Which Way To The Beach?

I definitely did not expect to wind up this summer lazing around a beach on the south coast of Cambodia, but I guess that just shows you never know where you are going to end up. This past weekend most of the interns got out of the heat, noise, and smell of Phnom Penh for the small town of Sihanoukville. We took a cheap but decent 4-hour bus ride and had a great weekend doing nothing but hanging out on the beach, swimming, reading, and relaxing.

Grace, Jenny, Carlton and I were lucky enough to snag rooms at a great little bungalow guesthouse literally about 10 metres from the beach. The first picture is essentially the view from our rooms. And, better still, the rooms were dirt cheap, which is kind of the theme of things in Cambodia.

Anyway, it was great to get out of town, recharge our batteries, and have some fun. The last two pics are continuing the ridiculous trend Ariel, Carlton and I started of the mustaches, but also with very silly Hawaiian shirts and shorts we picked up at the market before we left Phnom Penh. As you might expect, we got a lot of strange looks on the beach, but it really wasn't that far from what a lot of other people were wearing...

View from our guesthous on Serendiptiy Beach

Looking up the beach at sunset

The boys...

And another one of many ridiculous pictures we took this weekend

Korsang Pt. 2, More Visits, and Cambodia Chic

So, I need to make a quick correction to a previous post. I found out today that Korsang actually means "to rebuild" in Khmer, although "using the old to make the new" is a good description as well. Grace, Brad and I went back to Korsang today for another outreach. This time we visited two sites, both also slums, in order to hand out more hygeine kits. We got to hear more of Big Head's story and thoughts on Cambodia, NGOs, drug users, the NBA playoffs, and pretty much everything else under the sun.

As we were driving around with the outreach team, I kept thinking what a great documentary the story of Korsang would make, perhaps for a show like The Passionate Eye or 60 Minutes. Well, when we got back to the Korsang headquarters and spoke with Holly, Korsang's director, we also met David, a filmmaker from Boston who, it turns out, is making a documentary about Korsang! We got to see a preview of the movie, and it looks amazing, although really intense. Apparently he already has 50 hours of footage filmed and is planning to film more in order to get a feature-length movie made, partially funded by the World Health Organization. Hopefully we will be able to see it in North America pretty soon.

A bunch of us also took a trip to a drop-in center and school for kids who live close to the Phnom Penh dump. Horrifically, there are a large number of people, including little kids, who live out at the dump and spend all day picking through the garbage looking for stuff to use or sell. We walked through the dump to see these people and I can honestly say I have never smelled anything as bad in my life, but to see people living out there was even harder to handle. I can't imagine getting up every morning knowing you will just be picking through trash all day, and knowing your kids are running around barefoot through the dump as well.

Luckily there are a number of NGOs who run schools and centers for the kids there. The kids are absolutely beautiful (I can see why Angelina Jolie adopted a child from here) and just begging for some attention and physical contact. We played with them for a little while yesterday and let them climb all over us, but it was pretty heartbreaking to leave them and to know there is only so much attention we can give each kid. Hopefully we will get the chance to go back there a few more times this summer.

Outside of work, we are headed to the beach this weekend! Tomorrow most of the interns are hopping on a bus to go to the little town of Sihanoukville, which apparently has some pretty nice beaches around it. Pictures and stories to come after the weekend.

Finally, we've got this going on....

Yep, apparently mustaches and aviator sunglasses are Cambodia Chic this summer...but don't worry Mom and Carly, the mustache will be gone by August.

"Using The Old To Make The New"

If you had told me at the beginning of law school that I would be spending one day during the summer after my first year hanging out in Phnom Penh with a bunch of Cambodian ex-gang members and ex-cons, I would have thought you were crazy.

But, that's exactly what I was doing today, and hanging out with them to pass out hygeine kits in a Phnom Penh slum no less...

Let me start from the beginning. I spent today doing an outreach with my group partners, Grace and Brad, at an organization called Korsang. The organization was started by a woman named Holly, who I mentioned once before. Holly is an ex-drug user from Boston who moved to Cambodia a few years ago. While here she met up with a group of Cambodians who had been deported from the U.S. under new immigration rules brought in after 9/11. Basically, most of these guys had been in gangs in the U.S. and caught up in drug use. They were all convicted of felonies, most spent some time in jail, and they were deported back to Cambodia, although many of them had spent almost their whole lives in the U.S.

Here in Phnom Penh they started Korsang, which loosely translates to "using the old to make the new." The organization's main goal is harm reduction, especially for intravenous drug users. The main "harm" they are seeking to reduce is HIV and AIDS. The group does needle exchanges with heroin users, distributes condoms to sex workers, does general HIV awareness and training, and operates a drop-in center for at-risk youth.

Today we hung out with our new friend "Big Head" and his group on an outreach to a slum in Phnom Penh. Big Head moved to California from Cambodia when he was very young and lived there for about 27 years, but was in jail for almost half of that time. However, he wasn't bitter at all about his deportation, and actually said that he thought it was a blessing rather than a curse, because he had the opportunity to get a second chance and give back to try and help others.

At the slum Big Head and his outreach group handed out hygeine kits with toothbrushes, toothpaste, condoms, and other items to the slum's residents. The slum was one of the most desperately poor places I have ever seen. Apparently the residents were evicted from their home to make way for a high-rise apartment complex and now they live in awful conditions. Trash lay everywhere, and the homes were shabbily constructed huts covered in tarps.

There were many many children around the site, and they followed us around the whole time we were there. The kids were beautiful (I can see now why Angelina Jolie came here to adopt) but almost all of them were barefoot and there was tons of broken glass and I'm sure many other dangerous objects poking out of the garbage. I can't imagine the disease that infests this place.

This was our first exposure to the work of Korsang, but by no means the last. Because Grace, Brad and I are going to be working on developing an HIV/AIDS manual, we will be doing a lot of work with Korsang and other agencies working on HIV education and harm reduction.

The whole experience was almost a little difficult to process, but hopefully more of it will sink in when we go back on Wednesday for another outreach. What I do know, though, is that this was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life, and Korsang is one of the most incredible organizations I have ever seen.

Our House (In The Middle Of The Street)

Wherever I live, whether it is my college dorm room, Casa Bart in Phoenix, or my apartment in Ottawa, my parents always inevitably ask me to send pictures so they can see the place where I am living. This time, I thought I would pre-emptively strike and post some pictures of the volunteer house and office where I am living and working in Phnom Penh.



View from outside the volunteer house/Bridges Across Borders office. The main office is on the first floor, the balcony on the second floor is outside our conference room, and the third floor is our rooftop balcony.

My lovely room, my bed is on the right. I normally have both the A/C and the fan blasting at night...that's how hot it is here.

The conference room, also known as the "social justice sweatshop." This is where we do most of our work, where the best wireless signal is, and where I am writing this post. It can get a little cramped sometimes, though, so interns will often escape to the roof to do work or to stealthily watch episodes of The Office as "team building breaks."

The volunteer house kitchen

The rooftop, which is the best place in the house to hang out, day or night. A great place to have a beer, watch the lightning, read, listen to music, sit in a hammock, complain about the inefficiencies of Bridges Across Borders,.....

....or play a game of chess, as Abi and Stanley demonstrate, with Brian looking on.

What I'm Up To All Day Long

So I haven't really had an eventful week, but I realized that I haven't talked much about the work I am doing over here. Essentially the program we are working on develops curriculums to teach basic legal rights to Cambodian citizens. Education is limited here and there is not a lot of trust in the legal system or knowledge of basic legal rights, so Bridges Across Borders is aiming to teach what is called "street law", which consists of really simple, interactive lessons on legal rights.

Some of my fellow interns are working on such things as promoting children's rights, awareness of domestic violence laws, and land rights, especially against forced evictions by the government.

As for me, I will be working this summer on editing and reformatting a labor law manual and creating a manual to promote rights for persons with HIV/AIDS.

Right now I am finishing up the labor law editing with my group, so I will talk a little bit about this work. Our manual consists of 10 sections dealing with topics ranging from basic labor rights to special protections in the Cambodian Labor Code for women, children, and plantation workers. The more I research this work, the more I have realized that many workers are not aware of the rights they have which are built into the law and there are a lot of abuses which go on in the workplace.

One of the biggest industries in Cambodia is the garment and footwear industry, which makes all those Gap clothes and Nike sneakers, and also allowed me to buy a pair of Pumas for $12 and 2 Adidas shirts for $10 at the local market. There are a lot of problems in this industry with workers being forced to work long hours without overtime pay, unsafe working conditions, and sexual harassment in the workplace. Further, there is a serious anti-union climate here, and some union organizers have been killed in recent years.

I don't know how much of an impact our work will have, but hopefully it will allow some workers, especially workers in the garment industry, to recognize the basic rights they have to be protected in the workplace and paid a fair wage. There is a small chance we will get to work with some union leaders and garment workers and potentially even teach a class to some workers, but much more of our time will likely be spent on the HIV/AIDS manual, and we will definitely be doing some direct research and site visits for that topic.

Hope all is well back in North America. Good luck to the Senators, hopefully they can come back in the next couple of games. We are having a pretty low-key weekend here after our Angkor Wat adventures last weekend. Best wishes to everyone from Phnom Penh and thanks again for all the comments, facebook posts, and e-mails, I appreciate them a ton.

Siem Reap/Angkor Wat Pics

Bayon Temple

One of the famous faces at Bayon

Some of the ruins at Preah Khan, my favorite temple because there were no tour groups when we were there

Me and a giant tree amongst the ruins at Ta Prohm

Singing "Summer of 69" at the Dead Fish Tower in Siem Reap

The Ugly Head makes its first appearance in Cambodia at Angkor Wat

Angkor What?

It is Sunday night here and our group recently got back from a weekend trip to the town of Siem Reap, in northern Cambodia, and more importantly to visit the Angkor temples.

We had 16 interns going on this trip, so we ended up chartering a "bus", which turned out to be a large van. The trip was pretty cramped but we at least had A/C and a good driver who took us around everywhere we needed to go. We made the approximately 5 1/2 hour drive on Friday to Siem Reap, which is basically a tourist town feeding into the Angkor temples. We found a really nice guesthouse for only $7/night (we are getting spoiled really quickly by these cheap prices) and then explored Siem Reap. One highlight: we ate at a great Khmer restaurant called the Dead Fish Tower which featured live entertainment by a Cambodian duo who knew a ton of Western songs. After some prodding from my fellow interns, I was invited up to the mic to sing "Summer of '69." It was a pretty fun night, and I will try to post some pictures soon.

Saturday morning we woke up really early to head to the Angkor temples for the full day. Angkor was the capital of the Khmer empire from about 800 A.D. to 1432. Many of the temples were created by the founder of the Khmer empire, Jayavarman II. They include likely the most famous one, Angkor Wat, which is the world's largest religious building, and Ta Prohm, a temple famous for having appeared in the Tomb Raider movie with Angelina Jolie, a fact we were unfortunately reminded of quite often by postcard sellers and tour group leaders.

It is really hard to describe the Angkor temples. There are quite a few of them, spanning a vast area in the forest. It would take 4 or 5 days to see all the temples, so we were only able to make it to 4 temples, but they were the more famous ones. It was fascinating to see all of the temples, however, and realize that you are walking on ruins that were built well over a thousand years ago. All of the temples have incredibly detailed and intricate carvings and etchings in the stone. One of them, the Bayon temple, has amazing carvings of faces on almost every pillar. It will be easier to see what I mean when I put up the pictures.

Seeing all of this stuff was great, but unfortunately we picked an extremely hot day to visit Angkor. We were all sweating from the moment we left our guesthouse, and there was no respite from the heat until finally a rainstorm hit at about 3 PM. As well, a couple of the temples, especially the Tomb Raider temple, were absolutely flooded with tour groups. This was really annoying because the groups would be taking pictures of everything in sight and generally clog up the temple. However, there were a couple temples we got to where there were virtually no other tourists around. When we had a chance to sit and take in the temple in peace and quiet, we could begin to appreciate how amazing these places were and are.

I'm not sure anything else I could say would do this trip justice, so I will post some pictures soon of our trip. We went out again last night in Siem Reap, although we were also overrun by other tourists in the bars and restaurants there. We had a very long drive back today to Phnom Penh, all of us exhausted but finding it difficult to sleep in the cramped van. All in all, however, we had a great trip and some of us are already starting to plan our next excursion!