Halfway mark! Thought I'd make a quick update given tomorrow is the start of the second half of my placement. I am pretty happy with how things are going so far, particularly with the Phnom Penh Mapping Meetup. We'll be having two presenters at the fourth meetup this Thursday, and I hope we can get some more Khmer people to come along. Many seem interested on Facebook, so hopefully that translates into attendees :-) I am also hoping to do a 4 or 5 day moto trip around Kampong Cham, Siem Reap, Kampong Thom and back to Phnom Penh. If management approves my time off, it will be a great ride and my first 'big moto trip'!

WORK

Myself and an advocacy team member did a day's field trip round the city checking five eviction sites that we had doubts about in our dataset. It turns out none of them seemed to be eviction sites. We spoke to locals (who said they'd all been living at these locations 15-20 years) at three of the sites and they all were adamant that no one had been evicted in the time they'd been living there. The other two sites we didn't talk to anyone as the advocacy team member was certain himself no one had been evicted, only threatened with eviction. We visited them, however, to oblige another team member and because I'd never been there. It was an interesting day, although slightly alarming that we look to be deleting five eviction sites from our dataset. I'm glad we checked them!

One source of information that we use for the sites is a USAID commissioned report. Two of the sites we visited that day were in the report. I am now thinking we should check all the other sites from USAID. Another issue with the USAID report is that the number of people evicted, not the number of families, is listed. Our dataset lists the USAID data as being the number of families though, when we should have divided it by the average family size in Phnom Penh. Another member of the team also mentioned that the USAID data might be about land conflicts, not evictions. This might make sense given people are saying no one was evicted. These sorts of discoveries make me aware, again, that it is sometimes difficult to come in on the end of a project that others have started. My lack of familiarity with Phnom Penh and the land rights issue makes it hard for me to use my judgement to pick up wrong numbers or faulty interpretations of reports. I'm glad I'm being consultative and getting everyone together on this though, because we're discovering these issues with the dataset and will make it better.

The ugly picture of the cow next to a small hill of cow skeletons is from the field trip checking the sites. We were on the wrong side of the river at this point, trying to find a community on the Chroy Changvar peninsula which was in fact on the west side of the Tonle Sap! I got the location from our villages dataset, which is also a cause for alarm because it makes me wonder how precise the rest of the village locations are. I also still don't know the source of this dataset, its purpose or when it was made. Perhaps it's a draft dataset from the 1990s or something, and we've been taking it as gospel... Welcome to the trials and travails of wrangling with suspect geographic data in Cambodia!

TEDx PHNOM PENH

In addition to my volunteering at a NGO here, I am also volunteering on the ticketing committee of TEDx Phnom Penh. I attended FilmCampKH at Canadia Tower to sell tickets. Unfortunately, somehow I lost them!! And no one gave them back. I had them in my back pocket, I hope they were not sticking out and someone just pick pocketed me. Nevermind, we can print more and cancel the codes of the lost ones. There wasn't much interest in buying tickets anyway, I think because it's not until the 9th of June. But it was great to be there and meet lots of interesting people involved in film making.

I did not meet her, but Princess Soma Norodom started the event with a presentation about how to do well during casting. I only found out it was her after the event, otherwise I would have watched the speech, but at least I can say I heard her presentation :-) She sounded like she had a lot of experience in acting in Hollywood and Bollywood movies and gave a lot of advice. That article I linked to describes how she will star in a Bollywood movie set in Cambodia. Someone I did meet was a potential speaker at TEDx. She said she has little public speaking experience but many people encouraged her to apply so it will be interesting to see if she is selected. Her presentation would be about a rubbish collection initiative in Kampot. I think this idea is definitely worth spreading! Lastly, I met KM Lo, who runs Tuk Tuk Cinema. He is a self taught film maker and has run workshops all around Asia. He said he had just finished acting in a movie in Thailand, although I forgot its name. He also wanted to speak at TEDx although hadn't applied yet, so I nominated him on the spot :-) His idea is about a cheap way to make 3D films, useful because the equipment for this purpose is often very expensive.

REFLECTIONS ABOUT NGO WORK

On a recommendation from someone at the human rights body LICADHO, I recently bought two books about Cambodia's modern history - Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge and When the War was Over. Both books are quite thick and seem of a more academic bent than my rather light reading about Cambodia so far (Off the Rails in Phnom Penh and Emergency Sex). Every NGO worker that I have met here has said the entire government is corrupt and there is not one minister trying to do the right thing by the people. By the way, I see there is a petition on the Whitehouse website urging the US govt to bring Hun Sen before the ICC! He recommended these books to me after I said I did not believe this generalisation. At least he was able to provide some references for me to check the claim, but after five months here I can dispense some of my own observations.

Note that I mentioned it is NGO workers that give this opinion on the government. One thing I've noticed here is that there are an incredible number of such organisations. Interestingly, many are doing what a good government should do, such as education, providing water and sanitation infrastructure, health care and environmental protection. There's even a newspaper run as a NGO although some think it's just to dodge taxes. I also note that NGOs have been doing their business here for around 3 decades. Despite this, Cambodia remains near the bottom of many socioeconomic league tables. A third thing to note is Range Rovers. Range Rovers are expensive. There are hundreds of them in Phnom Penh. One $US is just over 4000 riels. $US1000/month is considered a high paying government job. Many Range Rovers, however, are driven by government workers (they have a special plate displayed on the windshield). The CIA World Factbook states the following about the economy: "The Cambodian government is working with bilateral and multilateral donors, including the World Bank and IMF, to address the country's many pressing needs." For example the lack of Range Rovers? Later: "The population lacks education and productive skills, particularly in the poverty-ridden countryside, which suffers from an almost total lack of basic infrastructure." I wonder how much basic infrastructure could be paid for with one new $US160,000 Range Rover?

I discussed this whole issue with another friend who's been here for a while working as a lawyer. She observed that if all of the NGOs left, perhaps the government would start to have to do its job.