So far so good right? After my first month here in Kampuchea, not much has really made me heart los estados unidos muy mucho, except of some of the basic life necessities like mexican food( just nachos with green chile and queson would do just fine please), people who drive between the lines, and TV. I guess not just basic TV, cuz we can find that down the street, I mean the kind that has 404 channels, and is available everywhere outside of here and parts of missisppi, would be my guess. Oh yeah and all of you lovely people.
Anyways, outside of an incident on an overnight bus, there were was lil to be concerned over regarding safety, besides just wearing a helmet when cruising the sweet motos around town.
Wrong, last week shit got real. I mean like real real real. Break ins, pick pockets, dirty teeves, and a good old fashioned bag snatching. Lets just roll through the week Monday-Monday. Its kind of a long post with even a touch of development theory at the end, something I told you was gonna be here on the last post, so grab a beverage, as it goes a little like this:
Monday- Not bad. Pretty good overall day, some decompressing from the Hochiminhsanity, starting to experiment with making my own Vietnamese coffee with my stash I brought over the border. Overall for here, prolly like a 7.5, nothing crazy notable, but a good day none the less.
Tuesday- Once again, things are just moving along nicely. I am actually starting to make a passable cup of Vietnamese coffee. We head out to Mith Samlanh, one of our NGOs we visit twice a week, teach some youngins. Same same as Monday for the most part up until sleepy time. 12-1am(talking weds here for those keeping track, but as i only count the next day when i wake up, its still tues and will make for a better story, just wait) things get a bit loud at outside the house, my room which is adjacent to our office which is a always bit noisey. I get up a couple times in the night but nothing seems too weird and out of place. No Big Deal. I get some more of that sweet sweet sleep in, and get up as usual, right before our morning meetings. Beauty of working where you live, zero commute!
Wednesday- Post 8:45am meeting things are going well, TPS reports and jibber jabber is filling the war room. Day 3 of Vietnamese coffee making, is a step back, too much water not enough magic beans. Around, 10 am, we notice that one of the windows is ajar. And not just kinda open, but rather opened, with a pry bar or two wedged in between the metal* window cages. No real damage, but somebody tried their hardest to steal all my deep v's and short shorts for sure, why else would they be here right. With that coming to light, precautions are recommended, and old wives tales of teeves using wire to snatch goodies, through open windows are regaled. No biggy, our house with our metal* window covers is safe and secure. Joe Pesci and that weird bearded dude from home alone and city slickers would have a tough time getting in, or so we thinks. Fast forward to the evening.
Already on edge from the night before, hard to sleep, and this time I wake up two or three times before 4am(cuz then it gets good), actually turn on some lights and walk around. This night is loud too, dogs barking, weird noises, etc. Well while I am dreaming about some chubby's chile chee fry, I get a phone call at 4am(this would be thursday morning). It's my roommate, and my other roomy calling me. They are freaking out hard. They tell me that a door is open in the house, after we diligently locked just about everything. I walk to the room and huddled under the mosquito net are two super scared roomies. After finding out we have an open door, from the inside, I am a bit creeped out, make that 3 super scared roomies.
Being the lone hombre in the casa, guess who gets to walk around a dark house in a third world country? Correct. For the next two hours I check every room in the house, luckily I found a baseball bat(made in China)and a light. Cruising around every room, trying to figure out if anyone was inside, we recognize that we are down a laptop, and someone decided to move our metal* window helpers out of place. This time in the bottom floor. Great. This is how easy it was to break in. Dude used sticks, I mean really come on, sticks to get in.
Thursday- Wake up and try to figure how to make our casa safe again, and figure out where to file a police report** get started on travel insurance forms and start to figure out how to better protect the casa. Start getting my bean to water ratio correct, and discuss that we will get a security guard, or maybe potentially move(due to the just described crime as well as the continuous burning trash dump a stones throw away. If you have some free time google this: steung meanchey, just down the street!!!!!!), or maybe razor wire, or my suggestion hang out in front of the house each evening polishing a shotgun and drankin some smooth angkor beer. With no shirt of course. Word would get around that there is a cra cra roundeye in the hood and don't fuck with that house. Well we make some moves, get a security guard, and then head out and grab a beer to reminisce the previous night at Zepplin Cafe, which by the way is by far the best bar in town with cheap cold beer and great tunage. Get home in a reasonable time, brush my teef, place the Beijing slugger next to my bead and fall asleep after a long day of UnAwesome.
Friday- Post theft, things are getting to feel a bit normal again. Less violated, just more of a realization that this country is real poor, and people will do what they can to survive, and that being a westerner around here calls immediate attention. My Vietnamese coffee recipe is getting honed in, lots of beans, liller bit of water is my new trick, used half a bag in half a week.
Things this day/ evening for the most part are nice. Our neighbors and fellow francofiles have a street concert, which was good fun, we get an out of town guest, and have a pretty laid back evening for the most part. On the way home around midnight cruising my moto(starting to get good at thisf point), I see a body in the middle of the road, face down. Not good at all. I hop of the moto and go over to the body, who is yelling for help in English (Thank god she was coherent, as usually when you come across a body in the middle of the road, things do not end up well. Either dead or a Zombie trying to dupe you into thinking they are dead only to devour your brains. I digress.). There is a crowd beginning to form, my roommates who were right with me are all there. After talking to the body we find out she is Sandra from Vancouver, and everything hurts.
We find out that someone tried to steal her purse while on a moto, a common theft around here, and she held on only to her purse only to be pulled from a moving moto, and then have her driver take off, leaving here there. My guess is that we arrived about 30 seconds after the incident, as we were the first folks there, and almost everybody passing by stopped by to see how they can help. We have our Skateistan ride with us, so we are able to load Sandra who is in some considerate pain into our car and take her one of the western hospitals in town. A French doctor lets us know that she has a broken collar bone, some chipped teeth, lots of road rash and bruises but will be ok. She will also heavily medicated for the next while. Once we can do nothing but clog the hallway of the SOS clinic, we head home and try and get some ZZ's around 4am.
Saturday- After waking up extremely tired, around 8am, we head out to one of the two daily sessions, and lucky for me I got the good one. Good in two ways; first was that the kids were killing it, hitting a mini launch ramp for the first time in their short skate careers. Second was that I didn't get pick pocketed, which happened to my roommate Frauke during the afternoon session. $10 or 7.55 Euro as she is one of Ze Germans that I work with was lifted out of her pantalones. Once again another theft. Starting to get old at this point. But we call Sandra's friend and find out she is on her way out of the hospital, and off to home in Vancouver soon. Travel safe.
We press on and head with the evening, and head to one of our freelance photographers house for a going away party with unreal ribs, Neddy believe you me I took notes, and then to another ex-pat party later in the evening. Great evening meeting new people and an overall badass time. We make it home safely, and I dream about how even taco bell would be classified as gourmet mexican food around here.
Sunday- Actually this day goes off without a hitch. Sleep in, no sessions, good eats, cruise the city for some yet unseen by parts. Vietnamese coffee, dominating it after one week, only missing the crushed ice. Fun times and quite a lazy Sunday for the most part.
Monday Again- One week, and so far it has been quite a doozy. With all that went on over the past week, one would hope that good karma, this is the land of buddha, would be cruising its way over soon. But nope, I become the most recent victim of the week of UnAwesome, as I have my local phone stolt, while at our Riverfront session. Now I didn't lose too much, but a few numbers and about $10 in prepaid credit which I just picked up. Side note, we had an almost doctor with us today who helped 3 kids with holes in their feet, not from skateboarding, but rather living the life of a street kid, which was a bit redeeming.
Now lets tally this up, in one week we had one almost break in, one real break in, one gnarly moto attempted theft, and two minor thefts. Quite a rough week indeed.
Yet, instead of being angry at what happened, well actually angry at what happened to Sandra, I can't help but start to think more about the cool stuff we get to do here. In reality I have started to realize not just what I can live without, but also more importantly what others are trying to live with. If we have the chance to get one of the kids we work with to not start sniffing glue and into something good, then I would regard it as success. Being here you meet a lot of people who work at fancy NGOs and places like the UN who are doing good work but are often obsessed with changing the world, which is great, but realistically unattainable, as whole. What you can hopefully do is affect the people around you and hope that they do the same to others, and so on and so forth.
Now that I have bored you with what I have spent the last two years studying and countless $$$$$ on, here is a bit more. I guess I just want people to know that creating new buildings and roads doesn't solve much, except maybe traffic jams here. Realistically, the only way for weeks of UnAwesome to slow down, here and in other similar countries, is to provide opportunities for people to live a decent life, thus the temptations for such UnAwesomeness are somewhat abated. It really is for lack of a better term, "Poor as Fuck" here, with people often living on so much less than $1 a day, kids picking through trash for food, yet often still smiling after it all.
For the nerds out there here are some stats: Bodia ranks 139 out of 180 countries on the Human Development Index, has a life expectancy of 63 years, and an average income of $1850 per capita PPP included. USA sits at 4 in the ranking, 78 years of life expectancy, and $43000 income PPP included(Thanks UN! Sorry for bagging on ya earlier). So on average, because of the combination of poverty, health, pollution, etc here, you are expected to live 15 years less in your life if you lose the birth lottery and get borned in Phnom Penh instead of a place even like Arvada. Gnar Gnar.
Sometimes I kinda understand what Angelina Jolie felt when coming here and picking up a couple ninos, putten em in her louis vuitton travel bags and taken em home.
Enough of the debbie downer, most of you tuned in for the funny, which I promise will be back. I just wanted to give yall something to noodle on.
Next Week either Cambodian Hipsters? or No Shoes, No Shirt, Get Radical! Depends on which group I can snap more photos of this week, which will be Awesome!
VayaConDoritos
Lorli
*When we say metal here, my guess its just shiney playdough, as my niece Z could could easily bend this shit into an oragami elephant.
** When I say "Police Report" I mean pay the police to file paperwork on your behalf, maybe even pay them to drive you to another office, and then pay them again to sign all the paperwork you paid them before to fill out. UnAwesome.
