Cambodia: A Good Place To Start

Cambodia: The People

I have so much to say about my trip to Cambodia, I hardly know where to begin. But let’s start with the people and organizations.

By the way, this entry turned out to be really long, so you’ll have to forgive me in advance for typos. I re-read it many times, but at some point after multiple proof-reads, all the words just start to blur together, so I’m positive I missed some things – tee hee. Also, we were entrusted with a LOT of information during the week+ I was in Cambodia, so you'll also have to forgive me if you find at some point that some of my facts (as I remember them) aren't 100% accurate. I think in their fight to get out of my head some of them are jumbling together! Believe it or not, it took me this long to get my first Cambodia blog posted because I wanted to go back and scan a few websites in order to get my facts as straight as possible! So there you go- this entry was even researched!

The PEPY Ride (“Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself”)

The PEPY Ride (www.pepyride.org) is the NGO that organized the trip through which I went to Cambodia. Before I go into too much detail about the trip, I want to give you some background on PEPY itself, because I think it’s a pretty amazing story.

6 years ago, Daniela (PEPY’s current Executive Director and our trip's leader) and the 5 friends who co-founded PEPY with her were Assistant Language Teachers in Japan on the same program I’m on (The JET Programme). They were all bicycle enthusiasts, and at one point they decided to do a 5-week bicycle tour through Cambodia…from the Thai border to the Vietnam border. But they didn’t want it to be just a ‘for fun’ trip. They wanted to associate it with something more meaningful, so they looked online for NGOs in Cambodia that sponsored education-based projects. They found a group that builds schools in rural areas that was willing to work with their idea. Thus, their bicycle tour turned into a fundraiser to build a school in Cambodia.

During their bicycle tour, they stopped in different places to visit orphanages and schools and teach English and environmental classes. When they got to the area where “their school” was being built, they ended up being dismayed to find that “their school” wasn’t at all a new school building in an area that had no prior access to a school. “Their school” turned out to be a 7-room extension on a pre-existing 5-room government-built school. The student population at the school was such that the pre-existing 5 rooms were more than enough, leaving the 7-room extension almost completely unnecessary. Only after seeing it with their own eyes did the cycling group come to realize that buildings were the least of Cambodia’s educational concerns. There are government-built schools all over the countryside (more than a few of them, I noticed, were built “in cooperation” with the people/embassies of varying countries). Granted, sometimes the students have to travel long-distances to reach the schools, but that’s not a story unheard of, for example, in the farmlands of Iowa either. Other issues hampering education in Cambodia include teachers being paid sub-livable wages by the government, native language illiteracy, education “costs,” transportation to and from school, and family-related labor requirements. I’ll get into all that in a later blog.

The cycling group looked around for NGOs that might be able to help their school tackle these other issues, hoping to make their school more functional. They did find some great groups operating in Cambodia who were doing exactly the work the cycling group was hoping to employ for their school, but unfortunately none of the groups operated anywhere near the area where the cycling group’s school was located. That’s when they decided to found their own NGO.

PEPY officially became both an international and U.S.-based NGO in 2005. Since then, they have established a Khmer (Cambodian native language) literacy program, a lending-library, Librarian training, literacy training for teachers, a bicycle program, peer-led after school clubs, higher education scholarships, and I know I’m forgetting many of their other programs! They also partner with and support other NGOs and community-based empowerment groups (some of which we visited during our tour, and I’ll talk more about them in a minute). As all of the founders were bicycling enthusiasts, it was a natural progression to establish a profit-based tourism enterprise associated with their NGO featuring in-country bicycle tours (www.pepytours.com) (they also offer volunteer tours that don’t involve bicycles). And they create customized tours and volunteer opportunities as well. For example, PEPY received a donation from an organization in Dubai, a stipulation of which was that 20+ members of the organization came to Cambodia for a week or two to assist with some of PEPY’s projects. Even one of the participants on my trip was on reconnaissance for his university, which is planning to send 30 of their students to Cambodia through PEPY next spring on an experiential tour next spring.

For those of you who gave money towards the donation part of my tour participation…PEPY is really proud to be able to promise that all donation funds go directly towards supporting PEPY’s programs, not towards paying for things like advertising fliers. While in Cambodia, I learned that PEPY’s overhead is funded 100% through 3 U.S.-based family foundations (I would not be surprised if the foundations are all associated with the alumni-network of the University of Notre Dame, which PEPY’s Executive Director’s alma mater). So, profits from the bicycle tours and the separate $500 donation fundraisers required by each tour participant go directly towards supporting PEPY’s programs and their partner organizations.

Here are two quotes from PEPY’s website that I particularly like:

“We arrived in Cambodia in 2005 with a lot of enthusiasm, but also a lot of naïve and incorrect ideas.” (I think that’s probably true for almost any NGO that wants to ‘do good’ in a foreign country, but not all of them come to this realization, and/or not all of them admit that their concept has been anything less than perfect from the beginning, so I say kudos to PEPY for recognizing their place amongst their Cambodian community and having the wherewithal to admit it.)

PEPY invests time and resourses in PEOPLE “…because we believe that improving education, providing training and stimulating ideas builds capacity for people to better solve their own problems.” (I’ll say more about why I like this concept so much in my last Cambodian blog installation.)

I think PEPY’s is an incredible story of falling into something on the other side of the world by accident that ends up making such a positive impact on peoples’ lives. PEPY might be a smaller, more localized NGO, but it has not gone unnoticed. Apparently even CNN recently contacted PEPY for a feature story.

PEPY’s Partner Organizations

You can find a more extensive list of PEPY’s partner organizations through their website, but I want to mention those that we visited during my trip, because their stories are pretty incredible too.

One of our first site-visits was to a Community Vocational Training Center in a village near the town of Kep. It’s not uncommon for villages to raise funds to support community development projects by having all the families in the village contribute a certain amount of money each month into a ‘community pot.’ At intervals decided upon by the community (once a year, for example), community members can submit their venture ideas and the community decides who gets the ‘pot’ for start-up money. The center we visited was just such a venture, aimed at providing vocational training for women. At this particular center, there were 3 primary projects: loom weaving, “Funky Junk,” and coconut jewelry. While the first and last projects are pretty self explanatory, “Funky Junk” probably needs some explanation. Back in the day, whenever some goods needed packaging, Cambodians wrapped them in banana leaves, which could be easily discarded anywhere on the ground and imperceptibly processed back into the environment. However, Cambodia was not immune to the plastic bag invasion that came with “modernization.” Now instead of banana leaves, goods come in plastic bags which are unfortunately disposed of in the same way the banana leaves were, leaving a significant amount of litter in the cities and around the countryside. This particular vocational center came up with craft designs made completely from Cambodia’s colorful plastic bag waste. While we were there, a gender-neutral team of 4 women and men were busy collating and weaving threads of plastic bags together to make “Funky Junk” vases. They made everything in-between as well, from pencil cases to stools!

Near a town called Chhuk, we did a family stay in a rural village. If I’m remembering correctly, the idea to open up the village as a profitable home-stay opportunity for tourists came to them via a visiting Frenchman. This particular village now takes in an average of 120 home-stayers each year, which might not sound like much, but I’m sure it helps generate a fair amount of revenue for the village. This village also built themselves a community center, and established community-based programs such as a rice bank and support for disadvantaged families.

In Phnom Penh, the restaurants we ate at were the financial and vocational training arms of projects that support street children and their families, and at-risk women and children respectively. The “Friends” restaurant in Phnom Penh is apparently pretty famous now, in part, I imagine, because they are probably listed in popular travel guides like “The Lonely Planet.” “Friends” offers schooling and other programs for street children (who are not just homeless, parentless children living on the street, but also children who have homes and families, but have to work, collect or beg on the street to help support their families), including teaching their students service industry skills as the wait-staff at the “Friends” restaurant (and a sister restaurant called “Ramdeng,” which opened because “Friends” was so overwhelmingly popular). Another restaurant we ate at also hired their target support community, at risk women, as their staff. The restaurant was also a showcase and sales platform for goods produced by women through the organization “NYEMO.” From what I remember being told by one of the restaurant staff whose English was amazing, “NYEMO” was founded in Nepal by a French woman as a small-business training enterprise for local women (primarily in hand-made textiles). Somehow NYEMO branched out into Cambodia. I’ll tell you, the goods at this restaurant could put the finest home decorating shops in the U.S. to shame they were so incredibly gorgeous and well-made,…as would the service at all the restaurants I just mentioned. I seriously think these street children and at-risk women should be paid to tour around the U.S. to give wait-service training to pretty much every dining establishment in the country.

We did end up spending quite a bit of time with members of another foreign-founded NGO called “EPiC Arts.” This is another story that leaves me amazed. EPiC Arts supports the deaf and disabled community in the city of Kampot and surrounding areas, as well as programs in Phnom Penh. The organization is not only providing immediate services, primarily in the performing arts, and schooling to its target community, but is helping build local awareness of disabilities, slowly dispelling stereotypes on the limits of disabilities. Estimates are that 1 in every 10 people in Cambodia have some sort of disability, whether physical or mental, and it’s often though that those who have disabilities have few capabilities for themselves or for society.

EPiC Arts was actually founded in London in 2001, and stands for "Every Person Counts." Katie's (the founder) father was severely disabled, but was a professor (I believe) and functioned within society on a high level despite his impairments. Katie was therefore extremely surprised when she learned that this was not the norm for people with disabilities. Combining her experience with her father and her background in performing arts, she founded EPiC Arts as a service and empowerment NGO for the disabled community in London.

Katie’s eventual husband had already been active in Cambodia for some time advising Cambodians about their land rights, outside of his landscape design day-job (land grabbing and swindles are a big problem in Cambodia, primarily instigated by members of the government looking to further line their pockets, often with incentives from foreign governments who are taking advantage of Cambodia’s situation to basically strip the country of it’s natural resources, from what I understand.…don’t think for a second that the U.S. isn’t on that list). When he wanted to go back to Cambodia, Katie went with him and the EPiC Arts Cambodia branch slowly took form. They chose the location of Kampot because there were no other disability NGOs operating in that area as there were in other parts of Cambodia. EPiC opened a café as a meeting point for the deaf community, which was also staffed by the deaf, and in the beginning, their other programs for deaf and disabled community members were run out of the café and the spaces behind, between and above the café. They bought a piece of land with the intention of building a separate EPiC Arts office at some point, and while they had to sit on the land for awhile before they were able to raise the money for the building, they now have a wonderful office, performance arts practice gym, recreation room and classroom for their students. They are currently working on raising the $180,000 needed for another classroom extension (wink, wink, nod, nod ).

I can’t even begin to list all the programs they have implemented, but here are two of my favorite stories. The first is about a downs syndrome boy named Chouk. When EPiC learned about him, he was in his later teen years, and already had the reputation as the town’s local madman. He would stomp around town barefoot, muttering to himself and every person he passed could be heard to say, “There goes Chouk.” Chouk’s family really didn’t know how to deal with him, so he hadn’t had the best care up to that point. Because of Chouk, EPiC understood they needed to come up with programs that could assist the mentally-impared members of the Kampot community as well. We met Chouk when we visited the EPiC office. He’s 19 years old now, although he looked very young- to me, no older than 10! He was adorable, pointing at each of us in turn as we entered the office, breaking into a gigantic smile, although from what we hear, he isn’t immune from being a trouble-maker. The pictures that Chouk draws though have become specialty greeting card items which are sold at the EPiC Arts Café to help raise money for EPiC programs.

My second favorite story is about a $300,000 donation EPiC received specifically to organize and present a large-scale event featuring EPiC students and performance opportunities for the deaf and disabled community in Cambodia. The event turned into an 8-day festival called “SPOTLIGHT,” and ended up being the largest cultural event ever held in Cambodia. My last day in Phnom Penh, I noticed that our tuk-tuk driver was wearing a “SPOTLIGHT” t-shirt, so I asked him about it. He said he was a sign-language interpreter! He spoke English really well too, so when I quizzed him about his sign-language abilities, he said he could speak Khmer sign language as well as various form of English sign-language (believe it or not, sign-language in Australia, for example, is different from sign-language in the U.S., is different from sign-language in England, etc, and that’s just among English-speaking countries!). And the primary reason he said he learned sign language is because deaf tourists come to Phnom Penh and want a tour guide just like everyone else. Wow.

Although Katie was in Cambodia at the time of the visit, we never got a chance to meet her. The EPiC staff member we spent the most time with was Hannah. I love her accidental story too. She came to Cambodia originally on a 6-month working holiday (basically supporting yourself while volunteering in a foreign country). Just as she was running out of money and needed to go back to England, she met Katie, and when she heard Katie’s plan for EPiC Arts in Cambodia, she decided that this person, this idea was something special (Hannah’s background was in Community Theater). So, she talked her working holiday program into hiring her in Cambodia as their in-country support staff, something the company hadn’t had during Hannah’s time as a volunteer and felt was sorely needed. Thus, Hannah had a paying job that allowed her to stay in Cambodia so she could volunteer whenever possible to help Katie establish EPiC. Hannah stayed with the working holiday company for two years until EPiC was at a point where it could hire full-time staff members. Hannah promptly quit her job and started working for EPiC full-time. She has now been in Cambodia for about 6 years and is very obviously dedicated to what she is doing here. The second part to Hannah’s story that gets me every time as well, is that her boyfriend, Rob, came over from England about 4 years ago to visit her, decided to buy a wine bar in Phnom Penh, and when Katie’s husband (the landscape architect) decided to open an eco lodge, called “The Vine Retreat” in the countryside outside of a town called Kep, Rob was hired on as an Assistant Manager for the lodge as well. Thursday through Sunday he lives in Phnom Penh and manages his wine bar, and Sunday through Thursday he lives in Kep, helping an amazing Cambodian lady co-manage the lodge (she’s also the manager of the pepper (as in the spice) plantation associated with the lodge).

www.epicarts.org.uk

www.thevineretreat.com

Last but not least of the people is Lucky, PEPY’s bicycle tour leader. Lucky’s Cambodian name translates into something like “Lucky Gold,” which is extremely fitting for him (and why he’s called Lucky), because he just so happens to be Cambodia’s #1 competitive cyclist. When he finished high school, he took off on a cheap street bicycle, started bicycling all over Cambodia, and it turned into a lifestyle and a career. When he entered his first competitive race, a mountain bike race that he completed on his street bicycle, and won first place, he was hooked. He does both road races and mountain bike races. He had been hoping to compete in the Beijing Olympics, but had a race accident a few weeks before the Olympic qualifiers and couldn’t participate. I didn’t get the story behind why or how this all happened, but at some point in the past 5 years, Daniela (PEPY Executive Director and our tour leader) met Greg Lemont, and when he heard about Lucky, Greg gave him the bike that Lucky currently uses to race.

Lucky is fantastic, and the perfect addition to PEPY’s bicycle tours. He’s insanely gregarious, which he jokingly told us no one coached him in, he just learned on his own. Everywhere we went he either already knew people or picked someone to go up to and just started chatting, whether it was another tuk-tuk driver or the people running the road-side sugar cane press we stopped at in the middle of nowhere. I remember watching him speak with a deaf person through Skype at the EPiC Café in Kampot. He knew the girl on our end of the conversation, but when I asked him, he said it was the first time he’d met the guy on the other end of the screen. I also asked him if he knew sign-language, and he said only the alphabet. Other than that, he just used gestures. One of the other most memorable Lucky moments was when we were in a small boat on the Kampot river, motoring around watching the sunset. Through an opening amongst the palm fronds lining the riverside, a group of children ran down to the water edge to yell hellos at us and wave frantically. Lucky dove off the boat and swam over to chat with them!

His day job is as a tuk-tuk driver for tourists in Phnom Penh, and he’s also a free-lance bicycle guide not only for PEPY, but also for other bicycle tour companies. His salaries go towards paying schooling and housing in Phnom Penh for 2 of his 9 siblings (most of his family lives in the countryside where he’s originally from). I imagine whatever is left goes towards his cycling training and race travel expenses. Lucky’s the kind of guy who is willing to undertake any challenge with a smile on his face. On my tour we happened to have one guy who had just competed in his first Ironman triathlon AND another guy who was a former University of Notre Dame swimmer, both of whom were trying to teach Lucky the logistics of competitive swimming and running, neither of which Lucky does much at all at the moment. Daniela said she’d help train Lucky for an upcoming triathlon and Lucky barely thought about it before he quipped one of his favorite phrases, “Why not?!?!” I also asked Lucky how he learned English (he speaks with a really heavy accent, but he doesn’t seem to have much problem with slang or jokes, which are often two of the most difficult aspects of a language to grasp). He laughed and said he doesn’t know. Actually, PEPY paid for him to take 2 English classes, but the finer-tuning came from speaking with tourists on his tuk-tuk or bicycle tours, and with other race competitors. It just kind of happened absent of his will to make it happen (stealing a line from “The Mexican”).

For those of you who are on Facebook, if you want to check out his site (which he JUST created), you can find him under “Meas Lucky Cambodia.”

OH! And I almost forgot! My last night in Phnom Penh, Daniela invited a woman who had just interviewed her, Tara, to join us for dinner. Tara is a magazine journalist by trade. She most recently had been worked for “COSMO Girl,” which gave grants to girls who were instigating social change wherever they lived in the world. Unfortunately “COSMO Girl” folded not so long ago, at which point, Tara decided it was the perfect time to undertake an independent project COSMO Girl’s grant program had inspired. Tara is taking 1-1.5 years off to travel around the world to interview girls and young women who are making profound impacts on social change. While in Cambodia, she had been told about PEPY and decided to interview Daniela. At the point at which we met her, she had been traveling for about 9 months through Europe, Africa and Asia. She doesn’t have a pre-set list of places she wants to go or people she wants to interview either. I’m sure she had some names in mind through the grant program, but for the most part, her next destination depends on names recommended to her while she’s on the road. She was on her way to Malaysia after Cambodia, and after that, she knew she wanted to go south towards Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia and the South Pacific, but wasn’t sure exactly where she would be when or how long she would end up there. Fascinating.

Tara is hoping this project will culminate in a website and one day a book. I’m sure it will be years before the book materializes, but already I can’t wait to read about her journey and all the incredible things she found that young women are doing to help change the world.

By the way, if anyone reading this knows of anyone in the areas I mentioned above, Latin or South America or Canada, who Tara should consider interviewing, please let me know and I’ll pass the information on to her!

I know it happens all the time and has since human history began, but these kinds of stories of foreigners ending up in “far-flung” places, often by accident or coincidence I think will never cease to amaze me. This is always one of my favorite parts of traveling, meeting amazing, inspiring people doing incredible things out there in the world, whether it's in their backyard or half-way around the world from their origins.