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making a difference

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

by the parents, who enjoyed watching their children play with some other kids this afternoon
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

 

91 children (two thirds of them boys) aged from 3-18 live together with five adults caring for them. A further ten volunteers help out too. None of the volunteers are tuktuk drivers. The one we met last week was, in the words of the vice director, who replied to our email, “it’s cheat”. He went on to say, “I don’t why they always saying that they are as the Lighthouse volunteer, they are only Tuk, Tuk service charge driving but they try to charge a lot commission from the rice.”
I think I know why they say they are from the orphanage – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make the link between that and the rice commission. It’s even easier to understand when you go to the orphanage and see the tourists actually do turn up with their rice sacks. But if you were trying to feed these 91 mouths and tourists were your main source of income, what would you do? Might you not be tempted to turn a blind eye to the fact that twice as much rice could be bought at a true price?
Anyway, the vice director invited us to visit, no strings attached. So we hired our own tuktuk and went out to play. It was easy to put aside the cynicism when you looked into the eyes of the children, took them on your lap, sat there with their arms draped around your shoulders, chatting, laughing, racing, playing ball.

We also had the opportunity to talk with a couple of guys from abroad, who are currently working on getting projects done around the place – building a chicken coop, establishing a garden, trying to convince the girls to teach the boys to put rubbish in the bins, making sure the toilets get unblocked, supervising the construction of a new building and soon to be upgrading the website (including information about tuktuk scammers). They are part of a group, who raise money at home and then bring it here, distributing it to the right people, making sure it doesn’t disappear into a big black hole. Good system.

They have dreams of teaching the kids to be productive. The Cambodian way is to just sit around….doing nothing is not a problem…..so they might struggle. But then again, out of a group of nearly one hundred children, there are bound to be some, who might like to spend time carving or painting or embroidering or writing or raising livestock…..and so there can surely be nothing wrong with giving the opportunity.
These guys are also thinking about what to do for the older children – how will they make the transition out of the orphanage? It is inspiring to see ordinary folk tackling problems like this head on. They don’t let the size of the task daunt them. They make a difference – one project at a time, one life at a time. As 39-year-old Australian Kip, said, “You can’t change the whole world, but you can make a difference for someone.”

How To Be Idle

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

book review and related contemplations by Rachael
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I’m having a read-fest; three books in four days. YAY for guesthouses with libraries and YAY for staying in one place long enough to finish a complete tome.
Some of Tom Hodgkinson’s “How To Be Idle” resonated deeply with me, especially in light of observations I’ve been making about daily life in Laos and Cambodia. Other parts jarred dischordantly. Please don’t try to tell me pornography hurts no-one. And if you’re going to quote the Bible in order to refute God, then at least get your theology right! (Work was given to man before the Fall, not as a potentially escapable punishment afterwards – and I therefore reject his basic premise, the notion that work per se, is bad). Then there are the chapters extolling drugs and drunkenness – it would be a clever man, who could convince me of the benefits of these excesses…but Tom is not the man. I have an inkling he was brought up Catholic (his obsession with guilt gives him away), and the brand of Christian religion he pits against Buddhism and other eastern faith systems is quite dissimilar from the life-giving freedom-offering purposeful Christianity I identify with. And while I can understand some of his arguments for smoking, I would rather knit, especially knowing THAT will not kill me. In a book basically about anarchistic hedonism, it really does seem shortsighted to applaud a habit that surely leads to death after varying degrees of misery.

So what did I like?
It’s anecdotal, but earlier this week I felt grotty and took myself to bed for the day, when ordinarily I would have soldiered on. Within hours I felt better, but still I lingered (with a compelling book <wink>) in bed. Complete recovery. Hodgkinson points out that throwing pills at medical problems may not always help, and that the old-fashioned concept of convalescence might actually be cure enough for many ailments. It certainly worked for me.
At the essence of this concept, and most other factors he discusses, is TIME.
   Time to linger over lunch.
   Time to enter into conversation, a real exchange of ideas (as opposed to impatient
   waiting to have your rehearsed say).
   Time to take tea (made with tea leaves, no less).
   Time to rest.
   Time to ramble.

The people we have met in the last two months have been time-rich. They have time to sit. They are not scared of curling up in a hammock, stretching out on a motorbike or nodding off on a plastic stool at their market stall when they need a nap. They are not driven by efficiency and productivity. They seem happy just to be together. There is little going or doing or achieving or pursuing or striving – just being. To a western mind there seems to be a “lack of ambition”, but if you step back and take the time to look again, you see contentment and community.
Without the assistance of self-help gurus who fill infomercials and bookshop shelves at home, these people are achieving a work-life balance so trendily discussed in professional circles. They work and live holistically, in harmony. Observing that rural (and small town) life here is very similar to Hodgkinson’s description of pre-Industrial Revolution life, lends some weight to his arguments and leaves me feeling he is not merely indulging in idealistic romanticism. I have witnessed a genuinely holistic way of life that does not include a life versus work distinction, and it is admirable. We have stayed with people, who enjoy their “work”/life, which includes such things as running a guest house, cultivating a garden, mending clothes on their front doorstep, raising their children, enjoying the social occasion of going to market, and cooking for themselves and anyone else who drops by…..we have seen similar families with a loom set up under their houses for weaving silk, another activity to fill their days….there is variety as they go about the work of living. Their lives are interesting, inextricably linked to the seasons, connected with others. There is no need to escape.

I was intrigued at Hodgkinson’s (presumably correct) observation that “action-packed holidays” are a relatively new invention. Prior to the Industrial Revolution there had been festivals and feast days liberally sprinkled through the religious calendar, days of celebration observed by all. As people stopped working for themselves and came under Big Bosses, they lost the freedom to determine their schedules, including time off, and after a long stint of ceaseless work, holidays became a “right” in 1936, with the British government legislating a one week holiday for workers every year. We, of course, have become accustomed to far more than this, without ever (on my part) questioning its normalcy (or otherwise).
When it suits Mr H, he turns to the Bible for support, and now is one of those times. Every seven years God’s people were commanded to take a sabbatical. If there was to be no tilling of the ground for a year, it would imply having an excess stored away to see them through the year, so we are not discussing the hand-to-mouth abject poverty, which is often associated with agrarian societies.
Forget the four week annual holiday – we should have our eye on a seven-yearly year off! And as part of my religious heritage, it is entirely consistent for me to claim it! Along with the weekly Sabbath rest and celebrations honouring our Creator-Sustainer God. All of this fits in with, is part of, life. It does not require escaping from life (or work) to happen. But the way we work now (generally in a very narrow specialised field for many hours of the day, often leaving little time for anything else) pushes us to need to escape from work. “How To Be Idle” suggests finding work you enjoy and then doing only as much as is needed to earn a living, so that you have time to live as well.

This begs the question “what do we need?”
Right now ten of us are living out of three backpacks, one electronics bag and a small daypack (we have with us a few more bags full of cold and wet weather gear, which we will need all too soon, but these bags have hardly been opened as yet). Looking after so little *stuff* takes minimal effort and we have had time for plenty of family rambling. Although we walked a lot at home, we rarely covered 10km in a day, a not-unusual distance at the moment. And we would never have considered walking 3km to dinner (and three more back home again afterwards), something we did every night in Chiang Mai. We are time-rich. We can choose to wander together.
It occurs to me that it is hard to determine what you need when you have only seen one way. But it is still hard to determine what you need when you have lived with a relatively well-off family, who had hardly any of the things we take for granted as normal. It is hard, even when you have seen families with nothing at all. The solution does not magically appear. There is no formula.
It would be all too easy to slot back into NZ life, with children wanting to buy new Lego, the mother expanding our already substantial library, the father expecting to work from eight til five Monday to Friday…..
But I hope we don’t. I hope we return different. Surely we will benefit from seeing other ways of living and other ways of working out community. Surely we will benefit from experiencing that abundance of time, from charting a course together, from looking at the world through a different lens. I hope we ask ourselves what’s important, what changes we want to make to our old lifestyle, what we want to adopt from our year-of-learning. I hope we manage to work out our priorities in our own culture. We may not necessarily choose to be idle, but we will be intentional.

she might only be two…

Monday, January 19th, 2009
by Mama Phnom Penh, Cambodia ...but the opportunity to travel is not being "wasted" on her. One thing that has surprised us about our youngest is her recognition of details. After even only one time visiting a place, she will tell us ... [Continue reading this entry]

disappointed

Sunday, January 18th, 2009
by Rob Phnom Penh, Cambodia Actually, we *had* planned on going to an orpahange today, after yesterday's chance encounter with a tuk-tuk driver, who is also a volunteer at a local orphanage. He was not at all pushy, suggesting we might like ... [Continue reading this entry]

natural wonders noticed

Saturday, January 17th, 2009
by a sunburnt Mama, who got caught by surprise with mid-30s temperatures and a blazing sun after a few weeks of (more pleasant to us ;-) ) high-20s and an accompanying gentle sun Phnom Penh, Cambodia

[Continue reading this entry]

the very boring process of applying for visas

Friday, January 16th, 2009
by someone, who obviously has too much time on her hands if she went to the bother of documenting this yawn-eliciting part of the journey! Phnom Penh, Cambodia Warning: if you're short on time, don't waste it reading this! Never mind the ... [Continue reading this entry]

will it ever stop?

Friday, January 16th, 2009
By Rach, who really likes some solace now and then Phnom Penh, Cambodia It's 3:41pm and Phnom Penh has me overwhelmed. I'm sitting on the curb of a non-stop intersection trying to capture the experience. I feel like I'm on a ... [Continue reading this entry]

begs the question

Thursday, January 15th, 2009
by Rachael Phnom Penh, Cambodia It's mid-afternoon and we're mooching about the guesthouse. I look across at ER2, who is sitting in her Dadda's lap. Hands outstretched, she's pretending to beg. I decide the time has come to ask the children ... [Continue reading this entry]

salt n pepper

Thursday, January 15th, 2009
by the chief cook Phnom Penh, Cambodia We have really been enjoying black pepper on our tomato rolls......not being gourmands, we had never come across the fact that there are different sorts of pepper in the world, but we have now ... [Continue reading this entry]

market day

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
by Rachael Phnom Penh, Cambodia  Every day is market day, actually. But today we went to the Russian market as well as our local one. Apparently the Russians in town used to shop there, hence the name, but we didn't see ... [Continue reading this entry]