Day 3 (25/9) - Koh Ker - Heritage Watch (Part 1)
Although sites like Angkor Wat and Angkor Tham have been heavily restored (even reconstructed), there're those which remain in a semi-ruined state. One is Ta Prohm, where they filmed Tomb Raider (I can't find clips of this unfortunately, and didn't watch that show not least since jiggling isn't my cup of tea). Another is Koh Ker, where we went this day. It was a 3 hour bus ride from Siem Reap, most of it along unpaved dirt roads.
Before the ruins though, we went to a Heritage Watch centre with a school and a social activities centre. Heritage Watch is a local NGO which aims to get locals involved in local heritage touristification for community benefit. The bus stopped us 6-700m from the centre and we walked in.
"Minefield cleared by CMAC. This minefield funded (sic) by French Government"
Apparently on the way there there were many signs warning of active minefields - the road and an area 10m to either side are cleared, but beyond that is No Man's Land. Unfortunately I missed them because I was sleeping most of the way (as were most of us, as we'd been advised to do but were later chided for doing).
As you can see, I brought up the rear. Although it meant the muddy ground was churned by the time I walked across it, that was alright since it meant that: a) I could take pictures of everyone to document our journey of discovery and b) If there were any unexploded mines hopefully someone else would trigger them, not me
The compound. Apparently Siem Reap was like this 20 years ago.
We were advised to wear sandals on the trip, and I was surprised that only 2 of us wore SAF sandals. One of Maria's sneakers had its sole drop out the previous day so she had gone to buy a new pair of sandals. Today, the first day she used it, it promptly broke (one of the triangles at the back of one sandal). I wonder which country the sandals were made in.
The villagers
We were supposed to do some fence-building but by the time we arrived it was done, so all we did was play with children and talk to adults. Oddly enough, if we'd built fences we wouldn't have been allowed to touch saws, and presumably not any barbed wire either, so I'm not sure what we would've done.
Weijie loves little children
Everyone loves little children
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Who photographs the photographers?
Kids
A group of female villagers (with babies in tow) was assembled, together with an interpreter who was missing part of his leg (how much, we couldn't see) and a village elder (whom I am told, having forgotten, was also missing part of a leg). The two men had fought on opposite sides during the civil war, and though the Paris Conference had concluded in 1991, this part of the country had been Khmer Rouge territory till 1998 or 1999.
If I'd wanted to problematise our interview with the villagers, I could've picked on the selection of individuals to talk to us, the selection of the village to come to, translational issues (not only linguistic but also unconscious filtering and even outright lying or misrepresentation) and declared everything we learnt to be useless.
The villagers said they hoped more tourists would come over the years. They wanted to protect the place and not just benefit from it monetarily because they wanted to display it to the young and their ancestors.
The school in the compound was for kids from Grades 1-4. Those in Grades 5-6 would go to a place 10km away, and high school was in Siem Reap.
In the village they didn't have many amenities. Every 2-3 months a doctor's assistant would come and speak about Malaria. Sometimes even 6 months would pass without a visit.
We asked if they were ready for thousands of tourists, big hotels and transformation, but the interpreter (who, coming from Phnom Penh was more aware of such things than the villagers) said they only thought about food and living from day to day. I could problematise this as incredibly condescending and saying that this was not the case - you just needed to understand the vocabulary and frameworks of discourse they used instead of imposing our own, judging them by it and finding them wanting.
Heritage Watch provided the villagers with skills and food.
The translator said when he first arrived there, when he asked the villagers questions they'd give one word answers, but now it was better. It was a remote area without media access (only radio), and they didn't know about the world outside and the Khmer Rouge trials.
Someone asked what a day in their life was like, and the answer was pretty standard: the men went into the fields while the women did housework. Likewise for boys and girls. I considered asking if their women felt marginalised, but decided to let others ask more inane questions instead.
Someone asked if they had any questions of us, and they asked us what our lives were like. One guy and one girl were each asked to respond. Unfortunately the girl did not incorporate a narrative of how women are oppressed by patriarchy in Singapore and instead gave a misleading picture of Singapore where structured gender inequalities were paved over. How disappointing!
I asked if, during the Khmer Rouge period, people had supported them or had been forced to support them. The question was dodged and I was told that they had split into factions: one supporting Hun Sen, one Sihanouk and one a rouge faction. They only reunited in 2000.
A question about post-conflict recovery was asked, and we were told that they worked in groups, supporting and encouraging each other with the weak propped up by others.
We then switched with the other group and went into the classroom to interact with kids whom we had next-to-no way of communicating with.
Making a fool of ourselves
Singing
Ministering
A few of them were topless and one was running around naked - more evidence to support my theory about why there's so much Child Sex Tourism in Cambodia!
Making a fool of ourselves
Cute pig someone drew
Paper aeroplane pandemonium
The Japs have been here too!
Things to do
This experience really struck home what I'd known for a while, that YEPs (Youth Expedition Projects where youth go overseas to build toilets, libraries, teach locals English or the like) are incredibly wasteful and selfish endeavours.
The carbon emissions generated by transporting tens of students around would be bad enough to doom these projects, but hard-earned and hard-raised (sponsorship) money is also wasted in transport, lodging, food and the like when it would be much more effective to just send the same sum of money over for the community's benefit. Not only would more be able to be done, it could be done for a longer time - a 3-week-long English course taught by amateurs is unlikely to improve students' English while a 3-month-long one taught by a professional is much more effective (not least since language needs to be practised).
The conclusion is that YEPs are conducted for the benefit not of the putative recipients, but that of the participants - for their own gratification, self-indulgent emotional masturbation in a vacuum and CV-boosting (the last, especially for the leaders). Even if you want to talk about some nebulous character-changing effects of YEPs, it doesn't change the fact that it is essentially the participants who are benefiting from the endeavours.
One could, in a last-ditch effort, claim that some participants would be inspired to do more things, but as with 'self-fulfilling prophecies' and other PC/left wing assertions, this effect is curiously and conveniently unmeasurable, lending it to much prostitution. If you want to engage in personal development, that is all well and fine, but claiming that your trip is primarily to help poor people in the Third World is misrepresentation at best.
And then you have the YEPs with the worst of both worlds - I'm told that a Eusoff Hall YEP had the students building 1 symbolic building and paying professionals to construct the rest.
[Wowbagger: Was on a YEP before. Took ages to do what the villagers could have done in a few hours. Completely agree with your assessment.]
"Minefield funded by Peace Boat"
Compound scene
There was an egregiously nice toilet in the middle of nowhere constructed in anticipation of hordes of tourists in future years.
No queue at the male toilet
Long queue at the female toilet, so I laughed at them and waltzed into the other.
Toilet
Exploiting the kids
Lunch place just outside Koh Ker illustrating commercialisation. Atmospheric, even if the food sucked (it was the worst we had on the trip and the only bad meal we had). Maybe, knowing people would come for the atmosphere, they felt they could skimp on the food.
Quotes:
They just live day to day... They're happier this way. [Me: Intelligence just makes people miserable.] You want to donate some to me? I don't mind.
[On Koh Ker kids] I wanted to draw pigs, then I realised they were Muslim. [Student 2: They're not! They're Buddhists!]