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Last week I traveled fast through Cambodia; the country’s tourism industry is growing quickly and akwardly. There is a strong aftertaste of Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge’s (Red People) idealistic genocide that occured 25 years ago. Lots of landmines placed by Russians and Americans remain active – I learned about them at the Land Mine Museum which I found by taking a right after the Zoo just inside Angkor Wat park entrance. The family that runs the museum cares for some kids too.
The trip through Cambodia began in Siem Reap with sunrise at the temples of Angkor Wat, then a hothot bus to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, where I met some volunteers from a rural University. I followed the volunteers back to the University in Kamchai Mear province. The students have pigs, straw dorms, 6 hours of electricity a day, no internet, and lots of transcendental meditation. The benefactors of this public university are rich Australian hippies who are still into TM.
Ning volunteer teaches at the the University. She was correcting assignments over breakfast and sighing… “I gave them this project because so many were failing, it’s a make-up assignment but one student just copied pages directly from a book that I lent him! And his friends then copied his assignment!!”
Cambodia is rebuilding with the help of a lot of different NGOs. It has come a long way and has a long way to go; I saw some street kids being beaten by an old man in Siem Reap, I could purchase just about anything on the streets of Phnom Penh for less than $5 including sex for $1 – everything for sale is fake. A lot of the original culture is gone because the Khmer Rouge distroyed the country’s educated people as well as it’s art, books, religion.
My initial Western view of the copying is 1) yay, cheap Ralph Lauren cloths, I’ll buy 3 because my cloths are rotting! and 2) how dare they subvert our proprietary rights? Then I thought about my own experience with copying.
When I was 15 my family moved from Orangeville Ontario where kids bragged about how few books they’d read, to Norwich Vermont where kids complained about their huge cars and bragged about Ivy League connections. My new highschool was in Hanover, New Hampshire and everyone was proud of the schedule which was modeled after that of Dartmouth College, it’s Ivy League neighbor. All my life I had been one of those coddled honor’s students and had started defining myself as such instead of by what I actually produced. The image of being smart had overtaken any need for smart actions on my part, or so I thought – especially in Orangeville where I got straight A’s without bringing home any homework during grade 9. I allowed myself to glide.
I enrolled in all honors classes at Hanover. Needless to say, I was unprepared and started doing poorly, especially in honors Bio where everything was on the computer and I didn’t know how to double-click a mouse. I began feeling sorry for myself and, after failing the first quarter of bio, I switched into a regular bio class. The second day of my new class, everyone turned in a review of a newspaper article, a weekly assignment. I was afraid of failing and decided to copy another girl’s review and hand it in as my own. A few months later my dad found both her review and my copy of her review and turned me in to the school for cheating. I was duely punished by the school with detention for the remainder of the year.
At this point you might be asking what does this have to do with travel and Cambodia? I’m not quite sure because the more I think about it, Cambodia and I are very different. I have many resources available to me including good support, food and water, and no excuse not to use my own head. Cambodia’s resources are growing every year.
Is the second season of Grey’s Anatomy really worth $59.99 or is it worth more like $2? I suspect that, as the Cambodian economy continues to improve, the culture will be less desperate for money.
Someday students will believe in themselves and their country enough to do their own work. Maybe someday in Cambodia people will come to terms with the tourists and relax and develop origional hip khmer coffee shops? Next time I get to Cambodia I will come more prepared to help.
Tags: Cambodia, Prâteh Kampuchea, Suiss/Schweiz
Greta
Hey, G- thanks for the great Blog withdrawal fixes. Funny how going 3/4 way around the world can make history here fall into a whole new perspective……keep those words and images coming.
love, mamad