Fourth of July message

Dear Family, Friends and other remarkable folks inhabiting Mother Earth,

As I mentioned in a communiqué to my super cousin, Rose Nash, life is settling down into a more basic routine that is still kept exciting by the increase of certain behaviors, usually later at night.  These activities are holdups, which seem to be focused on the six to eight square blocks where I reside and call home.  It is in the heart of NGO land and it has to be admitted in the echoes of the late, great Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks, –  it is where the money is.  Theft and holdups are nothing really new in Phnom Penh but the use of a gun is rather unique.  Most of the time robberies are basically committed by the young kids who come flying by on their gaudy colored motos, and grab handbags and tear away laughing.  I just don’t understand this need to have a brightly colored motorcycle with two and sometimes three guys sitting on it.  I always thought the idea of a good stickup artist was invisibility and stealth.  Maybe they are cops and are just tired of the drab government uniform they have to wear when they commit their felonious assaults on the citizenry, locals and foreigners.

So, anyway, the news of importance about this new rash of robberies is that sometimes the robbers are waving guns at the victims.  This is very unusual but in Phnom Penh there are many explanations.  The big one, but not the best one to me, is that with the elections ready for late July, the young’ens are just getting their piece of the pie early.  Many people seem to believe that instead of being poor kids or poor provincial folks who have come to the big city in search of quick wealth, it is actually the sons of the big gun politicians who feel or are supported in the view that they are above the law. There might something to this thought because they do own the big streets after 10 or 11 at night as they race around town on their big motorcycles or high priced cars.

Another view, which I seem to lean toward is that with the inflationary spiral is going up like a thermometer on a hot day, ends just are not meeting like they used to.  The gun issue is often shrugged off by the older citizens as nothing new.  Back in the late 80’s and 90’s everybody owned guns, some owned lots of guns, and some owned truly formidable firepower like machine guns or AK 47s.   With peace or civilization or big time donor groups coming into the scene the guns were evidently buried or exchanged for new and enhanced toys.  Now they are coming out again.

I find that I tend to tuck my tail down a little earlier than I used to and am watching more bootlegged DVDs and listening to more pirated CDs than before.  Maybe it just depends on your choice or illegality as what to what turns you on.

Work is still fun and currently we are waiting for some of this huge largess that the World bank tells us is going into the pipeline any day.  I do hear that some of it – maybe a massive amount of it, is already in the pipeline but is going to contractors to build new schools.  Some more is going to the Teacher Training Department, which is our big rival for handouts and largess. I am scheduled to do a training session for them in the next month or so, because my Filipina friend has been tasked with the job of developing a training module on special education.  They really don’t have one now but they are expected to come up with one.  I don’t feel any conflict with this request I am going to bring along my friends from the Special Education Office to support my song and dance show.  I think it will work.  In some future newsletter I will elaborate on the tensions of having one high powered ministry official’s wife working for one department while our lowly department happened to marry for love, or poverty or whatever.

On the issue of work topics, we are engaged in a consortium run by World Bank in which we plan to do some nation wide mapping for children with disabilities.  The goal will be to identify essentially how many children in the nation have disabilities. The unique feature of this survey will be to determine how many children exist both in and out of school.  This latter factor is key to future programming since by 2015 under the Education for All agreement many nations signed, we are supposed to be serving all children wit a basic education of nine years.  The initial comment, which could easily be the motto for everything World Bank does, was “No data, no problem.”  While most of the volunteers all know intuitively about the world-class issues facing education in Cambodia and we can all cite many personal observations of examples that defy reasonable interpretation of a sincere system, nobody can really produce a set of data that everybody agrees on.

World Bank has been complaining about this for quite a while and for a finance governing institution this must have driven them crazy.  Anyway now we will possibly move on this.

The structural model is pretty good but as often the case, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.  A pilot project will be done in Phnom Penh in which 1000 children will be surveyed. These caregivers of these children will be asked several questions on a variety of issues such as income, and other demographic topics.  Then there will be a ten (or maybe an 11 question including one on behavior) form in which if the caregiver answers any question “Yes” the child will move on to Phase two which includes a complete medical and psychological.  In this phase it will be determined whether the child has a true disability or not.  It is expected that of the original 1000 children surveyed, about 250 will be eligible for Phase two.

Now, in order to determine statistics that includes “out-of-school” children another 4000 children’s caregivers will be surveyed.  In addition to the expected 20 to 25% of eligibles for phrase two, every tenth child will be automatically selected for phase two.

Are you still with me?  These procedures are all statistically sound and will produce, if everything goes right, a big “if” but presumably doable, a set of baseline data.  A large team of community based workers will be needed and a site coordinator and most important, teams of doctors and psychologists.  Now remember this is country that 1. Killed all of its medical personnel if it found any, and 2.  A doctor can buy his or her way through school without ever studying.  So, where do this professional group come from?

The model has been used in Bangladesh and in Ethiopia.  Ethiopia posed many problems similar to Cambodia and help was culled for a source that America doesn’t recognize.  Cuba!  It seems that in Cuba there are so many fairly well trained doctors that they are driving cabs, working as waiters in hotels etc.  The health care system is extraordinary if you can accept Michael Moore’s documentary on health care.  Che Guevara is rumored to have “loaned” thousand of doctors to South American Countries who were in desperate need.  Regardless, that is one source.

As training occurs then these teams can move on to the remainder of the 24 provinces in Cambodia.  I like the notion but already folks are shuddering when then think of the logistics involved.  It will take from two to three months for a province to be surveyed and it is expected that by December 2009 it will be complete.  Granted there will be quite a bit of simultaneous surveying going on but again, it is doable and the results will be the baseline that future efforts can be built on.

Tomorrow finishes up this workshop I have been in and Monday it will back to work in SEO.  I think I will begin writing some plans for implementation for the policy we recently had sent to the ministry and had signed.  That will keep me busy for a while.

In the meanwhile, take a look around you and think about the social programs you have at your beck and call.  The school systems, the clinics, the government supported counseling and drug rehabilitation programs.  Plus the hundreds and possibly thousands of other programs that we rarely ever hear about.  All of this without donor groups unless you call the American taxpayer a donor group.  I do and I think most of us do.  Even in comparison with other developed nations we have a very good system. It can and should be better but it is not bad while we support a defense system that is most expensive in history.  No more lectures for now.

Love you all and hope that all is well with you and yours.  Your clinical observer, Dick

A flipped computer, language training, and gender equity

I am finally updating this note while spending a leisurely afternoon in the Freebird Bar which is a wifi and American type bar. I am drinking gin and tonics and while the internet is free I am rapidly going into chronic debt drinking and eating the spring roll appetizers at the final calculation of probably $6 or $7 dollars. God, life can be so tough!I am very sorry about the delay in updates, but I have been going through a series of adjustments due to the loss of my computer. Not the actual loss, but an “oweee” inflicted by a maid during my workshop in Kampong Chnam. I thought I was being clever by sliding my computer under a pillow to keep it out of sight but when the maid came in to clean the room I am sure she just grabbed the sheets and flipped them. Of course my computer got flipped as well and that night when I returned I could not get it to power up. I tried and tried but nothing.

Later in the week I returned to Phnom Penh and went to a computer store to see what they would tell. I was not hopeful, as a matter of fact I was pleased that I had as much backed up as I did since in previous episodes I had lost everything. The fellow at the store was helpful but he said it would possibly be better to go to another store on the riverfront since it was a Mac. I did, and to make this long story a little shorter, they worked on it, sent it to Singapore and this weekend it was returned to me safe and sound.

The purpose of this long discourse is not to burden you with the routines of computer repair but to emphasize the psychological impact of losing what has come to be a very important part of my life. My music is here, my financial accounting is here, and all of my thoughts and correspondence is here. Granted this time I had a backup but even still, I was a loss without my laptop. I was actually depressed. I am aware that it may only have been the trigger for other issues but since I am not in psychoanalysis yet, I am not sure what those other issues are yet. My distance from home and loved ones, a strange and challenging country, and a ton of other factors could all play a part but I was focused on my computer. So now, all is better if not perfect, and I am a happy pilgrim again.

This week I begin language training. This is a serious point in my stay in Cambodia and hopefully it will allow me to become more effective in my daily work. I have some phrases and vocabulary that I depend on a great deal but I would surely like to converse with people even at a low functional level. I don’t think I have a very good aptitude for languages. I did enjoy Latin in high school, Spanish in college and personal efforts at learning more Spanish since school. Tagalog was a disaster since I basically blew it off after learning that everyone spoke English in the Philippines and while they said they would help me with Tagalog they always keep speaking English. So, now I am in a country that basically has been exposed to their own native language, Khmer, but also Vietnamese, Thai, Russian, and now English. The nationals know that the one constant is Khmer and if they are going to be understood, the barang (foreigners) are going to have to speak Khmer.

I have been involved in several workshops during my short tenure in Cambodia. I have been a observer in Kampong Speu for Accelerated learning, a semi-involved observer in Kampong Chnam for Accelerated learning again, and last week, a participant in the reviewing the Child Friendly School Policy in Sihanoukville, where I had had my annual conference for VSO two weeks before. This last one was my most active participation since I arrived and while I was pushing for more involvement of children with disabilities, particularly physical disabilities, I seemed to have received a reputation for advocating for gender equity. In one small working group, I had mentioned the need to focus on the recruitment for more girls in the school population, especially disabled girls. I also mentioned that the focus could not just be limited to girls in school but also on women in the teaching and administrative ranks, hopefully women with disabilities. There has recently been a letter from MOEYS (Ministry on Education, Youth and Sports) stating that it was no longer permissible to deny women with disabilities teaching jobs because of their disabilities. But time moves slowly in Asia and in a Buddhist culture everything is explored at depth and repeatedly, even government communiqués. During a summary session where all of the discussions of the small groups were collected, Mr. Richard was mentioned at least twice as advocating gender equity and most people nodded wisely at this radical idea. The fact that it is a key component of the UNICEF and World Bank programs in education did not seem to diminish its wisdom.

That is it for now. I am happy to back in the communication links with all of you and hopefully my future notes will be a little more interesting. For the time being I remain your loyal and loving far eastern companion.