Please.

The sign says: "Please don't walk through the mass grave!"

A German-Khmer Phrase Book for Socialists (1987)

[Another post from Mo., our intrepid boy contributor. Hooray!—ed.]

A Situationist author whose name I forgot famously suggested one should hike through the Harz mountains in central Germany using a London city map for orientation. An adventuresome traveller can achieve similar incongruencies if she or he lets the 1987 Gesprächswörterbuch Deutsch-Khmer (German-Khmer conversation book) by Ngen Yos guide their communication in today’s Cambodia. The book was published by VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie Leipzig (people-owned publishing house Leipzig), as one in a series of publications on Cambodian language and culture. Written in the last years of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) socialist regime in the East of Germany and in the last years of the Vietnamese-run People’s Republic of Kampuchea in Cambodia, the book was intended primarily to assist “German-language readers who have the opportunity of using Khmer in their jobs, because of their studies, or because of personal connections” (according to the author’s introduction, it was meant also to be useful for Cambodians learning German). Starting out from German, it provides translations into Khmer and pronunciation help in the phonetic alphabet.

Many phrases featured in the book continue to be useful and up-to-date, including the sections on measures and weights, on months according to the traditional Khmer calendar, on illnesses, city tours, and the human body. Others, less so. Anachronistic as they are, though, they offer a window into the socialist late 1980s, or at least onto a small, largely unknown, and, to me, profoundly weird aspect of that time, international socialist solidarity and cooperation. 

In the first section, for instance, Ngen Yos explains the intricacies of greetings in Khmer culture, listing factors such as age, gender, type of relationship and degree of familiarity which determine the usage of greeting forms and the choice of the appropriate first person pronoun.

But should a good socialist even learn these terms? Socialist culture everywhere was quite concerned with transforming rituals that represented and reproduced traditional social hierarchies, be they feudal or capitalist. In Cambodia, these concerns were carried over from the Khmer Rouge years to the non-genocidal variety of socialism after 1979. Thus, the translator explains that “samamit” and “samamit neri”, the male and females form of “comrade”, “are not only the official greeting forms among members of the Revolutionary People’s Party of Kampuchea, but they are also used quite frequently among people without party membership. Guests from socialist countries and members of other (i.e. international, Mo.) communist parties should also be addressed in this manner.”

Significant chunks of the book are dedicated to agricultural and industrial production, where the GDR specialists or party delegates were expected to provide advice.

Marx’s central categories are listed, such as “means of production” and “relations of production”, as are really-existing-socialism’s inventions like the “five-year plan”. The focus on “heavy industry” and the “nuclear power plant” documents ambitions for industrial development; concepts of rationalization and efficiency get represented in phrases such as “we have developed a new machine which does the work of three people” or “Is your factory output in accordance with the plan?” If the visiting socialist professional seeks to find out about the progress of Cambodia’s working class, the phrase book suggests – scripts – a brief conversation:

“The workers spend their vacation time in the country’s most beautiful resorts”, “Who pays for this?” “The company”. (Other options are not given, resorts are not specified). One thing is clear: Shame on you, on-looking capitalist, whose workers pay for their vacations, if they get any at all.

However little these phrases may have to say about Cambodian life in the 1980s during civil war, post-genocide trauma, chaos, and extreme poverty (and I assume it is very little), and however flawed the concept of socialist internationalism and solidarity turned out to be, maybe we should also take this example of anachronistic phraseology and think of what a future reader, say 35 years from now, will make of the language used by today’s agents of international cooperation, cross-cultural exchange, and global commodity production, whether it’s the neoliberal, the journalistically brief and sober, the legal, the snotty blogger, or the morally-well-intended-neo-paternalism variety.

And now that Cambodia is beginning to have a larger industrial working class (laboring in a small but not completely insignificant part for German corporations such as Adidas, Puma or Beiersdorf/Nivea), maybe some workers will actually be able to fight for things like paid vacation days. And not just be allowed to go home over Cambodian New Year, like the garment factory workers we spoke to. 

Nowadays, however, they can probably expect little linguistic assistance from their foreign employers’ phrase books. If they even have phrase books.

One more thing that I found useful on my travels:

“I did not order this. I ordered Schweinebraten” (Schweinebraten = German pork roast).

More Girls Workin' on Zines

Images from the follow-up zine session at the Teuk Thla dorm, Friday January 22, 2010.

This time, there were no questions like, "Why do people do this?" "What is the purpose of zine?" and "What is your real job?"

There were only questions like, "What can I put in it?"And when I would say, "Whatever on earth you want to put in it," they would still ask permission to pursue their particular idea about zine.

The Long Ride Home

It wasn't until our 6-hour stopover at the delightful Incheon airport in Korea that it hit me. I was finishing a sub-par book, a travel narrative about a woman's adventures in Cambodia—not to be confused with the absolutely shitty travel narrative I read a few months ago about a woman's "adventures" in Southeast Asia (the final two chapters are devoted to Cambodia, where, upon going to the Killing Fields, the author realizes the hardship of the Cambodian people and delights that they retain such a good attitude, and practically resolves never to drink again even though the entire book she has been swilling beer and so for sure you should not believe her, plus she's a horrible writer)—and hit upon a sub-par story about a man she came across in the course of these adventures.

His story: He was a former GI, stationed in or near Cambodia. He had married a Khmer woman, and in the 1970s, when things got bad, they arranged to meet at the French Embassy in case the Khmer Rouge ever hit Phnom Penh. On April 17, 1975, she was running late, their ride left without her, and he was forced to return to the US alone. Upon a return trip, he discovered that she had been taken to a tennis court near their home and killed, alongside several of Lon Nol's former officers. Now, he kept returning to Cambodia, getting high, drinking beer, and angrily shouting at people, occasionally stumbling across information about his former life, and his wife's death. He'd made something of an ass of himself by the time our narrator came across him, and no one really liked or appreciated him, and he came across as an unlikeable hard-luck case in the prose.

His story is not all that harsh or unusual in Cambodia, of course, but for some reason the sheer banality of it, my selfish judgment of this man's torture, and the remains of his outrage—likely still present, to this day, and rightfully—struck me all in a moment while I waited for this plane back to Frankfurt. I sucked in one breath—that breath you hear in chick flicks when the music and the dialogue and the mom's dramatic reincarnation with her long-lost daughter all hit their crescendo cause all the disgruntled young women in the theater to simultaneously lose their shit—and immediately was crying harder than I had cried in months.

It wasn't this guy, of course: it was that the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the only thing anyone really gets to know about this place, had proven themselves just the beginning. It was the plethora of other stories that caused me to sit there, gasping for breath, while poor Mo. sat there wondering what the hell had gone wrong with me now.

It was the young woman's story of being put to work selling fried bananas at four because her father, likely with the KR, was out fighting in the early nineties still and couldn't provide for the family. It was the garment factory worker who couldn't tell me what she didn't like about her job—and the other, former garment factory worker who'd fainted once from overwork and upon awakening, was forced to sign a release form explaining that if she fainted again she was out of a job of her own free will. It was the female guard at the garment factory who waved me in, only to have another male guard shove me back out, claiming they "didn't make anything" there. It was the raids and the banditry and the desperation and the poverty. It was the sex workers, who correctly read the Bill and Melinda Gates HIV-prevention drug-test proposal as a horrible idea for local women, providing both those who received the treatment and those who received the placebo an excuse for unsafe sex, and who kept the test from being administered in Cambodia. It was the stories from Svay Rieng province, young babies left in fields by parents when the American bombs hit; mornings when craters were discovered where, the night before, had been livestock and livelihood; the erasure of these memories in the public demand to address the Khmer Rouge and only the Khmer Rouge. It was my friends, my young women leaders of Cambodia, who every day in their past had worked happily in farms in isolation, without support, and without any hope for an improved future. It was the generations of sheer chaos before and after the 1970s, the realization that whatever we now ascribe to the Khmer Rouge, there was a way it was positioned as a workable solution, a viable end to the chaos, an improvement.

Certainly, more will come on this blog and elsewhere as I finish up the stories I gathered information on during the last 3 + weeks in Southeast Asia, but I've a few more days to ponder it all in Berlin before I return home.

Boat

The Return

My last two days were spent stuck on a tropical isle with someone who's never heard of Gilligan's Island, and believe me this can be incredibly trying, but the point is that I haven't been able to ease you into my return to the Boeung Trabek Dorm nor to the New Teuk Thla Dorm nor for that matter to Seoul and then Berlin and then again Chicago, a lengthy process which begins in earnest in half an hour.

The thing is, this trip has not been easy. Cambodia will break your heart if you let it, and if you don't let it, why come? This happens a million different ways on a million different fronts a million different times. Your tuk tuk driver will throw you over for rich people. The ex-pats will be racist twits. The girl who wants to sell you mangoes, so cute when you saw her three days ago, pouts when you don't give her all your money. Funding falls through back home. A meeting is missed, an opportunity lost, a Cambodian fails to follow up on something, and American gets too aggressive. A fat German man tows a young girl—far too young to legitimately be out with him in the street at 10:30 p.m.—by her wrist while she cries. The stench, the garbage, the poverty, the unrelenting anger, the passive aggression, the resentment, the fear. The boredom. The rice.

It is impossible to discern what disgusts more: the desperation of the need or the self-aggrandizing supposed attempts to meet it.

Then: the ingenuity. A smile. A girl will hum a pop song while pouring some coffee and even though she won't catch you looking at her, her friend will, and smile. You know that song. You know it because a 6-hour bus ride from Kep had the karaoke video on repeat while it stucked itself in second gear almost all the way home, sure: but you have earned the right to enjoy her song. Even though she is not singing it for you.

Or: the three-year-old daughter of a factory worker on the bouncing back of a cart being towed by a motorcycle tests her English: "Hello! I love you!" before throwing you kisses like Miss Cambodia 2010. She pulls over ahead of you, stops, and does it again when you have caught up.

This country will break your heart if you let it. But you must also learn to let it make it up to you.

Olympic Soccer

I'm currently fascinated by Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium, a massive 1960's-era Vann Molyvann building intended to attract various international megasports games but eventually housing only mass killings under the Khmer Rouge, Irish singer Ronan Keating under Hun Sen (in his first Cambodian concert!), and various national sports organizations, such as volleyball, wrestling, badminton and—less officially—soccer.

Of course, the site also serves as the first location of the ever-popular Apsara Hip Hop Dance and Aerobics Extravaganza first mentioned here (and clearly labeled below).

Mo. and I were delighted to be asked to "enjoyn" the soccer game—or, well, he looks all Europy so I guess they really only asked him to play, and it was football to boot—and here he is, about to score a goal. Seriously.

Holiday In Cambodia

My pals at Annalemma have thunk up an amazing fundraising project: Holiday in Cambodia. And they've run an interview with me about it that careful readers of this blog will likely not receive any new information from, but should visit nonetheless.

If you haven't yet, please email Chris at Annalemma and beg him to take your late submission!

Finally.

So in case you have been wondering, yes, I have been working and not just running around the city taking pictures of really fat dogs or what have you, and yesterday I gave a presentation, as promised, at the new dorm on zines.

Guess what this girl's zine is about? Cats.

Dog or Walrus?

New Dorm Opening

The new dorm, as all the girls call it, opened yesterday in an all-morning ceremony with monk blessings, apsara dancers, several medium-length speeches, and more officials than generally gather in this nation around issues of girls rights to education.

The American Ambassador the Cambodia, Dr. Carol Rodley, cuts the ribbon at the opening ceremony of the new Harpswell Dormitory at Teuk Thla yesterday.

Alan Lightman, Dr. Rodley, Kara and Jean Lightman, the students, and several uninvited guests look on as the ribbon cutting ceremony begins.

Sarina in special-events makeup and fresh-faced MeaLea standing by during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Black shirts, brown shirts

[This is the long-awaited first-ever Camb(l)o(g)dia Guest Post, by my traveling companion Mo. Welcome to Camb(l)o(g)dia, Mo.!—ed.]

I was wearing a black shirt yesterday, one I bought in Sweden a few years back, and I got an unexpected compliment, or so I thought, from an older Cambodian lady in the guest house I was staying in. A short-haired lady of about 75 years, she seems to be the grandmother in this family-run place. She smiled, looked at me, and talked in Khmer when I came downstairs to leave my keys. I turned to her daughter, who is running the place, slightly confused. “You like black shirts?”, she translated. I nodded – I was wearing one, after all, so what could I say – and she continued, smilingly: “She says Cambodian people also like black shirts”.

I was surprised. Not that I hadn’t been prepared, or warned, about menswear in this country. Men, including most of the young ones, dress conservatively here: by and large, that means suit pants and shirts. Such sartorial conservatism contrasts strongly with the look that is predominant among vacationing westerners, the shorts, muscle-shirts or Angkor-Beer-T-Shirts.

I wasn’t surprised because I was thinking of such differences in cultural conventions, though. There is a harsher semiotics to black clothing, and the black shirt, in Cambodia, my travel companion had warned me in advance: Black was the colour the Khmer Rouge wore – and prescribed for the entire country to wear. It befitted their agrarian-proletarian asceticism, I guess. In Toul Sleng, the former Khmer Rouge prison and concentration camp that is now a museum, a few texts in the sparse exhibit are dedicated to clothing in the years of what the museum calls the “Pol Pot clique”. Not wearing black could be seen as a sign of difference and dissent. Former city dwellers who were forced to labor in the rice fields often used mud to blacken the only clothes they had, those they were wearing when they were expelled from the cities, as a means of survival, for not sticking out, the text read.

So, was this dignified lady, a Marxist might call her petit-bourgeois, a Khmer Rouge nostalgic, and her comment a reference to those times? Was she being cynical about my inappropriate color choices? Or was I being paranoid and she just liked my shirt, or the fact that I was wearing an actual, almost fully buttoned shirt at all?

Maybe I find this interesting because of where I come from. Being German, I am no stranger to remnants of genocidal history in everyday life, to coded language about war times and off-hand references to mass killings, to Nazi party membership cards in family albums, weird little moustaches men suddenly wear in the 1930s, or neighbours who live in houses they acquired cheaply when property was being “aryanized”, i.e. taken from its Jewish owners who were expelled or murdered. At the same time, I know how inappropriate it can feel when others take one’s history as a stage for their rather predictable morality plays or, more mundanely, when outsiders see symbols in places where I myself just see stuff. I started to wonder about the two brown shirts I have at home. Brown shirts, famously, were the uniform of the Nazi SA, the “Sturmabteilung” under Ernst Röhm, the thuggish paramilitary force that Nazi leaders used for terrorizing their opponents before 1933 and bascially shut down soon after they had come to power and started turning to more organized and professionalized forms of violence. The SA is still known as “brownshirts” in English, I think, but not really as “Braunhemden” in German, which would be the literal translation. That just isn’t a word we use very much any more. If some English-speaking person thought I was a Nazi sympathizer because of the colour of the shirt I was wearing, I’d be amused at best. So I figured I shouldn’t make too much of that black shirt comment either.

I still wonder, though. Come to think of it, probably quite a few Germans or former Germans who lived through that time wouldn’t wear brown shirts, for that very reason. And here in Cambodia, who actually cares about such symbols? Did everybody throw away their black clothes, even those who made sure that other people would wear nothing else?

Certainly, the museums seem to make a lot of such questions – including Aki Ra’s Landmine Museum in Siem Reap, where this picture was taken. But who do they speak for, and speak to? Maybe my paranoid tendencies stem from my impression that the representations of genocide and civil war history in Cambodia – the museums and exhibits, books stands and brochures, even the international trials – seem primarily directed toward people like myself, English-speaking tourists, while many people here appear speechless, silenced, formulaic, or indifferent.

Hip Hop Apsara

The city of Phnom Penh has public dance lessons on the riverfront at night now—they used to be at the misnamed Olympic Stadium—so 'round 5:30 much of the city gathers to bust a few Apsara dance moves and rehearse a few choreographed hip hop dances learned from the TV.

Full disclosure: It's amazing how bad I suck at the Apsara.

Garment Factory Interviews

Went out to interview garment factory workers on their lunchbreaks today.

These are the girls, in their mandatory yellow kerchiefs, beginning to flood back into the factory across the street. Their factory sews and prepares jeans for the United States, Mexico, and Panama.

We caught a few of them taking their break in a cool covered truck. They were all from the provinces—mostly Svey Rieng—and said they liked their jobs, because they got to go home on New Year's.

They pretty much told us there was no way we were getting into the factory—fear that we would uncover "violations" was cited as the reason—so we had to say goodbye when their lunch was over.

This girls make a base pay of $55 per month—that's a mandatory wage for factory labor. When asked how many days they work per week, they said seven; we were later told that this depends on the manager, that Sundays are technically off but that there is often overtime available. With a chance to earn $80 to $110 total bucks per month—doubling their wage—the girls take the overtime when they can.

They told us they pay about $15 per month in rent, often sharing rooms with two or more other girls, depending on the size of the room. They agreed they send about $50 home to their families in the provinces every month. We then took a tour of one of the garment factory apartments in the area; the doors are padlocked for security during the day, and children are sent off to spend time with relatives during the day.

This is the apartment of a former garment factory laborer, still living there to save money to buy a house in the country. The couple and their three year old child live there, unfolding a mattress onto the floor at night, cooking in the back two-foot square corner next tot he bathroom, and paying $25 per month ($30-$35 with utilities.) The room, we're estimating, is about 10' x 12'.

"His intellect is strong, but he has no morals to go along with it."

On this, the 25th anniversary of Hun Sen's election, The Cambodia Daily is offering a profile of the Prime Minister—now 11th on the list of longest-ruling leaders.

"His intellect is strong, but he has no morals to go along with it," says Pen Sovann, the first prime minister of the People's Republic of Kampuchea. He served for only a few months before spending a decade under house arrest in 1981. Sovann claims that although he was officially arrested by the Vietnamese government, Hun Sen—a recent defectee from the Khmer Rouge—read him his arrest papers.

"Although opinions on Mr Hun Sen's accomplishments during his quarter of a century of rule varied . . . most acknowledged the transformation of war-torn Cambodia into a stable, peaceful country with an open and growing economy as his greatest achievement," Paul Vrieze and Phann Ana write in today's story, "25 Years Since Hun Sen Named Prime Minister."

"However, human rights abuses, land evictions, rampant corruption among government officialsm a lack of independent judiciary and intimidation of political opponents" still mar his legacy, the story continues. (Page 19.)

Among other attributes, the aiming-to-be-read-as-glowing profile noted:

- his good health

- that "fighting corruption is not easy."

- his fantastic ability to "fascinate the Cambodian public."

To this last, historian Henri Locard added that he takes "opportunities to warn his underlings publicly to tow the line or for the more affluent ones, to commit themselves to making generous donations for a just cause."

"Cambodians relish all their newly-acquired freedoms," Locard adds, "with one major exception: the freedom to challenge his all-embracing power." (p. 20.)

4: The Best Version

It's a little bit unclear if this is a movie or a videogame, but what is TOTALLY FOR SURE CLEAR is that the FOURTH one in the series is the BEST ONE, which I hope is not disappointing for all those suckers out there who spent their money on the first three versions.

Bok Knear

A small traffic accident took place below me the other day when I was having an afternoon Angkor on a terrace across from Wat Langka: A moto rammed a bike into the driver's side door of a minivan. No injuries. Actually it was quite cute, and I think the male bike rider was trying to use the experience to gain a date with the female moto driver, which IMHO would be a pretty cute way to meet your future husband if you go for that sort of thing.

Then again what do I know? Mo. skipped our first date entirely and then I brought him to Cambodia anyway so obviously I know nothing about the ways of the heart.

Hmmm, but: the night before he left for Siem Reap, Mo. and I saw a horrible traffic accident on Monivong Boulevard, a ghastly situation in which a dazed woman was being carefully led to the raised, yellow-and-black-painted median, along which was laid the driver. No one tended him, no sirens blared, he did not move. I forgot to check what shape the moto was in.

Hearing about it, another friend relayed a story about an accident she was in about a year ago in her minivan. She was hit by some massive vehicle on the passenger's side door—fortunately her kids were not in the car—and the force thrust her through the front windshield face first. Luckily, she threw her hands up to protect her face and landed first on them, only breaking a single bone in her wrist.

Then, however, the nightmare started: although the driver took responsibility for the accident, hearings upon hearings were held to determine responsibility for various aspects. Finally—and only because a family friend set her up with a former high level government official, who merely sat in every hearing imposing a weight of authority—the party responsible agreed to pay for damages. They were allowed, however, to choose their own repair shop and had no time restrictions; they went with a cousin, who did a shoddy job, evidently incompetent to my totally untrained eye.

"When things are good in Cambodia," this friend concluded, "they're good. But when they're bad, you've really got problems."

Leang Seckon's Studio at Boeung Kak Lake

Went out the other night with a member of parliament, his wife, a few New Zealand artists working in the medium of installation, John Weeks and the lovely Fleur Bourgeois Smith for a tour of Leang Seckon 's studio. (I'm currently working on a piece for the catalogue of his upcoming show, the Heavy Skirt at Rossi Rossi gallery in London.)

His studio sits on the doomed Beoung Kak Lake, Phnom Penh’s largest remaining natural lake, currently being drained to make way for a residential and shopping district. A February 2007 agreement with the company Shukaku Inc., signed then by the Phnom Penh Municipality, kicked off the development project with a 99-year lease. Little is known about the company, although some press reports have linked it to Pheapimex, a land company owned by ruling party Cambodian People's Party member Lau Meng Khin.

On August 26, 2008, contractors began filling the lake in with sand. Residents were not notified in advance —only the first wave in a coming flood of forced evictions known more commonly around the country as “landgrabbing”—or in this case, lakegrabbing. Displaced residents have been offered three choices in compensation for the loss of their homes and/or livelihoods (many fish in the lake and survive off the food and sales of their catches): move to the northeast corner of the city into government-approved housing projects, still under construction; take $8500 lump sum in compensation; or wait until alternative housing is built in the neighborhood. The city claims only 600 people will be affected; NGOs put the number closer to 4,250 to 30,000 people.

Seckon has not heard anything official about the dwindling lake or whether he will soon be forced to move. Various legal and political actions have been undertaken to halt the deliberate destruction of the natural resource, but so far none have slowed the process. Directly across the water, Seckon can watch the sandy beach get larger and larger, almost day by day.

(Sorry, can't post pix from his studio yet and I'm not ready to describe his work further. I'll post links when published, tho!)

Back in the dorm (again)

I've reinstalled myself in the Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women, where internet is a bit hard to come by but girls not so much. I spent one evening explaining the more subtle meaning of Margaret Fuller's "A Woman at 40" to Sokheang, and another night going over Limheang's application for a US scholarship. Everyone is busy with final exams and the new dorm opening, about which more will be reported at a future date. Also, when I have access to Wi-fi, or as we call it here in Cambodia, Wi-5.

Sex Tourism II

New Dorm Leadership Seminar

New dorm, new style of leadership seminar: The new staff of the Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women have installed a new style of leadership seminar: no more listening carefully and note-taking, the students are now charged with research topics and encouraged to stand and deliver impromptu speeches, making them the leaders at last.

Below, the students gather in groups to discuss about the topic.

Tailor at Tuoul Tom Pong