Bits and pieces

It's been an odd week - some good things, some not so good.

Let's start with Thursday. Thursday was a good thing. I went around Phnom Penh helping another organisation to administer a cyclo driver survey. We asked questions like how long have they done this work, how much do they make and how can we help make their lives easier. Generally speaking, these men (there are no women cyclo drivers), make around $1.50 per day, which is used to support their families of around 4 or more. Many sleep in their cyclos at night on the street and don't feel very safe. One driver was 69 years old! After getting over initial fears that the questions would be too hard, most drivers were very pleased to be able to voice their opinions and were doubly pleased when they were given a bar of soap for their efforts. I would never have thought something as basic as a piece of soap would be so appreciated. Many seemed to be very gentle, beautiful people who live very hard lives. So lessons learned - be nice to cyclo drivers and if you are going to give anything to people begging (something which I'm always torn as to what to do), a piece of soap might be a viable alternative. Also, when I say "helped administer the survey", I mean I held the soap and tried to look intelligent - well, there's not alot you can do if you cannot speak Khmer.
The night before, I was the fourth in a quartet of musicians hired to play at a function at a swanky hotel. I did not know what the event was about so when I got there, I was mildly surprised to see the slogan "It's not just a hanger" emblazoned on the central banner, and a very large clear plastic coathanger suspended from the ceiling. The launch for this new coathanger company/brand spared no expense - fireworks, dinner, and girls dressed to the nines catwalking around stage and posing for photographers with, which looked like to me, a pretty normal looking disposable plastic coathanger. After spending the past 5 months focusing solely on poverty, basic rights etc., to see this level of decadence for something as ...eh... non-essential as a plastic coathanger was kind of overwhelming.

Then the weekend. I'm a bit cross about the weekend. Let's just say that I roamed the streets for a good part of it looking for someone and then, at 4pm on Sunday, I find out that he is in another city, 6 hours away. I guess it was a bit unlikely that I was ever going to find someone by simply walking around - I would never try to do that in Brisbane - but for some reason, I just thought I might run into them. And I did manage to squeeze in 4 episodes of West Wing, so it couldn't have all been that bad.

Which bank?

I watched today as our staff members received their first bank cards. Most Cambodians don't have bank accounts since the collapse of banks during the Pol Pot era. However, our staff all agreed that it was time to trust again and bank managers were duly invited to come to the office to open each one a savings account. There was a mixture of curiosity, excitement and pride as people signed on the dotted line. Those who couldn't sign came away with several inky fingers.

A while back, I heard a story about how everyone at a particular company was given a $1000 bonus each. 450 people gathered behind locked gates, were given $1000 cash each and then told to rush home. I think if you didn't show up for work that day, you missed out - but I could be making that part up.

Chickens

I'm not usually partial to chickens (I'm a duck-girl when it comes to poultry), but these guys were just too darn cute to pass by - small, fat balls of feathers pecking away on the road.
And just to add my 2c worth to Sunday's tour guide activities - I had fun, but then, I didn't have to drive. I was also glad to go back to my day job on Monday.

Where do you take 19 Japanese tourists in Phnom Penh? The dump, of course!

I now have another job that I can add to my ever-expanding list of professions that I really really don't want to do - tour guide. The stress and the weight of expectations is exhausting - even one day is too much, even if it was successful.

Our work had 19 Japanese visitors over the weekend and somehow it became Bek's and my job to look after them on sunday. Our destination - the dump. That's right, the rubbish dump. It's not the most obvious tourist attraction, but our visitors wanted "exposure", so that's what they got. The dump is a squalid, smelly mountain of garbage, and is the home and livelihood of many hundreds of people. When the trucks dump a new load, there is a mad scramble as the kids attack plastic bags with metal hooks to find cans, scraps of metal or plastic - anything that can be re-used or recycled. The cliche "one person's trash is another person's treasure" is truer here than anywhere else.



We took our guests in a 4WD and a van. I drew the short straw and had to drive 13 people in the old, beaten-up 2WD van. It has been raining a fair bit lately, so the good news was that the smell wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The bad news was the road was insanely muddy. How we managed to get through it I'll never know.

Our guests had a mixed reaction to the scene. Some jumped in enthusiastically, cameras clicking madly, while others hung back with their hands over their mouths and attempted the impossible task of walking through mud without stepping in it. Somehow, both reactions were very Japanese.

Our friends also came prepared to fend off swarms of insects. Again, in characteristically Japanese fashion, they did it with technology. All of them had these little electronic devices with mini fans, constantly filling the air around them with odourless insect repellent. They wore them around their necks, on their belts and on their wrists, and they wore them with pride. Not just at the rubbish dump, mind you, but in the city as well. Ok, so there's a few mosquitoes around, but they're not that bad! Bek took a photo of a wrist one (on the left), and had it thrust upon her as a gift, despite her protestations that she didn't need it.

At the end of the day, there were no big dramas and they were happy. We were just tired. I'm glad I'm not a tour guide.