The bloom is off the rose in Cambodia. At least it is for me with regards to eating. On arriving in Kampot Sokly, the DDP manager and I went with two prospective Deaf HIV trainers to dinner at what best can be called the "local outdoor diner." It consisted of rough hewn tables set up with plastic chairs in a public market. The food was set about in stainless steel pots on tables arranged so customers could lift the tops off the pots and indicate which item they wanted for their dinner. No problem eh? Well, given that it was after six p.m. it was quite dark outside and the town dogs roamed between the tables hunting for scraps. Motorcyclists rode right up to the pots and while still mounted chose their evening meal to be loaded into small plastic bags to go.

Nothing too wrong with this picture yet, right? Wrong! It had just rained in town and it pooled under the tables and on the chairs where we were to eat. Flies attracted by the electric lights swarmed over the food as soon as it was uncovered or plated. Not being able to tell what I was eating didn't help. Fortunately, Sokly speaks English quite well and pointed out some things I might and did indeed like. I chose red curry and palm cuttings for dinner. It was tasty, though trying to eat palm stalks can be quite difficult to chew if not cooked well.

At these outdoor joints Cambodians are quite accustomed to wiping off their own flatware since one isn't sure when the last time it had been washed. Kleenex boxes provide napkins and they are easily discarded right onto the ground. When something spills on the table, it's considered rude to wipe up what's there since that would waste paper napkins. Fly food galore. Dinner meant figuring out how to eat amidst town dogs and flies who were quite insistent about what they thought was their food

Breakfast the next morning is pictured above. Bacon cooked on a stone stove with rice and eggs previously scrambled. What you cannot see in the picture is the hundreds of flies that have gathered to enjoy their morning meal. Racing flies for breakfast isn't my idea of pleasant, but who am I to describe a proper Cambodian meal.

Lunch was had with the town dogs again with even fewer vegetarian friendly items... so I enjoyed the sauces of the various meat dishes. By dinner I decided I must eat in peace and wandered off alone to a restaurant catering to the foreign visitor "crowd" or lack thereof. After a fly free meal eaten at a proper restaurant the wait staffer sat down with me to chat. He told of how the tourist traffic has really died in Kampot and that I was only the second customer of the day in a place that clearly had at least ten tables seating four each.

As it was the town looked as it must have during the Pol Pot regime, largely devoid of people on the street. I read an article by a resident who claimed that in the mass relocation that every Cambodian experienced, he learned to eat, sleep and hide in trees from the Khmer Rouge cadres.

More on that later. I won't dwell on this misadventure any further. Have a good weekend.

As I said, I was in Kampot to observe two of DDP's sign language interpreters at an AIDS workshop presented for teens from 16 and up. The two interpreters did a bang up job given the material and presentation style. Their challenges were many. The presenters themselves knew nothing about Deaf people, and the Deaf young people were largely not literate, though for the most part they were quite smart. The audience were largely graduates of DDP's school program in Kampot.

Almost everyone in Kampot makes their living off either cultivating durian fruit or from fishing. As a result it's often hard for parents to see a need for the young Deaf people to go to school past elementary. Some of the young people have gotten jobs at the very program that co-sponsored the AIDS workshop, Epic Arts Center. Epic Arts is a performing and visual arts association focusing on integrating people with disabilities into Cambodia's communities. A small Epic Arts cafe downtown caters to foreign visitors and earns the British sponsored program some cash.

When it comes to AIDS Cambodians have been struck hard by the epidemic because of the large sex work industry that largely caters to foreigners, and because of the draw that recreational drugs have in a country recently devastated by a genocidal regime and presently being dragged down by a worldwide economic collapse. Meth, heroin and cocaine have a strong foothold here. That is why the presenters have worked with the Deaf young people over five months to introduce the concepts of personal hygiene, infectious disease, sexual health and drug awareness.

Some of the concepts presented are apparently very difficult for barely literate Cambodian Deaf people to understand. The presenter, a talented artist, drew a picture of a fenced in garden with various animals trying to hop the fence or break it down. She then explained that the HIV virus is like the farm animals repeatedly attacking the immune system (the fence) until it breaks it and invades the body (garden.) One of the older audience members then asked, "Do you think we have cattle inside our bodies?" Obviously Deaf people have a long way to go to get a full comprehension of HIV infection.

All in all an interesting week.

Here in Kampot on the southern coast of Cambodia there isnt a lot to do. Even finding an internet shop was hard. Work has me observing two of the Deaf Development Program sign language interpreters at an AIDS workshop. Disappointment has reared its head in two of my cherished areas of work. I certainly have very different expectations of HIV prevention trainers and of interpreters than they have for themselves. That either exist in this very poor nation is a matter for much gratitude.

The manager at this internet cafe took one look at me and decided to put me in a cubicle with a Japanese keyboard which haswhat passes for three, no four space bars but if I read three of them right would access the kanji characters on this computer. Typing is taking three times as long as a result. I gohome to Phnom Penh tomorrow. pICTUREs and text from there. Jum riab liah or Aloha as they say elsewhere.

This is Cambodia's principal blood bank and trauma hospital, next door to the Royal Palace. The signs in red read in Khmer and French, "Given the dengue fever epidemic, visitors are not permitted except for patients' relatives." Eek.

It's Tuesday morning at 1:45 and I'm awake . I'm grateful for this chance to work with the folks at Deaf Development Program (DDP). I get to see a life that I could never have imagined. That reminds me how richly blessed I am.

Tomorrow I get to go with a couple of the DDP interpreters and the organization's manager to a sleepy resort town in the south of the country, Kampot. DDP has a project going there and they will be inviting the local AIDS NGO (non-governmental organization = not for profit) to present to Deaf young people on the subject. As many of you know I was program director at APICHA, the Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS in NYC a while back. I am fascinated to learn what I can from my Khmer counterparts.

The one thing about working for DDP is that some there think that I come to help them improve their interpreting. I am glad to contribute where I can, but THEY have helped me so much to appreciate what I have. I hate to be maudlin about it, but what the hey...I get more than I give and they have given me a whole lifetime of experience while I have given little.

Remember you can always comment by clicking "comment" below any post. Help me stay in touch with you!....

Got a minute? Remember how I keep complaining about Phnom Penh traffic? Now you can see it --- in color if not exactly live. I stood on the corner of a major intersection at noon watching traffic (wondering how I could get across this particularly busy intersection) when it occurred to me to film the action.

Three things to remember.
1) There is no such thing as obeying traffic laws in Phnom Penh.
2) If you cannot get there from here in your vehicle, just force your way around.
3) Very few people own cars, those who do think they own the world.

Click on the picture above or on the triangle below the picture. Watch the black Prius as it enters the intersection just a few seconds into the movie. Then watch what happens to traffic. Especially watch the white car as it drives the wrong side of one road right in front of the camera.

Please leave a comment as appropriate under anyof these posts. It will help me feel more connected to you all.

Woman recycling plastic bottles retrieved from trash and hotels in the tourist area of Phnom Penh. She is working in the Royal Palace parking lot.

I have written frequently about the poverty in Cambodia. From the Phnom Penh Post, reporter Steve Finch breaks down the World Bank study.

Cambodia is set to be the country hardest hit this year by the global economic crisis in the Asia-Pacific region, the World Bank said today, placing the Kingdom among only four countries projected “to experience absolute increases in poverty”.

The cost of many things has increased by between 10-25% in the past five months as I have explained before in this log. This has hit the poor the hardest in this country where poverty is everywhere, even where the tourist buses park to disengorge some of the world's wealthiest to see where the single wealthiest family in the country lives.

People have moved from the countryside in search of cash which they believe would help them overcome the overwhelming poverty they knew. But because everything in an urban economy involves a middle man, what cash they can earn is reduced by some wholesaler taking a portion of their retail earnings.






Many older single men have moved from the outer provinces to seek cash, but don't have the skills for the industries here. So they work in the least mechanized fashions they can.

These men pedal cyclos - bicycle rickshaws for a living. In the hottest part of the day they hang hammocks to rest from the heat. At night many sleep in their cyclos.

I failed to mention the poorest of the poor here in Phnom Penh. I ran across a couple of them last night coming home from dinner. It's not recommended that people be out and about any time much after dark here because economic crime is pretty much rampant. But out my housemate, Tashi and her houseguest Vania (from Bulgaria) and I were.

We ran across the dumpster divers. Here in Phnom Penh we place our garbage out on the curb each evening in the small plastic bags we get from the grocers. In the morning "magically" the bags are gone. As you might guess, magic has nothing to do with it. Hard working folks from the provinces come by dragging their carts and load the garbage into them. Those carts are then dragged several kilometers outside of the city to the Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump.

During the daylight hours entire families root through the dump for anything recyclable, re-usable or resale-able. For literally pennies a day preschool children and their older brothers and sisters risk disease climbing barefoot through everyone else's desechos to pick out whatever might earn their family enough to feed itself-barely.

For further info check out this New York Times article:

www.nytimes.com/2003/08/25/world/phnom-penh-journal-children- scavenge-a-life-of-sorts-in-the-garbage.html - 47k

Hello all,
Sorry for not posting earlier this week. Internet has been down at my place all week. We hope that it will be up later today when we go and pay $400 for the next three months of service. Note that I just said $400 for three months of service. Sign language interpreters here make an exhorbitant $100+ a month. Most people here in Phnom Penh cannot afford electricity in their homes much less a computer with an internet connection.

Life is extremely complicated here even without the worldwide economic collapse. When I was here in December a liter bottle of potable water was 2000 riel (roughly 50c USD.) Now that very same bottle (with I hope different water in it ;*) is 2500 riel (roughly 65c USD) My favorite pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) was $1.50 USD and is now $2.50. I can easily afford the price rise, but I cannot imagine anyone else being able to do it given that their wages have remained stable while prices have risen roughly 20-25%.

I am working hard at developing a video stimulus program for training and testing the local sign language interpreters. Right now I'm working on a series on classifiers using pictures of objects in life (still lifes if you will.) I will show these pictures to Deaf people and ask them to describe on video what they see. Then I will show the same still life pictures to interpreters and students and ask them to sign what they see and to compare themselves to the Deaf models. The very concept of having video stimulus materials is brand new to Cambodian sign language interpreters. I hope that I can leave something worth Deaf DEvelopment Program's time and effort for having me here.

A bunch of us are going to a conference on sign language research and sign language interpreting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia at the end of the month. We had a meeting at DDP between all of us who are going. Several going have never been on an airplane before. Nor have they ever attended a large international conference. So we gave them an idea about what might happen in the plane and at the conference. Not things like we're gonna crash and the plane is going to break up into a million pieces, though I can imagine some believing that. Rather we have to remind people that airplanes are air conditioned and it will be worth the time to bring a sweater. We also have to remind people that they must bring their passports or we will leave them.... Human nature being forgetful :*)

Some of you may have heard me tell stories about the hill tribe people I accompanied to the Bangkok airport back in the early eighties. The refugees had never really been outside their own communities before they had to flee for their lives to relatively safe Thailand. They most certainly had never been in an air conditioned building before and they could hardly have imagined being on an airplane.

We, the volunteer American-acculturation-instructors prepared them for everything they might experience in a plane going to the US. So we thought! We taught them about sitting still for several hours and about using seat belts. We had even introduced them to sit-down toilets and plumbing for sinks and washing hands. They had a small taste of the kinds of food that they might get ont he airplane, if you can call stale chicken food. At the airport we accompanied the group of about forty to the gate itself, riding up escalators... a challenge for people who had never experienced architecturally fashioned stairs before, much less moving staircases.

The group boarded the plane, and the volunteers moved outside to watch the plane take off and to wait for the next group of outbound refugees. Off the plane went and we settled down to a late lunch to wait for the next group bound to the Phillipines. Out of the blue, the plane that left with the refugees we had just boarded appeared in the sky. Airport fire trucks and ambulances careened towards landing strips and airline personnel shouting incomprehensibilities in Thai ran towards us begging us to come with them . Back towards the gate we ran and were rushed onto the tarmac. The plane bumped and screeched to a very abrupt halt. The doors opened and inflatable chutes deployed. All the passengers jumped or were pushed down the chutes to waiting medical personnel.

When all 200 or so passengers had gotten off we finally got the story. The refugees accustomed to 90+ degree heat in their homelands were quite chilled in the 70 degree tube they were riding. So they gathered all the newspaper they had and lit a fire in the aisles to warm up. Obviously, we hadn't taught them all they needed to know. ;*)

I'm looking forward to a non-pyrotechnic flight to Kuala Lumpur next Friday. Before then I will try to upload some more stories and hopefully video showing Phnom Penh traffic at its best. :*)

Cambodia's national motto is "Nation, Religion, King." The king is Norodom Sihamoni, a 55 year old monarch who though largely educated abroad is the symbol of all that is Cambodia. He is also the nominal head of Buddhist practice in the nation.

There have been a bevy of monks crowing the area around my house this week. Even more than usual for a block that has a wat or Buddhist temple on each cardinal point. I don't know what it's about, but I will let you know when I find out.

This child is offering what is a morning ritual throughout southeast Asia. He's giving the monks bat, a small donation to their order or to their monastery and temple (wat.) The monks typically leave their monasteries after morning prayer for two or three hours begging for their own meals and for donations to the various causes they espouse and literally house. Every wat houses widows since they have neglible earning power at best. Most of them have a specific program to which the resident monks dedicate themselves. Wat Tham near work trains men with disabilities including Deaf men to carve traditional Buddhist images. A couple work with people with AIDS and their survivors.

The monks themselves eat one, perhaps two meals a day and never after noon. Yesterday while I was out and about exploring, I saw a couple of teenage monks at a local tourist trap restaurant. My eye was immediately caught by the fact that two Cambodians were sitting there and that two monks were sitting after noon (the start of their fasting time) in front of two glasses of Coke. They sat long enough for me to imagine that they were breaking their fast (something I haven't ever seen happen before.) But no, they got up from the table after an appropriate few moments so as not to look either greedy or ungrateful and walked away leaving full glasses of soda which the two waitresses then set in front of themselves to drink.

Buddhist monks here and in Thailand and Laos can dedicate their entire lives to practice, or they can take short stints of a couple of years before pursuing their secular lives. Almost every man here spends some time in the monastery. I almost got my head shaved this time around because of the heat, but decided against it since it would make me look like a defrocked monk..... I wouldn't like the implication of either being a monk or being defrocked. (Big smile on this end.)

As you heard all last week, King Norodom Sihamoni helped his people predict crop success and failure by plowing his own garden with oxen; celebrated his own birthday and helped his people celebrate their own regional and provincial cultures. This picture shows the royal reviewing stand which fronts the street and park that parallel the Royal Palace. The reviewing stand is used almost exclusively for the annual Water Festival which happens on the Tonle Sap River directly behind the camera. The water festival celebrates the importance of Cambodia's rivers and waterways in commerce. The Royal Plowing Day celebrates the importance of agriculture in the country and the King's Birthday ties all that is royal to all that is Cambodia. Oh, note that the most important feature on the reviewing stand is the King's portrait. Don't let my cynicism fool you, I do respect the importance of taking a week off in the beginning of the planting season.......... maybe!

Like the first week I was here in December, one of the things I got to do was to experience traditional Khmer culture in a new exciting way. I'm sorry that my photos are so lousy, but alll I had was my iPhone to take these shots of folk dances from the provinces. In this dance ont eh steps of the National Museum (remember I live directly across from this world treasure) the men and women act out harvesting rice in a traditional wet setting dragging their baskets through the water as they pull at the stalks. This performance and that of Kong Nay (below) were part of the King's support of Khmer artistic culture on his birthday. I feel so honored to be here during this renaissance of Khmer arts, crafts, dance and music. I remember so clearly the fear of Khmer refugees and of other artists that all this would be lost as the Khmer Rouge systematically mowed down everything that was traditional or in their eyes "elite."

Along with this cultural renaissance here in Phnom Penh, there's another kind of birth happening. This week Khmer people and ex-patriate supporters are cele brating Lesbian and Gay Pride week. My housemate dragged me out to a bar to watch a drag show. I stayed as late as I could but didn't last much beyond 10:30 and the performance didn't get started until after 11 p.m. As you may have read before in this blog (see the December lpostings) drag here involves lip synching to Mandarin, Cantonese or English music. Most of the performers don't know what they are supposed to be saying, so they act out their little skits to their own lyrics regardless what the actual lyrics say.

Ain't that like what every new subculture has to do in every society. The members of the subculture may be tempted to imitate the practices of fellow subculture members from other countries, but it isn't authentically theirs until the community members take their own material and create their own story with it. That's true whether the particulars are gay or lesbian, new print journalists, hip hop artists or even G-d forbid, Mormon.

Forcing the foreign way of doing things in a subculture in a new context is like training pigs. It's tough, it smells and it only annoys otherwise amiable co-inhabitants of our planet. The Mormons from Salt Lake keep trying to force Utah European-based music into Cambodian services... the problem is that Khmer takes 2-3 times as long to say the same thing as English. So Khmer doesn't fit into the convenient 4/4 or 3/4 patterns of western music. Trying to make it do so just annoys everyone's ears.

Encouraging the local subcultures to find their own way requires patience from outsiders. It also requires taking a huge step back and trusting that people will find the way if they are supported. Support means giving a hand up and not spoon feeding others. Hand up assumes that the supported are equal to the supporters and not needing to be spoon fed.

For three or four days this week, I've heard music coming from the park across the street from the apartment. Being somewhat jaded I thought, "Eh just recorded music to please the visitors to the royals' big bash." I have heard this particular music often because I have several of the recordings of folk master, Kong Nay. He is the Cambodian equivalent of Ray Charles. A blind man who may literally have saved Cambodian folk music from a destiny worse than death.

Friday night I wandered out to get a pedicure and a foot massage down the block (No one can ever tell me that getting your feet bathed, nails cut and legs massaged cannot change your life.) As I stepped out of the salon I spied a small stage set against the outer wall of the Royal Palace. From it came the plaintive sounds of an Cambodian lute and a solo male voice. I recognized Master Nay and his voice, but could not believe that he in person would be performing so close to my house. It sent chills up my spine that reminded me of the time I first heard Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie sing together at the Hudson Clearwater Revival. (For those who are too jaded, you don't know what you have missed until you've heard Ledbelly, Odetta and Pete Seeger sing old time spirituals and blues on the same stage.) Kong Nay is of that class. He performs improvisational poetry on the topics of the day. Imagine a hip hop artist jamming on a lute. He survived being starved and worked mercilessly despite being an artist of the kind the ingenue proliteriat wannabe's of the Khmer Rouge wanted dead largely because he was blind. He almost singlehandedly has saved this improvisational music form called chapei.

Wednesday, my tasks were to acclimate to the town again. My bike had a flat so that was my first task. I went to the neighborhood flat-fix-it guy. He fired up his gas-powered air pump and went to work on patching the flat and putting air in the other tire. All for 25¢. In Honolulu and DC the bike shops would have made me buy a new tube, charged me for labor and made me wait the half hour or so. All for the exhorbitant fee of $30 or so.

Riding around town I was again struck by traffic. When traffic follows no rules even red lights on major boulevards have little or no meaning. So standing at an intersection on the sidewalk just watching traffic go by I'm startled by a voice to my left. Lo and behold, a motorcycle has come uponto the side walk and is trying to beat the signal by riding directlyinto oncoming traffic (remember my little lecture on riding opposite traffic?) I can do nothing but smile and allow the driver to pass against the light opposite traffic and on the sidewalk.

Wow! I'm back again to the wonderful little apartment on Street 178. Arrived on Tuesday in time for the King's Royal Ploughing day and on Wednesday, his birthday. Everything in the area has been cordoned off since the Royal Palace is just a block away. It's kind of like living at G Street and 17th NW in Washington DC or at Punchbowl and King Street in Honolulu. No matter what else happens the police will cordon off a huge swath beyond the royal's residence.

Tuesday I had a sit-down chat with Charlie Dittmeier, the Deaf Development Program's (DDP) director to outline what I would be doing during the next two and half short months. We worked out little bits of how my relationship with the program will be going. I will be taking lessons in Khmer language and Cambodian sign language and developing a video program for interpreters to use for voicing practice as well as advanced work on including classifiers in interpreting.

Tuesday night Justin Smith, the program's deputy program director celebrated his birthday at local restaurant. He is a Deaf man from Great Britain and has worked with DDP for several years. He took a break to get a master's in public administration and has come back to his present position. Having worked as a volunteer among Deaf people in the Phillipines he is fluent in ASL as well as Cambodian SL and his native BSL.

I gotta tell ya from a personal note ... never try being social on jetlag... It doesn't work you just embarrass yourself by falling asleep in public. I stayed as long as I could and dragged myself onto a tuk-tuk for a ride home. I fell asleep on the way, a bad idea since the driver took me several miles the wrong way (having misunderstood my directions.) We then had to argue our way past the police cordon around my block. "You may not enter the section for the Royal Birthday." "But I live on the block!" "You cannot possibly. You don't speak Khmer and you aren't Cambodian" "But lots of people stay in the hotels on this block who aren't Khmer!" "Yeah but you claim to -live- here." "Okay I'm visiting here does that make a difference?" "Oh a tourist.. welcome!" All while I dosed between sentences.