No easy answers...

In development there are no easy answers.

You clear land for a road so people can reach the market but you create flood problems and soil erosion, you build a school but there is no money for teachers, you help one orphan you stigmatize him/her, you build a dam or reservoir for water and some people are helped while others suffer, it goes on and on. And here, in our own little project bubble we have no easy answers either.

We are far enough along now that it is becoming clear which cases can be closed and which need far more attention. And the problem is money. When we thought we had no money we were simply case workers, checking on children, making suggestions to caregivers, sensitizing the community. My team was demoralized because they thought they weren’t helping enough, but I was pretty much relieved. With no money there wasn’t much of a possibility of doing damage.

Now we have an overflow in the budget and a lot of money to spend in a short amount of time. My staff is drawing up glorious proposals for me about how they want to spend money on each case. They are taking a child to the doctor here, buying shoes there, providing books, school clothes, toys and on and on. The smaller things don’t worry me. But, take for example the case of two little boys living with a father who works every weekend. He locks them in their one room shack so they won’t wander the streets. My team wants to pay for childcare for them! And we have been over and over the idea of sustainability-what will happen when our project is gone? What has a family gained from us other than short term dependence? AND STILL, they remain firmly committed to the idea of paying for childcare. I cannot get them to actually meet with the community and come up with “community based” solutions, cannot get them to believe that others may have the same problem and thus the families could join together for a solution. They want the easy way out. And that brings me to…there are no easy answers.

Maybe the ultimate trouble with this project is that no one on the team, other than myself, has any development experience. I have two 22 year old social workers fresh from school and 3 local Burmese liaisons with differing levels of ability and experience in things like education and women’s empowerment. Their answer to everything is throw money at it because that is what they have seen NGOs in Thailand doing for as long as they can remember. This may be an unfair assessment of both my team and of NGOs in Thailand but it is the best I can come up with right now.

What can I do? It is nearly impossible to explain the principles of sustainability and development. You have to experience it-both success and failure. You have to read about it, write about it, let your mind twist and tangle with the options and the consequences before you begin to grasp it. We don’t have time for this. And, sadly to say, I don’t know that my team has either the desire to understand or the mental capacity for it. They have not been in a challenging educational system. Logic and analysis are not well developed at any level of education or in the workplace it seems. Memorizing the answers and looking to superiors-those are their favorite fall backs. I am not at all sure what to do.

Helloooo out there...

It feels, on days like this, that I am living at the very end of the earth. A place where the ocean and the air and the sky all converge in wet steamy fogginess. Today it has stormed 3 times already and it is only noon. And by storm I mean torrential downpour of rain and winds that spread my shoes all over the porch, kill my electricity, rattle the shutters, down the cable, and cause Talay the puppy to cower behind a pillow.

So here is the dilemna. The project is going well and there is a follow up project being planned which will require a Child Protection Specialist. And, amazingly to me, my abilties are being way overestimated and they want me to fill this role. The problem is that I would have to move here for a year. With Jeremy of course. I sort of saw this coming. I know that before June 30th I'll need to have a decision made. However, at this point, drowning in rain and lacking any emails from home today I am feeling like another year might put me over the edge of sanity... If only I could go home for a week to sort things out and get perspective.

Maybe the problem is being 30. That is what I'll blame it on. In my 20s I would have done anything for an opportunity like this. I daydreamed about the title Child Protection Specialist. I even remember applying for jobs in Sudan where I am positive there would be even less entertainment or food available. And suddenly, just this year, I find myself craving more stability and am less interested in jetting off around the world to fight poverty. I actually daydream about travel for vacation's sake -- to, horror of horrors, European countries, where I can be pampered and comfortable. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? How am I supposed to become a specialist and help the world's children if I am living it up in a pension in Italy?
Why are there these two conflicting people living inside of me? It would be so much easier if I just gave up all hope of helping others, became a California real estate agent and lived the high life!

I am afraid that it is dawning on me that you really cannot have it all. Getting the career I want will take it all out of me. But giving it up and sticking around the States seems like an awfully big waste of the last 10 years... Is an opportunity really an opportunity if you don't want to take it?

(Possibly last night of sunshine on the beach-Jer's last night in Bang Niang.)

Drowning now in Bang Niang.

Cambodia

I know this is coming a little late but I wanted to post some photos of Cambodia....





Days 1-3 Phnom Penh
Jer and I flew into Bangkok and then to Phnom Penh on a Sunday. We were so fortunate to have a great hotel. We tried to explore a little by foot on Monday but after a long hot wander through some very dirty roads we rented a tuk tuk driver for $10 to take us around for the day. We didn’t know much about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge so we did a little history tour to the Killing Fields and S-21 (the former school turned torture center in the 70s.) I don’t know if I tuned out in high school world history or what but I swear I don’t remember learning anything about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. It is disgusting what the human race is capable of and yet another testament to the frightening power you can create in children when you give them guns. Many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers were just little boys.

The second day we went to the Russian Market where I fell in love with antique opium pipes (a slight issue later when trying to fly back into Thailand-although I did manage to convince the airline that I wasn’t actually carrying opium!) and we spent 2 hours in the tuk tuk trying to find the school of Khmer Classical dance. There is a very funny story in this but the end result was wonderful. We were entertained for over an hour by a troupe of extremely talented little children learning to dance in the traditional Khmer style.

Days 4-7 Siem Reap (Angkor Wat)
Another amazing hotel. The Boppha Angkor Hotel. $77/night will buy a luxury suite overlooking the pool with a private terrace, huge bed, all traditional décor. It was a really relaxing place to get away from the rest of Siem Reap every evening.
We had a really amazing few days here. We rented a tuk tuk every day and bought a 3 day pass to all of the Angkor Temples. Jeremy was so upset at Chichen Itza in Mexico last year when the stairs to the main temple were roped off and he couldn’t climb up so here is where he got his payback. None of the temples are roped off. You can climb straight up to the top of the temples, explore every inch of the carvings and really have a personal experience with Angkor Wat. We were lucky, there weren’t a ton of tourists and there was no rain. We saw Bayon (the one with the faces) in the Angkor Thom complex first and this was by far our favorite temple although close behind were little pink Banteay Srei and Banteay Samre.

Our tuk tuk driver was very irritating being a wannabe tour guide. He stopped at every temple and felt that he had to give us a long, complicated and only semi-coherent English description that did not match up with any information from our guide book. Sometimes he would take a breath and we were convinced he was done (you know the feeling, where you breathe a sigh of relief and start to put a foot out the door), only to have him start right back in again with a change of subject. He would actually get off his tuk tuk motorbike, turn around backwards in his seat, adjust his hat backwards, take a deep breath and launch into it. We couldn’t be rude and stop him mid sentence when he was regaling us with examples of his political interests, problems paying for the guide license, low salary or his father’s background but it was excruciating sitting in the heat within steps of a temple we were dying to explore while trying to make interested faces and nods! Ugh. Jeremy does a very nice impression of him if you are ever interested.

So our days in Siem Reap were great even though the town itself is a little dusty and disappointing. It is filled with tourists and the small children who follow them offering every conceivable souvenir for “$1! $1!”

Sunrise at Angkor Wat. Wake up call at 4:00am. Tuk Tuk at 4:30am. Arrive at 5:00am all so our guide has a good solid hour to talk our ears off. I swear I almost saw the sunrise on his face instead of over the temple. We had to beg him to let us get out of the tuk tuk in time. Falling asleep on our feet by 8am...

Jeremy's dramatic ascent! Ok, the photo is a little posed but it was VERY hard. We found an easier way down though.

A whole blog about walking down my street

Large multi-winged fast flying insects swarmed my house last night. And I am not talking about a few innocent bugs, I am talking about hundreds of lunatic flyers racing around my driveway, zooming around the lights, dive bombing my porch and glass doors and even sneaking into the living room. Once in the living room they crawl very slowly across the floor like they think they can hide from me just because they sort of blend into the tiles. I haven’t been able to predict their arrival in the past but right after they left it started to pour rain and so now I think they may be rain heralds. So I guess I’ll be seeing more of them. I take my amusement where I can find it here and spraying them with large cans of bug spray is sort of satisfying.

Have I mentioned that I have a puppy again? Talay (my team named her – it means sea or sometimes it means seafood!) I will spare you the long story but in summary she is tiny and fluffy and full of passion for chasing bugs. Normally she spends a good hour or two each night patrolling the driveway and eating them but even she was overwhelmed last night and begged to come in and escape from them!

So my unnatural interest in the bugs last night got me thinking about just how different my days are here than back at home. Not exactly good different in terms of social life (I have none), definitely good different in terms of work, but overall just strange. Here is a typical day.

In the morning I walk my trash down the street to the communal garbage can (yes, just one normal sized can for each street of houses to share) because that is when it is empty and not swarming with stray dogs picking through people’s toilet paper and strange leftovers. On the way I am joined by Floppy Dog (his real name is Milo but picture lots of hair tied back in bows and an annoying penchant for trying to mount anything that moves), my own puppy, and Luc Luc, the neighbor’s puppy. This is 7am. I pass my neighbor as he is walking in a sarong and nothing else looking for water at some of the empty houses (we have a chronic water shut off problem)-he waves and I hope the sarong doesn’t drop. I pass the Burmese young men heading down my block to work in the rubber plantation which starts 2 houses away from me. They stare at me like I am the first woman they’ve ever seen and laugh and they like to shout “good morning” really no matter what time of day it is. Then I pass the car washing woman. She scrubs her shiny black car every morning and every evening. Usually wearing only a towel. And how does she have water to waste I do not know! She doesn’t make eye contact. I think she may be the maid and her employer has some weird passion about her and his car. Sometimes he watches her from his porch. Weird.

Then I get to Luc Luc’s house where toothless grandma emerges and laughs and laughs at me. I have no idea why. She finds my morning walk to the garbage the highlight of her day apparently. She talks and talks to me in Thai and follows me around and feeds my puppy and Luc Luc all sorts of terrible things that make them both sick. Last week it was some sort of rancid milk that left Talay’s lips green for the entire day. I don’t know how Luc Luc is still alive really. Sometimes the owner of that house comes out and shouts “goodbye miss” like she is annoyed with me. Not a greeting-definitely a very strong “get away from here”. No idea why. Maybe she doesn’t want grandma so worked up?

This is all before I get to the end of the block!

Today I found a spider in my underwear before I put it on. It was just clinging to it looking for a new home-on my skin! I was not pleased and realized that I haven’t been examining my air drying clothes well enough before using them. Yesterday I found a HUGE spider in my kitchen and honestly it was just too big to kill. I had to usher it out the door. I have given up.

The rest of my morning, until I leave for work, is usually spent fighting the leak on my water tank while I try to take a fast shower (at least this is better than a bucket) and then dealing with the myriad of people who like to show up before 8:30. Ok, not a myriad, but Nong (the caretaker of my house) and her fix it people. They come, they ask if my cable is on, I tell them it is still off and has been for 7 days now. Same as every day that they ask. They apologize. They ask if the water tank is fixed. I explain that it still has a leak. Like it has for 10 days. I don’t know why they think these things have fixed themselves?! Then I explain, again, that I get no water from the street. AND, once again this morning, Nong miraculously turns it on. She thinks I am crazy but I swear I turn those knobs at the curb pipe that controls my house water every morning and nothing comes on. Today I think she was explaining some complicated system of turning it until I hear a click and then turning it back the other direction. If only Jeremy were here. I absolutely hate trying to figure this out. Pluming, electricity, bugs, the tv, they all hate me!

Ahhh…is it weird that I find all of this so entertaining? I think I am severely socially deprived.

I did have my team and some of their significant others over for dinner 2 nights ago and we had a lot of fun. We went to the market and bought Thai junk food (fish on sticks, fried shrimp, unidentifiable soup, sticky dessert things and sticky rices) and brought it all back to my living room floor. I like the Thai style of eating at a party. No one ever sits on chairs or tables. We just sit in a circle and dip our hands into everything. It is a lot more fun. We played everyone’s favorite game of make Amanda read long and complicated sentences from my Thai/English phrasebook and try to guess what she is saying. HOWEVER, my Thai pronunciation is too good now and they actually understood me. I am quite proud.

In really good news, Laura (my college roommate and kindred spirit) is arriving in 2 weeks from Sunday!

Nothing more to report from Bang Niang.