Red Lights and Green Lizards

2011-06-21T06:34:00.000-07:00

My friend and colleague Dr Jerker recently gave me a copy of this beautifully-written book by Liz Anderson, a VSO volunteer in Cambodia in 1991.

Whilst written nearly twenty years ago, many of her descriptions are just as pertinent today.

Here are my favourite bits:

On socks: It was James’ pink socks that made the most impression on me that first day; amazingly they were still flashing about when we left two years later

On Cambodians: Two attributes of the complex Cambodian character we learned immediately; they are gregarious, and they are noisy

On traffic: The rule of the road is, officially, keep to the right, but unofficially it is the law of the bullyboy. Biggest is best and woe betide you if you forget it

On hotels: The overpowering stench of other people’s urine must have been enormously titillating to the resident family of cockroaches who after all had got there first

On nosiness: It was fortunate that we liked the chambermaid, for she spent an increasing amount of time in our room… She used to invite her friends and relations, too. A half empty bottle of rice wine under our bed was a sure sign that her husband had been visiting

On learning Khmer: Their language in theory should not be difficult to learn, for there is little in the way of grammar, just a multitude of words. But these are words the like of which we had never heard before… Everything had to be written down phonetically in a series of exercise books [which] bore, in English, the blue printed legend ‘The Solid and Commodious Note Book that is Starched is Very Useful for Study’

On learning Khmer (2): Dara was an excellent teacher, living up to his name which means ‘a star’… We laughed a great deal, at ourselves and at each other, but mainly at our comedian of a school-master, whose great fat belly continuously wobbled and bounced in time to his guffaws and giggles.

On learning Khmer (3): Apparently all that is needed to transform the teaching of prepositions is for a pupil to fall OFF a bike INTO a hole, or FROM a bike DOWN a hole, or… the variety, in Dara’s hands, was unending. And it was all accompanied by pictures on the board of pin-men fling THROUGH the air, and of course by huge fat wobbly chuckles

On illness: the diarrhea that was a continuously lurking and insidious unpleasantness, something we never really learn to live with

On stories of Khmer Rouge suffering: After moths of near starvation, he and his family had eventually reached the refugee camp… On arrival they were given food but warned to eat it slowly; their stomachs, accustomed for so long to little but water with a few grains of rice floating in it to make a ‘soup’, would be unable to cope with a big meal. For Dara’s little brother, the warning fell on deaf ears. He was a hungry child with food in front of him, and he ate. He died as a result

On the fall of Lon Nol: To uncaring outside observers, the whole thing smacked of farce. The world laughed at his tiny general, who had tiny furniture built to make him look tall by comparison. They laughed at the name of his military spokesman, Am Rong. The tears would come all too soon

On US bombing of Cambodia: Although officially out of the war, the US still needed their Cambodian ally to continue ‘their’ war against the communists. The Nixon administration sanctioned the bombing of the Khmer Rouge, and for two hundred days and nights a fleet of B52s dropped another 250,000 bombs on Cambodian soil

On work ethic: Pot Pot’s… whole idea was based on a ethic of work, work that was relentless and without respite

On life under Khmer Rouge: Dancing and music, idle conversation, even lovemaking, were banned

On street sounds: All sorts of wares were on mobile sale. There was the ice cream van, a handcart pushed by its owner, the bell on its shaft struck regularly in time to his step… Bread sellers mounted on bicycles declared their wares, the mournful ‘Noom-pang’… But my favourites were the noodle sellers, in early mornings and late evenings. A young boy would stroll down the street, tapping a stick on a flute-sized bamboo. The rhythm was intricate and the site of impact wandered up and down the bamboo, creating different notes. The result was a wistful almost-tune that to all of us came to encapsulate the whole scene. Following several minutes later came the hand pushed trolley, hot Chinese noodles aboard.

On music: Music was everywhere. All Cambodian ceremonial events have their own accompaniment, seemingly played as loudly as possible. A marriage or a death celebrated in a residential street, sometimes for days on end, can literally drive neighbours out of house and home…

On hospitals: Row upon row of rusty iron bedsteads without mattresses or bed-clothes, each with its drip-stand supporting a virulent yellow infusion bag, the contents couloured by a mixture of useless vitamins. Drips are an obsession, to every Cambodian and essential part of treatment on admission to hospital. That such ‘remedies’ could do far more harm than good was a very hard lesson for the Khmer doctors to learn

On the Mekong: An immense and awe-inspiring stretch of water, always a turgid milk chocolate brown and speckled with picturesque fishing boats

On rich and poor: The swimming pool at the Cambodiana… To the younger and more idealistic volunteers the comparison produced a huge philosophical dilemma. We were not here as tourists… To us old ones, hardened to the ways of the world, this posed little problem, I regret to say… But some could never bring themselves to go there. The contrast was too great.

On the Khmer Rouge: We had read about the murder of children by the simple expedient of swinging their heads against a tree. We had read of the typical case of the mother lashed to a treetrunk, watching her new baby laid on the ground to die of heat stroke, carefully placed just outside her reach… But sitting book in hand in a comfortable chair in a comfortable English home, such stories… had seemed disconnected from our own lives that their reality could be shirked. Now we could no longer avoid confronting the undeniable truth that these things had actually happened, here by the steps on which we sat

On schoolchildren: Perhaps it is the uniformity of colour not just of shirts but of hair too that makes massed Asian schoolchildren look so much smarter than their European counterparts

On the seaside: There can be few who have suffered a damp and near naked embrace by a Corsican bandit in the languid waters of the South China Sea

On volunteering: This was why we had come, why we were putting up with heat, sweat, mosquitoes, infected sores, diarrhea and emotional slaughter

Are Cambodians Lazy?

2011-05-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

We’ve all thought it – so why can’t we just come out and say it?

One of the main frustrations of being a volunteer in a country like Cambodia is, bluntly, getting anything done. As advisors we work with and through our Cambodian colleagues – we advise, and they are the ones who actually do things.

So we push and we prod with our westerner’s energy and enthusiasm. And they gaze at us, somewhere between amusement and bemusement… And then gently ignore our wise advice and carry on as before.

I guarantee that every volunteer has at least once boiled over with the frustration of thwarted ambition and blurted ‘they’re just so bloody lazy!’.

And who can blame us? Wander round my village and the abiding image is of people sleeping. There is a whole culture of hammock life here, from the vigourous swinging of tiny babies to the gentle sway of ancient wrinklies.

This is especially true - and particularly galling - at my hospital. Luckily there’s no shortage of beds, so staff are never far from the next nap. There’s also a handy tamarind tree, which is great for lazing round, out of earshot of groaning patients. If you really can’t sleep, there are always endless games of volleyball to keep you from slipping back to your job.

The first thing I saw in the hospital boardroom was a cleaner asleep on the table. Can you imagine that in a western country? And yesterday I had difficulty working in my office due to the volume of the snores coming from the next room!

Even some Khmer people admit it. The hospital director regularly berates staff for simply not bothering to turn up for work when they are on call. And he’s given up even expecting any staff to work in the afternoons – if you must be ill, make sure it’s mornings only!

So there’s the rant. Any mitigating circumstances?

Well yes. For one, the climate. It’s not just that heat and humidity slows you down (thought it certainly does). It’s also that it changes the day's dynamic – basically, it makes sense to avoid the heat of the day, and compress activity to the early mornings or late afternoons.

And boy are Cambodians early risers! Even before the cocks start crowing there is a buzz of activity outside my house – men chopping wood (or even building houses), women sweeping or cooking. I don’t get up until 6: that makes me the lazy one!

And it’s not just domestic chores which start early. Farmers are trundling off for the grueling work of their rice fields from 5 every morning (that’s every morning, seven days a week). The market next to me is sold out of bananas before I even rise, and still open when I go to bed. I didn’t even know about the lady selling delicious coconut waffles until recently – because she finishes at 7am.

So not all Cambodians are lazy. But that doesn’t help us volunteers! Perhaps it is more of a problem for us as we tend to work with the worst offenders – health and education. But surely these are some of the most important of all jobs, and the most damaging if they are shirked?

True, but valuing the likes of teachers and health workers needs government leadership. The state here pays such workers around a dollar a day – can we really expect dedicated, hard working staff in return? Given this pitiful income, of course they will take other jobs in the afternoons, to make ends meet. It’s still wrong to dodge your responsibilities, and certainly to take bribes from patients or pupils, or steal equipment – but it’s easy to see why it is tempting.

Furthermore, let’s not tar everyone in schools and hospitals with the indolence brush! Tell me if this sounds lazy: yesterday my translator was up at 4am picking mushrooms and chopping wood. Around 5 he collected water from the pond, then took care of his young boys whilst his wife cooked rice porridge. At 6 he taught English to a group of children in the makeshift classroom under his wooden house. At 7 he popped into his school for a quick meeting with other teachers. And he was still in the hospital before me, as I dragged myself in bleery-eyed for the ridiculously early 7.30am start. Who could blame him if he wants rice and a snooze by 11?

Finally, even when there is a certain laziness – is that always such a bad thing?

I certainly don’t condone skiving off when you should be on call, or ignoring patients in need. But one of the best lessons I’ve learned from my Cambodian friends and colleagues is the value of slowing down a little. There is little of the stress here of western life – no packed diaries, road rage, executive burnout – and isn’t that a good thing?

So as I swing in my hammock and watch the hard-working farmers return from their fields, my answer to the question of whether Cambodians are lazy is as follows: “No – well not everyone… but yes, some… though maybe that’s not always a bad thing… oh I don’t know. Can’t you let me sleep?”.

Climb any mountain

2011-05-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

As a student I had the good fortune to read philosophy for a year at Burgundy university, back in the days when the British taxpayer funded such civilized activities (or wasteful luxuries – I guess it’s a philosophical question?).

Dijon should have been ideal for me – a small city with a big student population, beautiful old buildings, and gastronomic delights a-plenty. But something was missing, and it took me fully six months to work out what it was.

The answer: hills! The Burgundy countryside may be picturesquely criss-crossed with famous vineyards, but it’s also flat as a crepe. For a boy raised in the Pennines and studying in the shadow of the Pentlands, the flatlands of eastern France literally lacked a vital dimension.

Imagine then when, years later, I was offered a two year volunteer placement in Cambodia, surely one of the flattest kingdoms on earth! Between the Cardamoms to the west and the Mondolkiri uplands to the east, the country is essentially one big, flat ricebowl.

At least this makes for good cycling, and I was fortunate to buy a decent mountain bike from a former volunteer. Not that there are any mountains here. But glancing at a map of my remote rural area I was delighted (and amazed) to see the alluring contours of two sizable hills, just within riding distance. What was I waiting for?

I usually cycle in the early evening, when the rich, warm sun shows the country at its most beautiful. But I was heading for the hills, so needed an earlier start. As the archetypal Englishman, I set out under the blaze of the mid-day sun (the mad dogs slept in the shade).

To counter the ferocious heat I packed water and money for more drinks, and donned my VSO peaked cap, pro-style Angkor 30k cycle vest, long lightweight sport-shorts, and – of course – double-skinned running socks. As my colleague Pete would say, ‘all the gear and no idea’.

The ride out of my village was stunning. Now the rains have started, the fields are vivid green. Oxen ploughed, and farmers were taking small rice plants from their nurseries and digging them into the fields. This is the true meaning of ‘transplantation’, before us health people misappropriated it!

By the time I reached the village of P’koum the blazing sun was making me parched, and I stopped by one of the ubiquitous orange ice-boxes. It contained no ice, but I savoured a warm coke whilst my hosts further tested my agricultural knowledge (they were not impressed that I only knew ‘market fruit’, not ‘village fruit’ - did you know there was a difference?).

You may assume the inhabitants of a village called Poum T’mai (‘New Village’) lack creativity. Not true! Every house on the road to this picturesque hamlet sported increasingly bizarre scarecrows, often with cowboy hats, paper-painted faces, jeans, and stylish tops. These, explained a wizened old Khmer guy, keep away diseases, dengue in particular. Quaint custom or dangerous hocus-pocus? (You get dengue from a nasty daytime mosquito, and a scarecrow ain’t gonna help you, no matter how dapper his shirt).

Yet all this was a distraction – I wanted mountains! By now they loomed tantalizingly in the distance, but the route still wasn’t clear. Asking locals here for directions is futile: if they point confidently they may have a vague idea; if they sweep their hand over their shoulder they have no clue and just want you to leave happy. They gestured at the hills, and left none the wiser.

Suddenly the road started to climb, and I felt that sublime tensing of the legs - finally I was going uphill! In contrast to the ricefields all around, the hillside was covered in trees (I guess as it’s hard to grow rice on a slope?). The dirt road snaked around the contours of the hills, so the view was limited, but no matter - I just felt great to be back in a three-dimensional landscape.

Elated, I reached my final village, the more imaginatively named Sway Sor (White Mango). The ice box offered coconut, and as usual my mouth ran ahead of my brain and I commented on how warm my can was. To my delight the kind shoplady produced a chunk of ice and crushed it. Less delightfully she then placed it in a chipped, pale-pink toilet scoop, and gestured for me to add the juice. I doubt many people can claim to have drunk coconut from a battered pale-pink toilet scoop in front of an audience of inquisitive peasant-farmers – it will certainly be one of my lasting memories here!

I wasn’t quite finished in the village. My lower arms had developed a worrying glow - pro-style cycling vest it may be, but the sleeves were amateurishly short, and I needed cover. So White Mango’s first clothes auction was soon underway. First on offer was a lovely brown Camel-brand shirt, overpriced at $15. A snappy striped work shirt fitted nicely but at $5 was still way too much. Finally an old lady hobbled up with an old shirt – crumpled and fishy, but undeniably long-sleeved. It came free with red paint stains and mud-clods, all for less than $1 – bargain! And so I set off home, looking rather like a New Village scarecrow, protected at least against the blazing sun.

The relentless attention can take its toll, as can pedaling in the heat, so I soon stopped under the tree in a pagoda. No peace here though – after a few milliseconds I was surrounded by young monks. ‘Where you go?’ ‘How much you bike cost?’ ‘Why you dress in old shirt?’ Time to press on.

There was still time for more experiences before I got home. Firstly, on the outskirts of New Village the biggest snake I’ve ever seen slithered across the track in front of me. It was so darn big it got stuck trying to get through the wooden fence. Of course I had no camera and no witnesses, so it’s safe for me to say it was bloody huge!

And finally, just before I returned to my village, I knew deities other than the sun-god were looking down on me. On a deserted track with nothing but ricefields for miles I saw a moto in the distance. As it neared I realised that the orange structure on his sidecar was not another empty icebox. Rather, the last my drinks money bought a delicious ca’rem (small baguette with white and purple ice cream, topped with condensed milk and peanuts – yum!).

Some things I failed to learn in Burgundy’s top philosophy school, but now understand:

· Learn about agriculture, or you’ll think transplantation is just organs and fruit just oranges

· Cover your arms, or you’ll have to buy a fishy old scarecrow shirt from a rice farmer

· Find your own way, as asking directions is futile!

· Shut your mouth, or you’ll end up drinking coconut juice from a chipped pale-pink toilet scoop

· Rest where you like, but don’t expect to find peace in pagodas

· Say your prayers, and you might just meet an ice-cream man when you most need and least expect him

Oh, and accept that Cambodia’s flat, and live with it.

Your move

2011-05-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

I have a modest competitive streak, which, together with my black and white view of events and my passive-aggressive tendencies give chess a certain appeal, at least to those trying to keep me away from polite society.

So when I was stranded in the pouring rain with ‘David’ the chirpy Battambang tuk-tuk driver, I was delighted when he pulled out a simply-carved but unmistakably chess-like game.

But Khmer chess, I was soon to learn, is subtly different from the game as I know it.

Thankfully the pieces are the same, if a little hard to distinguish at first. However the pawns line up not on the second and seventh ranks but one further forward, the third and sixth. Interesting! Also, there is no ‘queen on its own colour’ rule – in fact the board was just squares, with no black or white– and my king was positioned to face his queen and vice versa.

So far so similar. Rooks, knights, kings and queens all moved as normal too, as did pawns (though as they started further up the board they lost their initial two steps option).

However bishops – usually twin powerhouses zooming the board or bearing down on the enemy – were restricted to moving one square at a time, diagonally and also forwards and backwards (but not sideways). Perhaps this gives them some power I didn’t appreciate, but to me they were sad, emasculated versions of their usual proud selves – give me a knight any day!

Another difference was castling – this didn’t exist in the khmer version, but to get your king to the safety of a corner he was allowed to move like a knight for his first move – weird, but it kind of has the same result.

And so we got underway, and whilst I struggled to grapple with the unfamiliar shapes and moves, the general strategy of developing pieces whilst safeguarding the king still held.

We soon had an audience of course – what activity I do here doesn’t? – though the most active member was a serious little future grandmaster who busied himself storing all the captured pieces. I liked to think I could give him a few strategic tips. Pushing forward on my queen’s side I engineered a clever exchange to give me a passed pawn – and to put the wind up those Cambodian upstarts!

Ah! One problem – I was still working on the assumption that my pawn could be queened on reaching the eighth rank. Not so fast! A pawn, explained David patiently, is not queened but rather flipped over, at which point it can move one square on any diagonal. So the reward for my strategic brilliance was just another kind of weakly shuffling bishop!

This also meant that it was really hard to press home an advantage, and despite going into the endgame two pawns up –a decisive lead in our game – here we ended in stalemate. Or should I say, and honourable draw.

It was certainly the best mental workout I’ve had for ages, and David seemed to enjoy it too. Maybe it was the effort of making up all those new rules to confuse the foreigner!

Your move.

Cash quiz! Win big!

2011-05-06T02:13:00.000-07:00

1. The market lady charges you “3” for a couple of limes. Do you…

a) shrug as this seems a bit dear, and hand over $3

b) realize smugly she means 3 baht, and offer her a few shiny Thai coins

c) multiply the 3 by 100 to make 300 riels, laugh along with her at this preposterous overcharging, and chuck a couple of manky 100 riel notes onto her pile of cabbages

2. Your tuk-tuk driver quotes “just $35” for a couple of days visiting the temples. Do you…

a) enquire if he’ll charge extra for an early start

b) agree on the condition he takes you on the longer ‘grand route’ to get more monks for your money

c) explain you could buy half of Bayon for that and tell him it’s ‘ma-pay ($20) or the highway’

3. You fancy a shave at a street barber [for the sake of this quiz you are all male!]. Do you…

a) accept the $5 quoted and let him get scraping

b) haggle him down to $2.50 including a clean blade

c) say “please don’t shave me”, giggle together that it also means “don’t rip me off”, and hand him the usual $1 once you’re as shiny as a K’mai

4. The rent is due. Do you…

a) settle back whilst the direct debit kicks in

b) wait for the landlord to chase you up, then sternly hold back payment until the exposed electricity wires are fixed

c) pay promptly to the landlady, knowing that the women run the domestic finances here

5. The friend of a colleague’s cousin is getting married. Do you…

a) feel honoured to be asked, and log on to find the wedding list

b) reluctantly accept yet another invite, and grudgingly return the envelope with $10 when you sneak away early

c) evade your colleague so you can avoid the invite, and hope the noise isn’t too near your house

6. You invited a couple of colleagues for a meal in Phnom Penh, and the bill arrives. Do you…

a) toss down your card and wait for the others to follow suit – the waiter can work out the split

b) check the bill and hand out your share in cash, with a bit extra as a tip

c) hand over the full amount in cash, using both hands of course, knowing that as you invited them you should pay

7. You buy a fancy new rice cooker in town, but the cashier hands back your battered note. Do you…

a) argue loudly that there’s nothing wrong with it and storm out of the shop

b) grudgingly accept there’s a tiny tear, find a newer one, and head straight to the bank to return the damaged note

c) smilingly replace it and carefully examine every dollar of your change (refusing at least one on principle), all the while planning how to disguise the torn note during your next purchase

8. Your mate is visiting from the UK and calls to ask how much “200” is for the taxi fare to your village

a) tell him it’s Thai baht and suggest he uses some of the coins he has left from the airport

b) smugly add two 0s to make 20,000 riels, divide by 4000 to make it $5 (and tell him to multiply by 0.6 to make 3 quid if that helps)

c) get the taxi man on the phone and tell him he’s having a laugh, you know it’s only “m’meun” (10,000 riels), it always has been and always will be

9. A monk approaches with his helper, begging for food money. Do you…

a) admire the beautiful orange robe and humble sandals, and whimsically hand over a couple of dollars

b) reluctantly part with the bunch of 100 riel notes you store in your wallet to fend off beggars

c) cross yourself and carefully study your flip-flops until danger passes

10. You spend your time doing a quiz about money rather than making some yourself. Do you…

a) amass a’s in a vain attempt to acquire fake awards, like an absolute Cambodian cash-ass

b) bring on b’s, broadcasting you’re both bullish and full of bull

c) collect c’s, crowning you the Khmer king of cash!

O Brother

2011-04-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

When me and my big brother squabbled as kids we poked and jibed and wound each other up. Sometimes one would overstep the mark (me) and patience would finally snap (his). Occasionally one would get a bloody nose (me) and one would have a indignant tantrum to make up for it (me again).

But even as kids we understood it was all a bit silly, not worth fighting for. In fact most of the time I doubt we could remember what started it (though clearly it was always him). At some level we knew we didn’t really hate each other, that the bonds between us were way stronger than any passing dispute.

The squabbles on the Thai - Cambodian border, now uncomfortably near my home, may seem similarly petty, at least to an outside observer. I live just on the Cambodian side, so I’m still in the smaller simpling’s corner, puffing out my little chest and bigging up my Khmer Rouge battle-hardiness, even though everyone says my Thai brother is way stronger and better equipped than me (like having an airforce for example).

A Cambodian friend suggested Thailand is like a big bully who is better at everything than its little upstart sibling (richer, more developed, longer coastline, more Tesco supermarkets, more kickboxing medals, you name it).

But not quite everything. The one thing it doesn’t have is a proper big temple. Which then becomes the only thing it really wants! Thus, despite its embarrassment of riches, the giant to the west will never be happy until it has the one thing it can’t have – Angkor Wat. Far-fetched? Maybe, though it was part of Thailand as recently at 1904. And why else would there be a large scale model of it in the royal palace – in Bangkok?

Religion - or places of worship at least - certainly has some part in this. The recent skirmishes are ostensibly about ownership of buddhist temples which line the northern border.

That’s right, buddhist. You know the one, the gentle fat bloke who said killing anything was wrong and that we should all live in peace and harmony to achieve nirvana. I doubt he’d be impressed by his followers on both sides killing each other to own places built to worship him.

Which suggests it’s not just about temples – they’ve been there for hundreds of years, and are not going anywhere fast. Unless, that is, we adopt my translator’s whimsical but rather astute solution: let’s demolish all the temples on the border and divide the bricks evenly. Unthinkable - but think about it: are these stones really worth the lives of the dozen soldiers already killed this week, not to mention scores of wounded and hundreds of families forced from their homes? Don’t you think the peace-loving Buddha would approve?

Sadly, at the time of writing the conflict continues, with more people killed and injured every day. Recent fighting has spread west from the disputed temple at Preah Vihear to other temples much nearer to my home.

At first I wasn’t too concerned. There were flair-ups earlier and in previous years, and they seemed to be contained and to die down.

But despite my cool façade, I’m now a bit nervous. Yesterday I realized that the unusual thunder in the night was actually rocket-propelled grenades. And the more I listened to the rumours – about poisen gas, air-raids, Vietnnamese troops, you name it – the more I was unsettled. I doubt much of it is true, but it’s all people talk about all day, and the tension of being near conflict is real.

I have no idea how people manage to live their whole lives in real warzones. Painful as it is to admit it, even this relatively minor and distant fighting has at some level broken the spell of this charming, peaceful place, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be quite as contented here again.

Most of the time it’s ok though. There’s nothing really to see - a few richer families are leaving, and others are digging bunkers - but mainly life goes on as always.

The main battle here is against the rising heat and humidity. The village has no mains power, and the aging generators rarely worked this week: so no computer to see the latest fighting, but more pressingly no fans or fridges.

Perhaps we should just blame the heat - and the powercuts - on our sneeky Thai brethren. After all, they poison our food, flood our land, inflate our gas prices, steal our women… I know, because I heard it from the men over rice-wine last night.

And perhaps that’s what this is really about: politics. Specifically the most cynical, despicable stoking of nationalist sentiment among largely uneducated populations, aided by state-controlled media, to win votes and cling to power at forthcoming elections. Is that what the fighting’s for?

Whether it's nationalism or religion fuelling this conflict, one thing is clear: the border, the land, the temples, none of them is worth the blood of one soldier, the land of one farmer, the school of one child.

So as I settle down to another less than restful night, I’m hoping those with the power to do so stop this stupid, destructive, pointless conflict.

Let me get back to fighting the heat and the creepy crawlies. Let us resume our battle with the real enemies of illness, illiteracy, poverty. And let us all return to living with and loving each other as brothers.

What’s love got to do with it?

2011-04-24T02:06:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would write an article about food. But now I think about it every day!

I don’t want to lecture or sound like someone who knows it all. I just want to share my thoughts with you, and perhaps it will trigger something in you that will affect you for life.

When my sister gave up meat I remember making fun of her. When she was grumpy I said it was because she needed bratwurst! Now I feel ashamed of what I said, especially when I hear similarly ill-informed comments made by my family and even some of my friends.

Today I celebrate having been veggie for a year. This is largely thanks to Oly, who quit eating meat and fish as a rebellious teenager, and who finally helped me to do what I always wanted but didn’t know how.

So why have I chosen to quit eating meat and fish? You know why: for love!

Firstly, I love animals. I love the calm cows, the pink pigs, the fast chickens, the beautiful creatures who live in the Mekong and the sea. And I don’t kill things I love (or get someone else to kill them for me). And I try really hard not to cause pain to those I love and not causing pain is the biggest issue for me. Do those pig screams when they are slaughtered not make you feel something? We live in a Buddhist country, so we should be familiar with respect for animals, and I wish even more people would put such precious beliefs into practice (including the restaurant which just opened in front of my house, where they tether a young cow to a stake each morning, later to kill and roast him on a spit by the road – it breaks my heart every day).

Secondly, I love my life, and I feel far healthier as a veggie. As a health worker I am now very aware of the growing body of evidence connecting diet to health. Human beings don’t need to eat meat or fish. I am very happy to be avoiding meat, with its links to heart disease and cancers of the bowel and stomach. Interestingly, even the most recent issue of Medinews from MEDICAM Cambodia reported that meat and fish are linked to bowel disease. I am also pleased to have a lower risk of food poisoning and worms, improved digestion, and better breath! And I am delighted to be eating more healthy food, tasty tofu and nuts. I am now much more food-aware, and enjoy buying, sometimes cooking and eating delicious dishes. I live with a Cambodian family, and I’m thrilled to say that they started to cook and eat veggie food with me, with mouthwatering results!

Thirdly, I love the planet, and I am convinced that stopping meat-eating is the single most important thing most of us can do to reduce climate change. I understand that a veggie diet is hugely more energy efficient, a meaty one much more wasteful. I want my children to have children to have children to have children. If we don’t dramatically cut demand for meat we will destroy our future.

Over Christmas I was reading a moving and gripping book by Jonathan Safran Foer called Eating Animals. It is brilliantly written and full of great stories – but it is not fiction. If you are brave and honest enough to read it, it may well change your views and your life.

For example, do you think it is wrong to eat dogs? Foer explores this difficult issue, asking how it could be morally different from killing chickens or cows. He exposes the terrible cruelty which is inevitable in producing meat, but which most of us (me included) try to pretend doesn’t happen. And he concludes, like me, that for many many reasons the right thing to do is to go veggie.

Maybe I can compare giving up eating meat to giving up smoking. It is very hard at the beginning. The temptation to lapse back to the bad old habits, to give in to peer pressure. Sometimes people seemed almost scared to see me do the right thing in case it left them exposed. Often people want to find a reason to justify their habits, rather than having to change.

Here in Cambodia it’s actually quite easy to go veggie. There are good supplies of delicious fruit and veg, cereals and nuts, even in most rural areas. If you want to eat eggs they are everywhere, and you can often find milk or soya products like various tofu if you want.

And you won’t be alone! I have never met as many vegetarians as here in the VSO community in Cambodia. I love to go out to eat in lots of meat-free restaurants in Phnom Penh and Siem Riep. My friend from home also posts me trashy women’s mags and it’s reassuring to read that so many celebrities are role modeling by being veggie.

But as I say, I don’t want to preach, and I don’t have all the answers. For example, I love animals, most of all the gorgeous kittens I adopted. But cats, unlike us, can’t live happily without flesh. Yet if I feed them meat or fish, I will be part of killing another creature. It makes me sad and uncomfortable, but I don’t know what else I can do. This is an ongoing dilemma for me.

Fortunately, we humans don’t have that problem – we can choose what we do. And all of us make a choice, every day, even if we try to ignore it – either we eat meat, or we go veggie. For our love of other creatures, of ourselves, of our planet, it’s clear to me that I made the right choice. Why don’t you join me?

Sharing our roads - follow the Cambodians?

2011-04-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Khmer New Year! No ropey resolutions or blighting of Burns. In their place, bathing buddas and bolting back to your birthplace.

The water blessings I can handle - even if it's just ritual soaking of passers-by. The exodus from cities to the countryside may seem a more useful demonstration of devotion, but it is sadly also more of a problem.

Phnom Penh is the centre of the chaos as its residents return to their roots. And whilst new year is particularly bad, the chaos now just highlights underlying problems in the city's tenuous transport infrastructure.

Here’s the deal. You have a potentially beautiful city – maybe not the Paris of the east, but the riverfront view is reletively unimpeded, and narrow streets of pleasantly crumbing colonial mansions still lead to impressive tree-lined boulevards.

Then you ruin it by failing to provide any public transport. That’s right, nothing. Ot. No trains, trams or local busses here, or indeed in the entire country - can you imagine? This is not a uniquely impoverished place - in fact it is getting rapidly, visibly richer - yet can there be any capital city with such a poor travel networks? A few roads and no system, so unregulated traffic randomly clogs the streets of this potentially fine metropolis.

The problem is obvious – there is no planning, and no rules. In fact there is no law – or rather, it’s the law of the jungle, that most base, uncivilized of approaches, ‘might is right’.

To start at the bottom, Cambodians think you’re crazy if you choose to go by foot – walking is only for those too poor to travel any other way. Pedestrians have no rights, forced to choose between perilous roads, deathtrap gutters or car and moto-clogged sidewalks. Only tossers of the highest order park cars on pavements; sadly, Phnom Penh has multitudes of major culprits. Oh for some traffic wardens!

Cyclists fare little better. “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race” said H. G. Wells. There is some celebrating to be done here – the flat roads are perfect for cycling and there are still plenty around. But sadly the bike also remains a sign of poverty and weakness; there are no cycle lanes, no recognition of the economic or environmental magic of the bicycle. Even the wizened cyclo drivers seem downtrodden these days, though their size and solidity moves them slightly up the hierarchy.

Motos are traffic’s middle class - across Asia motorbikes are the transport of choice. Zipping around on efficient Honda Dream ‘plastic ponies’ makes a lot of sense. Swerving at speed, cutting corners, jumping lights, riding on the wrong side, or even on the pavement - less so. Doing so wearing just shorts and flipflops, your entire family, kitchen sink and farmyard on the back, all whilst texting with one hand and holding your helmet with the other - not sensible at all.

And then come the real bullies – cars, tankers, coaches, the bigger the better. Driving skills are minimal, as tests are not passed but ’bought’ for a $20 bribe. There’s pushing in, pulling out, everything from the discourteous to the downright dangerous. Depressingly, driving a Lexus has become the pinnacle of ambition. To our shame, rather than challenge this, international NGOs actively fuel the trade with fleets of four-by-fours. (Note: one organisation bucks the trend by providing a flotilla of rickety city bikes – good on you VSO!).

Pleasingly there is one exception to the might is right principle. At the very top of the power pyramid, undisputed kings of the roads surrounding the city, are… cows! I love it – they just amble across at their leisure and undaunted by even the meanest of motors. It’s a small but sweet victory.

In fact, now I’ve had my moment of road rage, I can sense a few more positives on Cambodia’s roads. Perhaps it’s not as chaotic as it initially seems. There may be no rules, but there are ‘conventions’ - it’s just that they are different, less rigid than other cities.

In particular, Cambodians’ easygoing, adaptable and gentle approach to life is very much reflected on their roads. Traffic generally flows at a sedate pace. The odd idiot drives fast, but even your average Lexus-lout takes it easy in town. There is little urgency in Cambodian life, and happily this is usually reflected in the driving.

And Cambodian adaptability translates into a fluidity of moment on the roads. Everyone keeps moving all the time, limiting opportunities to fume in gridlock. Even traffic lights are less stressful here, with a great countdown system so you know exactly when you’ll move - definitely a lesson for other cities.

The gentleness is also important – in traffic as in life people avoid conflict. This is also pragmatic: accidents are costly, more so if police are involved. Few have insurance, so you go out of your way to avoid crashes. (There are still plenty, but due to incompetence not inhumanity).

I was recently knocked off my bike in Phnom Penh by a moto cutting the corner on the wrong side of the road. We were both fine and there was only minor damage, so we just picked up, dusted down, and set off. What a welcome contrast to many western cities where pleasant people become angry monsters on ignition of car engines, and crashes lead to fury and stress, not to mention months of wrangling and paperwork.

In fact, now I’ve got the western road rage out of my system, maybe we could even make some Khmer new year's resolutions - not only to keep in touch with our familites more, but even to learn from the Cambodian approach to sharing our roads?

Crossing the Mekong

2011-04-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

The chocolaty Mekong oozes its way through Cambodia towards Phnom Penh, supporting riverside communities and picturesque boats. It is impressive, photogenic, even beautiful. But would you really want to bathe in it?

Daring VSO volunteers Katja, John and Adrian defied tradition, intuition (and medical wisdom) to successfully swim nearly a kilometre across the mighty, murky river.

Surprisingly, they weren’t alone in this questionable weekend pursuit. No less than 164 brave souls stripped off and plunged into the muddy depths as part of this year’s Mekong River Swim.

From the relative safety of the wobbly wooden Mekong Flower support boat, Ella and Oly were watching, wondering, and waving the VSO flag. Whatever nasties coated the swimmers, all that was on the spectators’ lips was one question: Why?

The event was too late to be an April fool. Hardy adventurers that they are, it seems the challenge of traversing one of the world’s great rivers was reason enough.

In fairness, the swim was also promoted by VolCom, as part of its ‘events’ role to bring together the volunteer community. Katja’s bright red VSO t-shirt also provided positive publicity, as well as a useful marker for the hovering rescue boats.

It was also a fun social event, mainly for the Phnom Penh ex-pat community, but with a sprinkling of local support too. And it was for a good cause – proceeds this year will help rebuild a school in Ofunato, Japan, destroyed by the recent tsunami. It is an interesting turn of events that funds are being raised in still-developing Cambodia to help one of the world’s richest countries. (There has been no confirmation of the rumour that next year proceeds will help Britain’s cash-strapped health service).

Happily all three brave volunteers made it across intact. Hopefully the chosen crossing point from Prek Leap Agricultural College was far enough upstream to avoid the worst of the city’s unregulated drainage – certainly at the time of writing their consumption of Mekong water has not been definitively linked with any subsequent hospitalizations.

Whilst the swimmers gagged and gurgled, conversation among the spectators turned to the future of the Mekong. It’s a challenge, as communities in no less than 5 countries depend on the river, as it flows from China, through Thailand and Laos into Cambodia, and finally out into the South China Sea from Vietnam.

Of particular concern are plans to build more dams upstream, which will change the river forever. Admittedly the developments could provide significant, lucrative and (crucially) clean and renewable hydro-electric power.

However, critics complain plans are being pushed through without consultation or assessment of the environmental impact. Ordinary river-dwellers are unlikely to see the benefits (reserved for government officials and foreign economies), yet will be greatly affected, being forced to change crop irrigation and their present fish-based diet.

Fortunately the organizers must be confident of the river’s future, in the short-term at least: the 16^th annual Mekong River Swim is scheduled for early April 2012. Fancy a swim?

Should I be happy?

2011-03-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

In my village…

Should I be happy that the kid with Down’s syndrome is not abused and joins other children’s games, even though these involve shouting waddisyouname at the village foreigner, who is now the most abused member of the village?

Should I be happy the music stopped, even though it just allows a clearer soundtrack of the howling hounds, crowing cockerels, pining pigs and hacking humans?

Should I be happy that “the worst national road in Cambodia” which links my village with the nearest town will be upgraded “in 2 years”, even though nobody can agree when the “2 years” starts (and it was “2 years” 2 years ago)?

Should I be happy to discover that the old tyre by the shack opposite is not rubbish but actually signifies it's a cycle repair shop, even though for the last year I’ve pushed my bike miles in the blazing heat to the only shop with a proper sign?

Should I be happy that I can leave my front door open without fear of thieves, even though it’s probably because I've nothing worth nicking?

Should I be happy that I have been accepted into the community, even if I know by being borderline assaulted by ‘friendly’ neck sniffing, hand-squeezing, ear-nibbling and buttock-fondling in a maelstrom of mandatory man-love?

In my hospital…

Should I be happy kids love the new playground we built by the children’s ward, even though I know by the volume of sweetie-wrappers strewn by the swings?

Should I be happy some staff came to the hospital this afternoon, even though they were so drunk they slept in the hammock whilst watching boxing on tv?

Should I be happy the toilets in the new children’s ward are so clean, even though it’s because they are always locked?

Should I be happy my nursing colleague Alison has a great new job in Phnom Penh, even though she’ll no longer be here in Thmar Puok to work with me?

Should I be happy contraception is clearly being used, even if the bins aren’t…?

Should I be happy villagers are combatting dengue fever, even if their efforts consist of building stuffed scarecrows to scare the evil sprits?

In my life...

Should I be happy the police agree I’ve been a model citizen for two years, even though to prove it I’ll have to break the anti-corruption law by bribing them for a certificate?

Should I be happy I have a gorgeous girlfriend right here in Cambodia, even though I only see her a couple of times a month as she lives more than a day’s journey away on the border with Laos?

Should I be happy I can now access the balance of my Travelex cash passport card on line, even though it shows me the thieving bastards are slyly deducting $4 a month from me for ‘inactivity’ in a country where they forgot to tell me none of the banks accept their crappy card?

Should I be happy I’ve got a sensible, secure, well-paid job back in the UK, even though I want to stay a crazy, footloose volunteer for ever?

In conclusion…

Should I be happy?

Nation, Religion, King

2011-03-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

Three words are emblazoned on the top of every official document, the defining words for Cambodia: Nation, Religion, King. How different from Britain!

Cambodians seem clear about their national identity. Sandwiched between the giants of Vietnam and Thailand (both with more people and land than the UK), and overshadowed by the might of China, Cambodia appears small, poor and under-populated. But the Khmers have a long and proud history, and won’t let anyone forget it!

Yet healthy national identity can spill into ugly nationalism. Pol Pot established the khmer rouge in Vietnam, but then demonized and murdered anyone linked to that country. Vietnam then ‘liberated’ Cambodia, but many feel outstayed their welcome during the 1980s. Many ethnic Khmers live in the Mekong delta, even though it has been Vietnamese for years, and border disputes drove the main opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, into exile in France. Similarly, trade with Thailand is crucial, prices in my village are quoted in baat, and many poor Cambodians cross the border to work. Most of my neighbours lived in Thai refugee camps, and retain close links. And yet, with elections looming, Cambodian troops are facing off with Thai soldiers not far from my village.

For Brits, nation is a particularly challenging concept, as many of us can’t decide where we’re from. Glancing at my passport I see a European Union standard, which later blurts ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. Is that British? Here in Cambodia I can’t say I’m British – I don’t think the word even exists in Khmer. I’m generally referred to as a barraing, which actually means French. I spent nearly all my adult life in Scotland. But I say I’m English – it’s easier in Khmer, probably more accurate, and occasionally draws comparisons with David Beckham, for which I’d happily sell both my soul and my visa.

Perhaps our confused nationality makes us suspicious of nationalism. Wrap yourself in the union jack and you’re clearly a fascist nutcase. It’s hard for me to accept that other countries have a normal, healthy relationship with their flag. In Cambodia there is bunting everywhere, proudly boasting the state symbol, the world’s largest religious monument: Angkor Wat. (Do you know any other country with any building, particularly a religious monument, on its national flag?).

And so to Religion which, like nation, holds a key place in Cambodian identity. Nearly everyone here calls themselves buddhist. There are a few muslims, despite the genocidal attempts of the Khmer Rouge, and a small number of christian converts overseeing a scattering of empty wooden churches.

Buddhism here seems to be more of a loose framework than an active belief system. Co-operation and non-violence provide a basic ethical framework, but it’s kind of flexible. The sanctity of life, for example, is a key cornerstone of buddhism. So how does that fit with the unimaginable killing and cruelty which Cambodians inflicted on fellow countrymen here within our lifetime? Even now soldiers are easily sacrificed in a petty border scuffle (ironically over a buddhist temple), and Cambodia’s unregulated roads and inadequate hospitals produce daily carnage - not to mention a convenient blind eye to the fact that buddhists are not meant to kill animals. Perhaps life is cheap in all poor countries?

But whilst religion as a moral guide is loosely interpreted here, it does play an important role in defining holidays, celebrating rites of passage, educating some young boys and providing a form of social safety net. Yet can it really be the best use of scarce resources to build sparkling temples and feed chanting monks, even whilst ordinary folk live in wooden shacks and barely afford rice?

For British people there is again an interesting comparison. Christianity in my home country is similarly light-touch, celebrated more in the breach than the observance. No surprise that the 2011 Social Attitudes Survey confirmed that for the first time a majority (51%) of Britons are not religious. We still have Sundays off, not for church but because we all need a day of rest. We celebrate the birth of Santa at Christmas and pray for chocolate at Easter. The Queen is head of the established Church of England, Defender of the Faith.

And so to monarchy, the third of the trinity. Vietnam, Laos and China to the east and north, ditched their hereditary emperors years ago, but Cambodia is still officially a monarchy. Thankfully the approach is very different to Thailand to the west, which has one of the last remaining god-kings and where lèse-majesté laws promise long bookings in the Bangkok Hilton.

Here in Cambodia the royal family have clung on despite their chequered history, including striking a deal with the Khmer Rouge whilst thousands of subjects died in the killing fields. They have settled into a relatively harmless, ceremonial role: the King pops out from his pretty palace now and then to sign off laws, whilst strongman prime minister Hun Sen wields all the power.

It’s a nice, rather British compromise. It hard to justify a system where ordinary people can’t be elected as head of their state, but does it matter? The British monarch, like her Cambodian cousin, has no real power, and the royals are slowly withering, despite the popularity of Will and Kate’s wedding day off.

Nation, Religion, King – would it be out of place at the top of an official UK document? We'd take it with a pinch of salt and a sprinkling of healthy scepticism. In Cambodia too the concepts are nicely diluted, strong beer but with plenty of ice. How else would I feel so comfortable here - despite being an internationalist, atheist, republican?

A Life In The Day

2011-03-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

06.00 Most people hate being woken by their alarm, but I love it – it’s proof of an unusually good sleep. More often I’ve already been awake a hour or so, thanks to crowing cocks, howling hounds, chugging tractors or percussive pagodas.

06.15 The bread man motos past my house announcing his delicious fresh baguettes. Always when I’m in the shower.

06.30 Breakfast on my balcony as the sun rises. It doesn’t get much better than this. It’s cool, and I have a grandstand view as the village comes to life. Women cycle their goods to market, immaculately-uniformed kids drift to school, monks glide along in line to beg for food.

07.15 I must have the best commute in the world. The village wise-man opposite breaks from telling fortunes or chalking Sanskrit on his wooden walls, to greet me with a friendly ''good morning doctor!". I’ve given up trying to correct him, but one day my cover may be blown. Then it’s an idyllic stroll past stilted houses and over the temple island, admiring the lilies as they come to life in the gentle sunshine.

07.30 My volunteer assistant Sokpha will already be at the hospital. It feels early, but he has already chopped wood, taught English, eaten rice and got all the latest news before I even arrive.

08.00 Hospital meeting. The timing is approximate. I now know the starting time is when the Director arrives. But I’ve no idea when this will be – other staff just seem to sense it. At the meeting, daily figures are mumbled and flip-flops examined. Staff are bereted for not being at work, not accounting for drugs, not caring for the politician’s daughter. And I find out exactly how much of my ‘personal’ life has been observed and commented on – invariably all of it.

09.00 Ward rounds. I like to speak to staff and patients, and observe what is going on in the hospital. I was delighted to hear patients and carers value my input – though I suspect they are reassured as much by my presence as a white man as for my knowledge of hospital management techniques.

10.00 Office. If we have electricity we’re in business. If we also have an internet connection we prioritise Facebook, er I mean important work emails. Actually the first thing to check these days is an update on the skirmishes between Thai and Cambodian soldiers – the border is only 15kms away.

11.00. Before I know it Sokpha is off to eat rice, and I’ll follow shortly. Everything stops at 11.00 – you wouldn’t stand between a bear and its cub, and don’t even think of asking a Cambodian to work at rice-eating time.

11.30. Stroll home over temple island, and straight to the market for the day’s Khmer practice and hopefully purchases of pumpkin, onions, carrots and leafy greens. Plus, at this time of year heaps of ripe mangos – bliss!

12.15 Quick cooling shower, then I cook my favourite lunch – noodles with the veg I bought, plus cashews and a dash of enlivening chili. Followed by a nice cuppa tea and a biscuit, and maybe even a little snooze in my hammock – everyone should do this after lunch, everyone!

13.15 Wake and quickly prepare for the afternoon. Chat with landlord / cleaning lady / passing dog about the rice harvest / where I’m going / why I’m still not married.

14.00 Meet back at the hospital, and hope some staff appear. There may be meetings to attend, visitors to greet, staff to be encouraged. Or if it’s a quieter day I can sneak to the office to make phone calls, write documents or catch up on emails. Present projects include improving quality in the paediatric and obstetric wards following the hospital assessment, focusing on infection control, overseeing the building of the new surgical unit, and trying to establish a hospital vegetable garden as a sustainable way of improving patient nutrition.

16.00 If I need to speak to anyone in the late afternoon they won’t be mopping patient brows, but may still be on the ward (as that’s where the tvs are - bought to allow the playing of health education DVDs - aye right!). More likely staff will be practicing communication skills under the tamarind tree. Or role-modeling healthy active lifestyles on the volleyball court.

17.00 The day is ending already and Sokpha is away to his family. Unless I’ve been persuaded to play football or it’s the day of my Khmer lesson, I’ll stay a little later. However, either the electricity or any internet cuts by 6pm. This is good, as it’s getting late, and a lone foreigner after dark is fair game for the village hounds. It’s time to go home.

18.30 Another cooling shower, then cooking. Present favourites are pumpkin curry in coconut, with brown rice and a squeeze of lime; or corn fritters, with cucumber and either rice or couscous – chennang nah! (=mmmm!).

20.00 Therapy. I’ll want to speak to Katja, so far away in Stung Treng, which depending on the day’s events may be a quick chat or a lengthy session. And if my colleague Alison isn’t on one of her visits up here then we may compare notes by phone – did we share any skills / change any lives today? She is a master at reminding me that this is a marathon not a sprint, and that even small steps should be celebrated.

21.00 All the athletics metaphors remind me I need an early night if I’m going to run the next morning. I may sneak in a little reading or DVD from the wonderful library at VSO's Programme Office – there’s not much of a village social life, so these are a life saver! And I have been known to write the odd thing too…

22.00 Good night! I crawl in under my mozzie net, snuggle with Gwendaline the (stuffed) Gecko, and pray that the thumping wedding music will soon subside…

Where did the day go?

In praise of… the BBC

2011-03-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

Britain once led the world (albeit by raping and pillaging jonny foreigner), but things have changed. Our only empire now is a virtual, media one. Brittainia now rules, at best, the airwaves.

These days the only place the sun never sets is the Beckham’s Los Angeles villa. Fortunately, Britain’s place in the world still goes beyond a couple of beautiful if slightly aging entertainers. One grand old institution of which the country should be rightly proud is the British Broadcasting Corporation - the brilliant, believeable, consistent BBC.

When I arrived in my rural Cambodian village I knew there would be no newspapers, television or internet café. Unphased, I banked on hearing the incomparable World Service on my neat Roberts radio, purchased specifically for the task.

I was disappointed - in my remote (and clearly strategically unimportant) village, getting even the faintest reception involves holding the ariel in a style and with a stillness only a meditating monk could sustain.

This was a blow: in a previous placement the World Service was a trusty companion, and I crave my daily news fix. I may even have tuned in to Test Match Special to witness the rare moment of England retaining the Ashes (though I gather the crucial winning moments were interrupted for that most British of broadcasts, The Shipping Forecast!).

I confess I even tried tuning to Voice of America, and was secretly relieved I couldn’t get that either.

Fortunately the BBC is not just on radios anymore! Whenever I get to an internet connection, my priority is to download radio podcasts. There are telly ones too, but strangely they haven't sorted the licensing for overseas access. This is my only criticism of the beeb - in such hard economic times, surely this is a colossal missed revenue stream.

But this must not detract from the podcasts - what an absolute joy! The quality of these programmes is unsurpassed, and (rightly or wrongly, and in a very un-English way) make me just a little proud to be British.

My menu starts with highlights from the Today programme, which I trust to deliver stories accurately, prioritise news sensibly, and rough-up politicians enjoyably. Kirsty Young’s dulcet tones alone attract me to Desert Island Discs, but I also love the choice of music, the range of interviewees, and the fascinating insights she uncovers. Perhaps I also feel a kinship with the guests, castaway as I am in this small remote village. Thinking Aloud you may not know – it’s new to me, themed around recent research, and even convinced me there may be a use for academics after all.

But the jewel in the crown is From Our Own Correspondent. What an absolute gem! Usually news journalists, here BBC correspondents across the world are allowed more time - about 3 minutes rather than the usual sub-minute news item. They also enjoy greater range, talking about anything, not just news - some of the most engaging pieces are simple insights into life in other countries. Crucially, personal perspectives are positively encouraged, and many are deeply moving. Journalists have a bad name, so I urge you to witness that the BBC’s foreign correspondents are highly talented writers and broadcasters.

Perhaps the greatest compliment is that when disaster struck - in this case, when I first heard rumours of a tragic bridge stampede in Phnom Penh - my instinct was to turn to the BBC. Interestingly this was on the web, probably the main media for news now, and http://www.bbc.co.uk/ is great. Basically, I trusted them more than anyone to tell me what was going on. Some regard the BBC as a state-controlled mouthpiece, but I believe they have as much integrity and objectivity as any broadcaster, and I always go to them first.

I accept that Britain left various legacies throughout the world, not always positive. But one thing for which we can continue to be extremely proud is the incomparable BBC.

The Beautiful Game?

2011-03-02T23:03:00.000-08:00

How many countries can you name where football is not the national sport?

Ok, this is the best I could come up with. In the Caribbean and Indian subcontinent cricket may shade it. Canadians and some easten Europeans do handbags at (ice) hockey. Aussies and Americans have odd-shaped balls.

(A friendly note to our errant Atlantic cousins – proper games like sorker don’t require body armour, don’t score in the hundreds, and don’t flatter themselves with a ‘World Series’ when no-one else plays it).

And that’s about it - did I miss anyone? So throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and Central and South America football reigns supreme.

But hang on! Sadly there is one more place which seems to have escaped from the universal appreciation of the beautiful game. And, just my luck, it’s right here, in wonderful, perplexing, unfathomable Cambodia.

In almost every way I love Cambodia. The people are amazing (especially considering what they’ve had to go through recently), the countryside is often stunning, the temples unrivalled. But for some reason this is one of the very few places I’ve been where football is yet to take off. The one thing I miss more than anything here is a decent game of five-a-side of a Sunday evening, followed by world-righting with the lads over a cool pint of Star.

It doesn’t help that our Asian neighbours are mad about footy. The Chinese go bonkers for the Premiership. The Thais and Vietnamese can’t get enough of it, not only for gambling. The Japanese and Koreans also caught the bug after their 2002 World Cup.

So why not Cambodia?

One reason might be - I hardly dare to say it - that ‘it’s only a game’. Perhaps the average Khmer has had more important things to ponder than one-twos and sliding tackles? But actually Cambodians love to play - it’s just that, inexplicably, volleyball, kick-boxing, cockfighting and flip-flop pétanque all seem to be more appreciated than the beautiful game.

Another reason might be the facilities. Football is the only true world sport partly as it is so simple and intuitive - all you need is a round thing and you’re off. But actually you do need something else: a flat piece of land. Surely no problem in Cambodia, the Holland of the east? Well it is actually – the clay soil here dries in uneven clumps and it’s actually very hard to find a properly level bit of ground. Not such an issue for volleyball, fighting cocks etc.

But finally, after over a year here, I’ve found a few guys who like a kick-around after work. Not that they make it easy…

The first test is to know when there’s a game on – and where. The fixture list is efficiently communicated by bush telegraph. In other words everyone else knows, but I don’t have a clue where or when, and it’s just chance if I either spot a game or someone calls me.

Then there’s the pitch. The school fields are particularly awful – if you fall you roll in piles of litter, remains of old foundations bash your toes, deep and sudden dips threaten your ankles, and if you’re not careful you’ll hit your head - there are several trees in the middle of the pitch. Plus, come rainy season a sub takes on a whole different meaning. The front yard of the governor’s building is slightly better, though if you sky your shot the ball hits the pond – and I’ve a nasty feeling it is a Khmer Rouge mass grave. See what I mean about having more important things to deal with?

Another challenge is the playing style. It can be seriously frustrating, as once players get the ball they look to dribble not pass, like we did as kids - to be harsh, it’s greedy and undisciplined. And rather than the delicate balance of fair play and controlled aggression I’m used to, here I get a free-for-all accompanied by whoops and girly squeals. Don’t try that in Glasgow. On the good side these guys are agile, skillful and manage to run about for hours in the ridiculous heat. And it took me a while to notice they usually play barefoot - respect.

And there are still moments of magic. The wonderful thing about football is that at its best it transcends all cultures. The young lad with Ronaldo felt-tipped onto his plain white t-shirt is pretty handy, and when we exchange a one-two and he squares back for me to slot home it’s like old times – we don’t need to be able to speak each others’ languages, we’ve let the ball do the talking.

Perhaps even here, in this strange land so far from home, football is the beautiful game.

A man for all seasons?

2011-02-20T22:10:00.000-08:00

During a stay in Tokyo I was proudly informed by my hosts that Japan is the only country with four proper, well-defined seasons.

I was skeptical, but every country I’ve been to since has seemed a little confused about its seasonal distinctions. Cambodia is a good example - can someone please tell me what season I’m meant to be in just now?

It’s certainly not rainy anymore - autumn was never exactly mists and mellow fruitfulness here, and the rains ended late last year leaving the worst flooding in living memory with their final throw. You wouldn’t know it now, with our once overflowing lake now withering rapidly in the heat. So I guess that makes it dry season? But it’ll be dry for the next 6 months, so that’s not much use as a definition. Our Khmer teacher Dara called it windy season, and the afternoon breeze is certainly a welcome change.

My vote is for dusty season - as opposed to the muddy season before. My local newspaper, fascinated that there may be life beyond northern England, asked me what was on my CD player (vinyl is being slowly phased out in Oldham). ‘A thick layer of red dust’ I answered bitterly. It now seems perfectly normal to tenderly tuck a sheet over my beloved computer in the evening to protect if from clogging with dirt. This is opposed to the impending hot season, when in temperatures of over 40 degrees many computers just stop working unless you get them their own special fan.

My Cambodian friends just call this Winter. Certainly not the snowy wonderlands I long for, but it’s logical. (Which hemisphere do you think Cambodia is in? We sure get tropical heat, but we’re actually well north of the equator here). Until a few weeks ago discontented hospital patients took to sporting socks, gloves, even balaclavas. Staff wore thick Parka jackets over their uniforms as temperatures plummeted below 30. Even I took to sleeping under a thin sheet.

Traditionally, the end of the rains also heralds the dreaded wedding season. Here this translates as open season for the excruciating noise, excessive drinking and revolting food which bring such joy to happy couples here. I though I'd escaped lightly this time, but I hadn’t reckoned on Chinese New Year - every morning the tormenting loudspeakers woke me at 4am for special sino-torture including kung-fu movies, fire-crackers and plinky-plonk ‘music’ (it sure wasn’t Vivaldi). After a couple of hours, when thoroughly past any chance of sleep, it promptly stopped - just when I had to get up.

To everything there is a season, and sadly now seems to be a time for war on the Thai-Cambodian border. I live just 15km from Thailand, and there’s plenty of cross-border commerce. Every so often shots are traded too, usually further east near the disputed temple at Preah Vihear. It’s probably just an annual show to keep nationalist voters happy, and no doubt the generals will smooth it out over a rice wine or two. But I confess to being a little disconcerted at reports of tanks trundling through my nearest town. And I wouldn’t like to try explaining the logic of seasonal scuffles to the wife of the Cambodian solider or dependents of the Thai villager who were both shot dead the other night.

Happily, life continues as normal in my village. Now the rains have gone, it also seems to be building season. Tents have sprung up outside many homes as families renovate (read knock down and rebuild) their homes. And I’m delighted to say that this is also the case at the hospital - our new surgical ward is taking shape at blistering speed, so much so that we might not have any staff trained in time for its opening!

Of course the real test comes in the next month or so, when it gets even hotter. I’m sure I’ll find a few choice adjectives to describe that season - temperatures are already pushing into the 40s and high humidity will mean I’ll do little else but try to keep cool. Let’s see how I get on - only time will tell if I can really claim to be a man for all seasons.

Infection Control Drive!

2011-02-15T17:00:00.001-08:00

Just why are we doing this again?

A perfectly normal question once you’re past the initial, enthusiastic stage of any project.

On this occasion I was talking to myself – muttering probably – though I did aim the question later at both my colleague Alison and my long-suffering meant-to-be-on-holiday parents.

We were helping to clean the wards at Thmar Puok hospital, part of our infection control drive.

So the answer’s clear, right? I mean, you don’t really need to ask why you’d want to control infections. It’s blindingly obvious - nobody wants to be contaminated, least of all weaker, more vulnerable people in hospital - so limiting bugs is what us managerial bullshit speakers term a no-brainer, no?

Well yes… but somehow out here it’s not as simple as that. The staff claimed to know all about the importance of infection control and how to do it. In fact, when we tried to do a quick refresher on the basics, eyes were rolled and we were grumblingly accused of ‘trying to teach crocodiles to swim’ (Cambodia grandmas don’t go in for egg-sucking).

Yet even a cursory tour of the wards showed a yawning chasm between theory and practice. Dirty doesn’t get near. I tour the wards every day, and was ashamed I’d put up with the filth for so long. Shit stuck to beds was probably the worst, but other lowlights included needles tossed aside, decomposing food stuffed into note trays and decades worth of accumulated grime, blood and worse under every bed, behind every cupboard and inside every drawer.

So however self-evident the need, the wards hadn’t had a proper clean for ages. So why were we doing this… now?

One answer is that we, the outside volunteers who like ‘nice clean western wards’, had asked to (albeit a rather insistent, toddler-after-a-lollipop request) – and our hosts were too polite to refuse. In fairness we planned the event together with the hospital’s head nurse, and timed it for the dry, quiet run up to Khmer new year, which also happens to be a traditional time for ‘spring cleaning’.

But we did have another, stronger reason – the Ministry of Health had laid down numerous standards, including levels of cleanliness, and were coming to assess how we matched up. The following week.

Somehow bigwigs from the capital focused minds in a way that even the whiff of festering wards hadn’t. And so we were permitted to start a clean of the whole hospital that morning, starting with the Medicine ward.

Breakfast was a nervous affair. What’s the worst that could happen? asked Alison. Well, for a start they’ll find some reason why today isn’t a good day to clean, and it’ll likely go downhill from there, I replied. I’m not really a morning person.

The doctor in charge of Medicine greeted us warmly. Just one thing - today’s not really a great day to clean because… So far, so predictable. I wasn’t in a mood for negotiating, and risked a bullish approach of ‘We’ve got to do it now. And your boss agrees’. He gave way with remarkable good grace. Maybe he knew what was under the dressing trolley.

So we started dragging beds outside, which had an amazing effect - suddenly the huddled nurses were all too happy to carry them outside. And then the main toy came out: the hose! Never has so much fun been had outside of a karaoke bar - the boys were positively wrestling it out of each others hands.

To our shame we rather forgot the patients in all this. Admittedly those who could walk had seen the inevitable and retreated to the relative safety of the cooking area. But two poor souls remained: a man bent double with abdominal pain, and a wafer-thin lady in the terminal stages of AIDS-related illness. The doctor wisely transferred the man, and it fell to Alison, my visiting mum, me and a passing relative to carry her to safety, each holding a corner of her wicker mat - the nurses were still having far too much fun with the hosepipe!

But in fairness the staff - particularly the cleaners - were doing a great job at scrubbing the floors, walls and even ceiling. Strangely though, there was much less enthusiasm for cleaning beds. And when I asked them to help me to paint, they point-blank refused. To this day I don’t know why: there must be something in the hierarchy which makes it ok to brush floors, but beyond the pale to brush paint. Some things I guess I’ll just never understand. Fortunately a placatory call to the hospital director broke the deadlock, with an agreement to pay a labourer to paint beds if we cleaned them and provided paint. Good deal!

In fact the painting was key. Some volunteers back away from helping to decorate their hospitals, feeling that it literally ‘paints over the cracks’ and gives a false impression of cleanliness which leads to apathy. I take the point, but disagree. In practical terms dirt shows up much more easily on white walls, and is easier to clean from freshly sanded and painted surfaces. And boy does a row of beautifully painted beds lift a place! The Medical ward in particular was completely transformed - to my eyes at least, by the end of the day it really looked quite beautiful.

A week later, the men from the ministry are in full swing, and the hospital is looking spick and span. One of my favourite moments of my whole year here happened this morning. The once recalcitrant medicine doctor skipped past announcing that he was on the way to collect some health education posters to decorate his newly cleaned walls. Wow!

Sustainability, of course, is the goal, and it remains to be seen whether the staff actively keep their wards clean, or passively allow the dust, dirt and other unmentionables to return. I’m an optimist, and really believe that now we have helped them see things can be better, they will improve even further.

That’s why we were doing it.

Pumpkins, Pagodas and Politics

2011-02-07T21:02:00.000-08:00

“Pumpkin custard is off the menu”, the waiter at the smart restaurant in Siem Reap whispered confidentially. I settled for a trio of crèmes brulees - lime, ginger and lemongrass.

The Cambodia we experienced in two weeks in January was perhaps a trio of flavours - everyday life in the village, the highlife of towns and temples, and in the background the politics of a country so recently embroiled in catastrophic conflict.

Thmor Pouk is a large village with markets, schools, government offices, a hospital, health centre and pagoda. We had a dusty journey from the nearest town, Sisophon, an hour away on the main road (no tarmac yet).

Oly’s house is on the first floor of a traditional Khmer house, a little posher than most as his landlord is a village chief. The main feature is a tiled balcony, overlooking the street, from which we liked to watch Cambodian life pass by - children in their uniforms; women going to market; lorries collecting rice straw; numerous bicycles and scooters; and two stroke tractors, the universal utility vehicle of the countryside.

We went to the market where Oly buys his vegetables and fruit – pumpkin and little bananas are his favourite. He is the only barraing (foreigner) in the village, and has learned to speak good Khmer, especially for bargaining in the market and with tuk-tuk drivers in towns.

The village is dusty at this time of year, and smoky from cooking stoves, burning rubbish, and making charcoal - we saw many people wearing face masks. The rice paddies were brown and dry during our stay, but we did see green fields elsewhere in the country where irrigation was in place, and there are many banana and coconut palm trees in the village, so it is not short of greenery.

Cambodia is also noisy, and thankfully we were warned to bring ear plugs! Loud music woke us in the early morning, and there was karaoke in the evening, followed by dogs during the night and cocks the next morning! But we slept ok under our mosquito nets, which protected us from malaria – though dengue fever is more feared here, so we sprayed ourselves liberally with Modiguard during the day.

Although Oly is in a remote area he makes full use of modern communication - mobile phones are ubiquitous in Cambodia, as they are in most developing countries nowadays – and he even plans to bring the internet to his village, just as soon as he gets his dongle to work!

The hospital is a collection of single storey buildings with plenty of space. We saw the new children’s ward, financed by the US army, and a surgical ward being built. Oly and Alison, his nurse advisor colleague, were having an infection control drive during our stay, and we helped clean some rusty iron beds from the medical ward, which were then painted whilst the ward itself was washed down. We saw the new playground and flagpole, familiar to us from his YouTube videos! The site of the new vegetable garden looks fertile enough – getting it going will be another challenge!

Thmar Puok is in the north west of the country very near to Thailand. There were border problems while we were there, and Oly’s trip to the temple at Preah Vihear on the back of Sokpha’s moto had to be postponed. Sokpha, his Volunteer Assistant, is a charming man with three children, aged 40 he told us, so he was a boy during the Khmer Rouge years (1975-1979). Many died in the north west and there are several mass graves in the village. The area was also heavily mined during the 1980s by both the retreating Khmer Rouge and the advancing Vietnamese, and land mine removal is still ongoing.

The other aspect of rural life in Cambodia revolves around the water, and later in our stay we did an eight hour river trip from Battambang to Siem Reap, though villages dependent on the water. First there were houses on stilts backing on to the river, very low at this time of year. Families had their boats moored below and clambered up the steep banks on ladders. Diesel pumps brought water up long pipes to the houses. Other families lived on houseboats moored on the river. Later we passed a floating village where houses and shops floated on pontoons. Some of the fishing was large scale with big nets on a cantilever construction of long bamboo poles. The children were very adept at life on the river, balancing their boats with ease and sculling them standing up.

The river led into the Tonle Sap lake – really a vast inland sea - and we had a clear run across open water to Siem Reap. The natural environment of the region is very precious and we saw many birds, including pied kingfishers, bee eaters, swallows, egrets, herons, terns, cormorants and a pelican. The river was overgrown with water hyacinth in places – but it is a useful plant and is harvested by the river dwellers.

The temples of Angkor are unmissable in a visit to Cambodia and we spent our first three days in Siem Reap walking round a few of these enormous and impressive structures, built between the years 800 to 1400.

We found it difficult to conceive of the skill and artistry that went into these carvings – made in situ and carved once the walls had been constructed. It was like a combination of building the pyramids followed by multiple unknown Michelangelos carving these intricate and lively scenes of battle and everyday life.

The setting for Ta Prohm was spectacular with the much photographed trees that have taken over some of the buildings – Oly treated us to a viewing of Tomb Raider one evening! Particularly special were our visits to Banteay Chhmar, another hour or so along the dirt road from Thmar Puok, where the temple is right in the jungle; and to the delicate carvings of Banteay Srei, and the carved riverbed at Kbal Spean.

We could get as close as we liked and in some of the temples we just scrambled over fallen blocks at will to see the carvings. The Apsara dancers are perhaps the best known carvings, and we were able to see a live performance of this traditional art Siem Reap. There we also visited the National Museum, a fine, modern collection that really helped to explain the temples, religions, and early Khmer history.

You have to work out the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism to understand the history - the kings who built the temples switched between these religions and in some ways merged them, and became god-kings themselves. The temples are religious buildings, but the wonderful bas-reliefs commemorate earthly struggles as well as the gods.

Buddhism remains the official religion in Cambodia. Every community has its pagoda and orange clad monks are a frequent sight. Young men are expected to spend time as monks. They are greatly respected and rely for their food on the community. Many households have a spirit house in their compound, surrounded with flowers. Chanting from local wats is another early morning sound we heard.

Whilst in Siem Reap we also gained some insight into Cambodia healthcare, with visits to Swiss cellist Dr Beat Richner’s fundraising concert for the Kantha Bopha hospitals, and the Japanese funded Angkor Children’s Hospital - and we enjoyed discussing how they fit (or don't) with the government healthcare system.

We also had two full days in Phnon Penh, enjoying the luxury of the Pavilion’s swimming pool and the tour-guiding skills of Katja. We enjoyed visiting the Royal Palace and the National Museum, an impressive 1920s terracotta building with a fine collection of Angkorian sculpture.

We saw the Mekong for the first time, sharing a sundown drink overlooking the river with Oly’s colleague Jerker, a Swedish professor of obstetrics. He is guardedly optimistic about the future of maternal and child health in Cambodia, the area that VSO volunteers in Cambodia focus on. We also met his wife Vathiny, a Cambodian doctor whose story is told in Red Lights and Green Lizards, an absorbing account of VSO health work in Cambodia in the early 1990s.

The next day Katja arranged for us to have four cyclos all day, one each, and we had a wonderful time being pedalled through the busy streets of Phnom Penh. But this sunny day included the darkest moment of our Cambodian visit when we went to Tuol Sleng museum, a former school was used by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1978 as a ‘security prison’, where thousands were detained and tortured before being taken to the Cheong Ek Killing Fields to be brutally killed. The ranks of photographs of the prisoners, the cells in which they were held, and the instruments of torture are all there.

We read some English language newspapers in Phnom Penh which we thought were well written – some news from international sources – and were very informative about the ongoing War Crimes trials in Cambodia. One trial has been concluded so far. It is a lengthy but, we think, necessary process, and has taken over 30 years to bear fruit. A form of truth and reconciliation process is also needed, and we saw an engrossing film called Enemies of the People, made by a courageous Cambodian journalist, Thet Sambath, whose objective is just that - to tell people through real interviews exactly what happened. He was at the showing of the film at the German Cultural Institute, and answered questions, saying he is making a further film in which he would try to explain why these things happened. We found it difficult to match this recent history with the friendly and smiling Cambodian people we met during our visit.

But Cambodia has to move forward and still has political problems of corruption and nepotism – though this is not unique in the modern world. And it is very dependent on outside aid through NGOs and international organisations – we observed the imposing headquarters of the World Bank on Norodom Boulevard (interestingly just round the corner from the North Korean embassy).

So many memories as we said good bye to Oly and Katja at Siem Reap airport. It is a small, charming airport where you still walk out on the tarmac to catch your flight, and where the young man in Monument Books wished me a Happy Chinese New Year with a broad Cambodian smile, as he sold me my western ‘catch up’ newspapers - and a copy of the Phnom Penh Post.

They lift you up your mum and dad

2011-02-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

“We don’t get to choose our parents, but some of us do get extraordinarily lucky. I’m one of them”.

So says Dr Andrew Thomson at the end of his popular book subtitled ‘True Stories From A Warzone’, which starts in Cambodia and accompanied me in the last two weeks on my travels across the country with my own parents. I share his good fortune.

My mum and dad’s stay was great for all the best reasons. Any visit to my remote posting is special and uplifting, but with mum and dad we could also catch up on local and family gossip, agree that little changes back home, and enjoy tales of rotten weather and depressing government (or is it the other way round?).

It was a big moment too for Katja – ‘meet the parents time’! Strange that the girl who is so much part of my life had not yet met my family. Unless these days meeting by Skype counts, in which case they were already old friends. Either way I soon couldn’t get a word in edgeways, which I guess is a good sign?

It was also lovely to have time as a tourist in this wonderful country. My parents were incredibly generous in paying for hotels and restaurants way beyond my modest volunteer’s allowance, where I could gorge on bread and butter to my heart’s discontent. I’m very lucky that the bank of mum and dad stays open well into my thirties!

But their visit showed me I owe them much more than this.

For one, after over a year here it was great to once again see Cambodia through fresh eyes. The beautiful landscape (albeit browning rapidly), the smiling children, even just the peaceful simplicity of daily village life were all brought back to me afresh in their company.

Of course the temples of Angkor were unmissable, and mum and dad’s enthusiasm gave me a renewed interest in the ancient Khmer civilization. Their sedate pace helped me appreciate masterpieces such as Bayon’s ornate bas-relief carvings of daily life. They also persuaded me to visit Siem Reap’s national museum, a showy building with wordy captions, but redeemed by galleries such as the 1,000 buddhas which are simply breathtaking. Lucky mum and dad ignored the guidebook’s sniffy review or I’d never have gone.

I also learned a great deal from them about Cambodia’s more recent, less glorious history. We had enlightening debates about the impact of the American-Vietnamese war, the Khmer Rouge and the civil war (not the same thing, I now realise), the UN-backed elections of 1993, and how we arrived at today’s Hun Sen era.

Maybe parents never stop educating you? Another wealth of knowledge shared was about the natural environment. I love the beautiful flowers in the lakes, but thought they were lotus not lillies, and hadn't noticed how they open in the morning but close when it’s hot. I enjoy birdsong, but never really knew minors from sparrows, kingfishers from egrets. And do you know the difference between a moth and a butterfly?

But perhaps the biggest impact of their stay was in my little village of Thmar Puok. My friends and colleagues were fascinated that the respected elderly white visitors had made it to such a remote spot. My landlord even polished his trophy car and proudly drove us to the local temple – now that doesn’t happen every day!

Sadly I didn’t fully shake my workaholic tendencies, sneaking off to early morning hospital meetings whilst the oldies caught up on sleep. My colleague Alison and I were struggling to drum up enthusiasm for our infection control drive, and the poor parents had to put up with us complaining bitterly about the lack of progress on the first morning.

So what did they do? Rather than taking a well-earned rest, they came to the medicine ward in the afternoon and helped get things going. I was so proud of my mum and dad – 68 and 70, but still rolling up their sleeves in the heat of a foreign land, on their holiday no less, to help people less fortunate than themselves.

Happily, the next day staff jumped to the task of cleaning obstetrics, this time needing no encouragement or direction from us. I congratulated myself on having successfully shared skills in a sustainable way, the holy grail of volunteers. Only later did a colleague sheepishly admit that it wasn’t me so much as the sight of the elderly barraings scrubbing unmentionables off beds which shamed the staff into action. Good on you mum and dad!

This reminded me of yet another debt I owe my parents - in so many ways I wouldn’t be here without them. I like to think my wandering tendencies come from being conceived in Dar Es Sallam on the way home from their own development work in Zambia. Unless my gestation period was nearly a year it was more likely a council estate in Oldham, but I’m sticking with the more romantic, less likely version.

And many of the characteristics they have passed to me - idealism, adventurousness, independence, even stubbornness - have stood me in good stead for my life as a volunteer. Given these gifts, perhaps it’s churlish to complain that they also passed me my big nose, hairy back and bald head…

So thank you mum and dad – for your visit, for showing me how extraordinarily lucky I am, and for reminding me why I love you so much.

Will more private healthcare help the poor?

2011-02-02T02:22:00.000-08:00

VSO is great. It aims to make life better for the poorest people in the world. And an important part of a better life has to be better health.

I was proud to work for the UK’s National Health Service. Its founding principle was healthcare free at the point of use. Access to care depends only on clinical need, not on ability to pay. It isn’t perfect, but Britain's health system is a profoundly civilised arrangement.

In my new home, Cambodia, things are very different. Sadly, access to healthcare here depends almost entirely on ability to pay, and has little to do with clinical need.

Here’s how it works (prepare for a mini-lecture!):

A small number of rich people (including elite wealthy Cambodians and most foreigners - including me) can afford almost western standards of healthcare in expensive private facilities, either here or in Bangkok or Singapore.

Cambodians on modest incomes either buy health insurance where available, or pay the fees for public health centres and hospitals in provincial towns. They need money for travel, food and personal care, and must be able to afford not work whilst away. Some choose private clinics, pharmacies or traditional medicines as they don't trust public healthcare (with some justification).

The poorest Cambodians can’t afford to pay for public health facilities or health insurance. Only if they are lucky enough to live in an area which (apparently randomly) is covered by a ‘Health Equity Fund’, or if they can get to hospitals such as Angkor Hospital for Children or Kantha Bopha, might they get decent healthcare. Otherwise they simply suffer or die silently in their villages.

Doesn’t sound good does it?

So what is the international community doing in our name to help make sure the poorest and most needy get access the healthcare they need?

Well, the clever folks in organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme say the answer is to encourage more private sector provision.

Really? Sorry, but how exactly is encouraging more private provision of healthcare going to help those most in need? How will quality and access be improved for the poor?

For quality, private treatment is better for the rich, but is not better for the less wealthy. In fact, many private clinics are seriously dodgy, with regulation even more lax than in public hospitals. As for private pharmacies, get this: an estimated 80% of medicines sold in Cambodia are fakes, ranging from the expensive and useless to the highly dangerous. The private sector actively harms public healthcare: public hospitals routinely deal with late presentation by patients who have first been treated unsuccessfully in (unregulated) private clinics and pharmacies. Staff routinely abandon their patients in public hospitals during the day to work in their private clinics. Worse still, they often take the hospital’s drugs and equipment with them. It’s an absolute scandal, but it happens every day here. Do we really want to encourage even more of this?

For access, more private provision will lead to more inequalities. Only the rich people will be able to go - when did you last hear of a private hospital exempting poor patients from fees? Private providers are driven by the profit motive, so ‘cherry pick’ profitable sectors (imaging, cancer, cosmetic surgery), and will not offer services in areas where there’s little money to be made (including the areas where VSO Cambodia’s health programme focuses - reproductive and child health).

So will more private healthcare help the poor? Of course it bloody won't!

Well thankfully there are the good guys like VSO around. Right now in Cambodia the organisation is discussing its strategy for the coming years. My suggestion is that we must urgently challenge the move towards private health provision. There is a critical need for analysis of the impacts of such a move on the quality and access of healthcare for all Cambodians, and especially the poor and marginalised.

In fact, we should learn something from the UK’s health service, whilst it is still standing. If we truly want poor people to have better health, we must make sure healthcare is free at the point of use. Not only should we fight the slide towards more private care, we should reverse the privatisation of public hospitals, abolishing the existing payment systems which exclude the poor people from care. The funding arrangements will have to be made, but it's possible - the government and donors actually have plenty of money - it's just a matter of getting priorities right.

On behalf of the poorest people in this country, I for one would be proud to be part of such a campaign.

Why I hate Khmer food

2011-01-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

The delicate art of flavouring has been replaced by monosodium glutamate and piles of sugar. The proud tradition of tasty vegetarian food as been ditched for a headlong dash to eat as many gross animal parts as possible.

The food lacks both the flair and taste of Thai dishes and the innovation and variety of Vietnamese cuisine.

It may not be their fault – the Khmer Rouge killed off knowledge and culture and the cuisine was no exception – but the sad fact is the food here is not only frequently dirty and laced with chemicals, it is also just bland and boring.

Ten worst culinary culprits:

10. ‘Special’ Eggs: Why settle for a perfectly good boiled egg when you can include a semi-formed chicken faetus?

9. Fried Spiders: Or maybe they’re tarantulas. Not that that makes it in the least bit better.

8. Pig’s head: Only for special occasions, mercifully.

7. Cake: They look the part, with artistic and colourful decorations. Unfortunately they taste like cardboard and sour cheese.

6. Dog, Rat, Snake: All gross (though why isn’t eating pig, chicken or cow equally distasteful?).

5. Angkor beer: “My beer, my country”. An unfortunate flag-bearer, this bland, mass-produced swill is hard to swallow and harder to forget given its bitter chemical aftertaste.

4. Fish sauce: This putrid concoction can spoil the tastiest of veggie stir-fries, and without specific interdiction will pollute most dishes when eating out.

3. Dog-hair bread: The bread itself a poor, sweetened mockery of delicious French baguettes. So why not ruin it completely by adding a layer of dog hair (some claim it is shredded pork – same difference).

2. Durian: “Like eating raspberry blamonge - in a lavatory” according to Anthony Burgess. “A mixture of cheese, onions, sherry, rotting meat, and drains” suggests the BBC’s Christine Finn. Either way, you can see why many hotels and taxis don’t even let you carry let alone eat this gruesome fruit.

1. Cow intestines: A delicacy, ‘the best part of the cow’. Or, more accurately, a gross-out plate which looks like worms and smells like shit, which of course is uncomfortably near to the truth.

Why I love Khmer food

2011-01-16T01:58:00.000-08:00

I love Khmer food.

The country is blessed with fertile land on which grow a wonderful range of fruits, vegetables, cereals and nuts. Subtle spices and interesting herbs abound.

Propagandists for Thai food conveniently forget that much of the country’s cuisine is based on Khmer recipes. Detractors of Cambodian cuisine often repeat old prejudice rather than taste the food for themselves. Simple maybe, uncelebrated certainly – but the food here is frequently delicious and those dismissing it are missing out!

Top 10 culinary champions:

10. Pumpkin: I can’t believe I never ate this before. Now I eat it every day. Cambodian pumpkins are large, rich and intensely flavoursome. Gently fried with noodles they soften to a delicious texture. Even better, simmer with potatoes and carrots in coconut milk and flavour with local spices and a squeeze of lime for the simplest and most exquisite curry this side of India. And then there’s pumpkin pie…

9. Kingdom Ale: At last Cambodia has produced a decent beer! This Phnom Penh brew is a tasty, highly drinkable pale ale. Cheers!

8. Cashews: Grown in the Eastern hills, and underappreciated even in their country of origin, these nuts go beautifully in a stir fry with pineapple or tofu, or on their own salted. And they cost a fraction of the price you’d pay overseas.

7. Rich fruit, dragon fruit, rambutans, and treefulls of fruits which don’t even have a name in English. Sure, bananas and melons can be great, but at their best these fruits are tasty, succulent and truly exotic.

6. Ban Sum: Thick rice noodles served cold with cucumber, mint, beansprouts, chilli, and chunks of veggie spring rolls. Best in Stung Treng market - for breakfast.

5. Noodle soup: More noodles for breakfast? Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Koy Taeo is a lip-smacking soup, the veggie version coming with spring onions, beansprouts and a zingy wedge of lime. Soak up the sauce with chunks of fried Ta Kwai bread. Now you’re set for the day.

4. Coffee: The sweet and chocolaty coffee from Cambodia’s North-East may not be for aficionados but it is undeniably tasty. Add an unhealthy dollop of MyBoy condensed milk and serve over ice and you have a delicious, teeth-janglingly sweet morning pick-me-up.

3. Tofu: Who needs meat when you can get all the goodness and none of the nastiness from this wonder food? Simply chunked and deep-fried with veggies and noodles it is awesome; my girlfriend Katja’s tofu-burgers fashioned with carrot and onions and flavoured with Kampot pepper were so delicious they’ll send Burger King shares into freefall.

2. Rice: Not just a staple, rather the very essence of Cambodian food (‘to eat’ in Khmer – nyam-bai - actually means ‘to eat rice’). Methods of production may be less mechanized than in neighbouring countries, and sadly brown rice is still tarred with memories of the Khmer Rouge forcing its production. But don’t worry: the nutty taste of the jasmine rice here is unsurpassed, and the sweet sticky rice is an unmissable dessert.

1. Mangoes. Sugary, smokey and succulant. The most tantalising treat in this Kingdom of Wonders.

Flicks in the Sticks

2011-01-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

The Flicks has to be one of my favourite places in all of Cambodia.

Tucked away on street 95, a jump-cut from the bustling Monnivong Boulevard, it’s a cute little set up, with a friendly wooden-floored lounge-bar giving way to a cozy air-conditioned auditorium. DVDs are projected onto a great quality, floor-to-ceiling screen, which you can enjoy from the comfy seats, or even lying down if you prefer.

You can have a few while you view too – I’ve quite a taste for the palm wine, and even braved the Mekong whisky, albeit well disguised with Coke – it must have been a lean month-end.

Martin and Jeanette came from New Zealand to start the place not much more than a year ago, and they give the place a lovely welcoming feel. Jack the dog is equally friendly, though thankfully less demonstratively following his recent operation. I’ve also developed a soft spot for Barraing, the lodger / bartender whose name means white-man (Frenchman), but is in fact 100% Cambodian – there’s a story there.

The film choice is great too – essentially whatever just arrived at the Russian Market. Favourites have included New Year Baby, a revealing documentary about a Cambodian woman returning for the first time since she fled as a child; Micmacs, a stylish comedy from Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and The Lives of Others, the powerful drama about life in communist East Germany. There is often also a Kiwi flavour, with Topps Twins, Boy, and Kenny recent hits. A caveat to this is Men Who Stare At Goats which was a monumental stinker, but you can’t win them all.

As well as Flicks, Phnom Penh now also boasts a newly renovated MetaHouse, part of the German Cultural Centre near the waterfront. It’s a cool, white concrete building, housing an excellent art-gallery below and semi-outdoor screening area above. Apart from films, they also serve up dreamy Hoegaarten beer and lip-smacking Flammenkuchen (pizza-breads). They show a commendable range of local documentaries, giving many young filmmakers their chance to shine. I recently saw the Cambodian premiere of Enemies of the People here, reviewed in an earlier blog. The cinema manager showed it three nights running (to packed houses), despite being denied a government screening permit – big respect to him for sticking his neck out.

These two gems more than make up for the lack of any bigger cinemas showing Western films in Phnom Penh. In fact there are very few other cinemas at all – I do intend to see a Khmer film soon, though I haven’t rushed to watch the stock martial art / shoot-em-up fare they seem to churn out.

This is actually quite sad – there was something of a golden age of Cambodian cinema in the late 1960s, when the French influence was still felt. King Sihanouk himself contributed by producing no less than nine feature films, and for a time Cambodian films looked set to make it on a world stage. Tragically this cinematic heritage was wiped out, along with so much else, by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s – and there are still only glimpses of a recovery.

So much for the cinematic delights of Phnom Penh. I am a day’s journey and a world away in my dusty little village on the Thai border. Cinemas there are none. There aren’t even many tellys, and these often draw quite a crowd to watch the twin delights of Khmer boxing or karaoke hits. And I do miss it – DVDs on my computer are great, but it’s not the same as cinema is it?

Imagine then my delight tonight when I was told that the racket coming from the grounds of the primary school wasn’t in fact another bloody wedding, but rather a traveling cinema – joy!

Even better, entry was just 1,500 riels, even less than the 2,000 (half a dollar) I was quoted. Before the film there were numerous distractions - first I headed for the dicing games. I was soon persuaded to place my remaining 500 riels on a lucky fish. And so it was, winning me four times my money back, even though I had no idea how to play – definitely beginner’s luck. This windfall was quickly blown on the throw-the-wobbly-darts-at-extra-tough-balloons game, but my mate won a bag of biscuits with his go. A good job, as there was no popcorn – and I don’t class stinky salted winkles or raw turnip as suitable alternatives.

The crowd of several hundred (a good chunk of the village populace) then sat down and waited expectantly. That was sitting on the earth of course, though the smart locals had brought rice bags for comfort. Luckily I was shown how to sit on my shoes, though I would still get a bit fidgety after the first 17 hours.

So to the film – and so disappointing. Far from an avant-guarde slice of young Khmer talent, or even just some easy Hollywood blockbuster, what we were offered was an episode of the intensely irritating slapstick ‘comedy’ which plagues my bus journeys to Phnom Penh. The funny man – a creepy little guy with a bushy Chapman / Hitler moustache and an grating high-pitched voice – makes Cambodians chortle and Westerners groan.

But I stuck it out, and it got better. The feature won’t win any Oscars, but it was an enjoyable romp, including charming prince, distressed damsel, evil sister, loud ‘mood music’, and a green-faced god arriving just in time to ensure a happy ending. Not to forget the fortune-telling rooster.

And then we all swarmed happily home through the streets of my village, like a football crowd returning from the ground. And it did feel a bit like coming back from a match: in the same way as you can enjoy a game even when your granny could play better - it’s the singing and chanting, the banter and the bovril – so I loved my evening amongst an excited crowd of giggling, whispering, cheering rice farmers. Such is the beauty of cinema, what sets it apart from telly or DVDs – it’s a shared experience. And one which is all the richer when enjoyed such an unlikely place as my little village in rural Cambodia. Flicks in the Sticks – happy, happy me.

How Not To Be A Role Model - An Apology (Of Sorts)

2011-01-03T23:43:00.000-08:00

So my last blog caused a bit of a stir. Sorry about that.

Well, sorry if it was a bit too polemical, sarcastic, holier-than-thou – point taken. And sorry if you’re one of the many dedicated aid workers who happen to be based in the city doing useful strategic work but do all you can to keep in touch with what’s really going on out there.

Not sorry of course if you’re a culturally loutish, Lexus-driving, burger-scoffing, beer-swilling, fag-blowing, bribing, privitising, abusing, proselytising bad egg.

Either way, I do believe that the issue of role-modeling is a crucial one, and would like to contribute to a debate about it. Perhaps in a slightly more balanced way this time.

One important issue I hinted at is that it’s not just what you do, it can be simply who you are. The more white, old and male you happen to be, the more respect and influence you are likely to be given here, whether you deserve it or not. (This of course is not only true here, but it is a strong tradition).

This is a dilemma – I often ask my local colleagues to challenge the advice I give, as frequently they have much greater insight into issues and solutions which work in their context. I am usually frustrated, as they basically show me too much respect – largely, I suspect, due to my whiteness, maleness and increasing baldness.

We are conspicuous and what we do is noticed, commented on and often taken as best practice. The cleverest (and most cynical) exploiters of this are advertisers working for big tobacco in developing countries (how can they sleep at night?). Phnom Penh billboards are packed with Alain Delon ‘The Taste of France’ and Davidoff ‘The More You Know’ adverts, always with beautiful, happy white models. This is because people here think white is good and want to be like white people. (Literally too – the market for creams including whitening agents is a multi-million dollar industry even in this relatively poor country).

Sometimes it is hard to know how to respond. Frequently I am ushered to the front of meetings, just because I am a white man. Yesterday I was asked to make sure I spend as much time on the hospital wards as possible – sadly not due to my hospital management expertise, but rather ‘patients like to see a white guy around’. Should I refuse, pointing out that these attitudes are based on and likely further fuel prejudice? Is it enough to merely acknowledge the issue and limit a response to gentle discussion with trusted colleagues?

So much for what we can’t control. But our behaviour we certainly can influence.

Now I’m no angel. I’m just as guilty as the rest of the volunteers and ex-pats when it comes to whinging about the irritations of living in a developing country. I certainly won’t drive a Lexus and make sure I’m seen out and about on my bike – but then I have just jetted off for a carbon-busting Christmas break. I will never darken the doors of KFC, but would give just about anything for a home-delivered pizza (unlikely in my village). I don’t smoke but I enjoy a few beers at weekends. I accept that there is a degree of moral compromise here – but I hope I can hold my head high.

I don’t pay bribes of course. Well, actually, I haven’t had one directly demanded yet, but if I am stopped by a gang of traffic police I may find it hard to refuse. And thinking about it, every single time I leave my village the driver of the shared taxi pays the police 2000 riels (half a dollar) – am I morally excused just because he pays this on my behalf? (A bit like getting my mate to buy the burgers?).

One thing I believe I can be proud of is that I have offered two years of my life to try to help improve the public health system here. This may well sound a bit pompous, but I worked for the UK’s National Health Service because I genuinely believe people should get the best healthcare possible based on their clinical need, not on their ability to pay. The NHS is of course far from perfect, but that principle seems to be going strong (please don’t tell me I’m wrong!). Here it’s a very different story – those with money get the best care, those with a bit can at least access hospitals and pay for food, and those with none often just suffer or die quietly. And I am doing it in a poor, rural area – noone can accuse me of relaxing in an airconditioned office (well, apart from when I go to work in the big hospital down the road to cool off!). And yet even here there’s a moral quandary – if I get really ill (several volunteers do), should I seriously demand to be treated just like everyone else here, and refuse to go to the nice posh hospital in Bangkok?

Just to finish the scorecard: I don’t do sex-tourism, I don’t buy from kids, and my only contact with orphanages is to channel donations directly to reputable institutions. I don’t try to change anyone’s religion (though I have been known to enquire about some of the apparent contractions in Buddhism). I obey the lights, I work afternoons, I leave the room to talk on the phone. So maybe I am a bit of an angel after all.

And one more thing. Can I claim to be role-modeling a questioning attitude, freedom of expression, an open society, by writing what I feel and opening myself up to criticism? I’m sure you’ll let me know.

New Year's Resolution: How Not To Be A Role Model

2011-01-03T07:01:00.000-08:00

You can do no wrong.

Really, as a rich Westerner in a poor Asian country, pretty much anything you do is seen as good, based on nothing more than your wealth and skin-colour. Like it or not, you’re a role model.

If you don’t like it, here are a few tips for how to fail:

· Disrespect the culture: it’s important to show a complete disregard for your hosts. Talking loudly helps (never in ‘their’ language), and make sure you include plenty of ill-informed criticisms of the country and its people.

· Show them how to travel: a Lexus is a great way to get around – it keeps you insulated from the unpleasantness of street life, and the aircon and western music help you forget you’re here. Never walk or cycle – that would make it look sensible and acceptable, and lead to awkward questions about parking the Hummer on the pavement. If you must ride a motorbike, make it an unnecessarily powerful one – and ditch the helmet.

· Eat: as with the big car, so with the Big Mac: show them that to emulate our wealth they must love burgers and KFC. Don’t worry, the Buddhist respect for animals is already shaky, and people don’t yet realize that eating heaps of cheap factory-farmed flesh will destroy both their bodies and their environment.

· Drink: show them how glamorous it is to get horribly hammered. You could always have a fight or drive home afterwards for bad measure.

· Smoke: enjoy your right to enjoy smoking tobacco, to drive home the cool impression created by the pretty white models on French cigarette adverts. And don’t miss the chance to toss your butt on the floor with the other trash.

· Bribe: beat them at their own game, give and take ‘informal payments’, make sure you show that only money talks. If you work in the oil or logging industries you’ll be well placed for this.

· Go Private: make sure you demonstrate that there’s no way you would use the public health or education systems, and encourage others to aspire to get out too – you can help people to understand that money is power and greed is good.

· Contribute to some abuse: a bit of sex-tourism maybe, or at least encourage kids to stay out of school by buying stuff from those who work on the streets. Orphanages make great freak-show entertainment.

· Show them who knows best: steamroller centuries of Buddhist culture and get them to change religion. You can do this under the guise of charity. Make sure anyone working for you has to convert, and you could insist the recipients believe too, in exchange for your ‘help’.

· Reinforce bad behaviour: sometimes you don’t even need to show the way, just join in – jump the lights, skive the afternoons, shout at your mobile.

· Avoid Poverty: perhaps most important of all, make sure you stay in town, away from reaky rural rice-farmers. On no account travel to remote villages - they don’t have air-con. A good way to avoid contact with poverty is to work for a well-funded international NGO, allowing you to remain indefinitely insulated in chilled city offices.

Christmas Stockings: In praise of socks...

2010-12-28T01:54:00.000-08:00

It hasn’t taken long to establish that my main role isn’t to help the poor people access better healthcare. Rather, I provide much-needed entertainment to my fellow villagers in this remote and previously humourless part of the country.

What I didn’t expect is that I am also a figure of ridicule amongst the volunteer community.

Why is this? After all, I constrain my obsessive-compulsive traits to alphabetizing of the fiction section of the volunteer library in Phnom Penh. I cover the tracks of my pitiful attachment to Oldham Athletic. I frequently resist the urge to don my fluorescent-yellow safety jacket.

But there is one area where I will not compromise – and where I thus meet the derision and mirth of my colleagues. I refuse to renounce the wearing of socks.

Socks! In this heat! Am I crazy? Allow me to explain.

First of all, let’s blow the fashion myth. Who says socks and sandals are a style no-no? I accept the allure of beautiful heels in stilettos, but what’s the attraction of hairy ankles in flipflops? In contrast, I'd say I cut rather a dashing figure as I stride through downtown Thmar Puok in my North-Face open-tops and matching light-green 100% cotton ankle-socks. I would go so far as to say they look even better than my wellies, though function outweighed form during the wet season.

Secondly, socks aren’t only fashionable, they keep you beautiful. Most Cambodians live in the countryside, which is dusty in dry season and a mud-fest when it rains. Perhaps because of this, personal cleanliness is highly prized. Girls spend hours painting toes, and my favourite taxi driver has grown his thumbnail into an impressive ten centimetre reminder that he no longer works the ricefields. Add to this the Bhuddist notion that the head is the holiest part of the body and your soles the most profane, and you have a strong reason to keep your feet as polished as possible. And who, my non-sock-wearing muckers, do you think has the cleanest feet in all Cambodia?

And the clincher: What’s the biggest threat to volunteers in this country? Crazy drivers? Maybe. Landmines? Probably not anymore. Diarrhea? Worms? Perhaps if you’re brave enough to eat the meat. Malaria? Getting warmer. From what I can tell it’s actually Dengue Fever. Two further cases recently meant that the majority of the volunteer community in my province have now had the disease, whose effects range from the unpleasant to the deadly. And what can you do to avoid it? Mosquito nets won’t help as it’s carried by the daytime mozzies. A few locals still put scarecrows outside their homes to protect them from the evil disease-bringing ghosts, but - with apologies to my cultural sensitivity training - this is superstitious claptrap (not to mention a dangerous distraction).

All you can do is spray and cover up well. And where do those mozzies go for most? Answer: your ankles. Conclusion: spray and cover your ankles. Wear socks, avoid Dengue. Hard to refute.

So my friends, it is time to rise up against the nastiness of naked ankles, the fug of festering feet, and the dangers of Dengue. Join me in my festive campaign – together let us celebrate and communicate the benefits of sporting the unfairly maligned, unquestionably sensible and surprisingly comfortable sock.

The 12 Days of...

2010-12-15T04:43:00.000-08:00

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me

A partridge in a pear tree

Two turtle doves

Three French hens

Four calling birds

FIVE GOLD RINGS

Six geese a laying

Seven swans a swimming

Eight maids a milking

Nine ladies dancing

Ten lords a leaping

Eleven pipers piping

Twelve drummers drumming

On the first day of Buddhmas my songsaa gave to me

A coconut in a palm tree

Two turtles stuffed

Three French men

Four calling phones

FIVE COLD DRINKS

Six mines delaying

Seven dolphins swimming

Eight coconuts milking

Nine Apsara dancing

Ten prices leaping

Eleven cyclos cycling

Twelve drummers waking you at some ridiculous time in the morning for another bloody wedding

On the first day of International Transparency Fortnight the regime gave to me

A Khmer Riche with flatscreen tv

Two more terms in office

Three French exiles

Four by-fours procured

FIVE INFORMAL PAYMENTS

Sex tourists laying

Seven coffers brimming

Eight ministries milking

Nine beergirls dancing

Ten druglords reaping

Eleven gaspipes piping

Twelve Hummers humming

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being... A Volunteer

2010-12-13T08:01:00.000-08:00

It’s not what I imagined.

Offering two years of my life to work in a developing country is a leap into the unknown. Admittedly I volunteered previously in Rwanda, and spent time in relatively poor places – India, Morocco, Uruguay, Kenya, er Glasgow.

But this is different – I’m living and working long term, where even crustily bearded travelers fear to tramp. It’s my toughest challenge yet.

Arriving in my dusty, wild-west village in the extreme north of Cambodia exactly a year ago, I admit my heart sank. No view of the majestic Mekong for me. No dolphins, elephants, tigers – not even any hills.

In fact the list of negatives was lengthy - no busses or tarmac road, no mains water or electric, no newspapers, telly or world service radio, no pubs or restaurants, no cheese or tofu (and certainly no chocolate or wine).

No home comforts either – I entered my bare house with no idea where to buy furniture or cooking utensils, no fridge, flushing toilet or hot water, no idea how to ask for anything. No other westerner for 50 kilometres. Nobody to help me.

And after a year, you know what I now think? Now I know I have a seriously easy life!

Here in my village I’ve come to realise that my house is way posher than everyone else’s. Not only have I two bedrooms and a balcony, I have a kitchen and bathroom all to myself (the village’s person to toilet ratio must approach 10:1, if they have one at all).

As the hot season intensified I cracked, ditched my perfectly good coldbox and bought a fridge – a fridge! Maybe not so clever without reliable electricity. I didn’t realise it was the first ever fridge here, draining both the village generator and my modest allowance. But boy, an ice cold water on a hot Cambodian afternoon – worth every riel, and every stare.

I soon braved the 300 kilometre round trip to bring a mini oven on the back of my wobbly moto. Emboldened, I went further and bought my most incongruous luxury. I’m gazing lovingly at it right now – my beautiful, ludicrously extravagant Apple desktop. Once you go Mac you never go back. But in rural Cambodia? Truly, I have an embarrassment of riches.

All of this in what I now recognize as a truly beautiful green and red landscape. Living with super-friendly people. In complete safety. Every morning I’m greeted by gentle sun and smiling children as I stroll to work across the temple lake. No cars. No pollution. None of that silly western stress you get all excited about.

And that’s all without leaving the village! But leave I do, thanks to my generous income (if I stay here and eat rice I can easily save from my $10 daily allowance) and munificent holiday calendar (a whopping 26 public holidays – wouldn’t you like to celebrate Meak Bochea and Visak Bochea days?; and why wouldn’t you mark the birthday of the king - and his mum, and his dad?).

At this point I basically become a tourist. I’ve witnessed the wonders of Angkor a dozen times already. I spent last Christmas on a Thai island, Khmer new year in southern Laos, and the latest festival exploring northern Vietnam. Other weekends I party in Phnom Penh’s swanky Club 182 or sip tea in Siem Reap’s Hotel de la Paix. It’s a hard life being a volunteer!

Of course it’s not quite so easy. Cambodia may be mocked as ‘volunteering lite’, but there are cultural challenges lurking everywhere – I recently listed unseen hierarchies, inbuilt fatalism, unfathomable body language, infuriating passivity, unspoken judgments…

And it’s easy to overlook the sacrifices volunteers give to be here. Several put careers at risk or gentle retirements on hold to come and help. All of us compromise our health and safety, not least by risking some pretty nasty illnesses. Avoid meat and you might evade worms, but everyone here gets some kind of unpleasant gastro condition. And we all get bitten, if not by snakes or scorpions then certainly by mosquitoes, with their pincer of nighttime malaria or daytime dengue fever.

So it’s not all easy. And we all need a break, to relax and recharge the batteries.

But as I sip my Singapore Sling and lazily enjoy my Kundera novel in the Foreign Correspondent’s Club I can’t help wondering guiltily just how exactly this is helping the poor people of Cambodia. I call it the unbearable lightness of being a volunteer.

It makes you think

2010-12-08T02:51:00.000-08:00

The tragic crush at this year's water festival made Cambodia headline news across the world. Just days ago at the time of writing, the terrible events are still too raw to understand.

For volunteers, being in a developing country when a disaster strikes is desperately sad, but can also give us focus. Surely such an event, and how people respond to it, tells us something important about the country we're trying to help - and how we should go about helping?

The scene of the crush is on my morning running route in Phnom Penh, and a couple of days later it was still lined with people. I paused to stand among the crowd, trying to gauge the atmosphere. The thought of hundreds of innocent young people so horribly crushed moved me to tears. But from the crowd there was no weeping or wailing. I just couldn't work out what people were thinking - I've worked here for over a year, yet I felt as foreign as ever.

I looked across at the bars and restaurants lining the riverfront. It's easy to forget this is a relatively poor country. Some even call this 'VSO Lite' - a far easier option than the hardship of sharing your skills in a really poor country or a properly rural placement. Material luxuries are easy to find. Houses for volunteers are large and comfortable. Tourists outnumber aid workers in places like Angkor. Isolation is minimal - even from my village, one of the most remote placements, I can (just about) make it to the capital in a day.

But it's not as simple as that! Despite the increasingly glossy surface, there are still very real challenges here for volunteers.

To start with, the Khmer language can be perplexing, with its hieroglyphic alphabet of 33 consonants and no less than 21 vowels. And this is just one aspect of what can seem huge cultural barriers to change - unseen hierarchies, inbuilt fatalism, unfathomable body language, infuriating passivity, unspoken judgments.

I personally found it far easier to volunteer in a very poor but openly ambitious country in Africa than in this part of Asia, where the poverty may be less extreme but the barriers to overcoming it appear even more complicated.

Returning to the crowd viewing the scene of the tragedy, my emotions turned to anger that such a outrage had not been prevented. This was a disaster waiting to happen, in a country which has an institutionalised disregard for safety. If even a tragedy like this doesn't spur people to demand change, how will things ever get better here? Yet there wasn't the slightest hint of rage from the crowd, who seemed more concerned with appeasing the imagined ghosts of the departed than holding to account the real failures of the authorities.

My time at the riverfront left me none the wiser about the tragic events a few days before or how to respond to them. But it did help me to reflect that perhaps the biggest obstacle to me improving lives is the one I experienced there - a culture and way of thinking here which is totally different from anything I have previously experienced.

Will any good will come of the tragic recent events in Cambodia? I truly hope so. In the meantime, as a volunteer it certainly forced me to reflect hard on why I'm here - and on the very real challenges I face if I am to help make this a better place.

My Favourite Run

2010-11-28T18:16:00.000-08:00

I am reliably informed that Runner's World has a regular column entitled ‘My Favourite Run’.

I don’t know for sure, as until recently I regarded running as a good walk spoiled (even more so than golf). Frankly, I’m about as likely to read the above publication as subscribe to Volleyball Asia or Cock-Fighting Cambodia.

Until now. Don’t get me wrong, football will always be the best game in the world - the beautiful game, and the only truly global sport. Apart from running I suppose, in that most people run at some point - but neither lazy loping nor serious scuttling really count as sport, do they?

My Damascene conversion happened on the unholy road from the provincial town of Sisophon to my village of Thmar Puok. The rainy season was in its final throwing-down as we passed the High School. Kids were literally swimming after the ball on the only ‘football pitch’ in town.

Clearly I had to find another way to exercise away my occasional cakes and ale. In Cambodia football is for swimmers, badminton for schoolgirls and cycling for bone-shaking fetishists. Reluctantly, I resolved to run.

Back in mid-February I had a great motivation to do some light training – the pleasure of completing the Phnom Penh 5k with my beautiful valentine. I guess the organisers didn’t have much choice of date, but starting at 2pm in the heart of hot season seemed designed to test the strongest of relationships.

A further challenge was the requirement to run the whole course alongside your partner. And to cross the line together holding hands, gazing into each others eyes, and looking very much in love. Katja and I share modest competitive streaks, and luckily our 5^th place out of 50 couples made the podium, as a prize was the minimum demanded by my valentine. The reward was a romantic meal in the city’s Country Club and big brownie-points for boyfriend. Surely this had to be my favorite run?

But now the challenge doubles – in just a few days time it’s the Angkor 10km run. One of the amazing perks of volunteering in such a beautiful place as Cambodia is to run in a World Heritage Site, past - in fact through - ancient, awe-inspiring temples. The route starts at the iconic Angkor Wat, winds past the enigmatically smiling Bayon heads, and explores the remarkable Khmer city of Angkor Thom. Wouldn’t this be anyone’s favourite run?

Yet in athletics - I am reliably informed - there is always room for an underdog. Now that I have overcome my aversion to 5.30am starts, faced off the snarling dogs (I think there’s still sleep in their eyes too), and learned to laugh off the howling derision of my fellow villagers – well, now I think I might just be learning to love running here. And when I watched the sun rise over the misty green rice fields this morning, even my hardened heart melted and I had to admit – this might be my favourite run of all.

A Health & Safety Nightmare?

2010-11-23T03:22:00.000-08:00

It’s nothing short of hilarious for the crowds lining Phnom Penh’s riverfront for the annual water festival.

Amongst the beautifully painted dragon boats, the proud crews carrying the hopes of their village, and the throngs of expectant spectators on the bank, a strange phenomenon appears: a boat full of westerners! What’s more, they have little idea how to row, and look utterly ridiculous – as if the bright orange t-shirts aren’t enough, the fools have donned luminous life-jackets - what a joke!

Safety has a similarly low priority just getting to the riverfront. Jumping on a motorbike taxi is quick and easy, but us volunteers are more careful, not least because of our organisation's strict safety rules. Drivers do sometimes wear helmets - but only to avoid giving the police an excuse to fine them. The rest of the family perch perilously behind them with bare heads (and arms, and feet). In a country where life is cheap and the humidity intense, do you really think people worry about donning a hot and heavy safety helmet?

The journey from the provincial town to my village is similarly risky. There is no bus service, and driving a moto up the bumpy mud road is scary even for a hardened Cambodian. So we wait a few hours to cram into a ‘shared taxi’. This ordinary Toyota Camrey car carries an extraordinary load - in addition to ricebags in the boot and boxes on the roof, there are 6 people in the back and 4 in the front! The driver twists forward from his shared seat to control the wheel. It’s a tough job, which may be why he calms his nerves with a little rice wine. In these circumstances, do you honestly think anyone thinks about safety belts?

And if it’s dangerous for motor vehicles, spare a thought for the ordinary pedestrian. Clearly no one else has! There are a few pavements in cities like Phnom Penh, and they have a variety of purposes: a great place for your food stall, or space to tie up your hammock. Parking of motos takes precedence though, complete with wire or string to ensure no pesky pedestrians get in the way. And of course if you have a Lexus then you can park it anywhere, and where better then a nice spot of sidewalk? All of which pushes ordinary people in the path of oncoming traffic, or into the gutter. Now what is the point in man-hole covers again?

So basically health and safety is non-existent in Cambodia.

Some visitors actually celebrate this. After all, aren’t westerners far too controlled and regulated? Cambodia is the last ‘free’ country, away from the interfering reach of authorities. If there are a few guns and drugs, a bit of child abuse and general anarchy on the roads, maybe this is the price we pay to be truly free?

Well, back to our boat. The 2010 water festival in Cambodia will not be remembered for the bright dragon boats, the proud crews or the joy of the winning team.

Tragically, it will be mourned for the deaths of hundreds of Cambodians, apparently crushed on a bridge to the new Diamond Island City area of Phnom Penh.

No doubt over the coming weeks there will be much soul-searching in Cambodia about how such a terrible thing can happen. Hopefully people will be brave enough to tell the truth – that if you have such a blatant disregard for the well-being of your fellow people then there is a tragedy waiting to happen. It should not have taken the deaths of so many innocent people to make the authorities here take health and safety seriously. Hopefully at least now they will – we’ll see.

As the hilarity turns to sadness, perhaps people here may wonder if the fools in the helmets and life jackets weren’t so stupid after all?

The Birds

2010-11-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

Collecting my new binoculars from the shop in Denby Dale, I casually mentioned the purchase was for a trip to Cambodia.

Knowing that the manager of the shop (a proper 'twitcher', unlike me) can be a little forward with his opinions, I dreaded the inevitable question about which bird book I'd be taking. Before the full title had passed my lips, he retorted “throw it in the bin!”.

I tried to explain that I was travelling light and that my 'pocket' guide was a compromise between quality and weight – I was backtracking in the face of the expert. So off I went to Cambodia with my excellent (and very lightweight) Zeiss binoculars, and my small but 'rubbish' bird book. I'll prove him wrong I thought...

My kind of birding is as a background interest to whatever else I'm doing at the time. It can be an interesting hobby – a typical male 'tick box' activity, plus the randomness to keep us birders on our toes. The great thing about going to the other side of the world is that an entirely new set of boxes present themselves, and you have no idea what you might see!

Urban, rural, plains, hills, tropical rainforest, coast, wetlands, rivers, a huge lake (the Tonle Sap), plantations, and huge expanses of rice paddy fields like the Norfolk Broads with rice - my three weeks in Cambodia had a fantastic mix. All these places I wanted to see anyway, but they also provided a wide variety of habitats – and therefore birds.

For me birding is part and parcel of the whole purpose of the holiday – to help restore and relax. It was sometimes difficult to have long enough to identify spots when zooming around the country on buses, taxis and tuk tuks. However, the slower pace of walking, cycling and the classic long boat trip between Battambang and Siem Reap - and even simply sitting by the pool in Phnom Penh or on Oly's balcony with a cold beer - provided ideal opportunities for a little 'spotting'.

This relaxed approach worked a treat on two particularoccasions. Firstly, when I walked the perimeter wall of the huge Angkor Thom. Because the wall is 8 metres high (and 13km long) I was effectively up in the forest canopy, with a huge moat to my left throughout. That day, in solitude, I had the pleasure of seeing Greater Racket Tailed Drongo, Black Crested Bulbul, and most dazzling, Golden Oriole. The second occasion, on my last day in Oly's village Thmar Puok, was on a cycle around the beautiful surrounding countryside. That day I was lucky to come across not one, but a whole family of Green Bee-eaters. The above photo can't fully show their dazzling the lime green chests, one of the most stunning colours I have ever seen.

One advantage of taking this hobby around the world is that bird families are often recognisable in different countries. For example, Flycatchers are present in Cambodia as in the UK, and because each family exhibits common characteristics in terms of size, shape and even behaviour, it helps with identification. The black beady eye and the return flight to the same perch after, you guessed it, catching a fly, helped me identify an Asian Brown Flycatcher (again, sat on a balcony sipping a cool beer – are you starting to see the attraction?).

I went to Cambodia with no expectations about what I may or may not see, as the nature of birding dictates, however as is usually the case when travelling to somewhere that contrasts so much with home, I wasn't at all disappointed.

The guy at the binoculars shop was right about the book though...

A rubbish blog

2010-10-31T17:45:00.000-07:00

Cambodia is a beautiful country. The streets of every village are lined with houses on stilts, smiling people, busy cycles and motos. But they are also strewn with litter.

Take the example of eating in a Cambodian food shack. It’s not the most pleasurable experience at the best of times, with questionable hygiene, ubiquitous stinky fish-sauce, mindnumbing telly soaps and soulless red plastic chairs. But perhaps the worst part is that everyone just chucks their garbage on the floor – paper towels, beer cans, bones. And of course this means dogs, cats and worse constantly prowl for castoffs. Altogether, only for those with strong stomachs.

In Kratie I witnessed people throwing their rubbish into the Mekong river. With so many Cambodians living by the water, it must be tempting to toss away garbage, which is conveniently swept away. It’s hard to explain why this is a bad thing, as any downstream consequences are far out of sight and mind. Perhaps we will only learn when we suffer from other polluters upstream. For example, Kratie’s famous Irrawaddy dolphins may all be dead in a decade, allegedly due to chemicals from non-organic farming practices further up in fast-industrialising China.

The worst offender is the malevolent plastic bag. Buy anything here – an onion from the chatty market lady, a drink from the toothless old coffeeman, a packet of noodles which is already double wrapped – and it is automatically presented to you in polythene. And just as unthinkingly as they are given, the evil wrappings are tossed on the ground, where they are left to rot.

Which of course is the problem. Back in the days when all waste was organic, it probably wasn’t so bad to drop the odd paper bag or banana skin, as they would quickly decompose. But the plastic doesn’t rot, it just piles up higher and higher. Education and habits have simply failed to keep pace with developments in product wrappings.

But hang on a minute! What, actually, is the problem with litter?

For a start, isn’t rubbish a health hazard? Piles of rotting garbage must attract rats and their associated diseases. But I’m not so sure – the rotting stuff doesn’t seem to be the problem, rather the stuff which doesn’t rot. I’ve also heard that discarded bags and bottles store small pools of water, ideal breading grounds for malevolent mosquitoes. But again I’m unconvinced: certainly in my village, there are pools of water everywhere, due mainly to the lack of proper drainage – the water trapped in plastic wrappings is a drop in the ocean.

How about health hazards to children or animals? But again it doesn’t seem a particularly powerful argument. The odd child may suffocate on a plastic bag, but it simply doesn’t feature as a major hazard in comparison with the many dangers for kids trying to survive in a developing country. And animals – well frankly, forget about karma and caring buddhist nature-lovers, nobody I’ve met here really cares about animals – at best they are ignored, at worst tortured or eaten. If the odd bird chokes on a piece of discarded plastic, who cares?

What about the danger to drainage systems from discarded plastic bags? Well, I’m sure it’s true that part of the threat from these environmental enemies is that they block drains and cause terrible flooding. But again it doesn’t quite hold, in my village at least – the recent floods (the worst in living memory) can’t really be blamed on plastic blocking the sewers, because there isn’t basic drainage here to be blocked!

Surely, as least, everyone will agree that litter is unpleasant and unsightly? But actually I’m not even sure about that. It certainly spoils much of the beautiful Cambodian landscape for me, but many local people just don’t seem to notice it. Worryingly, even I seem to be getting used to it. Even if I do find it aesthetically damaging, this just my subjective view, which others could easily disagree with. Basically, if Cambodians don’t mind, what does it matter if I do? – it’s their country. Is the tourist dollar the only incentive to keep a country beatiful? Is aesthetics really the only vaguely compelling reason we have not to litter our landscape?

There is hope. For one, Cambodian culture places a strong value on the beautiful (‘sa-aat’). When passing a football pitch in my local town I recently saw a group of young volunteers cleaning up the usual debris. And when I helped organise a further clean up, the only explanation required was that we wanted to help make it ‘sa-aat’. Many Cambodians keep their own houses and possessions spotlessly clean already, and temples are also litter-free – so it can be done.

Also, there is already a strong recycling culture here, albeit economically rather than environmentally driven. The honk of the plastic bottle recycling cart is often heard in Cambodian towns, and bicycles laden high with flattened cardboard boxes are a familiar sight. For my own part, I hope that the new vegetable garden at my hospital will include a composting area to encourage reuse of organic waste.

So whilst some say that beautiful Cambodia will always be blighted by litter, I hope soon we will see that’s a load of rubbish.

Good morning Vietnam!

2010-10-13T03:38:00.000-07:00

Hanoi is celebrating 1,000 years as the capital of Vietnam. My knowledge of the country was essentially limited to the ‘Nam of action movies. But it seems that that the American war of the 70s was just one in a long line of irritations to be swept aside - long before then the Chinese had occupied for centuries, the French colonized, and even the Japanese arrived for a while during the second world war.

The Ho Chi Min museum offers an interesting take on this – Uncle Ho (‘Bringer of Light’) seems more of a popular nationalist than an ideological communist, influenced as much by western art and literature as bolshevik rhetoric. The guards gave us a taste of commie customer service by unsmilingly evicting us at 11am for workers’ playtime, so we indulged in a capitalist icecream whilst admiring the beautifully brutal architecture and enjoying the blaring revolutionary songs.

Hanoi itself is bright and bustling, but blighted by traffic. The old town will be lovely once pedestrianised, but at present it’s hard to appreciate whilst dodging speeding motos and thuggish taxis. Hoan Kiem Lake is a more pleasant walk, complete with popcorn sellers, plastacine modelers, calligraphy writers and dice players. It even boasts an Arthurian legend of a sword emerging from the depths. Sadly the lady of this lake is a big fat turtle.

Escaping to the coast, we dipped our toes in the South China Sea at Hanlong Bay. The scenery is stunning – sailing in a wooden junk between thousands of small, green dome-shaped islands (limestone ‘karsts’) is truly breathtaking. Sleeping alongside the ship’s rat population is less romantic. And I'm not impressed with the skipper’s opinion that rodents on a boat prove its buoyancy.

The overnight train journey to the far north provided a better night's sleep, and we awoke on the cold and misty border with China. Driving up and up we arrived at the old French hill-station of Sapa. This Alpine landscape is home for many traditionally garbed ethnic groups, who skillfully cultivate rice on intricate terraces even at nearly 3,000m, and cleverly sell colourful handicrafts to visitors – be warned, the only Christmas prezzies I'm giving this year are ethnic hats.

Cool, clean and canine-free – Vietnam was a welcome break from Cambodia. Katja even managed to pick up some basic language, though it is 'tonal', so something which sounds essentially the same can have a completely different meaning depending on how your voice goes up or down. Perhaps it seems less immediately foreign because it’s possible to read straight away, the Vietnamese alphabet being similar to the western one. I missed the Cambodian bowing and relaxed approach, but loved the food and drink. Fresh beer (bier hoi) was a great find, and coffee is everywhere – did you know that Vietnam produces more coffee than any other country in the world after Brazil? ‘Pho’ (noodle soup) makes a great breakfast, especially if you avoid the stinky fish sauce, the rice is light and nutty, and deep fried tofu from a street stall is lick-smackingly good. All this with not a dog in sight – on the streets at least, though I suspect there were a few on the menu…

Back in Hanoi, the Temple of Literature was another haven of peace, and had a display of superb photographs to celebrate the city’s millennium – beautiful, telling images which for me captured the essence of the city even more than a thousand years of the temple’s words.

Compare and Contrast

2010-10-09T01:36:00.000-07:00

It would be a mistake to overlook this former francophone colony in favour of its bigger, better-known, English-speaking neighbours. The countryside is breathtaking, vivid green against deep red earth. And the people who tirelessly work it must be among the kindest and most gentle you could hope to meet.

But naturally you associate this place with bad things - the terrible genocide, and the resulting poverty. No doubt, like me, you agonise at how such dreadful things could be done in such a peaceful (and still deeply religious) country.

Cambodia, where I am presently volunteering, is a truly complex place. Yet these descriptions are as much about my previous posting in Rwanda - the similarities are pretty striking aren’t they?

But whilst both share a sub-tropical climate and blossom beautifully in rainy season, landlocked Rwanda is characterised by its thousand hills whereas largely flat Cambodia has a scenic coastline and is defined by the great Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers.

And linguistically, whilst both countries are moving from their colonial French to all-pervasive English, this is happening very differently: Cambodians choose English and French is gently disappearing, whereas Rwanda very pointedly dumped French, a knee in the highly sensitive linguistic groin of the backers of the former genocidal regime.

And so to genocide. Both countries suffered horribly at the hands of their own people, whilst the international community failed to intervene.

In Rwanda nearly a million Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) were slaughtered in just 100 days. This wasn’t long ago (1994), but they seem to be dealing with it: the trials are largely complete, and nobody can forget - every highway has a purple memorial, every news item a story, every year are poignant and very public commemorations.

Cambodia couldn’t be more different – its genocide (horrific, but arguably not strictly genocide as it did not aim to eliminate a race) lasted an excruciating four years (1975-1979), yet you could easily ignore what happened here. There are few monuments, little discussion, and delayed justice – the first conviction was this year, over 30 years later.

Both countries have elected but authoritarian presidents – the leader of Cambodia’s main opposition recently fled the country, whilst in the run-up to recent elections a leading Rwandese opposition figure was found in the town where I worked – beheaded. But there are important differences: not least that whereas Paul Kagame led the army which liberated Rwanda, Hun Sen was actually part of the Khmer Rouge.

Kagame is intelligent and ambitious – he has secured Rwanda’s borders and now plans to give every child a laptop and lay fibreoptic cables to transform a land of subsistence farmers into Africa’s technological hub. Corruption is minimal. There are more women in parliament than in your country. There are no stray dogs or even plastic bags.

Hun Sen is also smart, his country is peaceful, and the economy is developing - but corruption is rampant, and his ‘Khmer Riche’ clique luxuriate in 4x4s and gaudy palaces whilst public services are woefully underfunded and most people remain subsistence farmers. Gender divisions remain. And there are wild dogs and plastic bags everywhere.

So what is it like to volunteer in these similar yet contrasting countries?

There is certainly a need – I work in healthcare, which in both countries is basic, with facilities destroyed and a whole generation of professionals killed or exiled by the genocides.

The economies and education systems were also smashed, and poor, uneducated people are more likely to get ill and less likely to afford healthcare. And despite many people suffering from post-traumatic stress, mental healthcare is sadly lacking.

There are also more subtle legacies – patients (and colleagues) remain scared to voice disapproval, and whilst all may appear calm, bitterness and resentment may lurk undetected by outsiders. I even wonder if the cultural life seems more subdued than neighbouring countries – less dancing, blander food, fewer arts.

But I repeat, it would be a mistake to overlook either of these beautiful, beguiling countries. Volunteers are playing a vital part in helping them to recover from their terrible recent pasts. I look forward to learning and writing much more about them.

That was the week that was

2010-09-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Monday: As the one white guy in my village I provoke curiosity and / or hysterics; by tomorrow there will be eight barraings. It’s an unprecedented number – what will the neighbours say? I don’t care: an evening of music and beer on my balcony is a lovely way to start the week: who said they don’t like Mondays?

Tuesday: I don’t like Tuesdays. At least, not finding a viper curled behind my water filter. In true heroic style I run screaming to my landlord. He’s cool: using a broom handle he delicately teases the snake’s head into an upright position. His mate then fires his caltapult, hitting it in the face with a big rock. And then smashes its head with a hammer. All before breakfast. The day improves: we move and cement the new hospital playground, and then our lovely colleagues from the next province help with our first health education workshop for carers (usually relatives, who do much of the personal care you might expect nurses to provide). The highlight is a blunt but effective way to promote hygiene and sanitation: all together now for the Shit Song...

Wednesday: A bumpy journey down the worst road in Cambodia followed by a late night enjoying rare internet access is not the best preparation for chairing the toughest meeting of my time here: all the provincial hospital directors look at me to help them improve referrals to the big hospital. And to explain why no one from the big hospital turned up (a long story). And then I find that my nocternal emails didn’t go down well: my impassioned plea not to exclude poor people in my area from funds to pay for treatment, and for infection control equipment and training in my hospital, was well intentioned but clearly ruffled feathers. Apologetic phone calls are made over lunch, interrupted only as I’m chased for not paying the bill. At least I have a comfortable lift back up the bumpy road to Thmar Puok with colleagues from a partner organisation. I usually despise NGOs’ huge white gas-guzzlers (“we need a four-by-four... to help the poor”), but now the suspension and aircon are blissful. There’s still time for adventure: on arrival we watch a lone student midwife deliver a baby. When the placenta doesn’t appear, she disappears on a motorbike. Shortly later an older lady appears and takes over, thankfully with rather more confidence. Only later, as she removes her long gloves and leaves the delivery room do I recognise her – she’s the finance manager.

Thursday: My guests are great company, but it’s the first time I have hosted Cambodians, and I could have done better. Taking ages to cook coconut curry was useless – they needed to eat, so made their own noodles. To drink they wanted juice, but what kind of person chills it when temperatures are barely in the 30s? And to sleep, having mattresses raised onto beds - well, why would you do that? Unphased, we had several welcoming meetings in the morning. Then came an unexpected highlight: now patients have moved into the beautiful new children’s unit, we have an empty ward, which I was determined to clean before it is refilled. Good job – as soon as we move out the beds it is apparent just how filthy it is. The debris is pretty foul, and the range of fungal growths on the back of the doors quite astonishing. But the staff work so well together, scrubbing and buffing the ward and having a great laugh too. For once I’m even thankful for our intermittent power supply, as an enthusiastic trainee cleans the plug sockets – using a high-pressure hose. In fact it’s possibly the best day I’ve had here so far; an uplifting end to an eventful week.

Friday: thank god!

Silver Belle

2010-09-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Last weekend in Phnom Penh I had no less than 3 dance experiences to remember.

Most impressive by far was a performance at the beautifully restored Chinese House by the river.

It was particularly pleasing to see the hall packed with Cambodians, encouraged by the mere $1 entrance – even though this meant the usual performance etiquette regarding chatter and mobiles was largely ignored!

Not that many of the audience were distracted - for our bargain entry fee we were treated to an impressive, pulsating performance.

This was the best dancing, or indeed show of any kind, that I’ve seen in a long while. Silver Belle trained in both traditional Cambodian and contemporary western dance, and her performance beautifully combines very different traditions.

In fact her first performance was more of a fusion of the ancient Apsara dance with the modern Cambodian obsession with Khmer (kick) boxing – a lively way to start an evening!

Other performances included powerful storytelling and gentle humour – my favourite was of a monkey (brilliantly played) who spots and follows a beautiful lady, the twist being that he’s actually only interested in her colourful umbrella.

It was so refreshing to see original, creative choriography taking the best of Cambodian traditions but playing with it, adding modern moves and creative contrasts. A most enjoyable and uplifting evening.

The other two dance experiences were less distinctively Cambodian, but were still hugely entertaining.

Bopping to the heavy beats of the Riverside Lounge mainly involved American rap and hip hop, with the only nod to Khmer ways being the ear-splitting volume and random mixing.

The dancing in Snowie’s bar was more sophisticated and surprisingly fun. In this cosy undiscovered gem of a bar with sweeping views back across the river to Phnom Penh, our friend Sarah introduced us to the larger than life Robyn, who brings a energetic blend of swing and Lindy Hop dancing.

Silver Belle standard we weren’t, but I did have expert guidance and a beautiful partner; I swung Katja round to some golden oldies, cooled by the breeze off the river. And best of all, in swing it’s the man who leads – for a few precious hours I had my dancing shoes on and I wore the trousers!

Today the world came to my village!

2010-09-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

I live in a small, remote corner of Cambodia – few people visit.

In fairness it’s hard to get here – the grandly named National Route 56 is, according to National Geographic, “the worst road in Cambodia”. And if you do make it, it’s nice enough as rural Khmer settlements go, but I can’t pretend there’s too much to detain you.

But today was different – today, the world came to my village!

The occasion was the grand opening of the new children’s ward at the hospital. And I have to say, it’s beautiful. Thanks to the generosity of the American people – specifically the United States Army, Corps of Engineers, Pacific Command – my dusty little village now boasts a state of the art paediatric clinic.

The world was led by the Ambassador of the United States, Carol Rodley, along with the Health Minister and a slew of local and national dignitaries. Thundering into the compound in a cloud of four-by-fours they were greeted by crowds of flag-waving schoolchildren and all the staff (I’ve never seen so many), all in pristine uniforms (I’ve hardly seen any before!).

What’s more, in the hours prior to the visit the staff had transformed the hospital grounds – grass cut, litter collected, banners planted, even a new access road laid over the previous mud and puddles. This was a huge improvement, though I had to wonder if the Ambassador, like the Queen of England, thinks that everything smells of paint.

Monks blessed the building, cameras were pointed and we all stood seriously for the national anthem. The speeches were mercifully brief, stressing the desire of America to be known in this part of the world for its friendship and generosity. It may take more than a little children’s ward to erase the awful recent history here, but I think it’s a good start.

The building itself is lovely - according to the architect it is ‘Cambodia plus’, far better than the usual standard, with real paint not whitewash, solidly-made beds and proper mosquito nets on all windows. It would have been even better if there was a sink in every room and solar panels (which surely should be standard?). And I’m not sure why there are heavy locks on all the doors, given that it is a 24 hour facility.

But I’m certainly not complaining. It’s a huge improvement on the previous cramped and crumbling building – it is very necessary.

However, it is not in itself sufficient. We still need to make the ward welcoming (‘child-friendly’), and I and other volunteers will help staff provide decorations and play facilities. More generally, the onus is now on hospital staff to use this gift to transform the healthcare offered to children in this poor and remote corner of the country.

I’m looking forward to helping them.

Phnom Penh, the old and the new

2010-09-12T02:45:00.000-07:00

When I need a break from my rural backwater – and as long as I feel up to the 10 hour shared taxi plus moto plus bumpy bus journey – it is usually to Phnom Penh that I head.

I’m not sure why – it’s quicker to get to Bangkok, which is bigger and more developed, with far more cultural delights and distractions.

But I like Phnom Penh. Perhaps it is the contrasts: the stately cyclo-rickshaws rubbing shins with the Lexus louts, the simple noodle-shacks outside the bourgeois bistros, and at this time of year the blazing heat followed by the almighty downpour.

Not all the contrasts are welcome: the gap between rich and poor is as great as in any city I have visited. The urban underclass of homeless beggars, dragging amputees and child bottle-pickers contrast shamefully with the pretentious palaces, gruesome gas-guzzlers and charmless champagne of the Khmer Riche (and the increasing number of wealthy ex-pats and tourists).

One of the most notable contrasts is between traditional Phnom Penh and the new metropolis.

The oldest and grandest buildings in the city are around the Royal Palace. Metres from the bustling riverfront, the high white walls enclose an oasis of calm and tradition. So traditional, in fact, that many visitors are caught out by the strict dress code – but fortunately the ticket booth happily sell unnecessary but only slightly overpriced shirts to cover the parts of you which might offend royalty.

Outside, the meticulously manicured gardens are remarkable not only for the beautiful purple and yellow flowers but also for the great green leaves covered with graffiti love letters and for the ornate topiary with an emphasis on teapots.

The walls not only serve to keep out the hoi-poloi but are also adorned with historical friezes. The obligatory museum, whilst mercifully free of crown jewels, does include helpful mannequins modelling the lucky colour for each day, alongside maps and poems glorifying the Khmer empire (now long gone - I assume they wore the wrong shades). The highlight is undeniably the dozen beautiful buildings, complete with ornate gates, golden tiles and swirling finishes.

What a contrast with the new Cambodian architecture just a few hundred metres along the riverfront. Like most intensely ugly things, the brash NagaWorld complex looks better by night, when the coloured fountains distract from the dull box of a building.

This is nothing, however, compared with the newest pretender, the monumentally mundane architecture of the new Diamond Island City. Whilst the prosaic towers are at best an opportunity missed to create something memorable (or even interesting), there is a least an impressively large golden dragon at the entrance and the amusement of a super-kitch pleasure garden, complete with mermaid sculptures and frog fountains.

But there is hope: also just opened near the riverfront is the new Metahouse cinema and art gallery, housed in a cool white villa with groovy gallery and outdoor screening space upstairs. And to complete the link, the latest showings include celebrations of Cambodia’s ancient traditional and buildings, bringing together the best of the old and the new.