April 26, 2009
This Land is Your Land? This Land is My Land.
Land rights and forced evictions have become a huge problem in cambodia over the past five years. While Cambodia shares many aspects with squatting and shantytowns around the world, there is one important difference: all titles and claims prior to 1979 were basically eradicated. Families returning home after the end of the Khmer Rouge found themselves in something vaguely reminiscent of the state of nature, albeit one administered by the Vietnamese army. According to Boramy, in the early days you could just move into a house, clean it up, and take possession. (By 1981-82, things had settled enough that while you could still claim open land, houses were pretty much a closed matter). Of course, you couldn't take any house you wanted, because some were specifically reserved for government officials.
And therein lies the biggest problem in Cambodian land issues: if you don't have a clear title to the land (something that seemed like an unnecessary expense in terms of the bribery and fees to make it happen), it probably belongs to the government. And if the government wants to sell off that land to some foreign company or some company run by friends of the government, there's not a lot you can do. The government might make some token effort at restitution, but mostly that involves moving from a central city location you've lived and worked at for 30 years, to some exurb without plumbing, electricity, or decent roads. Too many of the shiny shopping malls and
The land law says that five years of continued possession is enough to grant you a legitimate claim to the land, and that was the law, which was more or less followed until fairly recently. The real estate boom and ensuing rampant speculation (particularly by government and army officials) changed things so that there's a much stronger constellation of private and public forces pushing for unjust evictions, and much less recourse in the face of illegal actions by private companies.
It's a messed up situation, and it's one more reason for you, dear reader, to be grateful that you are not poor and Cambodian.
Continue reading "This Land is Your Land? This Land is My Land."
Posted by flynn at 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 1, 2009
Scene and Herd
Most travel/'adventure' blogging is centered around narratives. Often, they seem to revolve around going somewhere with either nature or culture relatively undisturbed by globalization, and the 'deep lesson' the author receieves from such an experience. It doesn't matter if the people imparting the experience have done it a thousand times before for naïve westerners, it's the narrative that ends up on the blog. Either that or it's a 'awareness-raising' post about some sort of downtrodden victim group in need of assistance.
Both are worthy when they come from the right places, but the thing is, everyone wants to do that, regardless of whether their experiences actually match up to the template. That's probably why blogging from afar gets tiring after a while: sometimes life doesn't fit the template. [NOTE: MY ENTRIES DURING KHMER NEW YEAR ARE LIKELY TO FALL UNERRINGLY INTO THIS TEMPLATE]. Sometimes you just get busy living, and it's hard churning that into content. Sometimes the real grain of your experience comes from the apparent husk--strange details and observations, that are common currency to people living here but impossible to guess for outsiders. With that in mind, here are a few interesting things I've seen, heard, or thought about:
-Cockfighting has been banned by Hun Sen's fiat. I wnder if this means that they're not going to have the weekly televised cockfighting on CTN (complete with stats, record, and play-by-play) anymore...
Continue reading "Scene and Herd"
Posted by flynn at 11:43 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
March 24, 2009
Bananarama
My TOEFL students were shocked yesterday to learn that there's only one kind of banana in the United States.
This somewhat odd discussion came out of a listening selection on heirloom crops. For that to make sense, I had to explain the concept of selective breeding, giving cows as a basic example (ie, for dairy, meat, or in the case of Cambodian cattle, physical labor). The biology and environmental sciences students already had some idea about 'biodiversity,' the topic of one of our better master's programs, so this wasn't too much of a stretch for them. Then I explained how the bananas I ate in the states were generally grown in Central or South America, and since they had to keep fresh over a long travel time, they were generally bred for that quality above others.
Cambodia, in contrast, has a very short time-to-market, and generally isn't so systematized in its agriculture. So that means that without even trying Cambodia has many different kinds of bananas that might be considered "heirloom" in other countries. They are incredibly flavorful; I particularly enjoy the short, fat "chicken-egg bananas" you can get on the street in any number of ways. When wrapped in sticky rice and grilled, they're one of my favorite roadside foods.
It's the same with tomatoes (some of which, admittedly, come from Vietnam). But I should note that Cambodia isn't necessarily the organic paradise you might imagine. A lot of farmers buy pesticides and fertilizers with directions and warnings in languages they can't read, and drench their crops with these volatile chemicals in concentrations far above recommended or safe levels. The chemistry department has done some really interesting work in this regard, and education on the matter is an ongoing project for the NGOs.
Posted by flynn at 11:46 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
March 22, 2009
"On-on..."
Things are going pretty well, and I've actually been pretty busy. Over the past 2-3 weeks I have:
-started playing basketball at the US Embassy on a weekly basis. It really is like going to another country; they have their own water supply so you can actually drink the tap water.
Attended the CamTESOL Conference and listened to a great number of talks on teaching English and teaching thinking (more on this in a bit)
-Contributed to the development of Cambodian hip-hop through my technical assistance on matters of production, as well as by sharing with them some excellent sampling material. Peanut is doing some amazing stuff making beats out of old 60s Cambodian Rock.
-Run with the legendary Hash House Harriers. The Phnom Penh Chapter is something of an expat fixture (since '92), and it's a nice way to deal with both the desire for exercise, and the desire to meet new people. You also get to see random parts of nearby provinces, and drink a reasonably unreasonable amount for a Sunday evening. I also really like the way it's non-competitive, and how this is ensured by the course design: lead runners have to check out all the possible forks in a path when they hit a fork. By the time they've figured out the right path, the slower people have caught up. Plus you get to shout things like "on-on!" that leave no doubt as to its british origins (the songs after a run and before/during the drinking are also another tip-off).
Posted by flynn at 5:51 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
February 15, 2009
V-C Day
Valentine's Day in Phnom Penh is intense. Way more intense than in the states. They don't really know where it comes from, but seem to have picked it up from Thai and Korean movies. Regardless, for couples aged from 15-24, it is THE day to go out with your sweetheart, to bring her flowers, and to coax her into sexual intercourse. Some couples only have sex on Valentine's Day and, bizarrely, International Women's Day (March 8).
I've read the qualitative report mentioned in the latter article, and it's interesting albeit a little unsettling to find out about the sexual habits of people not unlike my students. There's such a divide between the very high-school attitudes and 1950s-style mores the girls seem to be locked into(or are willing to admit to), and the seamier exploits admitted to by the men. It reminds me a bit of the city of Lumberton from Blue Velvet: wholesome and staid on the surface, but hiding a lurid, violent, parallel world within. How many of my students, for instance, have taken part in the apparently widespread practice of bauk? (Bauk could be described charitably as "running a train," or more accurately as "gang rape." It's usually practiced as a bait-and-switch on sex workers, getting her to agree to go back to a guesthouse with one or two men, only to have 4 more guys waiting when they get to the room. According to the interviews, many young men don't consider it wrong, because they've "already paid for it.")
In other news, the first trial of the Khmer Rouge Tribunals is starting up with Duch, chief of S-21 (Tuol Sleng), the central interrogation and torture center of the KR...
Posted by flynn at 4:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 10, 2009
MM..Food
Last weekend, I caught some fish off the coast of Sihanoukville. Yesterday, I skinned 'em, seasoned 'em, wrapped 'em in foil and steamed 'em in coconut milk with ginger and garlic. I actually used my rice cooker as a steamer, a highly useful kitchen hack that I'm going to use more often. This is something that I simply would not have done in America.
Cambodia has made me learn how to cook. It's amazing what the simple fact of not having a microwave will do for your sense of culinary adventure. Plus there's the fact that because we're at the far end of the processed-foods supply chain out here, it's actually cheaper for me to buy tenderloin at the market than spam in a can.
It's really strange how fast the change has been, especially considering that the most I had really attempted beforehand was garlic-toast. Now I'm trying to do stir-fries, curries, marsala, homemade french fries, all sorts of crazy things. It's cheaper than street foods and probably much healthier (though there's something to be said for fat-noodles and hot sauce). I mean, I do have a job that gives me a lot of free time, so it helps that I actually have energy in the evening to whip something up. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that neat fact.
Posted by flynn at 10:59 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
December 24, 2008
Holiday in Cambodia
WATCH THIS SPACE, friends and confidants, for a full account of Mr. Flynn's attempts to "save Christmas" in a country that does not technically celebrate said holiday.
--------------------------
Ever since I was a little kid, I loved Christmas. I've never been particularly religious in my love of Christmas (I usually fell asleep during church services), but I am such a sucker for the spirit of the season, for gift giving and christmas caroling and funny beverages and various strange norse/germanic holdovers from paganism.
In fact, I decided that even though I had to work on christmas, I would still ring in the season as festively as possible. Christopher suggested the idea of getting Santa suits from friends in Hong Kong (where they have a yearly Santa pub crawl, and thus good supply of Santa suits.) I brought up the idea of going out to the shooting range in Santa outfits. We also floated various ideas like riding around in a cyclo on christmas, giving candy to random children and strangers. Though I didn't get to pull that off, I do have a long-lasting souvenir of this christmas season: a custom-made Cambodian Santa outfit. I decided to have one made after concluding that a) getting one made wouldn't cost any more than buying a Santa suit would, b) none of the Santa suits available here would fit me comfortably, and c) the idea of a custom-made Santa suit is just plain awesome.
[Photo to come: Mr Flynn in Santa attire, riding in a tuk-tuk]
Continue reading "Holiday in Cambodia"
Posted by flynn at 8:41 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
