Three Roys in Cambodia

Yesterday, to my great delight, Tyler and Katie emerged from Pochentong Airport customs and into my life in Cambodia. They are here for two full weeks to enjoy some time with me and to learn about my surrogate home for six months.

They arrived at 10am Saturday after having left Atlanta at 6:30pm Thursday, which sounds horrendously long. But after you realize the 13 hour difference in time and crossing the International Dateline, you come to understand it was only a shade under 24 hours travel time – only semi-horrendous.

 

Tyler and Katie have always been great travelers. Tyler went on a cruise ship in the Caribbean when he was just three months old and Katie went on her first international trip to the United Kingdom when she was just 15 months. Since then they have traveled so many places, including the typical suspects near America, like Mexico and Canada, as well as extensively in the USA. But international trips include the UK several times, Ireland, France, Mexico; and South Africa, Australia & New Zealand (Tyler), Spain (Katie). Now Cambodia. Tyler, soon to be Japan.

Hmmm…when I was 21 years old I had been to Canada when I was 9 years old and that’s it!

I’m really glad they’re here. They are such fun and easy to travel with. Whatever comes their way they adapt and roll with new challenges that pop up. We’re on our way tomorrow to Siem Reap, which is the gateway to the Angkor temple complex, which is over 70 square miles of nearly 300 temple ruins from about 800 to 1300a.d. Simply magnificent. The granddaddy of all is Angkor Wat, which is the largest single religious complex in the world, even bigger than the Vatican. The picture at the very bottom of the blog is one of Angkor Wat, which I took back in January.

We’ll stay there for two days and then take a very long but scenic boat ride to Battambang, a town I’ve written about on the blog on several occasions. We’ll spend two nights there as well. I’ll be working during the day while they are out and about exploring. I’ll join them after work hours to explore as well, but since I’ve seen much of what they are about to see I’ll be able to give good advice on what to see.

I’ll have plenty of pics to share with you next time, as well as tell you more about amazing Angkor.

The REAL rain returns

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an entry entitled “Today’s forecast: Monsoon”. Well, since then it’s been dry, really dry, and hot. This afternoon that all changed.

I was sitting on the porch, two floors up this afternoon enjoying my new splurge – WiMax – internet in my home, finally. Expensive, but I want to make communication with the family much easier. Cost is $110 per month(!!) and that’s for only 500mb per month. It’s .10 per mb thereafter. In one hour this morning I burned through 28mb…oh boy (I'm taking donations!). If you want to Skype me, my handle is “scottroy” without the quotation marks. I’d love to hear from you.

Anyway, back to the rains. The clouds built up and I thought, ‘gee, I sure wish it would finally rain!’

Be careful what you wish for!

All it took was 30 minutes of hell-bent-for-leather breaking loose and the streets were completely flooded. I mean F L O O D E D. My lovely little intersection below the balcony had 18 inches or more in the center. Bikes and motos being pushed by hand and people strolling up to their kneecaps in the stuff. The curbs had disappeared. The occasional automobile threw waves into the adjacent properties. Now I understand why there are so many SUVs in town – to simply clear the water!

But what amazed me was the laughter I heard – and not from just a few children. From the depths of this “big problem” came a guttural joy of the highest order. Lightning crackling all around us, thunder rumbling like a freight train, and yet sheer mirth infused the masses.

Once again, a lesson in Cambodian life. From people who really know what struggling is all about, I learn that life’s little (and big) inconveniences are to be accepted, embraced, and even celebrated.

It’s like the multitudes are chanting: “It is as it is, so why not enjoy it?”

Half Way Home

I can’t believe that it’s June and I’m nearly half way through my assignment in Cambodia. Time has flown.

I’ve really enjoyed my time here, so much so that I’ve even considered how I might stay here and work for awhile longer. VSO has liked what I've brought to my work and has asked me to extend my work here as well. I must say, the pace of life and the impact of my work are two really enticing realities.

Studying and researching Enterprise Development has been a very unique project for me rather than building enterprises. Actually, what I’ve been doing is creating a business plan for VSO to get into the business of building businesses. But I can see why VSO wanted an experienced entrepreneur to design this intervention. Who would know more about what to look for and to design a workable plan?

VSO is really thinking outside of the box on this one, seeing that it usually focuses on capacity building in other organizations. They are aligning with current development approaches which very reluctantly embrace private enterprise as probably the most sustainable and effective solution to poverty. A major problem is that it is one thing to recognize what needs to be done, but it's another thing entirely to actually be able to do it. NGOs are not business builders per se. But they do have the right aim at trying to help poor people, so we must also design this into the project so that we don't just assume benefits will trickle down to the poor automatically. We must take the best of both business and NGO approaches.

My role here is to develop an executable plan that will support the development of enterprises owned by relatively poor people in small villages. That means study the problem, understand the enabling environment, find strategic partners, uncover money, and formulate a detailed plan that will create more financial opportunity for poor families. They’ve scheduled six months for the project so that I can take my time, what with the cultural differences, the relative alien quality of the economic and business conditions here, and the nature of NGO work.

Coming here, I thought, ‘Great, let’s help some fishermen make a little more money by helping them build their businesses better…(yadi, yadi, yadi)’. What I now know are two things: one is that I am a spoiled business child reared in the American garden of business Eden and never knew it. And two, while the Cambodian business context has formidable problems there are still some very significant and impacting strategies I’m seeing.

Can you imagine operating a business in an environment where your government is a serious predator? Where the judiciary makes such erratic decisions that you know you’d better only do business with people you trust? Where contracts are nearly unenforceable? Where property rights are cloudy? Where access to credit has such a high threshold that you must have three times the amount of assets to the size of the loan you take, and you have to pay it back in one year at 18% interest? Where paying bribes to police and government officials are part of the business plan? Where you avoid becoming too successful for fear of reprisal?

Yet even in the midst of all of this there is still opportunity. It comes in the form of problems to be solved, which is an entrepreneur’s dream. Businesses and entire industries are formed to solve problems and Cambodia has a lot of them!

I look forward to sharing my plans for enterprise development in the next few weeks as the project comes together. I’m very excited about its possibilities and impact on poor people who depend on fishing, as is VSO, about the preliminary recommendations I am making that are currently under consideration. After a conference call on Wednesday with VSO’s international Livelihoods Programme Director and then a planning meeting with the Livelihoods Team in Cambodia we are now ready to proceed with writing up the project proposal and identify donors. Stay tuned.

What's cookin'?

One of the best things I’ve enjoyed here is noodle soup for breakfast. Take really fine Chinese noodles and choose your meat. Simple as that. It comes to the table piping hot with a side of spicy sauce, fresh bean sprouts and a wedge of lime. Mmmm good.

The eating technique is also pretty cool. Chopsticks in one hand, Asian spoon in the other and you use both implements simultaneously. I must say, I am getting really good with chopsticks. Funny though, most of the locals use forks and spoons now. Really easy to spot barangues (Westerners).

And there is always a pitcher of hot tea on the table, free of course. You can order coffee but it isn’t the greatest. It’s usually thickish stuff with a consistency like thin latex paint. Milk is almost always sweet condensed milk that sits at the bottom of the glass like a parfait. I didn’t like it at first but have gotten used to it.

Lunch is a big thing here. It’s a full two hours long, with eating in the first half and grabbing a nap in the second half. There’s this really good locals place just down from the office with excellent food. They even have the menu with English translation for the occasional barangue that wanders in. But me, I’m a regular. The one girl on staff who speaks English always waits on me. It’s just automatic.

The food is excellent with all sorts of soups, curries and stir-fries, from vegetarian to every kind of meat you can imagine, including eel, frog and snake (I haven’t ventured into that part of the menu yet). Of course, rice is always served in a big side bowl that sits covered on the table.

Khmers share their food with their friends. Typically they will dish up a mound of rice and then just a spoonful or so of the ordered food, unlike the rest of us who typically think the thing we’ve ordered is the main thing you eat. Khmer’s, and I suspect most from SE Asia, are here for the rice. It’s not uncommon to see leftovers on the table from the main course but the rice is gone.

Here in Phnom Penh you can eat Western style but it will cost about 3 to 4 times the cost of traditional foods. Both breakfast and lunch as described above cost about one dollar each, including tea. You would pay about 3 to 4 times or more than that amount if you insist on eating in a place that caters to Westerners.

There are the REAL local places which consist of a totally portable restaurant with mini-trestle tables, small plastic stools and portable barbecue stoves – I don’t eat there because hygiene is of reasonable concern. But many, many Khmer’s eat at these informal eateries. I prefer an open air restaurant spilling out of a business space onto the sidewalk, surrounded by potted plants, trestle tables, cheap plastic seats and loads of Khmer people who act somewhat surprised at my presence, and who seem genuinely pleased I’m there.

And of course there are more exotic foods to eat here. Take prahoc for example. It is known affectionately as fish cheese. It is made from very small fish that are gutted and deboned, then minced into a paste. The mince is put into large ceramic jugs (60 gallons or more), salt is added and it is allowed to ferment for 45 days. Yes, that's right, can you imagine the smell of this stuff as it breaks down and ferments for a month and a half? I've actually been to the fish paste factory in Battambang where there are about 200 of these vats going in various stages. After fermenting it is ready to be processed and so flavorings like chili are added. I have eaten it twice and it is really pretty good. After all, I eat moldy French cheese - same thing, right?

Another group of delicacies are bugs, deep fried and coated with different flavorings. It is really something when you see a vendor walking down the street with a large flat basket of deep fried bugs! I saw an entire vendor stand of at least eight different varieties of critters, including tarantulas and smoked snake. I haven't been there or done that one yet, nor am I likely to do so. However, what I've been told is that out of survival necessity the Cambodian people turned to eating bugs for protein during the Khmer Rouge holocaust. They developed a taste for them and now they can't stop eating their bugs!

Other than the previous paragraph the food here is delightful. I took a cooking class here for about 5 hours and learned how to cook Khmer style. I thinkI do a pretty good job of it too. And my rice cooking skills have been perfected. I can't wait to cook for many of you when I get back. Bon appetit!

Today's forecast: monsoon

Right now, Lizzy and I are sitting on our lovely broad balcony two floors hovering above the street and it is pouring with rain. This is no sissy rain mind you. It’s a good ol’ huge droplet, high wind, pummeling that is starting to become a daily occurrence.

We’ve come through the dry season which goes from November to April and the hottest month of the year, April, and now we’re through the one month transition to rainy season. The rains will continue to intensify and get longer over the next few months until they crest in September.

One might think it is inconvenient and nasty, as in, “Oh, it’s monsoon season, how terrible!” But I find it terribly refreshing and somewhat exciting. I like rain, and I love big thunderstorms. Looks like I won’t be disappointed. It’s cool out now, like low 70 degrees Fahrenheit, so it’s a very welcome relief to the heat which daily seems to scrape the paint off 95 degrees or sometimes more. Add in the heat index, which is a formula that considers both temperature and humidity to arrive at what it actually feels like. 95F usually translates to 110F or more.

But you know something, you adapt. I’m generally pretty comfortable here. There are times when it feels hot, particularly when the air is not moving. The businesses here have strategically placed fans and sometimes air conditioning that increase one’s personal comfort. Generally speaking, I think I’ve just said “yes” to the heat instead of resisting it.

This storm will pass and the temp will pick up again, but it’s 5:30pm and we’ll probably land around 75F overnight. From my colleagues at work I understand that the rains will be in the afternoon for the first couple of months, but then gradually move into the evening and overnight hours, and eventually, after a couple months, the rains will happen every day in the morning.

Rain is good. The Mekong floods and Tonle Sap Lake expands to nine times its dry season size – nine times! It brings an abundance of fish from upstream in Lao, Thailand and China which feed this country the protein it needs. And the rains grow rice and other crops that are vital to the Cambodian people.

But rain can be a hardship on certain populations. Here in Phnom Penh it is a daily ritualistic inconvenience. Plastic sheets come out, people run for cover, ponchos abound. Life keeps moving, albeit a bit slower. But in the country the rains bring a mixed blessing of a rich harvest of fish and rice, but major inconveniences of washed out roads that remain impassable sometimes for weeks and months.

Keep up with the weather at www.weather.com and simply type in Phnom Penh, or you can look on this blog in the righthand column for a quick link.