A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me to become a co-facilitator of the American Club at the American Corner here in Kampong Cham. The American Club, for the curious, is funded by the American Embassy* and has the unabashed goal of trying to bring American culture to teenage Cambodians. Students get access to the American Corner — internet-connected computers, an extensive library of books, magazines and videos in English — as well as funds for field trips and a qualified youth coordinator (my friend Kosal) in exchange for their rapt attention to all things American.

Needless to say, I was skeptical, but my curiosity and concern outweighed the qualms and I showed up on a Sunday to figure out what this was all about.

My first Sunday in attendance, the students were frantically working on presentations for a special visit from a representative from the American embassy the next week. The 40+ students were divided into 4 groups, and each had chosen a topic of special interest related to American culture: the elections, the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, and the top 10 solo artists in the US. Kosal asked me to visit each group as the so-called “expert” on all things American, so I got busy chatting with each group and answering their questions best I could.

The total disconnect between these kids’ reality and their imagined concept of America is stunning, and only exacerbated by these activities promoted by the club. America, for them, seems to be a homogeneous mass of folks** interested in pop music, beautiful outdoors scenery and freedom.

The next week, Kosal gave me an hour and I organized an activity that compared Cambodia and the US in ways that I hoped would challenge and broaden their concept of both my country and their own. The game show questions included things like:

– Approximately how many children are born per woman in the US? How about in Cambodia? a) 1 and 3.5 b) 0.5 and 4 c) 2 and 3 d) 1.5 and 5***
– True or False. The US is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.
– Approximately what percent of people work in agriculture in the US and Cambodia? a) 10% and 60% b) 5% and 79% c) 3% and 90% d) 0.6% and 80%
– What place did the US 15-year-olds rank in math out of a study of 30 developed countries?
– What is the growth rate of the Cambodian economy? What is the growth rate of the US economy?

Anyway, I think it was somewhat successful because the kids were surprised, but it didn’t even scratch the surface of the strange uninformed relationship of most Cambodians to the west.

Cambodians’ insistence (at least in the NGO sector) on making the westerner into God, and their seeming rejection of their own culture is supremely sad to me and it seems closely married to the rampant materialism I’ve seen here. Western countries have more — more tall buildings, bigger cars, better celebrities, more TVs and cell phones and computers**** — and this makes their ideas and values and culture somehow superior.

One good thing that comes of this: the shame in this seemingly undue adulation has pushed me to be especially critical of how we in the States do certain things (in education, in environmental sustainability, taking care of the poor in our own communities, etc.), which in turn has fostered a powerful urge to get on home right quick and help to clean up my own country’s act before coming to another country to help them with theirs.

* Interestingly, I visited the embassy the other day and it’s no surprise that this clean, huge, imposing, impossible to penetrate building was the face of America in foreign countries.
**Speaking to this point — some of the students didn’t believe I was American at all, given that I’m half-Asian and have black hair and all
*** Do you know?
**** I purposely omit better access to medicine, better schools, etc. because I honestly believe that it isn’t these symbols of prosperity that impress — why don’t the Cambodians idolize the Scandics?

I haven’t written very much about work stuff, perhaps because I’ve still been trying to process everything myself and get a handle on the best way to describe it all, but I guess here’s as good a time as any to make a go of it.

So here I am, working with a local education NGO here in Kampong Cham. The organization’s origins go back to April 1996, when USAID decided to halt funding for their Cambodia Assistance to Primary Education Project because of the political climate in Cambodia. A group of local staff from Kampong Cham province decided that it was unacceptable to suddenly drop aid and technical assistance to schools, and continued their efforts with their own personal resources. Eventually, with support from the local and national partners, the project was reborn into the organization it is today.

As I’ve described before, we’re your typical alphabet soup of projects funded by a myriad of donors from all over the place. We try to organize ourselves into sections and consolidate projects into longer term programs as much as possible. I work in the Girls’ Education Initiative (gei) section which currently includes two main programs: our Girls Secondary School Scholarship Program which includes a bunch of different activities including vocational training and “life skills” classes like computers, cooking, and hair-cutting, and the REACH project.

I was mostly hired to advise the REACH team, specifically to help them with research design and analysis, designing the new activities based on our research, and writing reports and proposals. I also act as advisor to the gei section in general, which currently means I’m sorting out a projected budget for the next 3 years, writing proposals to try to secure the money, and writing reports to current donors.

Unfortunately, day-to-day I feel like I’m buried in a mountain of bureaucracy. I thought I would be able to help this local NGO and learn a lot about development and I think I was right, but not in the way that I expected. Honestly, I’m most useful as a flak jacket to protect my team from the demands of donors so they can go ahead and get the actual work done. I guess someone needs to do it, but it’s not especially fulfilling. I’m trying as much as possible not to just do the work, but instead help the team learn skills themselves so that they can function more independently of an advisor in the future, but it’s tough to find the time and the patience. It’s a constant battle between just doing things myself because it’s faster and simpler, and trying to cajole the team into doing it themselves. So far, I’m teaching a weekly advanced English writing class (sparsely attended) and mentoring our team leader Rumdourl and temporary Program Manager, Rith, but it’s slow going.

I guess I live for trips out to the field which remind me of the children and communities that all this paperwork is meant to help. This past week, I went out to visit three groups of girls who received a small loan from our NGO to start a business after completed our vocational training programs in sewing / beautician skills. It was super to see what they had achieved in only a little over 2 months. One group of 5 girls was making over $150/week sewing clothes for people in their village, at least twice as much as they could make individually in the rice fields.

To mark the difference the loan actually made, we also visited some individual students who hadn’t received any credit assistance after finishing their training; 3 of 4 were out in the fields working, their sewing machines covered and unattended. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that we can make the program much bigger ourselves since our main focus is education and we don’t have the expertise nor the manpower nor the donor connections… so I’m going to try to look for a local microfinance partner who we can pass the groups off to instead.

I’m starting to see how education development can be a difficult field, given that the results are so vague… We assume that students who have more education are better off, but it’s not always the immediate reality. In the long term, there’s no doubt that a better educated populace is good for political stability and necessary for economic development, and it’s certainly worthy to give children at least the option of a quality education if they want it, but like the example of the vocational training/microfinance link, it seems like education may be necessary to a point, but is woefully insufficient without other programs.

Anyway, enough for now. Missing home lots, but still doing well.

Today, the weather seems to be finally changing and there’s a gorgeous breeze blowing through the office, cooling sweaty brows and tempers alike. After a number of heated moments in the past few days, it seems like things are finally calming down. If I will learn anything from my time here, I hope it will be patience and grace despite frustration because without these qualities, I won’t survive another month.

This past week has been my most difficult by far in terms of my work here in Cambodia. Some of my worst nightmares of the donor community have come alive in ugly detail this week, and the sudden flare of my own displeasure with our partner, added to the unrelated issues brewing on our project team seems to resulted in the proverbial pot boiling over. Take a fundamentally flawed system, add miscommunication and language barriers, egos and reputation, throw in a little bit of incompetence and my own impatience, and you’ve got the recipe for a serious headache.

To be crystal clear, though there has been a small issue on the project team I’m advising, the major issues I’m taking about have to do with the folks who are funding my main project. Anyway, I don’t have much time to write right now, but my seething sense of righteousness seriously needed a vent. I will describe the meeting and its aftermath in excruciating detail soon.

Things have been hectic at the office lately trying to get our research wrapped up and our pilot off the ground before the school year comes to a close.

Thankfully, I was able to escape report-monotony twice in the past couple of weeks to observe some of our programs in action.

Some pix here.

More soon on the English class I’m teaching, my new responsibilities at the Buddhism and Society Development Association (BSDA), my trip over the bamboo bridge, various existential crises and more.

Muah,
Jess