It's been a long and busy day time spent in silence and reflection, speeches, workshops and cooking. Today, the staff at the centre have a break in the afternoon so our group could either eat outside or cook themselves. We decided to team Khmer and Thai people together so they could learn to cook each other's dishes. The meal was excellent and then those who didn't cook washed the dishes.
I sat in my little corner, typing all the sessions. Sometimes it's quite difficult hearing or understanding what people are saying but I muddle along, willing in the blanks later. There were some exercises, which the young folk love but I find very strange. For four minutes pairs of people had to sit staring into each other's eyes. Some stayed focussed the entire time whilst others would frequently burst into fits of giggles. In one exercise the participants were asked to talk about an issue they'd faced in life and how they had solved it.
Everyone sits on the floor but yours truly decided to sit on a chair. I have another chair in front of me for my iPad and I type merrily away. I collect so much material it goes on for many pages. I'm here for five days so I'm a bit worried about having to through it all to create the report which I have to submit to various groups, including financial donors. Generally, when I have a few moments I work on the report and delete material I no longer need. I'm not used to sitting for so long and so my backside suffers.
One thing I've insisted on is that Khmer and Thai participants sit together in the dining room. If I sit at a table that is completely Thai or Khmer, then they use their own language and I feel left out of the conversation. If they mix, then they have to speak English and that helps me to join in.
During the day we listened to a Thai priest who came to work in Site 2, which was the biggest refugee camp on the Thai border following the fall of the Khmer Rouge. He spoke about having to be careful because local people thought he was a Vietnamese - the enemy. One day he was on the back of a motorbike and the driver said, "Take your hat off because people will think you are Vietnamese." He's been in Cambodia since the late 1990s so he's seen a lot of changes. In the old days he could meet with any official and was accepted. Nowadays, when he meets officials he has to be dressed appropriately with jacket and tie. He mentioned that people returning from the refugee camps often had an advantage over those who'd remained in the countryside. That's because they were given an education while in the camps and so they were offered jobs because they were more qualified. In his early days, only officials had vehicles and they were generally poorly made Russian jeeps; everyone else rode bicycles or cyclos - the bicycles with a seat in front for a passenger. Things must have been so different in those early days.
We had an excellent meal and we thought of cancelling all the programmes and just allow the youth to cook. Afterwards we created our family trees and individuals shared what they knew about the family with the rest of their group. In Cambodian families there are often gaps because of people disappearing during the time of Pol Pot. I was interested that the Thais in my group knew nothing about that time, even though they are neighbours. I was also surprised that the two Cambodians in my group have never visited the famous sites in Phnom Penh that talk about the history during the time of the Khmer Rouge. It's as if they don't want to know. I don't blame them but they really should see these places if they want to understand the older generations.
Tomorrow the youth have decided they want to see sunrise over Angkor Wat temple. I've decided they can go and leave me in bed as there's no way I'm going out on a bus at 4.30am. I won't see them until 4 pam as they plan on having meals in the temple area plus touring the temple. I've seen so many sunrises, I don't need to see another one, and in any case I've got a beautiful photo of it happening at Angkor War and so I can just stare at the photo. I've seen the temples so many times and it's not easy spending hours in the sun. I'll work on the report, relax and do my own thing. There are people I can phone for lunch, if I want to have company.
