Lost In Translation

Right now I am very busy with my thesis research. Up to now, I have been able to survey close to 200 garment workers, and I hope to be able to survey some more before I go. It has been very compelling, visiting garment factories and then also the workers' homes. Below is a picture of a typical house where garment workers live.....usually with another 4 to 8 people in one room.


When I survey them, I generally stand back and smile at everyone in a very friendly way. It is incredibly frustrating to not be able to communicate with them. I think that if I ever end up living in another country, I will do all I can to learn the language. This next picture is one of my favorites up to now, not because it is such a brilliant picture....but because it caught the moment. A little girl had just given food to two Buddhist monks, a common occurrence here. In return, they chant some sort of a blessing (I assume). The little girl was kneeling in front of them, receiving the blessing. When I snapped the picture, she was just getting up.....an everyday scene of life that I will remember for a long time, I think.


I'll end this short, hurried post with three brilliant Engrish vignettes:

1. This evening for dinner, I ordered 'Meat and Celery Dumpings'.....and it was good, too.
2. Listening to the radio, the chorus of a hit song went like this: 'I love you, loving you, as the mouse so loves the rice'.....
3. Hitching a ride with a motodop, I had a good laugh when we passed a sign advertising roadside billboard space by proclaiming, 'Expose yourself outdoor!'

New Adventures in Cambodia

The past couple of days I was able to spend in Kampot, a coastal town due south of Phnom Penh. Coincidentally I got my camera fixed and was able to take my own pictures again. That was great, and I immediately took full advantage.....I shot 110 pictures, a new record for just 5 days.

My trip began and ended with an eventful bus ride. On the way there, the transmission blew while we were still in Phnom Penh, so we only had to wait about half an hour before a replacement bus took us to Kampot. On the way back, however, our bus started smoking precisely in the middle of nowhere. It was midday, making the weather unbelievably hot. After attempting to cool down the engine by throwing water over it, about ten of us attempted to jumpstart the bus by pushing it along as the driver tried throwing it into first. The engine did start, but produced such a belch of smoke that he immediately stopped and decided to wait for a replacement bus that was a little longer in coming. In this picture, you can see many Khmer and a few disgruntled Westerners waiting for the bus at a roadside house/snackbar. I think our bus meant Christmas in April for that family.


Kampot is a quiet town, with past illusions of grandeur. In the 1920s, it used to be the holiday destination for the French colonialists who wanted to get away from the craziness of Phnom Penh. Therefore it is built with wide boulevards and large, roomy residences with high ceilings. It is difficult to research the exact history of the place, but suffice to say that it suffered a great deal in the following decades, and was one of the last outposts of the Khmer Rouge. According to one guy I talked to, most of the vendors at the crowded market that I walked through (and bought the red t-shirt I'm wearing above) are ex-Khmer Rouge. Walking through the streets, you truly get the feeling that the weight of history is upon you.


At night, there are no streetlights and packs of dogs roam around. At one point in time, I was chased by a small pack of them and had to face a few snapping at my heels. That made me a lot more careful when venturing out at night.

Close to Kampot is the Bokor Hill Station. This mountain rises about a kilometer up from the ground, and I joined a group of people on the back of a 4x4. It's about 32 km of winding, rough road to get to the top. At the top is an abandoned town, with empty hotels, houses, and a church. Because the area was strategically important, it was the scene of heavy fighting between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces. As a result, there were still unexploded mines and we were told to stay on the path. If you google 'Bokor Hill Station', almost every entry will speak of the spooky nature of the abandoned buildings and the surrounding cliffs. The most impressive building is the old casino located at the edge of the cliff. Legend has it that unlucky gamblers would hurl themselves off the cliff, and during the battles, people were also driven off these same cliffs.

Perhaps it sounds like it is a depressing place, but it that's not completely true. While I was walking around the casino above, there were scores of Khmer families having elaborate picnics in the once posh hotel.....I even saw a whole cow on a spit, being slowly roasted over charcoal, destined for a huge family barbecue that evening.

Our day ended with a relaxing river cruise, with hundreds of kids along the riverside shouting 'Hello! Hello!' at the sunburned tourists. Every once in a while some adults would join in, whole families standing at the doorway of their house, waving at us. I have the idea that we are an endless source of amusement for them.....the crazy tourists running around during the heat of the day, when all normal people are in the shade keeping cool.

I also visited the Elephant Caves, making the mistake of telling my 10 and 14 year old guides that I had brought a flashlight with me. Full of enthusiasm, they took me deep underground where it was pitch black.....showing me interesting shapes in the stalactites like a 'man and woman together', and the musical rocks. The latter were stalactites that you could hit with a rock, producing a very clear and beautiful sound. In the end, I had to crawl through a narrow opening to get outside, with my group of guides (by now numbering four) clambering over all the rocks like it was nothing. This was the end result.....I was soaked in my own sweat, so much so that the kids asked my Khmer fellow spelunker why she wasn't sweating like the white guy.

It was a fun time, though, and I was very happy with my guides....whether they were happy with me is another question, judging from their expressions.

Inflation and Rising Temperature

I've never truly experienced the impact of inflation as acutely as now. During the last federal election, I got an email forwarded to me written by some clear-headed genius. He claimed that one of the reasons he was voting Conservative this time was because he was able to buy less with his dollar than when the Liberal party first came to power. Like it or not, inflation is a fact of life, like the Leafs missing the playoffs (for the ****** 3rd year in a row!!!!).

Cambodia, like I wrote previously, is a country of extremes. If there's going to be inflation, it won't be just a few percent a year.....no, the price of rice will increase by around 40% in a few weeks. And when many people are already living on subsistence wages, this is very bad news. Gasoline prices have also increased, I've heard rough estimates of about 25% in the past few weeks. I notice it every time I take a moto or tuktuk. A trip that used to cost me 2,000 Riel (50 cents) now costs 3,000 Riel (75 cents).

Garment workers have felt it too. I talked with one garment worker earlier this week who said that he was sometimes unable to send money back to his family in the countryside because he spent everything on food and lodging. Unions and GMAC, as a result, agreed to a US $6 increase in the monthly wages of garment workers as a special cost of living bonus. This means that someone earning the minimum wage of US $50/month will has a 12% increase in salary.

That's right, I have finally been able to talk to garment workers. Bieck and I went with a Khmer friend to a school that teaches English to garment workers and distributed my survey to them. The cost is US $4/month. We took a tuktuk all the way there, which was no problem until we had to turn off the paved road and onto a dirt road. Oh yeah, and it was pitch dark, with no street lights to speak of. This led to a collection of garment factories and housing for the workers. Our Khmer friend introduced us and handed out the surveys that she had translated into Khmer that afternoon.....you really are very dependent on the work of others, and I am very grateful for their help.

We had been warned that it might be difficult for us to communicate with the workers, as we are tall and blond white guys. But I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly things went. They do have a good giggle among themselves when we show up, but after that it went well. We began by attempting to write our first names on the whiteboard, and this was cause for much hilarity. They wanted to know about Holland, about what the weather was like, how tall people were and how much things cost there. We did take pictures there, but as I promised complete confidentiality, I won't post them. I meant what I said, I said what I meant.....

On our way back at around 9.30 pm, we were passed by a few trucks carrying about fifty girls each. Our friend told us that these were the girls who had worked overtime and had about an hour's drive into the countryside, back to their homes. They would be up the next morning at 4 am to go back to the factory, have breakfast there and start work.

Aside from work, we went for a weekend to Sihanoukville, a city on the west coast of Cambodia. It was a four hour bus ride there, with one stop halfway to bring an offering to a goddess who would protect us on our journey. Once we got to Sihanoukville, we found a nice guesthouse (see picture) and had dinner on the beach.


We had been assured that there would be no mosquitoes if we turned the air conditioner on in our room. But after contributing our fair share to the melting of that ice shelf in Antarctica, I still spent a significant amount of time running around the room killing anything that moved. In the end, I slept under a bedsheet with a t-shirt draped over my head, and the tiny bit of my face that was still exposed covered in a thick film of bug spray.


As idyllic as the picture above seems, it was the scene of a nasty *ss-kicking that I received playing pool. Saturday evening was the time for a 'reggae, dance-hall party on a private island'. We should have seen it coming as the event was promoted by an organization called Booze Brothers, but I was still caught off guard when someone approached me to ask very politely, "Would you like to buy some LSD?" Without thinking, I responded, "No thanks....but thanks for asking!!"

The following day was spent enjoying general revelation at Bamboo Island.....I have a feeling that I will be going there again. There are also huts that can be rented for around $10/night. I think this picture kind of says it all.....


On a final note, the best cartoon in the world is 'Tom and Jerry'. We've had good times watching it, snickering along with the Khmer locals at how Tom gets violently and enthusiastically destroyed by the clever Jerry mouse yet again.

Grace Finds Beauty in Everything

Up until today, I had a cheerful blog entry planned. I had written down key words such as ‘green peppers’ and ‘orphanage’ to keep track of all the fun, trivial things that I wanted to share and would have composed my entry based on those. Last night, for example, we attended what was billed as the largest concert ever had in Cambodia. But all that will have to wait until the next time.

I remember my dad telling me a few years ago as I was watching the news that you don’t have to see everything to know that it happens. Perhaps he’s right.

Today we visited Toul Sleng, or S21, the infamous prison of the Khmer Rouge, now a genocide museum. Located in the heart of Phnom Penh, it is surrounded on all sides by residential housing, allowing me to watch a mother lying on a bed with her child through the barred windows of the prison. Of the more than twenty thousand prisoners, only seven survived. The prisoners were interrogated, tortured, forced into confessions, and ultimately killed.

We purposely put off going here so that we could get an idea of the country, of the people. Some stop by Cambodia for a few days, hitting Toul Sleng, the Killing Fields, perhaps blowing up a cow with a hand grenade for $100 (the price overheard at a cheap hotel/restaurant), and quickly tour Angkor Wat before heading off again.

We first walked through the rooms of Building A, where the higher-ranking officials within the party were held in individual rooms.

In one of the rooms, a picture hangs on the wall showing the badly decomposing body of one of the last fourteen victims found at the prison. When you look closely, you notice the bare bed on which he was found still stands in the room, five feet in front of you.

I can’t relate all I saw there, the pictures, the instruments of torture, the skulls with bullet holes. What I’ll try to relate is how I felt. In the beginning, it was very overwhelming. No matter how much you prepare for it, it’s still sickening. But gradually, I noticed myself becoming distracted. It’s like I became desensitized, and I began to walk through the rooms rather absent-mindedly, gazing at one poster and having it not register at all. I think at a certain point, you can’t take anymore and your mind kind of shuts off.

I began to notice other things. The mother with her baby. The bats flying over my head as I stared up at the ceiling of one of the stairwells. I watched a little bird land on the barbed wire stretched across the front balconies of Building C to prevent prisoners from leaping to their death from the upper floors.

Scratched into the wall of one of the inhumanly small individual cells was ‘I WILL REMEB REMEMBER’. People always make spelling mistakes, also when trying to leave a meaningful message behind for others….

The moment I kind of came back was when I walked past a bucket and a tub that prisoners would be shackled onto. These instruments would then be filled with water and the prisoners held underwater. I thought of the current debate on waterboarding, and its absolute absurdity became clear to me. National security concerns aside, it’s inconceivable to even have a debate on whether it constitutes torture or not.

Perhaps my dad is wrong, and it was necessary for me to see this so that things become clearer and my naiveté goes away. I don’t know….what I do know is that somehow, life always seems to go on. Babies are born, bats and birds do their thing, people tag every available surface, and we need to pray for grace.

(All pictures taken by Bieck)

What horror lies in knowing there’s no fate that chaos can’t kill….

Last week, I was able to attend a conference discussing the future of Cambodia, with government, the private sector, and numerous NGOs in attendance. Bieck and I were terribly proud of the fact that we were the only ones arriving in style. All other participants either stayed at the hotel or arrived in an SUV, Mercedes, or Lexus. We rolled in, chillin on the leather seats of a red tuktuk with a driver who cut across six lanes of traffic to get us there. We were the sole garment industry representatives, and we fulfilled our duties admirably (if I may say so myself). We each bagged about ten business cards, and handed out a similar number in return. Compared to the rest, it’s fairly meagre, but we prefer quality over quantity. It is amazing how many of these cards get exchanged in the course of doing business here. I suspect it’s the same the world over, but there was one gentleman who literally shook your hand and gave you a business card, all in one fluid motion.

The keynote speaker was the Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen. He spoke for a good forty-five minutes, reading from a prepared speech and frequently venturing from the beaten path to launch volleys at Cambodia’s political opposition parties, the UN, and the World Bank. At one point, he proclaimed that Cambodia was not Niger. All eyes in the room turned to look at a man in the audience who was Nigerian. This remark was made because oil had been discovered off the coast, and critics feared that oil revenue would not be equitably shared with the whole population, like what happened in Niger. Hun Sen diffused the situation by addressing the man directly, commiserating with him about how terrible it was there. A masterful performance….

Sunday afternoon saw us go swimming at the Olympic swimming pool. Looking back on it, we were probably the first white dudes to go swimming there since the Leafs made the playoffs….and by white dudes, I truly mean Caspar-the-Friendly-Ghost white. Imagine three Dutch people fresh off the plane who haven’t gone swimming in the sun since the previous summer. The moment we arrived, the bleachers around the pool seemed to hold a lot more people. The second we jumped in the water, music began blaring from the sound system. It was a regular party….

Being at the pool was an interesting experience. Basically, all the rules that I learned as a kid taking swimming lessons at that chlorine-filled preservative solution tank known as the Sir Allan MacNab Public Swimming Pool were broken with reckless abandon.

1. No running on the deck – Kids were running, falling, grabbing each other by the legs and dragging each other across the deck and into the pool.

2. No children can be unattended in the deep end – Kids were daring each to go farther and farther into the deep end.

3. No peeing in the pool – This is just a guess, but the water was not all too clear and sometimes you would catch a whiff of something that didn’t smell like chlorine.

4. You can only make one jump when diving off the diving board – The record I counted was five consecutive jumps, catapulting one boy higher and higher. I, incidentally, did my best to make an elegant Alexander Despatie dive of the diving board when I gathered enough courage to try. Turns out the diving board had a little more ‘jump’ than I had estimated, and I might have over-rotated just a little and was the object of ridicule for the forty kids watching.

5. No underage children off the high diving board – While we were terrified just by looking off the high diving board, kids of 8 and 9 were launching themselves off the 10-meter mark. Remember, this is an Olympic pool, with all the bells and whistles with respect to diving boards.

6. Don’t talk back to the lifeguards – Uhhhh…..what are lifeguards and where do we find them?

The next day, I had to go to the Immigration office across from the airport to pick up our visas. On the way back, the Prime Minister of Thailand was just about to arrive and be greeted at the airport so the entire road was blocked off.

So my intrepid tuktuk driver drove me around the airport and through some of the less touristy, less paved parts of Phnom Penh. However fascinating it was, I could not sit very comfortably knowing that I had a significant amount of money, a laptop, and three passports in my backpack.

I know I have to develop more trust, but when you’re part of a bottleneck trying to cross a narrow bridge and you’re surrounded by hundreds of motos, bikes and pedestrians, you start to imagine everyone is looking at you and thinking, ‘Sweet mother of pearl, it’s my lucky day…..’.

I think it’s just part of the general fish-out-of-water feeling that hasn’t gone away completely yet. Being in that traffic jam, you just think ‘something’s wrong with this picture, and I think I’m the reason.’ That’s why I sometimes still find it difficult to walk through the streets. It’s like you have no point of reference, no place where you can say, ‘oh yeah, I belong here’. I hope that feeling goes away soon, and I think the only way to get rid of that is by doing precisely what you don’t want to do…..walk through the streets.

Below is a picture of a typical garment factory. They are huge.....and are not sweatshops.

You Are My Centre When I Spin Away

It’s about time that I show you the view from the balcony of our apartment building. Our crib is located on the fourth floor (or fifth floor in North American terms), and we look out over a busy intersection just to the north.

Traffic is continuous, with the noise of scooters, motos, trucks, SUVs, and tuktuks waking me up every morning at around 6.30 am. The true Darwinian that I am, I have correspondingly evolved to adapt to the new environment. When I wake up, I take the other soft pink, decorated-with-teddybears-flowers-and-stars pillow and place it over my exposed ear. Then I ease back into sleep on my very roomy soft pink, decorated-with-teddybears-flowers-and-stars double bed until my alarm goes off a short time later.

Directly across from our apartment is the Phnom Penh Olympic Stadium. Not that it has ever hosted an Olympic event. Yet it still has a large golden metal bowl that I assume was where the Olympic flame would have burned. The most prestigious sporting event it hosted was a World Cup qualifying soccer match between Australia and North Korea, when relations between the two countries were a tad strained. During the time of the Khmer Rouge, public executions were conducted here. So it was with the weight of all that has happened here over time on my shoulders that I entered the stadium to watch an exhibition soccer match between Ulsan Hyundai (a South Korean club team) and the Cambodian National Team. Our section was fairly full, the other side was not.

Admission was free, parking was indiscriminate, and the food was interesting. We entered, half expecting to pay some sort of fee, yet no one stopped us. There was a general area for all the scooters and motos. This area seemed to be more of a suggestion, however, as we encountered these vehicles scattered all over the place….even right up to the bleaches. Instead of selling hot dogs, pizza and beer, the vendors hawked popcorn (???), noodle soups, rice, and cold drinks. We left in the second half when the game when the score was 3-0 Ulsan Hyundai, with the winning team having the game firmly in hand. The next day I found out that Cambodia scored two goals after we left to finish the game 3-2. I suspect there may have been some collusion between the two sides to not embarrass the home side….

A few days later, it was my turn to make Cambodia proud. My new street hockey team, the Phnom Penh Monsoon, rained down a beating on the team from Bangkok, Thailand and blew them away. Actually, we played a best-of-five series, with the Monsoon winning 3 games to 1. It was a lot of fun, and very intense. The Thailand team was, I think, all Canadian boys and they took their hockey seriously. The hockey pictures and the first one of this blog were taken by Bieck, my fellow intern. He has a very good camera and, more importantly, knows how to use it. Note the whiteness of my arms and legs when compared to those who have obviously been in a tropical climate a little longer.

Throughout the day, the casualties piled up. One player threw up between the first and second game, but came back to play the rest of the day. Another player had both his legs basically cramp up simultaneously, an experience I don’t envy. Personally, I noticed that I was not completely in game shape yet. During the third game, I ran out for my shift when I suddenly felt my heart beating a lot faster than normal. Then my vision became clouded and started to fade. I had enough presence of mind to sub off and sit down with my head between my legs. I was back out there the next shift, though….

Slowly but surely, I am becoming more familiar with my immediate surroundings. We have discovered our default restaurant called Mama Restaurant, where they serve the best pineapple shakes this side of the Mekong and beyond. Lately, I have taken to eating two main courses per meal, except for when we go to some expat restaurant with Western prices. I do this in an attempt to combat weight loss, something that I cannot afford to have too much. You just feel a lot less hungry in a hot, humid climate and I still don’t have the guts to go out and buy local fruit and vegetables yet. I hope to buy mangos soon, they are very healthy, dirt cheap, and oh so good.

The longer I stay in Phnom Penh, the more I am struck by the contrasts. Here, everything is mixed in with each other. This picture, taken by the lake here, is taken off the deck of a nice restaurant. In the background, there are houses along the lakeside.

On the road, you will literally encounter H3s and Escalades with ground effects and spinners alongside bicycles held together by little more than string and an emaciated man perched on top. Fancy restaurants are located behind roadside kiosks selling cell phone minutes and gasoline in old Pepsi bottles. On my way to work one morning, I crossed a beautifully-decorated intersection with flowers blooming in the boulevards. Ten steps later I encountered two men pissing into a sludge pond as I tried to hold my breath the whole time so that I don’t have to smell the water. It sometimes hits very hard, it’s reality without a safety net for many people.

Lonely Rivers Flow to the Sea, to the Sea

By this time, I have been in Phnom Penh for just over a week. To be honest, it feels much longer than that. I think it’s because you experience so many new things that your brain is much more full than normal and time seems to slow down. It already seems quite a long time ago since I arrived at the airport.

On Friday, I accompanied my supervisor to visit my first garment factory. Most garment factories are located on the outskirts of town here, so it took a little bit of driving to get there. A Catholic Sister from an organization here that provides vocational skills training to girls also accompanied us. This particular factory made garments for both Adidas and Puma. I actually saw the Adidas logo being stitched on shirts here, and got a bit of an indication about all the work that goes into making a shirt. We were also taken to see where they live. This particular factory provides dormitories for the girls who work there. All in all, it was quite amazing to finally see something that I had done so much preparing for. Even though I had read a great deal and imagined how it would be like, it still becomes much more vivid, much more real when you see it with your own eyes. This picture is of a house just outside the gates of one of the factories. It really shows that the dormitories for the girls are a dramatic improvement over where they would otherwise live, as they try to spend as little money as possible on housing so they can send more money back to their families in the countryside.

After leaving the factory (not having received any complimentary Adidas or Puma gear….rats :)....), we traveled to a large primary school that the Catholic Sisters run in Phnom Penh. It was very large and quite impressive. We were taken all over the premises, and had to stop at what seemed like each classroom to say hi and hear the children chant “Good morning, ssiiiiista’ to us in unison. Every time we came across a student, no matter how young, they pressed the palms of their hands together and bowed forward a little bit in greeting.

At one point, all the Sisters were laughing out loud because a group of little boys perched on top of a jungle gym said ‘Good morning, grandfather!’ to me in Khmer. I know I hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, but was it really that bad?.....This picture is of grandpa Kees and a Sisssssta looking into a classroom.

Maybe I am just paying attention to such things for the first time, but the Cambodian children have such beautiful smiles. They smile wholeheartedly, even when they are too shy to say ‘Hello’ to you. Not many children seem to be that shy, however. I don’t know how many times I get greeted with ‘Hello!’. When I try to say ‘Hi’ back to them in my mangled Khmer they burst out laughing. While riding home in a tuktuk, this moto with an underage driver pulled up beside us at a stoplight.

In terms of my actual work here, things are gradually becoming a little clearer. I have just been instructed to read the Cambodian Labour Law of 1997. Looking forward to that, I am. But it does seem that my topic is relevant, especially as there continues to be significant labour unrest in the garment factories. I hope that I can somehow contribute a little bit to making things better for everyone.

On TV here, I am actually following American Idol. After taking last year off (who won anyway….was it Jordan Sparks or something?), I am able to catch all the episodes here. A brilliant distraction. There is also plenty of soccer to watch, from Asian to European and Champions Leagues. There always seems to be a game on.

This morning we visited another garment factory. This one made clothing for brands like H&M as well as United Colors of Benetton. It was with an official French delegation. That was pretty cool. Security guards all around and we were led from building to building. On the way back to the office, we stopped at a Chinese restaurant where I reconfirmed by supposition that I don't like noodles with beef. Not only is the real beef surrounded by layers of fat, it can also create a mess of your white dress shirt. The worst thing is that I have to meet someone this afternoon yet. I have retied my tie, and with a little fancy positioning, the worst of the stains should be covered up.....