The Post (1999)

Die-hard journalism fans like myself (PROOF: I totally "like" journalism on Facebook) will want to track down The Post, a short Australian doc about the 1999 Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia's "Newspaper of Record" founded by Michael Hayes—and approved by Princely decree—in 1992. It covers a most fascinating time in Cambodian history—as well as an interesting point in Cambodian/International relations: The Khmer Rouge claimed to be giving up power (although fighting would continue through the date of the release of the film); UNTAC was drawing to a close; and various large-scale government corruption scandals were just abrewing. As they always are. Here, though: no actors. Just news-room calm amid an array of crises. I'd go into a longer overview and review here if I had time for to rewatch; sadly it's never been shown in the States, at least to Hayes's knowledge.

SEE ALSO: The Post Study Guide.

PUC Charity Event

Saturday evening saw the auspicious occasion of the 7th annual PUC Charity Event, which it may surprise you to hear is an event at which funds are raised to donate to charity, which is certainly a good thing, and also events are a good thing, especially the entertaining ones. And this was certainly entertaining.

The event started with the unveiling of the PUC Charity Event banner, as well as the ceremonial spraying of two different-colored cans of silly string off-stage and unseen. (The silly string itself was also largely unseen, and fell into a bit of a line on the floor in front of the banner. Still, they joy was much in evidence.)

(You'll need to forgive the tilt of the images; I had attached my tripod to the chair and the angle can only be corrected with present tools so much.)

A group of children danced the Wishing Dance for us—the intended recipients of some of the charity funds in question, it seems. They were cute, and fairly amazing dancers—particularly considering that they grew up on the dump just outside of Phnom Penh.

I will say that the highlight of the event was Ann Visal, the pop singer pictured above, who graced us with a tune or two. Not so much because he was good—he was fine—but because he was cute, and nervous. And best: named Ann. Which believe me, will feature prominently in the upcoming Revenge of Print 2011 edition of AnneZine.

Well, about now my camera gave out, which is sort of fine because several more hours of entertainment ensued until the grand finale: a morality play about a woman who falls in with an abusive man. Followed by another morality play about a younger woman, who falls in with a string of abusive younger men. Who, at some point, all gang up on her and beat her up. At which the crowd laughed. Some hesitantly—as if getting over a nervousness—but some all-out uproariously. As if viewing the funniest and most just thing they had ever seen.

My friend R—. and I keep talking about it: young women and men, both struck with fits of giggling on watching this drama. I keep trying to place it in my brain in some morally acceptable configuration: they're growing tired of the morality-play-means of education; they were nervous; there was a joke in Khmer I somehow missed. But the truth is, well, they laughed at a young women getting besieged by a group of male ruffians. And I don't know why.

The event ended, as our MC foretold, on a high note: that is, a couple young women engaged in a bit of Pradal Serey against a similar band of youthful, masculine ruffians. The morality lesson for me at the end of the night being: a lot more gangs of young ruffians hang about Cambodia than when I was last here.

SEE ALSO: These kickboxing images.

Analogy.

In an argument against American men who take young Cambodian "wives" in addition to their families back home—and yes, this is something so frequent as to be commonly debated, which is preposterous to me on two levels and keep in mind I've been with my fair share of married men in my day so one of the levels is not me being a total prude—someone said: they always want the youngest girl. 15, 16, 17. They never want the oldest girl, or the mother. You want to help our country, help her family? Marry the mother. If you had to love the mother, you could. It's like Cambodians: when you had only rice, you loved to eat rice. And now that you can have rice or noodles, you only like noodles!

It's a delightful argument, way better than mine. Which was, for the record: Also, it's usually illegal.

RELATED: You'll notice I stopped documenting sex tourists this trip. Why? Because I don't have the energy to pull out my camera every time I see one.

Conversation with K—.

I had lunch with K—. today, who is fast becoming one of my favorite people in Cambodia. Arranged to be married to a young neighbor boy, she contracted Meningitis, which she survived through sheer force of will. Literally: one hospital attempted, and failed, to help her. The second she approached, the staff of which was mentored by the doctors in the first, decreed they were likely unable to help, since their former instructor could not, and did nothing. For one week she sat in the hospital, and they never came back to check on her. So she went home, to bed. Getting over Meningitis took her a year. I imagine it would. At which point the marriage-arranger, who rumor has it had a young daughter of her own she wished to marry the neighbor boy, suggested the potential union-promise be annulled. She did this through the circulation of rumors which conflated Meningitis with Mental Deficiency, telling the parents of the young man that K— would soon become crazy. Well. The marriage agreement broke off, and she was free. Until another young man fell in love with her, and through discussions held by their parents, asked please that they agree to marry. Which, she says, she did not do because: "no feeling." She liked him, sure, and he was cute enough she says (and I believe has good taste here), but I get the sense that that was all. No feeling. He was crushed and resolved never to marry another, but did, and this is OK with her because she likes him, after all.

So this is K—., who I had lunch with today. Actually that's not even the beginning but what else do you need to know except awesome? Nothing. So on the way back from lunch she said, "What do you do in Chicago?"

"I teach also," I said. "I teach a kind of practice that does not happen in Cambodia. Part art and part research. I teach at an art school."

"Do you like it?" She asked.

"I like it very much but, I'll be honest with you, there are things that have gotten difficult there lately." Things I have not told you about, dear readers: things you would not understand.

"So why don't you stay here?" She asked. "Or," because she is not naive, "why don't you come back?"

"I will," I said. I probably will. I always seem to, plus have an exciting new project to plan, but am not ready yet to think about how it will work yet, exactly. I have too much in the short term to do. "But," I added, because I am not naive either, "There are things that are difficult here, too. It is not easy when, everywhere I go, I am automatically not taken seriously because I am a woman, and only some people in some places have learned better. In Chicago, only some people do not take me seriously because I am a woman, and there is a way to talk to them, and other people that can talk to them too. Also, it is easier to do things in Chicago, because I know more people, and more people know me, and things happen faster. It is just easier there."

"Yes," she said. "I see. But here, maybe it is more important."

Garment Worker Open University

I had the pleasure to visit Better Factory Cambodia's new initiative yesterday, Garment Worker Open University, which brings factory workers in from all over the Phnom Penh area to learn about their rights and responsibilities under the law.

Here are some women gathered under the awning used as a playhouse: a sewing machine, a bike, and packets of health-care products such as shampoo were given away as quiz prizes following a short skit.

Workers (in the dark blue) and event organizers (in the turquoise) gather behind the band as the play—something of a morality one, about domestic violence—begins.

This woman correctly answered the questions (I believe about domestic violence resources) and won a bike! And then had to pose for pictures with it for about 20 minutes. (Pictures were sort of a big deal, organizers told me. They are quickly replacing the "certificate" in the category of preferred keepsakes from events.)

Workers gathered around a break-time resource table filled with information about reproductive health services and facilities. Other tables offered financial service information (calendars being key here) and hygiene basics. The employment opportunities table, to inform women that their garment manufacturing skills are transferrable, was not staffed, but a giant poster offered a reminder anyway.

Organizers prepare snacks. These were not donated, but purchased, from local businesses. Meals were key here: staff of the event felt responsible to make sure the women ate all the food they were given. The Red Cross was also on hand to furnish medication, health services, or emergency treatment to anyone who needed it.

Workers are lead in a energy-boosting, post-lunch game (Mock, Ghost, Beautiful Girl—I'll explain it later because of it's awesomeness) before they return to their lessons. Which were based on the BFC's reading of labor law in Cambodia.

More Hip Hop Apsara

I'll post these, unretouched and without further comment for the moment, except to say that I'll be releasing a book of them with some sort of explanatory-but-not-really essay about ghosts, with Chicago-based art house Green Lantern Press, within the next year.

Pictures from PUC Radio Talk Show

Me, but on the radio, above. Below, me with Soma Norodom, hostess of PUC Radio Talk Show.

And then there are the days that break your heart.

I say break, and it is a cliché. In fact what happens is a small incision is made—a tiny comment, an insignificance so slight you would not notice it if not already worn so thin. This papercut opens, though, and from it spills forth everything: a projectile gush, and you can feel it entering your throat and rushing out of your mouth. It is deeply emotional, like a compressing vomit, and as steeped in the sensations of bile and acid and rot. Sheerly wrong. The heart is a careful vessel here, anything may upset it, spill it, crush it.

Anything. A child on the street asks you to buy a book. You say no thank you, in Khmer, and show him the one you are reading. You know his parents or another adult likely take the money anyway and don’t want to support forced labor; anyway you bought the only book you need from him last week just in case it wasn’t true, just in case he did profit from his own labor, the hope against hope of the white American tourist. You explain none of this, just expect to be heard: Te, akun. Som nong l’or. No thank you. But: Good luck. And he curses you.

A driver you trust, already on salary, demands $50 from you for an incomprehensible reason. A young woman from the provinces whom you have offered a job, demands four times what you are offering—and ten times the going rate in the States. In response, you must tell her: It is good to feel pride in your work. But no way. At night the dog across the street howls so harshly you know it is being hurt, every night. A barang stops you in the street, shares a horror tale of his pack getting stolen and the local authorities doing nothing, and asks you for a bit of money, any money, until Western Union opens again. As you suspected the first time you met, he is so high he does not realize he asked you for money two weeks ago. Which means the street crime here doesn’t even always benefit Cambodia. A frustration so multi-faceted you don’t know how to respond, and just walk away without a word. The payout to the policeman, the slight of a philanthropist, the comments of a visiting professor. The blank eyes of a young student you have been working with for weeks who only wants to get a high-paying job. Not learn.

It mounts. And then a friend tells you you look pretty, that the dress you are wearing is very flattering. Even though you are super fat. Or that you look less like a boy than when you had short hair but why do you still act like a boy? Or someone you admire, someone who is used to this all, someone who sees this, daily, and engages in much, much worse: she can’t do it anymore. She gives up. Leaves the country, quits her job. Stops. Cries. Is done.

You come to expect it, sure. It is endemic to Cambodia, this well of exhausting fury. It is in the drinking water, there, next to the arsenic, and on the street behind the fast-food billboard. It happens, and maybe you can handle it. But sometimes you think: why the hell should I?

Me.

This is what I did last night, which is one of my favorite things in the world to do: sit around a public park watching people combine hip hop moves with traditional Apsara ones to the droning base lines of Cambodian pop music turned up way too high. More pix to come, I promise.

RATANAKIRI: A life of difficulty and contentment

By Menghun Kaing

Located in the northeastern part of Cambodia, the Ratanakiri province borders Laos to the north and Vietnam to the east. It is one of the least-developed provinces in the nation, with approximately 150,000 residents—or about 1% of the country’s total population.

Ratanakiri landscape, by Menghun Kaing

The province is home to several diverse ethnic groups including Charay, Kreng, Tompoun, Prov Kachak, Kavet, Laotian, Loun, and Phnon—each retain a unique culture, belief, tradition, and language. Despite its slow pace of development, Ratanakiri is famous for its rich natural resources and its exquisite landscapes.

Last week I went on a volunteer trip to the province in order to conduct a workshop with a group of 42 indigenous middle-school students. It was a very long, exhausting journey, but worth doing, for there was so much to learn about these unique people.

Houses, by Menghun Kaing

I could not wait for the day to come that I could meet with the new students. I had imagined them looking different, speaking various dialogues of their tribes, and having distinctive characteristics from those of the majority of Cambodians.

“I get up at 5 a.m. and study, and then head to school,” said a curly black-haired, 16-year-old Kreng girl, Khan Srey Ny. Khan Srey Ny is now an eighth grader and has left her Kreng community to enroll in Banlung Dormitory School, a facility built by the Vietnamese government. “My parents are farmers and they grow cashews, sesame, and vegetables for family needs,” she said, adding that her parents are happy to send her to school.

Two Kreng women in Ratanakiri with the author (center), by Menghun Kaing

Life is very simple and happy in these communities. “At home we do not have a TV, radio, electricity, running water, or any modern equipment,” said Luon Sokun, a 16-year-old Prov boy. Prov is another tribe of indigenous Cambodians.

“We use a lamp and we grow vegetables for our daily diet,” he continued. “We rarely have meat because our people do not go to the market and buy food every day.” He chuckled tranquilly, and I could feel his fulfillment through his dark, shiny eyes and smiling face.

No matter how hard life is, they still have hope. “Even though I face some difficulties, I am still committed to continuing my studies at a university level,” said Sophat, an eleventh-grader from Tompoun tribe. He added that sometimes he has to work to afford his studies. “My family could only afford to give me 10,000 riel ($2.5) per week, so I have to work as a moto-taxi driver to earn money to buy books and food,” said Sophat.

Sophat (right) with the author, by Menghun Kaing

“Because we are poor, my parents wanted me to quit school since I was in grade nine, but I persevered through obstacles to achieve my goals of pursuing a higher education, and now I am in grade eleven,” Sophat added.

Since these special groups of people had settled down thousands of years ago, they formed their own community with varied cultures and still hold on to those beliefs strictly today. And sometimes, that could be a barrier to development and education.

An interesting tradition that some tribes still practice today is moving home. A Tompoun boy told me that he just moved from his father’s community to his mother’s after a few years living in his father’s.

“Usually, if you marry a person from a different tribe, you have to live with him/ her for a number of years. And then move to your community,” he explained.

Ratanakiri street life, by Menghun Kaing

Health is another concern to the group. Sophat talked about his family. His two oldest siblings had died because of a disease that the tribe believed indicated a wrong done to the holy spirits. “My oldest brother died shortly after my sister had passed away,” Sophat recalled, “Older people thought they were sick because they unintentionally disrespect the community spirits.”

“They did not take them to the hospital,” he added.

Lam Binh, an eighth grader from Prov, told her story that because she is the oldest daughter; in her tribe, it is believed that daughters should work to help family and should not study too much. And therefore, her mother wanted her to give up her school.

In order to continue her studies, she has to struggle through poverty by working to support her family. “Besides school, my mom sends me to work as a maid for the neighbors,” Lam Binh said, “I do laundry or other housework for them.”

Lam Binh is one of the 42 indigenous students I worked with during the workshop. They were all just as smart, ambitious, committed as the rest of the Cambodians. In spite of the difficulties they face as minorities in an underdeveloped region of the country—difficulties including poverty, cultural and traditional constraints, and a lack of educational opportunities, they still have dreams and work hard to reach them.

This story was funded by readers who donated to Camb(l)o(g)dia (see button above!) in support of women-created, ad-free, independent media. See here for our loose rules and regulations.

Woman Buying Sunglasses

The News.

This from the Phnom Penh Post's youth-focused LIFT supplement. For the record.

The Great Chol Mlop Debate

According to this article, Chol Mlop is a long-standing Cambodian rite of passage for young women:

Chol Mlop, literally meaning “entering the shade”, is a Khmer ceremony for a girl marking her first menstrual period. After the girl is secluded in the “shade” for a specified period of time, she is socially accepted as a nubile young woman and therefore considered ready for marriage.

It's disappearing, says Sun Chandeb, and that's bad. So he procured a grant from the Ford Foundation to, he says "carry on the tradition of Chol Mlop." (I believe this article originally appeared in the Cambodia Daily.)

At least some Cambodian women, however—demanding the right to be heard in public that practices like Chol Mlop discourage—aren't so disappointed to lose this particular aspect of traditional culture.

Chol Mlop is not a good practice. Why do only girls need to practice Chol Mlop? Why not boys? Why do only girls need to know how to do the housework? What about boys?

To help our country be efficient and effective in utilising its human resources, and in being fair to girls, Chol Mlop should not be carried on.

Girls are not born to be housewives and do housework. Some girls are born with unique talents that they can use to serve our country better. Some can become great future medical doctors, lawyers, police, soldiers, engineers, scientists or politicians.

If we keep practising Chol Mlop, it means we are blocking girls' desires and dreams to be who they really are and what they want to be.

If we keep practising the Chol Mlop, it means that our country would lose many potential human resources.

Read Tep Sophea's full response, as published in the Phnom Penh Post, here.

Communication Fundamentals

I gave a guest lecture in a Fundamentals of Communications course the other day, and the students were really fun and engaged. I didn't realize that they were also evaluation me as an intercultural communicator, and so had written down various things they believed to be true about me before I started to speak. At the end of the lecture, they read the list to me, and here's what they said:

• American.
• 30 years old.
• Married.

And I had to tell them, "It is totally true that I am American."

So we discussed a little bit about the advertising of multinational corporations in Cambodia, and I presented some research my class and I did—I'll post it here, soon—and variosu things that are sort of about communication, and ways to think about communication. and then, in that delightfully straightforward Cambodian way, one of the students cut to the chase: "Please tell me how to be an effective communicator."

Obviously, I can't do that, but I said that I could tell them more about how I communicate, and they could try my way for themselves. This is all old news for you, though, dear readers: you know how I do. So let's just cut to the chase ourselves, shall we? 

That's when I accidently showed mostly-naked pictures of Pamela Anderson (this one and this one) to a monk. 

The girls balked: He has to leave! But the monk said: Learning to critically view advertising is an important part of this lecture. Which was true.

I'm Pretty Sure This is Not Jennifer Aniston, But a Trans Person Doing Jennifer Aniston

From a Khmer magazine I couldn't read the title of. Although I could have asked someone, it's true.

PUC Radio Talk Show

There's only one, so that's what they named it. I'll be a guest tomorrow evening:

Here's a bit more information for the listeners at home:

Adidas store

I'm just going to go ahead and post this without comment for now, except to add that the customers to the store, which I visited on a late Wednesday afternoon, were all middle-class or wealthy Cambodians, who seemed largely unperturbed by the $38 tank tops and $61 running jackets—prices discounted, I was assured by signage, 50-70%. (Only items on the sale racks were discounted. Items inside the store were full price.)

Related: Adidas signs a letter to the GMAC.

The feminist art club.

I was asked to come give a talk last night to a group of young women artists in Phnom Penh—maybe not quite exactly feminists, OK, but maybe concerned primarily with gender right now, particularly as it impacts their ability to create work. We met at Meta-House, where I was preceded by a brief introduction  that referred to my work as conceptual.

Now, if you know me, you know that I don't really think of my work as conceptual, but I also don't really think of it in terms of art. I just more think of it in terms of "projects," and then people end up wanting to show them in an art context, because where the hell else is a pair of ripped up jeans going to make sense, a public square? Certainly not.

But, conceptual or no, there's certainly no small amount of confusion around the Garment Work installation at Meta-House. Several pieces have fallen off the wall, and some were just thrown away. Other bits are missing, damaged: There is no safe harbor from need and ingenuity here. The decision to name something trash can be permanent.

But, so, I talked about my work. By now, I've spent a great deal of time over the last three years explaining to young women in the largely illiterate Cambodian culture why I feel driven to create little joke books about political things even if it gets me into trouble. I've gotten used to questions along the lines of, "What on earth does intellectual property rights even mean?" "But what do your parents/husband/kids have to say about what you do?" and, "I'm sorry, but who is Pamela Anderson?"

But, you know: One of these women just had a nose job. Another spent the weekend fighting with her parents, who believe her art career is making her uppity, and she is losing her respect for Khmer culture. Another was just suffering from a terrible, horrible fear that what she wanted to do with her time was not valid. She struggled to use the term artist to refer to herself; when she did she couched it in terms of reverence and pride—things she was not sure she deserved.

And not a one of them would show me their work, or even talk about it. So we set up a second meeting.