Cambodia the country

The Kingdom of Cambodia is a small country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Thailand to the west and north, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east and south. The capital is Phnom Penh with other major cities being Siem Reap (with the Angkor Wat temples where all the tourists go), Sihanoukville (fast becoming a popular beach resort) and Battambang (not much to write home about -- except for being the home of Phare Ponleu Selpak where I worked!).

I entered Cambodia via the border town Poipet and proceeded to Battambang. Thereafter my trajectory -- which I have traced on the map to the right -- is Siem Reap, then Phnom Penh, with excursion to Kampong Cham, and lastly Sihanoukville.

Cambodia
today has around 13 million inhabitants. For some time, the country was known as Kampuchea, which is still what it is called by the Cambodians themselves (Preah Reachenachakr Kampuchea). Of course, to me and perhaps to others, the name Kampuchea conjures up the Khmer Rouge, the brutal regime of the late 1970’s. The people in Cambodia are quite homogenous in the sense that they all speak one language, Khmer (pronounced “Kmai”). Yet there are minority groups such as the Muslim Cham and several small hill tribes in the northwest of the country, as well as many people with Chinese and Vietnamese background. I noticed how different the Cambodians can look from one another – some ‘look’ almost Indian or Sri-Lankan whereas others appear Chinese. But they are all considered ‘Khmer’ whether ethnically so or not.

A little history...
The mighty Khmer empire once stretched across what is now Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. The temples at Angkor Wat are a testament to a glorious past, by many considered the eighth wonder of the world. The vastness of the monuments and the intricacy of their design are simply stunning. Contrast that with the poverty of the country today and the reign of the Khmer Rouge.

KHMER ROUGE
Some of you may know of the Khmer Rouge regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 – 1979, essentially converting the entire country into one enormous concentration camp and killing up to 2.5 million people (at the time 2/3 of the population) through execution, mass starvation and generally unbearable living conditions

Lonely Planet writes: “Upon taking Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge implemented one of the most radical and brutal restructurings of a society ever attempted; its goal … to transform Cambodia into a peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. Within days of coming to power the entire population of Phnom Penh and provincial towns, including the sick, elderly and infirm, was forced to march into the countryside and work as slaves for 12-15 hours a day. Disobedience of any sort often brought immediate execution. The advent of Khmer Rouge rule was proclaimed Year Zero. Currency was abolished and postal services halted. The country cut itself off from the outside world.” They renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. They discarded anything considered Western, including Western medicine.

Yet not all had it equally bad. This is what makes the situation complicated – in terms of justice being pursued in today’s Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge targeted anyone who was not ethnically pure Khmer, e.g. anyone of Chinese or Vietnamese descent, as well as anyone who was educated or with trained skills (doctors, lawyers, teachers). They specifically pursued people from the city, with country folk considered “old people” or “base people” and folk from the city (driven out from the cities into the countryside) “new people.” Basically, they turned the poorer country people against the better-off, city people. Manipulating resentments, they were able to easily create their henchmen, the Khmer Rouge Cadres, among the country people, similar to the Kapos in WWII concentration camps. The “new people” were kept separate from the “base people” and treated more harshly: starved, raped, murdered and worked (literally) to death. Many “base people,” however, were not as greatly affected and as a result there is some discrepancy in the experience and memory of that time period among the Cambodian population. Further complicating things is the fact that former Khmer Rouge soldiers and leaders have disappeared into the general population. In fact, the current government includes some former Khmer Rouge cadres, including the prime minister!

Cambodians and their country today
Because of the extent of cruelty inflicted by the Cambodians upon its own people, and having heard of the level of human trafficking and corruption plaguing the country, somehow one may have expected Cambodians to be cold, mean and heartless as a people, if nothing else as an after effect of their recent history. But rather I discover that Cambodians are open, warm and extremely friendly. I find them curious and welcoming to foreigners. They stare at you, as a foreigner, but not in any antagonistic way, rather with great curiosity and interest. The children gleefully shout out "Hello! Hello!" and wave enthusiastically as you pass. Even the adults do. Constantly. It's funny.

The country is incredibly poor. People earn on average $30 per month. Corruption is rampant. Underpaid public servants demand pay-outs in return for services. If you want anything done in Cambodia, you gotta pay up. This includes teachers asking their students for money and paying the police to receive assistance. Even with such poverty abounding in Cambodia, there are well-to-do Khmers and the gap between the rich and poor is only widening, some say with disdain. This is particularly disconcerting in my view, considering that the whole Khmer Rouge atrocity based itself on the divide between the rich and the poor, the city folk versus the country folk. It's as if it never happened. Even more disconcerting is the fact that what happened during the Khmer Rouge is not talked about among the people nor in any way taught in school.

The difference in wealth makes for a startling contrast. I saw Landcruisers next to carts with 15 people piled up on it or passing an ox cart eking its way forward or all the cows wandering about everywhere. One might see a newly constructed fancy mansion of a house and right next to it a small hut made out of straw that is barely holding up. The new and modern mixed in with the old and traditional. That is something particular I noticed with Cambodia. People live quite primitively in houses that are more or less shacks with minimum comfort (according to my view: hole-in-the-floor toilet, only cold water, sleeping on a mat on the floor) and yet you’ll have a youngster emerge dressed in style, hair waxed and coiffed and listening to their mp3. Television sets flicker through the glass-less window of a straw hut. Commercials advertise the latest teeth-whitening product, although a lot of people most likely have never seen a dentist.

To be continued...

PHOTOS Phare

More write-up to follow soon! But in meantime here are some more pics.

My clowns! They are great!

Clowning around with the 12-19 year olds

The adolescents and young adults learning theater which they bring into the community presenting shows about relevant issues

The youngsters who live at the Maison des Enfants (because they have no parents or can't live with their parents)

Voleak, a spirited young girl who lives in the Children's House

.... and Apheap goofing around

My work at Phare Ponleu Selpak

This is a special mission I have at Phare Ponleu Selpak (beyond clowning around for simple joy and delight).

The kids I work with are learning and preparing for a future as artists, as a viable alternative to trying to make a living as a rice farmer, or picking the garbage heap, or trying to sell trinkets and snacks on the side of the road -- which is what some of their parents do. Some parents have no work at all.

The youngsters are incredibly talented -- their drawings and paintings are fantastic and the circus trainees already have amazing acrobatic, contortion or juggling skills.

I teach them clown and physical theater as an opportunity to freely express themselves emotionally and physically (as opposed to circus training which is more technical) and to advance their performance capabilities.

I work mainly with two groups: one where the kids are between 13-19 years old and the other a group of young adults between 19 and 24. I also play with the younger children who stay in the Children's House, age 9-13.

The young adults I work with go out into the community and do shows about relevant local issues, such as domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and trafficking. A couple of youngsters are preparing to go to hospitals to clown for sick children. I help them prepare and work with them to enrich their playing.

[To be continued.]

PHOTOS Phare Ponleu Selpak

The road to Phare


The grounds... with circus school in background. And this is the visual art center.

Here's the music school.

The daycare leisure center

The house where I live (that's my room on the corner)

Morning workout


End of school day 5pm


Hanging outside the daycare leisure center

All pics AZ

Phare Ponleu Selpak Nov 8 - Dec 8

For one month I have been at Phare Ponleu Selpak which is in Battambang, northwest Cambodia.

Phare Ponleu Selpak is a school and art center for disadvantaged children. 'Ponleu' means light and 'selpak' art. It was started in 1994 by eight former refugees who survived the Khmer Rouge as small children and thereafter grew up in a refugee camp on the Thai side of the border. They lived in the camp from 1979 until 1993 when it was finally considered safe to return to Cambodia. In the camp they had met a French woman who taught them art and gave them the chance to express and work through their difficult experiences. Now they wanted to give other children the opportunity to express themselves and overcome the trauma of prolonged war. They based their center outside Battambang town, in a village where many poor live without land and without means.

Today Phare is not only a visual art center but also a music school as well as a circus school. The compound includes a public school -- from primary through high school -- for the disadvantaged kids living at Phare as well as children from the neighborhood community.

The children and youth at Phare come from a variety of backgrounds: extreme poverty, where the family simply can't feed them; domestic violence and abuse, a major issue in poverty-stricken Cambodia; children living on the streets with or without parents; and trafficking, where the children have been sold by their parents to Thailand to work as beggars, domestic slaves or in brothels.

One youngster told me one evening how he used to live in Bangkok (how come?, I asked, not thinking). He had been sent there as a child and had been forced to beg on the streets from 4pm until 4am. If he did not return with a certain amount of money he would get beaten. When he was 10 he was picked up by police, put in jail and then sent back to Cambodia, and eventually came to Phare. He is now 19, a talented and promising visual artist.

The trafficked children are occasionally caught by Thai police, or some finally have the gumption to walk into a police station, and they are then sent back to the Cambodian border where Unicef or another rescue organization takes care of the kids and places them at, for example, Phare. These children live at Phare. Others live in the surrounding community with their families but get fed at Phare, and some others just come for school. All who want to take part are welcome and all study for free.

Clowning at Angkor Wat

Since I had a few days before starting my workshops at Phare Ponleu Selpak in Battambang, I decided to go see Angkor Wat, the enormous temple compound outside Siem Reap. A must for anyone going to Cambodia. There I took the opportunity to clown around with the poor children who run around the temples desperately selling trinkets to tourists. Along with me was Erin Nicholson with her hoolahoop (who had been working with children on a related project in Sangklaburi in Thailand).

'Mon', or "Mr. Cool", a natural.

When I first saw him, Mon was drawing in the sand.

'Mah', for whom we bought breakfast (rice and eggs, and banana),
or else she wouldn't eat. Which she then shared with her friends.

In the ancient days of Angkor Wat's heyday, they had circus too!

November 7, 2008

Crossing the border into Cambodia

November 4, 2008
I take the bus from Bangkok (northern Mo Chit station) to the Thai border town Aranya. From there me and my traveling companion pile into a little tuktuk with all our luggage (stilts, hoolahoop and all) to take us the rest of the way to the border. The tuktuk driver lets us off on the side of the road by a tent and we get approached by what are supposedly border officials. They insist the price is 1,000 Baht ($30) for the visa, although I had read that's a scam; the official price is $20. They claimed you only paid $20 if you got a visa in advance. Well, we had to get thru the border, so pay up!
Then we walk for a bit and cross a checkpoint, then walk again some more, through a Welcome to Cambodia huge stone gate, then another arrival checkpoint, past a bunch of casinos (the border is casino central). Then a bus to "bus station"to get taxi. Where they wanted to charge us 2000 Baht to go to Battambang. Ha ha ha, very funny, nice try but no cigar. I guess we looked like easy bait. We walked away. But here was the hairy part. We didn't have much of a bargaining point. This was no bus station. And there were no other taxis around that I could see. In fact there were no taxis -- what they suggested to be our taxi was just a regular car. Earning some extra cash? It was incredibly muddy all around! And how could I drag all my luggage through that? (Somehow I did.) How were we going to find another car to take us? We pretty much had to deal with what was there before us. "Ok, you go find something else, what do you know, never been to Cambodia," the guy says. "OK, we will!"... Finally, we get in the cab on the premise of paying 800B which was fair. Then, once car finally takes off, after some false starts and driving around here and there and changing driver twice and picking up two other people (Cambodian couple sharing the front seat) -- it was smooth sailing down the road to Battambang!

By the time we got there it was too late to go to Phare Ponleu Selpak (the school) or rather the taxi didn't know where it was and I didn't know either really and it was dark -- so we went to a hotel. The Royal Hotel, the cheapest room under the roof (5th floor walk-up) next to the kitchen for $3. By the end of the night, however, I managed to hook up with the folks at Phare and took a moto (motorcycle) -- with my huge stilt bag across my lap! (about 5 feet long), and another moto following with the other bag --- and dropped the bags off at the school.

Before I start the workshops Í'm taking the boat to Siam Reap to see Angkor Wat. After that, it's non-stop work until the end of December!