How to Ride an Elephant

Join the Adventure!

I have never had much desire to ride an elephant, or a camel, or a even a horse. But siting on my patio one evening, I conducted a more thorough mental examination of the issue. If I don't ride an elephant now, I may not have the opportunity to do it again. I should be able to say I've ridden an elephant, because that seems really cool, which seems like a good enough reason. This was, I confess, my shameful motivation.

Yet how does one ride an elephant? They are such very large animals, presumably wise yet consistently obsessed with their primal need to consume 300 kgs of food daily.

First, one goes to Mondlekiri Province. This is one of the few places where one can ride elephants in Cambodia. In this region, there are many options for those seeking the elephant riding experience. We [myself and our three "interns" who journeyed out for the long weekend over King Sihamoni's birthday] arranged the adventure through our guesthouse who packed us out with six other Western tourists to a small minority village. A total group of 10 went out, on five elephants, with perhaps 10 Khmer guides and random observers.

Secondly, one must climb up a ladder into a small basket. This might be the most terrifying part of the entire process. Once you reach the top of the ladder, you have to climb further into a small basket. You are climbing over a live animal and somehow he stands still as a puny human asserts her dominance and props herself in this small basket. At last you find yourself seated with your feet under your chin, crushed against a fellow passenger, and a small child sitting behind the elephant's ears with a stick to "drive" it. You are easily 10 foot on the ground, and you realize a kid is managing this large animal, and then you consider if perhaps there was something more sane you might have considered instead of elephant trekking.

Third, one must hold on and brace oneself. Elephants are heavy-footed animals and utterly incapably of anything other then violent jerking as they plod forward. You have to somehow anticipate their movement and sway with them, all the while unable to readjust in your basket. On the other-hand, they are very surefooted, and low and behold, can ford streams and rapids!

Finally, enjoy! It's a little challenging to enjoy swaying in a basket on top of the world's largest mammals. However, once you get the hang of the rhythmic jerking and overcome the five minutes of fear, it's a priceless experience. You ride through forests, through streams, past a field of marijuana, and think to yourself, I'm glad I'm actually giving this a shot. 

How to Celebrate Khmer New Year: 2nd Edition

For my second Khmer New Year (and my third New Year within 2012), a new adventure was required. This year is notably for me because it's "my year," the Year of the Dragon" on the Chinese calendar and they only come around once every 12 years.

This year I went to Koh Thmei. It's a very tiny unknown island in Kampong Som Province, 30 kilometers from Kampong Som town (otherwise known as Sihanoukville). While the island has been here for ages, we stayed at a nice new resort owned by a German couple. There was a sense of tension when seven loud an energetic girls showed up. But we calmed ourselves down considerably and allowed for plenty of island peace for the few other guests.

Gettings to Koh Thmei is a small adventure. It requires driving the five hours down towards Sihanoukville, but turning 30 kilometers north of the town and heading on a rural dirt road. Eventually, you arrive a tiny congested fishing village. From there, you hop on a small boat and ride out towards the island for yet another hour. It's an adventure for the faint-hearted and the brave...but still an adventure.

While it seems mandatory to write about my Khmer New Year: Dragon/12, the summation is actually underwhelming! I read two books, laid on the beach, ate lots of food, went for short walks and enjoyed the breeze, the bright sunshine, and both the sun and the rain.

My only complaint is regarding sand flees, which are nasty creatures leaving you itchy well over a week after the encounter. I've no doubt the year can only improve from here.

How to Commemorate Labor Day

In the US, we've lost all sight of Labor Day. It's that three-day weekend in September, the end of summer, the beginning of the academic season, and a nice weekend to travel. Does "labor day" assist us in appreciating how good we have it? Strangely, yet also unsurprisingly, it does not.

Yet for the rest of the world, Labor Day is 1 May and it really is about a celebration of the international labor movement. For Cambodian civil society members, human rights activists, and those employed in sectors most prone to abuses of labor laws, it's a day to restate global commitment to ensure that everyone has the right to a safe and decently compensated place of employment.

For this Labor Day, I joined with some colleagues and several thousand Cambodians (predominately women), in a march along the Phnom Penh riverside. Most of those in the march were young Cambodian women from the garment industry.

Cambodia has been both blessed and challenged in recent years as it's joined the up-and-coming nations involved in textile manufacturing. Nike, Gap, American Eagle, Adidas, Levi, A&F, among many others outsource garment production to Cambodia. The result has been an overwhelming number of young women from rural areas flooding into the Phnom Penh suburbs for employment, a new booming economy. However, these women, poor and uneducated, are often at risk of exploitation. They are paid $61 per month with no overtime and certainly no benefits. Even in Cambodia, $61 is far below a "living wage." For years, human rights activists have been pushing for the minimum wage to be increased and for factories conditions to be improved. Mass faintings are common in factories where there is no airflow and a high concentration of dust and chemicals.

Also represented in this year's Labor Day march were tuk tuk drivers and moto taxis, a sector completely unrepresented and unprotected in the Cambodian labor laws. As far as the government is concerned, these sectors don't exist.

For the march, we walked to the National Assembly and requested for a representative to come and take the petition jointly signed by members of the garment and transport sectors. Not surprisingly, no one came out.

Still, it was a remarkable event, the joining together of several thousand members of unrepresented sectors, surrendering their day off to signal support for justice and a fair wage. Large gatherings are largely discouraged in Cambodia, but on Labor Day, for once, a crowd marched through Phnom Penh. And just for today, remarkably, it was peaceful.

How to Survive Hot Season

I like to think of myself as a very rational, logical, common sense type of person. However, I've been loathed to write about hot season, for fear that I'll jinx it and make it even hotter. This fear forces me to look deep within myself and admit that I am superstitious. This superstitious fear of increased heat also comes from a tiny place of relief inside of me. Because for a whole, it was hot, but not unbelievably hot and we allowed ourselves the arrogant thought that hot season wouldn't be that bad this year.

However, in the past three weeks, the heat went from tolerably hot to inexplicably hot, when you sweat before 7:30am, when nothing you wear is cool enough, when you can't manage to consume enough water. Everyday for the last few month, I asked my Khmer colleague if it will get hotter. Every time he laughed at me and said, "yes, it will get more hot." Until last week when I finally got the answer I wanted, "it is the most hot now." This is comforting because it means we can only get cooler.

Hot season is aptly named, because it is so hot. It starts early March and runs through the end of May (all dates approximate). A perfect hot season should see no rain. However, we've had a few thunderstorms which are also extremely welcome. When you first arrive in Cambodia, you wonder why people are up at 5am. Upon reaching hot season, this quickly makes sense because often by 9am, it's already soring into the high 90s. When I get home from work, it averages 96 in my house, so I open all the windows and doors and it cools down to the low 90s. Driving after 10am is much the same as driving into a hair dryer, and the breeze on your face which is often so welcome, is hot and smoggy and you can literally imagine the smog is sticking to your sweaty face. If that sounds nasty, it's because it is, incredibly nasty.

There are several coping strategies to hot season.

• Cold showers. A truly hot day in hot season, can call for three showers.
• Mangoes: Hot season is when mangoes are in season, and so unbelievably cheap that you start to drool. 
• Work: I don't at all mind going to work. It means the opportunity to be air conditioning because after 10am, my house heats up like an oven.
• Sun: The sun also seems harsher in hot season, and I tan on my mere 20 minute afternoon commute to my partner organization. I also burn after not that much more time outdoors. Still, a nice tan from a seasonal change isn't inherently bad.
• AC (also known as "air con"): I do have AC in my house, which is reserved exclusively for sleeping or the electric bill is outrageous. AC five years ago, was considered luxurious and unnecessary. Thank God I didn't live here five years ago.
• Common Misery: The nice thing about hot season is that everyone experiences it together. Even with AC, the sun shines on the just and the unjust. I take comfort that even with sweat rings, damp clothes, and a greasy face, everyone else looks about the same. The standards lower ever so slightly, and without this, I wouldn't survive quite so well.

Technically, we're about halfway through hot season 2012. We can only hope and pray that it end "on time," or that June's rains come early. I'm not quite so superstitious about rainy season.

This Post is for Halfway

I can't help notice on my calendar, that I've been living in Cambodia 18 months. That totals to exactly half of my time in Cambodia. Of course, extension is always an option, but the likelihood of a new adventure in the likes of Timbuktu, Vanuatu, Slovenia is rather high. Historically, my immediate family is incapable of staying in one place longer than three years, so I must carry the torch forward.

I have a love/hate relationship with Cambodia. I love my life; my friends, my church, my colleagues, most of my job, and the rich abundance of easily accessible vacation destinations. But I struggle with the systemic injustices; the land evictions, the overcrowding of cities, the harsh working conditions of garment workers, the high rates of domestic violence, the massive corruption. I've gone through stages of anger at Cambodia for these senseless tragedies that could so easily be avoided. I've also experienced times of hope and excitement, seeing positive change at the periphery. This is life as a global nomad. You can't compare with your home country because that's unfair. You can however be frustrated that change is a slow and dynamic process which can often include regression.

But now that I've summited the mountain and finished the hardest part, I expect a fast decent. Time only goes faster when you're having fun. And for the record, life is so, so good.

How to Enjoy 36 hours in Kampong Som

Every year, I'm given the pleasure of two annual retreats. The first is the national retreat which includes all the national staff and their families. The second is the regional retreat, and previously included the program staff across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, rotating among the three countries. The former took place last weekend, with over 50 people traveling down to Kampong Som, staff and family members.

Kampong Som (featured in several other earlier posts, also known as Sihanoukville), is five hours south by bus. The idea of an overnight trip was initially repulsive. However, at it's conclusion, it was rather enjoyable!

Cambodians and expats have very different ideas about the beach. This is manifested in four primary ways.

First, Cambodians only swim fully clothed; denim or khaki shorts, t-shirt, jeans, and even a hat. Cambodians have an uncomplicated view on swimsuits; "you're wearing underwear in public." Needless to say, because we know this view and because we're trying to be sensitive, we wear a t-shirt and athletic shorts, over our swimsuits. 

Second, swimming fully clothed ties into another Cambodian value, white skin. Beauty and desirability are connected strongly to fair skin, and women will go to great length to whiten their skin. This is extremely obvious at the beach where there are "pavilions" with tables for the Cambodians to sit in the shade, and the normal sun lounge/beds for the expats. The two values coincide no more apparent than on same strip of land alongside the ocean. Cambodians would never lay in the sun. Expats would never come to the beach in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.

Third, another common Cambodian beach value is the acquisition of food from the market. This market is a 10 minute moto/tuk tuk ride away, and inevitably Cambodians will bring food from the market to eat on the beach. The expats would prefer to just buy food at the beach. The price is almost identical, but this is how it must be done.

A final prominent difference is travel to a vacation destination. As expats, we climb on the bus and expect to make one bathroom break, and arrive at our destination as fast as possible. Cambodians enjoy making frequent stops on the way; stop for breakfast 45 minutes after departure, stop for snacks 45 minutes after that, stop 45 minutes after snacks for the toilet, stop another 45 minutes after that for lunch... The journey is part of the adventure and it's an infinitely social experience. For expats, it's maddening.

Our values are quite apparent in how we all perceive the same retreat experience. The emphasis is relationship-building and spending time with each other. But with such prominent language and cultural barriers, beyond the silly ones mentioned above, friendships require far more time and effort. It doesn't fit neatly into a 36-hour retreat. It takes a whole lot more time.

How to Think

One of the strangest things about my job is precisely how I'm valued. I'm here because of how I think. I'm valued for how I think.

Cambodians are intelligent people. Everyone is inherently intelligent. It would be both egocentric and ethnocentric to suggest otherwise.

But in the globalized industrialized world of 2012, where economics rule, power is purchased and a hybrid American/European culture is the standard for modernity, we have to think like Westerners. We have to think in logical sequence, start with a pros/cons list, identify risks, manage risks, always stick to the plan. We criticize anything with inconsistencies. Truth must be sought and provided scientifically, and hold up in separate instances. We look for successful yet innovative patterns to replicate. We respect no one, unless they've demonstrated themselves as worthy. 

I think like this. This was how I was educated. Now somehow I'm in this odd situation where I'm inadvertently instructed to teach others to think like this. It's a very strange demand, quite "modernizationist." The pressure can sometimes be enormous because rewiring how people think is quite impossible. Who's to say how I think I better? I have questions about how I think. I was educated to think like a Westerner while simultaneously educated to criticizes that very quality.

I've not been in Cambodia long enough to make wide sweeping judgements about how everyone thinks. I can say that it's more cyclical. Liner logical thinking is a challenge for many Cambodians. There is an acceptance of the status quo. There is a concentration on short term outputs. There's a tendency to do the same thing over and over again, without modifications. Direct confrontation is avoided, in all situations. Yet also, there is a loyalty to family, the ability to accept life as is, and a deep respect for authority. 

For the purposes of project planning and in order to secure Western funding, Cambodian leaders are demanded to think like Westerners; to fill out logical frameworks and develop a long-term sustainability strategies. For now, this is how it is, and someone has to explain these foreign Western expectations. Sometimes with my partners, that person is me. And if I'm going to be stuck in that situation, the least I can do--or anyone else--is be gracious, patient, and respectful. It's not a one-way street. I want to learn how to think like an Easterner, or a Cambodians. There is value and beauty in taking the best of both. The Cambodians I work with are sharp, intelligent, even creative people. They just don't think like Westerners.