April 2010 #1

The Last Two Weeks

What with Easter and Khmer New Year, there has been little time left for anything else. Two things that come to mind are:

April 08, Kampong Samakki (means, Solidarity Crossing village).
This is an amazing Kampot community. In June 2008 the villagers marched through the streets of Kampot to demand the return of mangrove forests given over to wealthy business persons by the authorities. Amazingly, the land was returned to the villagers - actually, the governor simply held onto the land transfer documents and never gave them over to the "new" owners. More recently, a Cambodian phone company have been sniffing around the same area asking for people interested in selling their land to the phone company. No one is quite sure why the phone company needs land in quite that location, except as a front to the businessmen trying to access ownership to the mangrove forests. It might be something like if they buy up all the land surrounding the mangroves, who's going to stop them taking the mangroves, too? I led a short excursion down to the community for a German human rights organisation primarily concerned with food security and human rights. If the community lose access to the mangrove forest, they lose their fishing grounds, too.

April 19-20, Sunrise
Sam left early Monday morni driving to Phnom Penh for several meetings related to the Sunrise project in Kompong Cham province. To jog your memory, Sunrise began as a home-based AIDS care project in Kompong Cham, about 2 hours north of Phnom Penh. It now branches out in peacebuilding training at the local prison, in schools and orphanages, and continues a well-respected home-based care program. Over the years deaths related to AIDS/HIV have declined to a small fraction of when the project first began. However, TB is a growing concern, especially with the increased numbers of cases of drug-resistant TB in the world. Sam is meeting today and tommorrow to continue her role as chair of the Board of Governance.

... And this is what we got up to over the break ...

April 04, Easter
We were able to celebrate Easter with two families who are becoming "spiritual family" for us. Both families have young kids and have lived in Kampot longer than us. They both are seeking an authentic life. We had the required Easter egg hunt (we use plastic eggs in Cambodia) and the Cambodian neighbours joined in, bagging most of the goodies.

April 13, 14, 15, Khmer New Year
April 13, 14 and 15 are the three days of Khmer New Year, also Nepalese New Year. It means we have three "new years" in Cambodia: Jan 01, Chinese New Year, and Khmer New Year! Basically, everything shuts down, people go "home" to their hometowns, drink a lot, eat a lot, etc. We stayed home and rested, and discovered different ways in which you can deal with 40 or more mangoes dropping off the trees every day. See my blog for more info (and recipes) at http://bakerevens.blogspot.com.

April 15, Mount Bokor
We also made the trip up to the top of Mount Bokor - famous for it's French-era buildings and Khmer Rouge tales. We live about 10kms from the entrance to Mt Bokor, but it is still a 2-hour journey to the top. There is a spectacular view at the summit, a very sharp escarpment, and we were surprised how many other people were there, too.

April 19, White Mountain
Keeping with the mountain theme - Bokor, White and mountains of mangoes - I finally made it to a a local spot, much more modest than Bokor, where a white-clad buddhist nun lives in a tin shack at the top. Many mountains and hills are topped with a shrine or pagoda. I'm not entirely sure why, as spirits don't live "up" in heaven, but in trees and in the local vicinity. It proved to be a very steep 20-minute climb, which I also took the boys on this morning because Sam was out of town.

The Next Two Weeks

With Khmer New Year out of the way, work will increase again.

May 4-5, Training
I (Chris) am running a 2-day workshop on Culture & Conflict Sensitivity with Cheas Ponleu and the Wholistic Development Organisation, two organisations I have worked with over the years. Both are Christian organisations and Cheas Ponleu recently began working with indigenous peoples in the north of the country. There are about 15 indigenous people groups, including Khmer, who speak different languages and have distinct cultures. Khmer is the dominant group, making 90 per cent or more of the population. It is easy, however, for Khmer to go in and overwhelm the indigenous minority groups and be ignorant of the important issues of power. I hope that these two days will assist the organisations to be clear about the power they bring with them, and how to tread lightly and respectfully on another culture.

Ongoing, Curriculum Development
I finished an outline for a community workshop on nonviolence and am waiting for feedback on it from the organisation (Bridges Across Borders South-East Asia) I will be collaborating with on the project. As well as the opportunity to influence local communities with instruction in nonviolence techniques, I'm also really excited to be working with a well established NGO that has the Khmer-speaking trainers to use the material effectively. It also means that the development stage of the curriculum will go through several cycles of translation and re-translation to make sure the workshop is of high quality. It also includes cultural "translation" which is more than words. It will look at symbols, stories, methodologies that best connect with the Khmer communities who go through the training.

Ongoing, Peppercorns
Peppercorns resumes tommorrow (following the Khmer New Year break), which hopefully means that Sam will have a lot more time to pursue her studies (nursing pre-requisites) while Patrick and Isaac are in school. A key to this is the ability to high a competent Cambodian assistant for Claire (the teacher).

Peace,
Chris Baker Evens