My Cambodian family

I’ve realized I have developed a family here. We take care of each other, look out for each other, and develop extremely close bonds with each other. Its nothing I’ve experienced in the states, I think it has something to do with the intense environment we are all in- its like survival mode. We all just got back from an exciting trip to the beach. We had great weather the first few days, then went to this great island-without electricity or running water- for a night. (more pics on facebook) We were able to have a huge bonfire as well. It was riiiight before the storm hit! The night turned into 2 since the monsoon hit and we couldn’t get off the island. It was really fun- we were DEFINITELY ready to get off the island. The wind was SO strong and SO constant it got tiring and cold. (picture of us all huddled on our porch) First time anyone of us felt cold in months!! But it was really fun to get out of the city! There were TONS of fresh crab and shrimp- so we ate very well!

The pic with the boats is the morning we left. They came by at 6am screaming at us to hurry pack and leave. thankfully benny's girlfriend is khmer so translated for us. They had to get all the foreigners off the island. and wouldnt let any boat leave till we were all out. the waves were SO strong it was the scariest thing i've done in a while. it felt like we were on a scary rollercoster water park ride and they kept throwing buckets and buckets of water on us! we had to bucket out water from the boats so we didnt sink. We found out later that 10 people drowned in the town beside us becuase of they went over board.

We also go to BBQ every Saturday night. Which involves lots of beer and khmer style bbq beef and morning glory. We all leave extremely full and feeling good for $4 each! Then we go dancing. We are also joining a bocce league which meets wed nights- nothing too serious so it will be fun!!

I also included some shots of the people and places we saw on the way down to Kep (beach). I didn’t take them but I did see them. I’m realizing the difference between an easy camera and a complicated one! Like the pics of the snails? Well it looks SO much better than it smells!! haha!

New Family Members

Annie- UK, SISHA Program Development Intern (my intern)

Susie- US, Heller Keller Public Health Fellow

Jess- Australia, English Teacher

Darley- US, Monitoring and Evaluation Intern

Kensey- US, Water Pump Project Intern

Kuny- Cambodia, Child Rights Program Officer

Kent- US, SISHA undercover investigator

Brian- US, Garmet Industry Research Fellow

Ethan- US, SISHA part time Inter, Princeton University Fellow

Benny- Australia, Solor Power something…

Mo- UK, SISHA Legal Intern

Huh.... now I know!!

I'm going to make this section about the little things I learn.

September

2) There is famous Kampot Pepper here. It is very tasty- it comes in the same form like regular black pepper. However, the flakes are much larger. Small black specks... that look strangely the same as the bugs you often find in meals. SO i think they put the pepper in everything so you don't know if you're eating bugs or pepper. You're always able to convince yourself its pepper, so you feel happy while eating whatever it may be!


June

1) In Cambodia is polite to leave some food on your plate. Maybe it is because it is almost impossible to clean a plate when using chopsticks.

Never thought I'd be doing this!

SOOOO I’ve been holding off on posts because life has been a little tough lately. Couldn’t think of what positive things to write about. I’ve been watching tons of episodes of the Wire- and that didn’t make for interesting stories or pictures. My best friends from PP left, got my heart broken and went to my first brothel –all within in 2 days. So lots of time has been spent in bed. (not the beds in the pics)

But now I’m back up and running!! have conducted my first raid- and it was exciting! SISHA conducted 2 raids in the same day. We had been waiting on the warrants for TWO WEEKS and then they both came through at once! One was on the Thai Cambodia border, and the other in Phnom Penh. They both went as planned and we rescued 41 girls in one day! There were supposed to be over 90 but since the warrants took so long, some of the girls have already been moved to Malaysia.

I experienced the frustration of the Cambodian police system. IT IS SLOW. SISHA did all the work getting the statements, warrants, ssignatures ect. And STILL had to wait soooo long for it to go through. I’ve learned to stop thinking about how it should work, and accept how it does work, then begin to work within their system.

So there has been a huge increase in bonded labor since the rules in china are becoming more strict. They are moving their factories to Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand. SISHA has been appointed the organization to head up all the investigations, so we’ve started getting calls.

The raid on the border was a brutal brothel. The girls were drugged and living in awful conditions. After we did the raid and grabbed the girls we brought them to a police station to do the statements. While there the power dynamic was really interesting. One girl spoke some English and was translating for the other girls questions they had. That was the hardest part for me, being asked questions and not wanting to tell them the answers. We were supposed to be paid next week, will we still be paid? (NO if you haven’t been paid for 4 months – and he tells you every week next week- you were NOT going to be paid!) But having to tell a 15 year old girl that was impossible. I’m not sure on the ages of the border raid, they looked young, but its hard to know the real ages of girls. The chiefs of the towns will often lie on the birth certificates when the traffickers take them so it looks like they are over 18. Age is also not important in Cambodia and its not uncommon for the people from the provinces to not know when they were born.

So it was a good day for SISHA! Some of the girls from both raids have been brought to long term aftercare farcicalities while others chose to go back to their families.

Next post will be of my apt and something uplifting….. I promise….. alltho it may be of partying….. there are only 2 things to do in phnom penh- work and party!

A rollercoster ride that never ends

Woke up to the sound of a jackhammer at the end of my bed. grrr. quickly got ready to make it to work in time to make a skype call before work starts. Then i'm off to find a tuk tuk. Frustration hits. The sense of helplessness is overwhelming . The language barrier is second only to the culture barrier. The two go hand in hand, especially with Cambodians. The lack of grammar in their own language makes their well-meaning attempts at English frustratingly meager. They use so many words, to say so little. An explanation takes three times as long as it should, and in the end you're not even sure what answer you got. You try to explain something to them, and their polite smiling manner let you believe that you are getting through, when in fact maybe one or two words has actually made sense to them. Their giggling can be so sweet at times, but then you have the insecure giggle of someone who does not have a clue... And someone who once considered herself culturally sensitive and understanding wants to scream at them and tear her own hair out. DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ME!!!!!!!!!! Because of the lack of understanding takes me 40 mins longer to get to work than it should and i miss my window for a skype call.

but then i'm at work. internet. responsibility. satisfaction with my time spent here. After work i leave for a restaurant and find a tuk tuk driver that knows exactly where to go2 times in one night, the satisfaction is unreal. And my positive feelings towards this country returns and leaves me calm again.

The Killing Fields

Warning: Not a happy topic
One of the biggest reasons that there are so many NGOs in Cambodia is due to the genocide that started in 1975. Pol Pot had this great idea that if all the educated, upper class were eliminated, the peasant class would be treated fairly. He abolished religion, culture, education ect. He brought the educated and professionals out to the rural areas and implemented forced labor, most died of starvation. Over 1.5 million people died during the regime. He made sure all children of the adults who were killed were also killed so there wouldn’t be a chance of retrubution when the kids grew up. I don’t know all the details, but Pol Pot’s actions left a country without doctors, lawyers, teachers, bankers ect. To this day NGOs are trying hard to rebuild a society. You may have heard about lately it because of the trial held last week (maybe the word Cambodia caught your attention) The verdict came out that a senior commander, Duch, who was responsible for over 13,000 deaths was sentenced to 19 years. My friends who work for the courts were outraged, only 19 years? The number of children who died is incomprehensible. But, it is better than nothing.

Pics from top to bottom

Photos 1, 2, 3- After s

omeone was taken by the Khmer Rouge, they were brought to Toul Slang, a prison where they were held for a length of time between 2-6 months. They were tortured, starved, and interrogated for names of people who were "potential threats"

4- They would take a photo of a prison

er, there are over 8 rooms full of frames like this

5- The Killing Fields, this is where they brought the "prisoners" to have them killed. They dug mass graves and pushed them in. They used alternative methods to exterminate them since bullets were expensive.

6- They have begun excavating the mass graves and have built a memorial to honor them within the Buddhist culture

Background:

Cambodian jungle in the 1960s, advocated a radical Communist revolution that would wipe out Western influences in Cambodia and set up a solely agrarian society. In 1970, aided by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, Khmer Rouge guerrillas began a large-scale insurgency against Cambodian government forces, soon gaining control of nearly a third of the country.



By 1973, secret U.S.

bombings of Cambodian territory controlled by the Vietnamese Communists forced the Vietnamese out of the country, creating a power vacuum that was soon filled by Pol Pot's rapidly growing Khmer Rouge movement. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, overthrew the pro-U.S. regime, and established a new government, the Kampuchean People's Republic.



As the new ruler of Cambodia, Pol Pot set about transforming the country into his vision of an agrarian utopia. The cities were evacuated, factories and

schools were closed, and currency and private property was abolished. Anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed. Skilled workers were also killed, in addition to anyone caught in possession of eyeglasses, a wristwatch, or any other modern technology. In forced marches punctuated with atrocities from the Khmer Rouge, the millions who failed to escape Cambodia were herded onto rural collective farms.


Between 1975 and 1978, an estimated two million Cambodians died by execution, forced labor, and famine. In 1978, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh in early 1979. A moderate Communist government was established, and Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge retreated back into the jungle.


In 1985, Pol Pot officially retired but remained the effective head of the Khmer Rouge, which continued its guerrilla actions against the government in Phnom Penh. In 1997, however, he was put on trial by the organization after an internal power struggle ousted him from his leadership position. Sentenced to life imprisonment by a "people's tribunal," which critics derided as a show trial, Pol Pot later declared in an interview, "My conscience is clear." Much of the international community hoped that his captors would extradite him to stand trial for his crimes against humanity, but he died of apparently natural causes while under house arrest in 1998.

Still interested- check out these sites:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38356506/ about the trial
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia.html more background info
Movie: The killing fields (on demand on Netflix i think)

Bangkok Weekend!

Since roundtrip tickets to Bangkok are only $150 my group decided to go to Bangkok for a long weekend! It was sooo much fun! Jess has friends at the Intercontinental so we were able to get employee rates of $60 a night (compared to $250). We arrived and went out for some great thai food, I had the coconut milk spicy soup. SO good! Then we went back and were all exhausted and decided to go to bed and check out the night life the 2^nd night. I don think any of us had ever been so happy to be in a hotel room. It was SO quiet. I mean silent. and the beds were the most comfortable beds I’ve ever been in. We all slept for 11 hours. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned how awful the mornings are in Phnom Penh. The entire night there are dogs barking, constantly. Then at about 5:45 the vendors start coming out and squeak the bike horns we used as kids, or use a microphone that is loud and sounds like waa waa waaaaa. There is construction going on throughout the entire city. At 6:05 the ear piercing banging begins. Its beyond painful- torture really. The entire western population is sleep deprived (which may explain why there are so many NGO’s with badly thought out projects). Even with my computer blaring “peaceful music” it seems as though the construction workers are in my room. So yes, a silent night and morning sleep is something all of us were sooo happy to enjoy. I woke up at 8am and just squiggled in my bed and acknowledged the happiness I felt in a cold dark silent comfy room. Thankfully every morning was like that (no morning people thankfully!!). The first day we laid by the roof top pool for a while, then walked around the city and got massages then went to the backpackers district at night. Very fun- buckets of booze and Leo beer! Then there were the food carts which were plain amazingness. Eatable noodles and spring rolls for $1! SO gooooood!!!

The next day we did the tourist thing and checked out the royal palace and sleeping Buddha which I did with Christian but still was an incredible site. That night we ate at a cute amazing thai restaurant and checked out the high society clubs at night. Sunday we hung out at the pool all day then went to a movie at night. The movie was something else- you walk in and its like a classy lounge with massage chairs. Then when its time for the movie to begin they bring you in and there are huge leather recliners that go all the way back. They bring you pillows and blankets and take your order. SOOOO amazing! it was really fun, and we saw a great movie! (no theaters in phnom penh) They also had a great food court in the mall so I was able to get some annies pretzels with dunkable cheese.

I spent Monday morning before my flight reading by the pool then took off for the airport. I finally had time to get a huge sub and make a burger king run quickly before my flight took off. I ordered onion rings, French friends, chicken nuggets and tater tots from burger king. The guy beside me gave me a funny look as I totally pigged out - I had to explain there are no fast food restaurants in phnom penh and I had to eat it while I could. It was pretty tough leaving the city. It was SO nice to have sidewalks and skywalk and public transportation to get around. And the city was so manageable, the traffic followed rules and it was so nice to be able to eat without worrying about getting sick! We are opening a SISHA office in Bangkok soon, so maybe in the future I’ll be there!

So today I’m back in Phnom Penh, having the dogs keep me awake all night and woke up nice and early to the sounds of toy horns and construction. Hopefully my new place will be a little quieter, I’m paying quite a bit extra in the hopes that it is. But it was such a fabulous weekend!!

Site Visit

Early Sunday morning Jess and I went to visit our Youth Legal Training Program. Our Director decided not to come last min which left the two of us to get ourselves there. Thankfully his wife gave our tuk tuk driver some good first step directions. We get close then drive around in circles for a bit, then finally after a few calls the driver turns down this railroad track. The path was tiny and the houses were built on the tracks so there was barly any room to drive. This is also a place that westerners would never find let alone go down, so the people were very confused and looked a little shocked to see us. That’s never a good feeling…. the area is one of the poorest in the city. Finally after about 15 mins the driver stops and then our co-worker steps out and we are at the school. The students were amazing. Soooo into the lesion- Sunday they were teaching about drugs. They were so interested and paid attention. they were boys and girls aged 15-20. The program was piloted earlier this year and was so successful they chose the top 3 students to become peer teachers for this round. They are going to start bringing the training to the dump site (look it up its super awful) and start educating the kids there. They focus on the legal rights that exist and ones they have. They also talk a lot about trafficking and whats legal and whats not. There were some young girls that were hanging out at the school and were at first terrified of me and jess. Then after a big they started warming up a little to us. We finally were able to play rock paper scissors with them and watched them play hid and go seek. They were so much fun.

This week I’m working on a proposal and I’m down to the wire right now. Its going well just really overwhelming that I’m the one in charge! We are presenting to the Minister of Women’s Affairs this week to get her on board with some funding for our new rape crisis center (first one in Cambodia) that will give medical, mental and legal counseling and aftercare placement to anyone who reports a rape or domestic violence. Sounds like its going to be really great. Just need the funding now!

That’s all for now- I’m going to go to Bangkok next weekend to hang out – I’m sure I’ll come back with some good pics and stories!! (below is jess with the cows after we finally found our ride home)