Kep

One week before leaving Cambodia, I went to on a road trip to Kep with four very nice people. I was happy Joanna was going to drive the car, until she turned the key in the engine. I was fooled by her mild manners and calm exterior, it turned out she releases all her inner frustrations by speeding on dirt roads and scaring fragile friends in the back seat. We almost hit an elephant on our way to Kep, it was just taddling along on the road, but it fortunately went well. A lucky boy was riding it home. On our way we stopped at a nice place to explore some caves.

The outside of the caves

Laska and I in a cave. Finally my $1 flashlight came in handy!

Kep was a very calm, very green place. There weren't a lot of tourists there, not a lot of people at all, so it felt a bit magic to be walking around there all by ourselves. We lived at Tree Top Bungalows, which was really pretty. There were some large, scary looking lizards there, I was a bit nervous they would come nibble on me at night, but I don't think they did. Maybe they didn't consider me nibble-worthy, I'm not sure.

The bungalows!

The view. Life was good.

The beautiful surroundings brought out the poet in Laska.

I had a tiny bit of food poisoning the first day, so I wasn't feeling so fresh the next day at breakfast. (But come to think of it, only having it once during 5 months isn't too bad, I thought it might be more!) I was trying to eat an omelett, but I didn't have much apetite.

The sweet people working there got worried about me, and asked if there was anything else I wanted. When I asked if they had anything simple, like some fruit, they gave me a whole bunch of bananas and refused to take any money for them. I was touched! The others were going to Rabbit Island by boat, and I decided to go with them, even though I wasn't feeling too good. Then the hotel owner gave me a lift all the way down to the main road on his scooter, so that I didn't have to walk all the way. When I came down I thanked him profoundly in bad Khmer, I think he understood.

I sat down on a bench to wait for the others who walked down, next to me there was a guy selling durian fruit from a cart. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. It was very warm and quiet, I could just hear the wind rustling through the trees. I could smell a hint of the ocean in the air. It struck me that in a week, I would leave all this. I would return to my home, which was very dear to me, but so very different from all I could see from this bench I was sitting on. I teared up, and felt such a strong gratitude towards these wonderful people, this street, this sleepy little town. It was the perfect place to visit my last week in the country. The others came down, and we found a tuk-tuk.

Me in a tuk-tuk, smiling, not vomiting. Joanna The Crazy Driver in the middle and Laska The Cutie on the left. Joanna's arm is always like that, I really should ask her why some day.

Me on a boat, slightly nauseous, but still not vomiting. Nice boat man in the background, beautiful ocean below!

Ingrid and I enjoying a lovely evening

The sun setting!

Laska and Dar enjoying the ride (and eachother? Grrr)

Who needs lights, when you have good friends and a case of Angkor beer?

Powerful women

In Chinese there is a cool expression: 半边天, or banbiantian. This litterally means "half the sky", but it apparantly refers to a vision Mao Zedong had, that in the ideal society women should hold up half the sky. So 半边天 today refers to succesful women, often those who have important positions in the government or in companies. When I was 16 I got this book:

It has a female super hero on the cover, and the title "Half the sky is ours". It was a book that talked about gender issues, and why it is important to be aware of them. I have always liked this title. In Norway women have all the same legal rights as men, but as this title suggests, there is more to equality than what can be written in law books.

We might be one of the best countries in the world for women to live in, but even here women's income is only 85 % of men's income, and only 1 out of 5 executive managers are women. 2 out of 3 women are employed, but 40 % of these only work part time (the equivalent number for men being 14 %). 50 % of all 15 year old girls think that they weigh too much, when in fact only 16 % are overweight. 120 000 Norwegians have an eating disorder, and 90 % of these are women. (Sources: 1 2 3)

Right now in the Norwegian media, there is a lot of talk regarding assault rape cases in Oslo (this being in parks, alleys etc. by unknown perpetrators). 48 cases has been reported so far this year, this is a doubling of the total number in 2010, and only 7 cases have been solved. Women in Oslo are scared by this fact, and the political opposition accuses the government for not doing enough to fight the problem.

I think the author Emilie Buchwald has said something wise about this phenomenon: "A rape culture is a culture of intimidation. It keeps women afraid of being attacked and so it keeps women confined in the range of their behavior. That fear makes a woman censor her behavior - her speech, her way of dressing, her actions. It undermines her confidence in her ability to be independent. The necessity to be mindful of one's behavior at all times is far more than annoying. Women's lives are unnecessarily constricted. As a society, this one issue hampers the best efforts of half our population. It costs us heavily in lost initiative and in emotional energy stolen from other, more creative thoughts."

In Scandinavia, the problem of assault rape is worst in Norway at the moment. But of course, it is a much bigger problem in many other places in the world. In Cambodia, friends of mine warned me that I as a woman should not walk alone on the street after dark, or even live by myself (women rarely do). The risk of rape was high, they meant, and the newspaper had stories every day about both grown women and small girls being victims of this. I was told there is a superstition that if a man has sex with a virgin, he will get more "male energy" from it, become more of a man. Because of this, very young girls are often targeted. A case that was especially horrifying last year involved a 6 month old baby girl and 4 grown men, she barely survived the internal injuries. This is hard to learn about, but it's all the more important that focus is brought to the problem.

 

Refering to the Chinese expression, there is a movement called Half The Sky, started by the Americans Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. They are journalists and have won a pulitzer price for their coverage of China, WuDunn being the first Asian-American ever to win it. (She also has this very cool TED talk called "Our century's greatest injustice".) They have written the book "Half the sky - How to change the world" (2010), this was recently translated into Norwegian. I came across a review of it in the newspaper Dagsavisen, I was glad the book was given attention also here.

One of the book's many strong stories: 18 year old Bibi Aisha from Afghanistan was abused by the Taliban. Photo from Dagsavisen.

In the book we can read about several people, one of them being the Cambodian girl Srey Rath. When she was 15 she wanted to work in Thailand for two months washing dishes, so she could help her mother financially. The man who had promised her the job then sold her to a brothel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where she was transported against her will. When she arrived she first resisted the oppressors, but was then beaten and raped until she obeyed them. She worked as a prostitute for 15 hours per day without getting paid anything, until she and three other girls managed to escape. They went to the police station, but there a police officer arrested them and sold Srey Rath to another brothel in Thailand. She was finally able to escape from here too, and returned to Cambodia and her family. She was helped by an American NGO who worked with victims of trafficking, and she can now make a living by selling things off a cart by the Thai border. As many as 100 000 girls and women are kidnapped and sold to brothels each year, and most aren't as lucky as Srey Rath was.

American author Anne Rice has bragged about the book: "It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book about one of the most serious problems of our time: the worldwide abuse and exploitation of women. In addition to describing the injustices, Kristof and WuDunn show how concerned individuals everywhere are working effectively to empower women and help them overcome adversity. Wonderfully written and vividly descriptive, Half the Sky can and should galvanize support for reform on all levels. Inspiring as it is shocking, this book demands to be read."

In 2009 Kristof and WuDunn also wrote "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide", which also became a best seller. Inspiring!

Telethon for mine clearing

This Sunday we had the big NRK Telethon, or TV-aksjonen as we call it in Norwegian. This is a big fund raiser where people can either give donations online, or to the volunteers who show up at their door. I have participated in this several times, and it really is a nice project to be a part of. You meet a lot of nice people when you go around knocking on doors, most of them are happy to give some change to a good cause.

The organization they're raising funds for this year is The Norwegian People's Aid, and their work to clear mines. The countries in focus now are Vietnam, Laos, Sudan, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tajikistan, but the organization has already done a lot of work in Cambodia. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, both land mines and UXOs (unexploded ordinances) are a huge problem. These are mostly leftovers from the roughly 500 000 bombs that the US dropped in the late 1960 and early 1970s.

The Cambodian Mine Action Center believes that there are 4-6 million mines left in Cambodia, most of them in rural areas. From 2000-2005 about 850 people died each year because of landmines, since then the number has steadily decreased. One third of the casualties are children, who often starts playing with shiny things on the ground without realizing that is a lethal weapon. 40 000 people life as amputees in Cambodia, one of the highest rates in the world, and I saw many of these people begging in the streets of Phnom Penh. These are mostly victims of land mine explosions.

Here's an interesting clip (in Norwegian) about how different types of mines work. Hard to hear about at times, but I think it's important to know. You can also hear this year's telethon song "Field of fire", by the great band Big Bang.

Photo taken in Cambodia by the Norwegian People's Aid.

This year's telethon was the second best ever held, and it raised about $520,000. Not bad! Let's hope this money will save a lot of lives, and make children be able to run around in the fields of their villages without a care in the world. It's hard to put a price on a safe and peaceful childhood, it's something everyone in the world should get.

Media coverage

The media in Cambodia are now all concerned with the flooding in South East Asia, that has led Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to say that Bangkok might be swamped by the massive amounts of water.


In Norwegian media, this is not talked about a lot. It seems that we have two main news stories these days, one being the Nobel Peace Prize. It has been awarded to three very important, courageous women this year, hooray! I watched the documentary "Pray the devil back to hell" last year, and these women's struggle for peace in Liberia made a very strong impression on me (two of these women are this year's laureates). Now my friend Kimsor has informed me that this movie will be translated and dubbed into Khmer, which is wonderful, I hope many Cambodians can be as inspired as I was.


The other hot topic in Norwegian media is of a slightly different nature. A Danish hunter has shot Albin, the celebrity moose. He is called this because of the special color of his fur. Albin was first thought to be albino, but scientists now think that it just has the unusual color coincidentally.

Albin as we will remember him, proud and beige. He lived to be six years old (in moose years).

In 2009 there were hot rumours that Albin had gotten a girlfriend, the brown moose in the background. I have to point out that hese rumours were never confirmed.

The hunter Oddbjørn is sad and angry over the killing of Albin. Here he shows the last footage he took of him. Oddbjørn at least hopes that the Dane will donate Albin's body to a Norwegian museum, so that he can be mounted, displayed and remembered for generations to come.


The Danish hunter has received death threats from Norwegian moose enthusiasts (enmoosiasts?), and has gone underground.

Flooding

There are several flash floods going on in Cambodia these days, 164 people have died so far, 15 provinces are affected and 215 000 people have been displaced. It's the worst one they've had for a decade, in July 2000 there was a flood that killed 347 people, but there was a lot less damage to roads and rice paddies than there is now. Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Pakistan are also struggling with the same problem.

Photo of a brave little kid in the middle of the flood in Cambodia

 

I have never previously worked with an enviroment project before the Let’s do it-project in Phnom Penh. But as so many others, I remember the earth quake and tsunami in South East Asia in 2004, and the focus it put on climate change and natural disasters. The Norwegian media focused mostly on Thailand, because this where most of the 84 deceased Norwegians had been on Christmas vacation when it struck. But where Thailand lost an estimated 8000 people, one thinks as many as 167 000 people lost their lives in Indonesia. 230 000 people altogether. In a small country like ours, everyone knew of someone who died. In my case it was a teacher at my elementary school, and her little daughter. I remember her being pregnant when I was still in school, and was very sad to hear these news when it happened.

Scary, scary photo of the tsunami in Thailand. Taken from Wikipedia.

A more recent event that has brought a lot of attention to natural disasters in the region (and nuclear power in general), is of course the earth quake and following tsunami east of Japan in March. It caused almost 16 000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of residents have been evacuated because of the meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

When talking about global environmental issues in Cambodia, people were very concerned about the Phillipines. Greenpeace has used them as an example of one of the countries that suffers the most from man made climate change, with extreme weather occurrences such as floods, droughts, forest fires, land slides and an increase in tropical cyclones.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report in 2007 saying that the sea level could rise between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) by century's end. Rises of just 10 centimeters (4 inches) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia. The students I talked to in Cambodia were interested in these facts, recognizing that even though their country doesn't pollute a lot compared to the rest of the world, they are very vulnerable to these changes.

Siem Reap

I have traveled quite a bit in Europe and in Asia, and my favourite thing to see has rarely been famous buildings. Maybe because of the hype, the other tourists, the heat, the annoying guides, I’m not sure. I prefer walking the streets with no tourists, sitting in cafés where I can’t understand the menu and look at people going by. If I come across a tourist even in this setting, I’m often a bit irritated, as I’m sure they are too when they spot me. (Hey compadre, this café isn’t big enough for two pretend-locals!) Anyways, if you read about Cambodia on the internet, the one tourist sight everyone talks about is the Angkor Wat.

This is a temple outside Siem Reap, the largest and most famous one among the so called Angkorian temples. I will honestly admit that I didn’t have very high expectations of these sights when I ventured out on a three day trip to see them. The first one I saw was the Angkor Wat, and I was impressed by the size of it and the nice atmosphere there. But then came all the others. I was astonished by all this beauty, never before have physical buldings made such an impression on me. We had long tuktuk rides in between the temples, which were nice breaks to have in between all the stories and stone carvings. When I think back on it, it almost seem like one long, meditative journey through history and art :)

Angkor was the capital of the Khmer Empire until the 15^th century, and was then most likely unpopulated for 300 years until French archaeologists re-discovered the area in 1860. In the meantime the jungle had been able to grow freely around the temples, and some places huge, 300 year old trees have grown straight through stone floors and walls. It’s fascinating! Monks usually wrote down important things on palm leafs through history, and these have mostly disappeared and perished. So the best historical sources we have today over the Khmer Empire, are the texts carved into the stone walls in the different temples. They’re mostly about the emperors at the time, and current wars. I will post some of my many photos from the temples here:

 Sunrise over Angkor Wat

Monkey by the Angkor Wat, holding on to her baby's tail. Cute!

The Bayon Temple

The Banteay Srei temple

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm

These roots are 300 years old!

Beautiful colours

Martine taking a rest on a little tree

Making it up to the Pre Rup temple in time for the sunset, nice and sweaty

Amazing evening sky over Pre Rup

Oh, how I will miss the palm trees

A good project

Last fall I took a very interesting course at my university, called ”Environment and development”. The class was a nice contrast to my courses in economics! We of course talked a lot about environment and pollution, but also fundemental questions like what our relationship to nature really is, and what responsibility we have towards it. Does nature have a value in itself, or just through how it can help people? We also talked about “development”. The word naturally just means a change, or a progress of some sort. But we often use it synonymously with industrialization, increased production and GDP, increased “standard of living”. Maybe at any cost? So when I went to Cambodia, I was excited over seeing a so called developing country up close. How NGOs did their work, what kind of aid proved to be most successful.

Before going, I learnt that my very cool doctor had actually worked there for some time with her husband. They’re both doctors, and they decided to do something completely different for a few months, in a whole new place. They started an initiative where they went around in boats to the people in the floating villages on the Tonle Sap, and provided medical care to the people who needed it. Needless to say, it was normally very hard for these villagers to go to a medical institution for help. One year later she was very happy and proud to hear that the project had continued without them, now operated by local Cambodian doctors. I learnt that a big problem with these initiatives started by foreigners, is that they’re not sustainable for when they leave. They might stay for a few months or a year, and then the locals don’t have the compentence or the funding to continue the project. And worse, sometimes the locals have learnt to depend on the temporary projects, and might suffer when it suddenly disappears.

I met a nice guy who worked for an NGO called BB2C, they had project on water pumps used in agriculture. About 85 % of the population are farmers, so this is a very important focus area in Cambodia. They struggle to grow crops during the dry season, november – may, so they import a lot of fruits and vegetables from Vietnam, and the prices are extra high during this time of the year. Their idea was to follow the model of a project in Kenya called KickStart. They would buy efficient, environmental friendly water pumps that were easy to operate, and that were simple to maintain and repair. The farmers could use the pumps to water their fields efficiently, get higher yield and even grow crops outside the rainy season. The NGO first tried giving away a certain number of pumps as a trial project, with the criteria that the farmers who received them wanted to use them, and had access to water that could be pumped up.

One year later the NGO returned to see what results the farmers had gotten with the pumps. They were surprised to find that only a very small amount of the pumps were still in use, most of them stood covered in dust and almost untouched. When trying to find out why the farmers weren’t using the pumps, even though they had gotten the training and had been guaranteed larger crops if they did use them, the reasons were varied. Some had found it too complicated, and given up. Some weren’t motivated after all to change the way they worked on their land. Some didn’t have as good access to water as they had claimed to have. The project was deemed pretty unsuccesful, and they decided to sell the pumps instead of just giving them away.

They sold them for less than the production cost, I believe for about 100 dollars, and they went to small villages to give training in how to use them and fix them. Often families or neighbourhoods would buy a pump together, so that more people would benefit from the purchase. One year later, the NGO was happy to see that basically all the pumps were in use, and the farmers had all gotten very good results and increased incomes. If something was wrong with the pump, you could take it apart with your hands without using tools, and they were able to fix it themselves. The pump didn’t need electricity or gasoline to run, so it was a long-term environmentally sustainable solution. I thought this was an interesting story! When the farmers and the communities decided for themselves to invest some money in the pump, they felt a full ownership and responsibilty for the project. I bet they also got a great feeling of accomplishment  when they made this investment work, and could harvest a larger crop for themselves and their families. Inspiring.

Photo from the NGO's website.