by Paul Rowson
It is a distinctly rough place at night but not at all typical of Cambodia, where I’m usually greeted with are smiles and shown huge generosity from people who at the bottom of the pile. As ever it is often those with least that give most - a well worn phrase but one that has always proved to be the case here.
Yesterday was the highest of ‘highs’ as we went deep into the rural Prey Veng district which is one of the poorest areas of Cambodia. The Rough Guide to Cambodia describes it as ‘A place seldom visited by other Cambodians let alone foreigners’. Cambodia is one of the world’s poorest countries with the average income $480 per annum.
Srey Rot, an English teacher who lives in a one room place above the classroom at Dey Krahorn, had suggested that we take a couple of kids in a car to visit her family in her village. When I arrived for pickup at 7.30am this had turned into nine kids, one adult and a van, which thankfully had air conditioning. We set off into the dust and pollution of the Phnom Penh rush hour, crossed the Monovong bridge and slipped into the countryside along Highway One. For highway think forty year old ‘B’ road packed with oxen, cars, lorries, tuk tuks and cyclos. One unstable lorry in front of us in the slow moving traffic had forty three people sitting on top of its’ already tall load and at least two pigs.
The kids, unsurprisingly were brilliant, the driver good and cheesy Cambodian Pop kept us going as we went deeper into the countryside. A ferry crossing over the massive muddy Mekong resulted in gentle hustling from disabled orphan kids as we waited to drive on. We left paved roads and went onto dirt tracks and soon we were the only vehicle around. After three hours we arrived at the family compound of about thirteen people, several chickens, various dogs and loads of mango trees. Sleeping areas were on small stilts with slatted wood floors and cooking on the ground was with wood charcoal. At the front by the track one of the family sold deep fried bananas to infrequent passersby. I was offered one, accepted and will never feel bad about eating chips again. It was seventy five per cent fat and twenty five per cent banana.
A visit to the market followed and, with not a foreigner in sight, we became the friendly focus of attention. We drifted back to the compound and the produce we had bought was cooked for lunch. Dog was on the menu but I declined and opted for the chicken, who I felt I had bonded with when it was running around as we arrived. Twenty people sat down to a convivial lunch after which we were told to relax on the wooden slatted open sleeping areas. I obeyed, fell into a deep sleep and am still bitter about the accusations of snoring. I may also have drooled.
Srey Rot announced that we were now to visit a close friend who was a rice farmer. We drove for half an hour and, as we approached the house, hordes of kids came out to meet us. Srey Rot asked who has seen a ‘barang’ (foreigner) before, and just three put their hands up. The children followed us languidly, the heat was cloying, adults slept in hammocks, there were no sounds of vehicles or music……a dog barked half heartedly in the hazy distance…….time was slowing down….. and I felt great.
As we got back into the bus and made a slow start to the return journey along paths which became tracks, which turned into bigger tracks. Finally they became dirt roads and eventually, as we reached Highway One the driver cranked up the CD and on came a Cambodian version of ‘Puppy Love’ which was somehow both appalling and weirdly wonderful.
We stopped for a swim in the dangerous Mekong. We stopped for noodles at a roadside stall and gradually we were drawn into the urban sprawl of Phnom Penh and back to Dey Krahorn. I was so lucky to get a look at below subsistence rural living and Srey Rot, who has the mental and emotional strength of ten people was gracious, funny, accommodating and patient. It was day like no other.
Yours
Rural Rowson
Ladyboy Love-in, Medical Mayhem and Fifty Nine Year Old Soccer Sensation
Dear All
It was 3pm on a dripping hot Phnom Penh afternoon and I was in the middle of the six, seven, and eight year old English class at Aziza Lakeside. It’s a one room school with no doors and the view is of the one track railway line, the slum and the lake which is about to be drained for ‘development’. We were concentrating on the letters K, L and M. Just as we got to ‘words beginning with L,’ the local ladyboys, who live adjacent to the classroom, walked by. The kids screamed hysterically as one - ‘LADYBOY’ which resulted in camp chaos outside. We moved swiftly on to ‘M’.
Of all the staggering and varied things I’ve been lucky enough to see and do the most enjoyable was the soccer in the rain at ‘New Frontiers’. This is a community of forty three orphans run by eccentric but brilliant ‘Nev’ from Nottingham in a sprawling ramshackle town a hundred kilometres south of Phnom Penh. Nev is helped by Cambodians and various international volunteers who have passed on the word about his great work. He and they have created a happy place of bright articulate kids who are inspirational to be around. I went there with Dom (Tasmanian) and Benita (English) Sharpe who are trustees of CamKids, the UK organisation holding your donations until I disperse them. They are here for a year and this is their sixth visit after adopting a Cambodian girl. They are ebullient optimists.
After the walk around, a strong breeze picked up and storm clouds hovered menacingly overhead. A monster rain storm started and in seconds the tiny dirt five a side pitch was flooded in three inches of water. Kids instantly started a game and Dom stripped to shorts and joined in. I could not resist as, despite the fact that it is twenty five years since I’ve played, I reckoned that the conditions would be a great leveller as John Motson might have said.
Within thirty seconds of coming on I had stubbed my toe and performed a backwards somersault into a drooping bush at the side of the pitch. Kids rushed to pick me up, amazed that a man so old could demonstrate such tumbling ability. I was amazed that a man so old did not scream with the pain of a cut ankle. The match went on and every time a goal was scored the conceding team had to do ten press ups in the water…the torrent continued….the game continued but I ‘subbed’ myself after a fifteen minute cameo performance. For an hour afterwards at least a dozen people came up to me to ask in broken English ‘You OK Paul?’ Parts of me moved in that storm that hadn’t move for a while and getting up the next morning was done in stages.
For the trip back Dom bought several beers or ‘travellers’ as the Tasmanians refer to beer drunk en route, which helped dull the pain and relax me. After the fifth one the pain was so dulled that I was in fact relaxed as a newt and fell deeply asleep after a blissful day.
There was no respite and another early start for what proved to be a sobering day at a country clinic run by two American paramedics. On the hundred kilometre journey to it we passed four other clinics which, according to the government, were treating many hundreds. In fact they were empty, yet at the place we went to they were camping out overnight to be seen.
This was a story of corruption on a grand scale with money for medicine pocketed by greedy regional bigwigs. The Garcias, who run the clinic, are run down heroes. We were in the operating ‘theatre', an open one room affair, within two minutes of getting out of the van. No scrubbing up here as we watched a woman being stitched up after having a growth removed. The stoicism of the patients was of epic proportions. As ever with medics, when we left the Garcias were having a quick smoke in the bushes behind the building.
A final ‘thank you’ to all donors. It was such a pleasure giving your money out directly at the sharp end and you have helped buy medicine, provide educational equipment, give scholarships and build schoolrooms in one of the poorest countries in the world. I can’t begin to tell you what a positive contribution you have made and it is not hyperbole to say that lives have been changed because of your generosity.
See you all soon
Your Cambodian Correspondent.
I think I learnt a lot on that trip, although it was in some ways a selfish enterprise, undertaken to mark an upcoming milestone in my own life. My American friend, who is one of life’s great pragmatists and
has lived in Phnom Penh for six years, said that if she left having not actually retarded development, she would consider it an achievement. Sustainable progress in terms of education, health and infrastructure, remains elusive in Cambodia. It is still one of the poorest countries in the world, deeply scarred by the recent past and riddled with corruption as it lurches towards an uncertain future.
Massive NGO bureaucracies spend so much on their own infrastructure there that you have to question the methodology and effectiveness of some mass aid. It’s a complex country still only beginning to emerge from the horrors of the Khymer Rouge regime. Yet despite that and against the odds, there remains a generosity of spirit together with an energy and optimism, among the young particularly, that is both admirable and palpable. It’s also a country that anybody who has spent time there will never quite get out of their system.
I arrived ridiculously early at the airport for the evening flight to Seoul and Long, who drove me for the last time in his tuk tuk, was puzzled that I didn’t want to stop off for a beer or something to eat en route. But actually getting inside the terminal was a kind of cathartic formalisation that the trip was completed. All that was left to do was take the local Phnom Penh SIM card out of my phone. As I got hold of it to swop the cards one final text popped up. It was from Long and it read ‘you early paul for flight you must be very tire give regard to yr family se you soon I hope your friend long’. I looked up and the check-in desk was opening.
22.
SLAVES OF FREEDOM 2010
Writing this in the middle of the biggest recession in years it might not be the wisest thing to wax lyrical about risk taking - in life or careers. The truth is that many people finally distinguish between wisdom and knowledge relatively late in life. By the time most of us have sifted through the detritus of lost loves and broken dreams to discover the certainty of what is actually important, we are locked into relationships and financial commitments. Today, here in one of the richest countries on the planet, there are still millions who have no stable relationships, no meaningful work and who live in deep and unrelenting poverty. Never forget that, notwithstanding all our financial pressures and complicated lives, we are the lucky ones.
Those of us with jobs and homes have, if we just took a minute to step back and analyse the situation, almost total freedom and a myriad of choices as to how we live our lives in the pursuit of happiness. How can we insist on buying new cars and then claim to be stressed and financially constrained? Why do we have to jet off on holidays when surveys tell us that most don’t live up to expectations or significantly increase our sense of well being. How many people actually love the work they do and how many hide behind their so called ‘responsibilities’ as an excuse for not breaking out? Ostensibly we were happier living fifty years ago, when post war austerity meant relatively few had the material possessions that even those with modest incomes today take for granted and deem essential.
There are shelves groaning under the weight of upbeat books about how positive thinking will enable you to overcome the challenges resulting from our unbalanced lifestyles. A disturbing number are full of simplistic homilies such as ‘if you are given a lemon, make lemonade’ or ‘dance like nobody is watching’. That last particular piece of advice strikes me as a guaranteed way to lose friends, who would probably die of embarrassment, were you to act on it. ‘Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon’ is another one which initially seems quite charming. Alternatively it could lead to death by poisoning or violent assault, were you to recklessly love somebody else’s partner having wined and dined them.
After spending a lifetime observing the absurdity of work yet being strangely wedded to doing loads of it, I offer with some trepidation, my own list. They are truisms for me but I doubt you’ll agree with them all. If you think the list contains good advice I would be gratified. If you don’t I couldn’t give a fuck and would say in closing that I am sixty one and it works for me. Sadly I was fifty nine before I realised it.
A Dilettante’s guide to happiness
1. Revenge is a dish best left uneaten
2. Be quick to apologise when you have made a twat of yourself
3. ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’ said William Blake and there is some truth in that. Knowing when to rein in is the key.
4. Never trust anybody who doesn’t drink. Recovering alcoholics are the exception.
5. Maintain dignity but if that fails laugh loudly at yourself in the sure knowledge that it will help drown out the sound of those who are laughing at you.
6. All the major religions are hokum with the possible exception of Buddhism which is more a code for inner peace and deep contentment. If you are reading this and religious buy ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins. It will make you happier. If you have already read it and are still religious go and see a doctor.
7. Most work meetings are a waste of time. Go out for a walk instead and come back refreshed or maybe without a job.
8. Always make time to see live music – even when you return home exhausted.
9. Fish and chips are best cooked in beef dripping.
10. Write your own epitaph and then live it.
11. Exercise - a sedentary life will probably be a shorter one. It also means you can enjoy more food and wine.
12. If you are educated and not living in poverty, life is what you make it – no excuses.
[email protected]
Paul Rowson
Writer
Speaker
After a spectacularly unsuccessful school career Paul worked briefly in insurance, pubs, the building trade, rock music, teaching, radio, the charity sector the public sector, the private sector and held a miscellany of posts in the USA, England, Wales, the Bahamas and Cambodia.
He attended Woodstock, failed to score any drugs and got nowhere near the stage.
After numerous meetings with the Prince of Wales, and holding a senior post at one of the Royal Charities, Paul is a committed republican.
Paul’s cousin is the Head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales but Paul is an atheist and signed up member of the Richard Dawkins fan Club, or would be if he had one.
Until 1992, despite having a family, he had not stuck at anything longer than three years but was never actually run out of town.
His email missives from Cambodia were “brilliant dispatches from a natural raconteur”.
He is older than Methuselah and has spoken on numerous platforms here and in Europe - and some even had audiences in front of them.
Paul joined Business in the Community in 1997 as Regional Director for Wales. He became Field Director in 2000. He had responsibility for financial and operational development of the English regions, Wales and Northern Ireland with three hundred staff via eleven regional directors reporting to him.
Prior to joining BITC, Paul was the Project Director for the Penrhys Partnership – an amalgam of public, private and not-for-profit sectors working to improve the quality of life in marginalised areas. The Partnerships undertook significant Capital projects and sustained a range of successful education, cultural and training initiatives on one of the most deprived estates in Britain.
Paul is married to Elspeth, has two adult sons and enjoys music, alcohol and walking but not at the same time.
