A few weeks ago, I described a short walk on the north riverside of Siem Reap, and attempted to paint a picture of a lively slice of of the town, one that you won’t see around Pub Street or wandering through the temples. It’s a part of ordinary, everyday Cambodia, full of bustle and barking, gossipy roadside haircuts, the heave-ho of negotiations over prices for food and materials, and the smells of dinners being cooked. Here was the sound of kids playing up and down the road, women gathered and laughing, of weddings being celebrated (usually, it must be said, to the horror of expats), of music, and the clatter of motorbike repairs. It was real life, in all its mess and beauty.

A sewing workshop, whose workers have reportedly been given an alternative location nearby so they can continue to work in the area by the RiverGarden Hotel.

Last Monday many of the people who make up that lively scene received their marching orders, and were given a week to pack up their things, walls and all, and leave. They went about the task quietly, and the only real sounds came from the bang of hammers, and the scrawch of rusted nails being hauled out of old planks of wood. An air of resignation prevailed. There was no chat and laughter, but no crying either. Some have been compensated and given an alternative site on which to relocate, though not all. That some are happy about the move and its conditions, there is no question. But there had been protest the day before I went to have a look, and the police and army were present for the rest of the week to keep a lid on things.

This view is of the same stretch as appears in the Travelfish.org covershot for Siem Reap.

The principal reason for the eviction is that the river is going to be widened, and the riverside developed, which seems a bright idea, especially in view of the devastating floods that hit Siem Reap last year, and stayed for six long weeks. Others point to the amount of litter constantly ejected from the stilt-houses that line the riverside, polluting the river, and creating an unsightly mess in downtown Siem Reap, hence the net drawn across the river to trap it all, which was never going to be an adequate long-term solution.

It’s true too that in any country, you can’t expect people to continue living such a precarious existence, in darkened, dishevelled huts perched on scrawny stilts over the edge of an unpredictable river. The fact that these structures survived the merciless hammering of the floods is a testament to the capacity and know-how of their builders; but they couldn’t survive the smooth stroke of a supposedly benign administrator’s pen. They would have had to move one day, that was inevitable. Questions remain, however, about the justifications, the timing and also the manner in which the eviction was conducted.

Not all the buildings went at once, but they will.

With regard to the justifications given for the eviction, it seems questionable whether any widening would be sufficient to prevent the incredible scale of flooding that we saw last year, and in 2010. I'm not sure what's happened to the plan to divert part of the Siem Reap River to Roulos, which seems a more effective solution (to my admittedly non-expert mind).

Moreover, there are questions about the need to evict entire communities in such a manner, when the authorities have failed to dredge the river as promised, a significant factor in the flooding last year, and they've certainly had much more than a week to do so. I wonder too about the littering, and the extent to which any attempt was made to educate people about waste disposal, or an alternative solution offered.

While the residents have long known that they would have to move, the sudden order to do so, with a deadline of a week, seems harsh. Questions remain about the compensation that has been awarded to the riverside residents. It would seem there are differences in the amounts of compensation paid, and the Vietnamese community in particular appears to have received almost nothing. There are also some who may have received compensation they did not deserve, having set up camp on the riverside as soon as they heard a census was being made for removal purposes.

Even the kids were quiet.

There are questions too about the site chosen for this relocation of almost 1,000 families. It's on a flood plain, five kilometres from Siem Reap. That may not seem much to some people, but when you're earning $3 a day that's a petrol bill that quickly becomes unsustainable. For others, building up a business again will be difficult and, for many who relied on passing trade, impossible. The new development has government built stand-alone brick toilets, of the kind I've seen littered around parts of the countryside, filthy and unused. The site is next to a sewage processing plant.

I guess the questions in relation to all of this can be distilled into one basic one: is the eviction for the benefit of the people that live here or for the benefit of tourists? Sadly though, little in Cambodia is done for the benefit of Cambodians (or the Vietnamese communities that live here), unless they happen to be members of the elite.

Skeletal remains.

One of the children's drop-in shelters in Siem Reap is trying to raise funds so that they can set extend micro-loans to some of the families affected in order to help them deal with the move, as some of the children who are registered come from families affected by the relocation. I'm familiar with the organisation (disclosure: I stepped in to help out briefly three years ago while the director was sick), and they are one of the few with their heart and their head in the right place. If you'd like to help, Anjali House has a donation page on Virgin Giving.

Floods, fire and eviction, all in the space of six months. How's your day been?

The same shot from a few weeks ago.

In relation to the walk it is, of course, still doable and it will still give you a wonderful slice of Cambodian life to appreciate and take home with you. It'll be a bit quieter though. And oddly enough, removal of the houses has revealed that there are not so many trees after all, and that much of the cool and shelter came from the presence of the close-knit homes that these families lived in.

Tags: evictions, floods, walking tours

“O would some power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!”
-- Robbie Burns, To A Louse

We are sometimes the worst judges of how we and our actions are perceived or experienced by others, and never more so than when we’re in a strange environment where we do not speak the language or understand the unspoken codes. As much as our communications channels are stunted, the critical faculties that so ably reveal to us the tricksters, cons and charades at home seem to melt away when exposed to the tropical heat. Our sense of wide-eyed wonder is activated and captivated by the beauty and novelty of everything around us, and sometimes it forgets where to draw the line.

Everything in the garden looks rosy, though, emm ... that's actually an hibiscus ...

When I lived in Phnom Penh, I regularly bought books and newspapers from the kids on the riverfront. As a process, this sure as hell beat pulling a copy of The Economist off a sterile shelf in a newsagent and handing over the cash to some hang-jawed check-out worker at home. In fact, copies of The Economist used to come running down the street after me yelling “Lady, lady! Here your Ecomis!” They were wonderful kids: cheeky, bold and full of fun, they put an extra shine on my day. I had no idea, then, that I was doing them so much harm.

On International Volunteer Day this year -- December 5 -- a group of Siem Reap-based volunteers got together to launch a new campaign aimed at raising awareness of the issues around buying products from street kids in Cambodia. Think Twice! hopes to put that apparently simple, honest and open-hearted transaction in its proper context, to help visitors see beyond the smile and the banter to the effects their actions really have on the lives of others.

Buy books from adults, not kids.

With their confident sales pitch and irreverent jokes, these kids certainly don't look that vulnerable, and it may seem that giving a dollar, or more, for a few beads or postcards is helping them -- giving them money for school, food and their families. It’s not. It is sustaining a system that keeps the kids out of school, that exploits their charms for labour, and that exposes them to the dangers of sexual predators, traffickers and drug dealers. Selling newspapers and souvenirs on the streets is often the first step on the path to life as a sex worker. I was horrified when I learned from an aid-worker that most of the kids from whom I bought my Economist in Phnom Penh, some of them really young, were almost all sexually active and available, for a price.

According to reports by World Vision and the Consortium for Street Children , there were an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 street working children in Cambodia in 2001. In Phnom Penh, 88% of vulnerable children, including street children, had had sexual relations with tourists. While those figures are now a decade old, with more tourists in Cambodia today than ever, the incentives for putting kids on the street are correspondingly higher. Edited, full report here (page 32), but sample size very small and the report is a decade old.

I stopped buying from them because without a customer to buy the products, the families and the middle-men who put the kids on the street no longer have an incentive for doing so. According to the director of one children’s charity in Siem Reap, many of the kids working the streets in Siem Reap aren’t even from Siem Reap province anymore. They have been brought in to tap into the lucrative market in tourists’ sympathy and desire to connect with Cambodia.

The children themselves do not see the money that they work so hard to earn. Some will go to their families, the rest to the middle-men who supply the postcards and beads and books.

When you see the young girls selling flowers in bars at midnight, just imagine, would this be acceptable if she were your daughter? There are alternatives. Families do struggle here, but support is available from a network of hard-working locally based charities that provide education, healthcare, vocational training and other material supports for families in need. Examples include Anjali House, Grace House, the Green Gecko Project, the Sangkheum Centre, Sunrise Children’s Villages, The Global Child and many more. You can help them with donations or, in select cases, offers of voluntary support. They really are effective in helping the families they reach, and you can help them to reach even more, even better.

Cambodian kids, on the long road to school.

Don’t just take my word for it. The Think Twice! campaign is supported by businesses and organisations all over Siem Reap, and you’ll see posters, stickers, flyers and postcards everywhere soon. Moreover, the campaign is backed by the International Labour Organisation, UN Volunteers, Australian Aid, Friends International, Childsafe Network, ConCert Cambodia and Anjali House.

For more information on the campaign, check out the Think Twice! facebook page. And if you’d like to understand more about the context of child street begging and vending, you’ll find some helpful information here:

http://www.thinkbeforegiving.org/

http://www.mediaglobal.org/2011/02/04/letting-parents-earn-and-children-learn-in-cambodia/

http://www.concertcambodia.org

Tags: Street kids, Think Twice!

A debate is going back and forth in Siem Reap at the moment relating to visitors who want to do something to help Cambodia, but only have a very small amount of time in which to do it, from half a day up to one week. Seeing so much poverty, and so many of the children who suffer, inspires many visitors to express a desire to spend time working with children in one of the many shelters that are dotted about the countryside around this town, teaching English or otherwise helping out. Perhaps after reading this, you will be able to give your input on how to accommodate these good intentions, to the benefit of everyone involved.

Take a leap!

Everyone has the greatest respect for anyone expressing a desire to help in Cambodia. As Cambodians work hard to rebuild their country, many people are working alongside them to help them achieve their goals. The difficulty is that short-term volunteering, especially with children, has the potential to do more harm than good, both for the organisation and the children involved. Your opinions on what alternatives you and your co-travellers would be happy with would greatly add to the debate and help find some answers.

Looking at the difficulties: for the organisation, integrating a volunteer for a very short period of time is costly. A full-time paid worker is required to spend time preparing for the volunteer, introducing them and supervising them. This full-time worker may be a teacher or a social worker, and is being taken away from their normal duties that are usually directed towards the children’s education or well-being. As the work of the volunteer is naturally of limited value compared to the work of a full-time employee, the cash-strapped organisation is basically paying full-time wages for very little benefit.

That is assuming the organisation is a reputable one with a formal child-protection policy, sound paedagogical standards, a transparent accounting system, and proper management structures. Cambodia may be poverty stricken, but these things are not difficult or expensive to achieve -- provided you have the will to do so. However, if it is a reputable organisation with all of these procedures in place, it is unlikely that they would accept volunteers for such short periods of time.

It is extremely difficult for visitors to identify which organisations are good and which are exploitative of both the children and visitors. One indicator: if you're not asked to sign a child protection policy, walk away. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Asking your tuk tuk driver where to go will very likely put you on that road.

For the unaware traveller, the consequences for the child go deep. There are too many “orphanages” in Cambodia, most of which are not even needed. It has, however, become an attractive business model for some unscrupulous individuals who prey on the vulnerability of the children, and their parents – the majority of Cambodian “orphans” have at least one living parent – and the goodwill of visitors. The managers of these institutions are blessed with a salesman’s ability to quickly tug loose the heart strings that bind visitors’ wallets, and letting visitors spend time “teaching” the kids is an easy bargain. The result is that children are needlessly institutionalised, kept in a state of poverty and deprived not just of an education, but even their own home.

Moreover, for children a constant revolution of people through their lives can have terrible consequences. Cambodian children grow up in a context of profound psychological vulnerability. The inherited trauma driven behaviours of their parents and grandparents, coupled with poverty and insecurity, make them some of the most vulnerable children in the world. With every volunteer that comes into their lives, creates a relationship and then promptly leaves, there is a further psychological loss to the child, impacting their ability to form meaningful relationships. Their capacity to love and be loved suffers.

There are other ways to help, and we need to find them fast. Ideas such as blood donations have been put forward though it is understandable that that is not for everyone. Another concern is that the work of volunteers should not take away the possibility of paid work for a local.

We are searching for ways that will make everyone happy. What do you think would help?

Further reading
Why giving money to street kids is a bad idea