1 April we were evicted. Our landlady had
mental issues and thought we were out to get her. She refused to take the rent
money because of his paranoia. Her son wanted to collect on it. There was also
a daughter that wanted it. The son and the daughter had a feud between them. We
decided to get out of the family drama.
April and May we went house hunting. We’d
been in our old office for over four years in a fabulous neighborhood. However,
we soon learned that within those four years, our neighborhood had been "Khmer gentrified" and we were now priced out. There were also almost no options. Three different
real estate agents took us to the same properties. Our boss visited twice, and
we took him to the same properties. They weren't even good properties.
Early May we found a good spot in a bad
location. Late May, we found the perfect spot but the landlord double-crossed
us for someone who offered him more. Early June, we found the office. It wasn’t perfect. The location was passable,
but all other options had dissipated and so we settled...like a tired shopper at Best Buy.
The last two weeks of June, we had to clean
out old office. There was junk coming out of every cranny and corner. Every
departing expat had left old furniture, kitchen wear, and chaos in piles. Filing cabinets
hadn’t been cleaned out…ever…and we pulled out telegrams from 1984. We sorted through hundreds of books and DVDs, built piles of broken computer hardware
to dump, and furniture that rats had eaten away. Part of this is organizational culture…never
get rid of something because you may want/need it later. Part of it is an
archaic emphasis on thriftiness; the ability to reuse
anything for eternity. A final contributing factor was that our previous year without
leadership had literally allowed things to pile up. For days, we continued to pile up trash and
junk. We gave away unwanted junk to the national staff who wanted it, which
turned out to be quite complicated, as we learned later.
Originally, I estimated that moving would take two
days. It took a week. It didn't help that the people hired to wire internet and power took three times as long as expected, slowing everything down by multiple days while they drilled holes in the wall. We moved smaller pieces in a pick-up truck for three days
ourselves, loading and unloading. On the fourth day, we hired a huge truck and
several moto-taxi drivers to move the larger heavier pieces. They made three
trips, and unloaded everything haphazardly into the yard of the new office.
They moved the piles of junk I had designated as throw-away, and didn’t move
other things I wanted moved. It was a disaster. We let them go by lunch time.
However, going back to the old office, we realized they left they had left the
50+ potted plants on the third-floor veranda in the old office. This was the
only point when I became angry. However, several of us went back and moved the
plants by hand, down three flights of stairs and into the pick-up. No one was
happy.
This was the move. For weeks, we looked like
red-necked hicks with junk and
furniture strewn everywhere. We strung up a tarp
to house old furnisher and “junk” that no one knew what to do with (infuriating
to me). It took weeks to organize the new place and we continued to throw
things away.
I learned several key things in the move.
1. I’m not in charge
2. No one else is in charge.
3. It’s futile to have a
plan.
4. It’s futile to explain the
plan to anyone else
5. Unless you are a tall
male, you’re ignored
6. Unless you speak Khmer,
you’re ignored
7. It’s almost impossible to
get rid of junk.
8. Cambodia is where
all order comes to die.
Don’t ever move an office overseas. If you
do, spend the weeks leading up to it developing your male-ness and your local
language skills. Once you’ve done this, then wait for everything to fall apart.
Something about living overseas mandates nothing go according to plan.
