I was supposed to keep this as a log of everything I'm experiencing as a newbie to the field of development in Cambodia. Of course, that excitement stagnated around the months of November and December. One could call it the end of my honeymoon phase with Cambodia. Others would diagnose it as a function of my business with work, which I was. I'm just going to call it sheer neglect and laziness on my part. I should also mention that there were attempts to write. There are currently about 3-4 unfinished drafts sitting in my Blogger account.
However, I find myself a tad bit cash strapped (a result of a recent trip to Bangkok and a recent bout of a strep throat). The introspective self has also re-emerged vis-a-vis a dip in professional confidence (read: competence) in the past weeks. So where to start where to start where to start?
Ah. Before I left Canada, the man overseeing my internship asked me "So what do you think it will be like, as an person of East Asian descent, working in an East Asian country?" As a first post among my resurrection-posts, I want to point out first: I am Canadian first and Chinese second....and yes, I'm Chinese. Neither Khmer, Japanese, Khmer-Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Philipino, Native American, Hungarian nor Russian.
A common conversation:
Tuk Tuk Driver: Where you from?
Me: Canada
TTD: But....you look As-iiiiii-an.
Me: Yah....I am.
Another funny conversation.
TTD: You look Hung(a)ry.
Me: No...I'm fine...thanks.
TTD: Russian?
Me: oh he thinks i'm Hungarian. No. I'm not Russian or Hungarian.
TTD: So what are you?
I started to get mistaken for Russian and Turkish more frequently this past month and I couldn't help but wonder why?
It seems a bit strange that I rarely get asked if I am Chinese. The question of my race comes up quite a bit. A funny moment was during over lunch during a recent workshop I attended. My Dutch colleague, of the National AID Authority, said to me, "the moment you walked in this morning, I couldn't tell what you were. So my guess is Half Khmer, Half Japanese".
When the question of "what are you?" or "where are you from," my immediate reaction is Canadian, as in my first scenario. However, this answer is often not satisfying enough. The other party then goes on to list possibilities. Do I not look that Chinese really? Growing up in Toronto, where we apparently account for 11% of the total population, the subject of what ethnic group I belonged to was never a question. I didn't think it would be uncertain here.
It finally dawned on me one day, walking down good ol' Street 278.
I dress like a Westerner. The East Asian aesthetic didn't really get translated from my DNA. I'm kinda bigger than most Chinese girls that I know. I speak English without any accent, but the Canadian one I am said to exude. I'm also quite tanned. Many people here still shy away from the sun, preferring to keep a lighter skin tone as an indicator of wealth and prosperity, and not having to work in rice fields. I, unfortunately, like to tan, and instead, should be keeping out of the sun to avoid skin cancer.
The Chinese in Cambodia are a large population. Prior to the destruction imposed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, huge numbers of my country-men fled China when Mao Tse Tung imposed the restrictive policies of the Cultural Revolution. Many fled to Southeast Asia, to countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Many Chinese were already in these countries as a result of trade and economic growth. By 1964, we numbered nearly 500,000 in Cambodia. After the KR's decimation, however, the population slipped to 5 figures in 1979. In the recent exponential development of the Chinese economy, however, there's a new resurgence in the Chinese population here as trade barriers lift. 5 blocks away from my flat, you can even find Mao Tse Tung Blvd. However, you can definitely tell the difference between la nouveau Chinois and that of the first exodus. There is a difference in ethnicity: China is made of many different ethnic groups reflected in the sheer number of dialects that exist. Chinese diaspora and migration patterns are a function of these ethnic differences. However, there is also a question of identity. A conversation with the Chinese-Cambodian owner of the guesthouse I stayed at when I first arrived revealed that he identified first as Cambodian, and then Chinese. His family spoke both Khmer and Cantonese. I wonder if this is similar among other multi-generational Chinese living in Cambodia. I wonder if its also similar to my own identity as a Chinese Canadian.
Cambodia itself is considered one of the most homogenous in Asia. 90% of Cambodia's population is made up of ethnic Khmer. Yet meeting the Khmer that are both friends and colleagues with reveal that ethnic homogeny may be in how one identifies oneself and cultural membership. I'm sure that closer inspection of family histories and genealogy will reveal inherent migration throughout East and South East Asia, which I see most evidently in Cambodia. What defines a particular ethnicity may not necessarily lie in the genes, but rather identity, language and culture. What is ethnicity therefore? What is national identity? I ask this in the post-colonial, globalized and travel-efficient world we live in now.
I work for the International Organization for Migration. How perfect.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
so what do you do when....
So what do you do when you're a Cambodian-American permanent resident, but you've just been deported back to Cambodia because you've infringed the American "3 Strikes and You're Out" rule and are now being sent back to Cambodia because of a new deportation policy enacted by Homeland Security in the aftermath of 9/11?
Before I get to the answer to this question, let me first explain this is probably one of my more positive and refreshing experiences I've had in Cambodia's NGOland since I've settled into life and work here. I suppose that the overhanging annoyances of the corrosive mixture of race and gender here have been a major theme of my thoughts of late, and I didn't want to necessarily taint my blog with angry typings about post-colonial-subcontinent-fetishizing sexpats.
The answer to the above query: www.korsangkhmer.org
In the aftermath of 9/11, national security policy sought to be-rid American soil of any possibility of a homegrown terror, be it of the Al-Quaeda sort, or the poverty-born criminal sort. As a result, criminals who were not American citizens and had infringed the "3-strikes and your out" law found in many states, were deported back to their home countries.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, the USA was a recipient of many Cambodian refugees. As many of you may, or may not know, the genocide and destructive activities of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime displaced many Cambodians to refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodia border. One of my drivers, whom I like to call good friend as well, Phirath, was raised in such a camp. The UNHCR and IOM mediated much of the sending of these refugees either to be re-patriated to Cambodia, or for resettlement in the USA, mostly in the recipient states of Florida, Kentucky and California. Many of these refugees resettled in the USA were small children, who's would only know the USA as home.
Arrival in the US was tough. Children old enough to remember bore the psychological scars of the genocide and civil war. Those young enough not to remember found lives embedded in poverty as new arrivals with parents who had limited social networks and social or fiscal capital. The combination of rampant poverty, a poorly constructed education and social welfare system in the USA caused many of these kids grew to be adolescents who turned to crime. Being such a youth in the 21st century was clearly not easy. But with 9/11 in the background, things were made tougher.
Approximately 10-15 such youth, between the ages of 18-30 are deported back to their supposed homelands of Cambodia each month. In 2004, several of such youth collected together and formed Korsang.
Korsang is an NGO in Phnom Penh, which seeks to provide harm reduction, HIV/AIDS prevention and rehabilitation services to drug users. They use peer education, skills training, needle exchange and safe injection, and health service provision to accomplish their goals to reduce the risks associated with injection and amphetimine drug use. An exciting program is the use of hip hop (and might I add, Khmer hip hop is awesome) for both skills building and physical strength training for recovering drug users. By teaching music production and lyric development, recovering drug users also build a great foundation for the nascent hip hop scene in Cambodia. By teaching young recovering IDUs the styles of breakdancing and hip hop dance skills, it is not only building up their physiological status, but also bringing in a very cool cultural imprint on a North American cultural phenomenon previously relegated to the urban hip hop scene.
They have been so successful in Phnom Penh, that they now work with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The WHO and UNODC recently worked with Korsang to produce a music video/harm reduction campaign to teach IDUs how to reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection by the proper cleaning and use of needles....through a hip hop music video.
Sitting in my Joint UN Team on HIV/AIDS meeting and having just watched the premiere of this video by my venerable colleague at the WHO, team members remarked "well, it's a little fast isn't it? I don't think they'll get it?" To which I thought - "no! the song is still reverberating in my head! it's catchy! and awesome!"
The success of Korsang can also be seen through how much funding they receive and how much they have expanded their activities since their limited beginnings. They are now internationally renowned for their established best practices and I look forward to seeing them at AIDS2008 in Mexico City...spreading the word of rehabilitation and harm reduction in the aftermath of deportation and crime and in the crushing environment of the slums of Phnom Penh.
I was lucky enough to meet the founders and heads of Korsang at a Livelihoods and HIV Knowledge Sharing Meeting at the Hotel Phnom Penh last week. They even had members of their hip hop dance class put on a show. It was amazing and I thought these kids had just hopped out of a KRS-One video.
I don't think I had felt this excited about something since arriving in Phnom Penh 2 months ago, and I'm really happy that I didn't write about the activities of post-colonial-subcontinent-fetishizing sexpats. It would have been a terrible post filled with angry observations made from the club scene here.
Before I get to the answer to this question, let me first explain this is probably one of my more positive and refreshing experiences I've had in Cambodia's NGOland since I've settled into life and work here. I suppose that the overhanging annoyances of the corrosive mixture of race and gender here have been a major theme of my thoughts of late, and I didn't want to necessarily taint my blog with angry typings about post-colonial-subcontinent-fetishizing sexpats.
The answer to the above query: www.korsangkhmer.org
In the aftermath of 9/11, national security policy sought to be-rid American soil of any possibility of a homegrown terror, be it of the Al-Quaeda sort, or the poverty-born criminal sort. As a result, criminals who were not American citizens and had infringed the "3-strikes and your out" law found in many states, were deported back to their home countries.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, the USA was a recipient of many Cambodian refugees. As many of you may, or may not know, the genocide and destructive activities of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime displaced many Cambodians to refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodia border. One of my drivers, whom I like to call good friend as well, Phirath, was raised in such a camp. The UNHCR and IOM mediated much of the sending of these refugees either to be re-patriated to Cambodia, or for resettlement in the USA, mostly in the recipient states of Florida, Kentucky and California. Many of these refugees resettled in the USA were small children, who's would only know the USA as home.
Arrival in the US was tough. Children old enough to remember bore the psychological scars of the genocide and civil war. Those young enough not to remember found lives embedded in poverty as new arrivals with parents who had limited social networks and social or fiscal capital. The combination of rampant poverty, a poorly constructed education and social welfare system in the USA caused many of these kids grew to be adolescents who turned to crime. Being such a youth in the 21st century was clearly not easy. But with 9/11 in the background, things were made tougher.
Approximately 10-15 such youth, between the ages of 18-30 are deported back to their supposed homelands of Cambodia each month. In 2004, several of such youth collected together and formed Korsang.
Korsang is an NGO in Phnom Penh, which seeks to provide harm reduction, HIV/AIDS prevention and rehabilitation services to drug users. They use peer education, skills training, needle exchange and safe injection, and health service provision to accomplish their goals to reduce the risks associated with injection and amphetimine drug use. An exciting program is the use of hip hop (and might I add, Khmer hip hop is awesome) for both skills building and physical strength training for recovering drug users. By teaching music production and lyric development, recovering drug users also build a great foundation for the nascent hip hop scene in Cambodia. By teaching young recovering IDUs the styles of breakdancing and hip hop dance skills, it is not only building up their physiological status, but also bringing in a very cool cultural imprint on a North American cultural phenomenon previously relegated to the urban hip hop scene.
They have been so successful in Phnom Penh, that they now work with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The WHO and UNODC recently worked with Korsang to produce a music video/harm reduction campaign to teach IDUs how to reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection by the proper cleaning and use of needles....through a hip hop music video.
Sitting in my Joint UN Team on HIV/AIDS meeting and having just watched the premiere of this video by my venerable colleague at the WHO, team members remarked "well, it's a little fast isn't it? I don't think they'll get it?" To which I thought - "no! the song is still reverberating in my head! it's catchy! and awesome!"
The success of Korsang can also be seen through how much funding they receive and how much they have expanded their activities since their limited beginnings. They are now internationally renowned for their established best practices and I look forward to seeing them at AIDS2008 in Mexico City...spreading the word of rehabilitation and harm reduction in the aftermath of deportation and crime and in the crushing environment of the slums of Phnom Penh.
I was lucky enough to meet the founders and heads of Korsang at a Livelihoods and HIV Knowledge Sharing Meeting at the Hotel Phnom Penh last week. They even had members of their hip hop dance class put on a show. It was amazing and I thought these kids had just hopped out of a KRS-One video.
I don't think I had felt this excited about something since arriving in Phnom Penh 2 months ago, and I'm really happy that I didn't write about the activities of post-colonial-subcontinent-fetishizing sexpats. It would have been a terrible post filled with angry observations made from the club scene here.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
how to halloween in PP
First, get invited to a party.
It really helps to have attached yourself to a well oiled crew of fun people who embrace the holiday with open arms and a bottle of something. It also helps that they know of a mansion complete with a dancefloor and bar, rented by a couple, one of whom was a choreographer for Disney and are more than ready to put on a good party.
Second, come up with a costume.
Thoughts of the easy costume options may come through your mind. For example, the ethno-culturally appropriate: geisha, Yoko Ono, or the easy because you own stuff for it already: punk rocker, cow girl. And then there are the costumes your friends already have planned and make you go "damn, i wish i had thought of that": Angelina Jolie, Jem and Wonder Woman are such. For those who are especially eager, you might want to choose a costume which has different names, depending on where you are in North America, or may not even exist where you are currently: a pylon, or as they call them in the US, a traffic cone comes to mind. Also be prepared to realize that this costume actually have quite a lot to do with your work. Afterall, you might be both an advocate for safe migration in both occupation and costume.
Of course, this costume also comes with assembly and a challenge to ensure that its cost does not rise above $5 USD and you can find a tailor who is willing to make you an neon orange dress in less than 24 hrs. If you cannot do so, one may assemble the dress yourself...with inspiraton from those sexy geniuses at American Apparel. However, this may include a fairly treacherous trip to Russian Market during one's lunch break in order to look for neon orange material and brave the hardware section of market where there is a chance a huge jackhammer may fall on you.
Third, put on your costume, add some requisite sex appeal to it and tah dah, you have it done. Also, take that sigh of relief that you didn't go as Yoko Ono because someone is already dressed as one.
Fourth, and finally: Be prepared to be misinterpreted as a gnome.
It really helps to have attached yourself to a well oiled crew of fun people who embrace the holiday with open arms and a bottle of something. It also helps that they know of a mansion complete with a dancefloor and bar, rented by a couple, one of whom was a choreographer for Disney and are more than ready to put on a good party.
Second, come up with a costume.
Thoughts of the easy costume options may come through your mind. For example, the ethno-culturally appropriate: geisha, Yoko Ono, or the easy because you own stuff for it already: punk rocker, cow girl. And then there are the costumes your friends already have planned and make you go "damn, i wish i had thought of that": Angelina Jolie, Jem and Wonder Woman are such. For those who are especially eager, you might want to choose a costume which has different names, depending on where you are in North America, or may not even exist where you are currently: a pylon, or as they call them in the US, a traffic cone comes to mind. Also be prepared to realize that this costume actually have quite a lot to do with your work. Afterall, you might be both an advocate for safe migration in both occupation and costume.
Of course, this costume also comes with assembly and a challenge to ensure that its cost does not rise above $5 USD and you can find a tailor who is willing to make you an neon orange dress in less than 24 hrs. If you cannot do so, one may assemble the dress yourself...with inspiraton from those sexy geniuses at American Apparel. However, this may include a fairly treacherous trip to Russian Market during one's lunch break in order to look for neon orange material and brave the hardware section of market where there is a chance a huge jackhammer may fall on you.
Third, put on your costume, add some requisite sex appeal to it and tah dah, you have it done. Also, take that sigh of relief that you didn't go as Yoko Ono because someone is already dressed as one.
Fourth, and finally: Be prepared to be misinterpreted as a gnome.
Friday, October 26, 2007
"while getting lashes or electrification, you must not cry at all"
Last Sunday, my friend Mary was in town before leaving to start her internship in Kep, Cambodia. There were some tourist sites in PP that I had yet to see...well, most of them actually given that I work all day. One of these was the Tuol Sleng, Genocide Museum. I had been afraid to go alone.
Tuol Sleng, known under the Khmer Rouge regime as S-21 (Security Office 21), was used as a prison and institute of interrogation (read: torture), prison and execution of individuals termed anti-KR during the years in which the KR were in power: 1975-1979. Of the 12,000 children, prisoners and other general workers who passed through its doors, only 7 left S-21 alive.
In 1980, it was reopened and is now operated by the Royal Government of Cambodia to comemmorate the history of those horrific 5 years. It is a testament to the absolute fury which can be wrought by human hands. I felt a feeling of strangulation and
I was going through my harddrive tonight, since it's a quiet Friday evening and there's a raging storm outside. I found something I wrote. It was in response to a talk I went to back in March. I was lucky enought to be invited to, given by Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, current President of Liberia and first female state leader in the continent of Africa. Liberia is currently recovering from similar horrors wrought by human hands. Following the development of my interest in Cambodia as a kid, I became very much interested in the little known, but very much sinster events occuring in Liberia in 2000. All from a Rolling Stone article I read. While I listened to President Sirleaf-Johnson give her speech, I wrote this,
*
as humans, we are gardeners of our bounties and architects of our own madness
it is the balance of these 2 mechanisms of human development that we can truly ameliorate the cosmos of concerns we face in the 21st century
by bounties I do not mean a vegetable garden
for it is possible to flourish pests of uncontrollable growth as well
by madness, I do not mean to insinuate psychosis,
for it is insanity that mankind has brought to life the grandeurs of imagination
it is thus best to recognize the power we wield
harness it to the best of our powers
be wary of our own boundaries
cross those boundaries
and to lookout for the ones who stand most vulnerable.
*
Reading that tonight, I guess it brought back memories of last Sunday. Especially when the man without a face, a man, scarred by either land mines or perhaps even horrors wrought during Pol Pot's regime and begs outside Tuol Sleng everday, came to Mary and I asking for money. For whatever reason, the destruction done to this man's face: his missing eye, his reddened and deeply scarred flesh, had an even greater effect on me that seeing a man wheel an older man lacking all 4 limbs on Sisowath Quay. With all the office work I do, expat social life I have, its easier to lose sight of why they heck I wanted to get myself here in the first place.
Is such destruction and carnage a part of our genome that we will never be able to shed? Similar horrors are occuring in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Sudan at the moment. Eruptions in Burma loom near. We just kinda let them happen while trying to tackle avian flu
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
the word intern should be replaced with "gap filler"
This is a realization I come to and embrace with open arms. My conception of intern, previously, had been filled with assumptions that I would be merely a support worker...filing away reports, proofreading, and perhaps even the odd chance to follow around the big boss and make notes. All of this would be done without complaint as the guarantee for salaried employment, the result of a job well done, would arrive at the end of one's tenure.
My experience as Migration Health Associate at the IOM has been so much more than the word "intern." I might as well be called an employee with benefits.
The lengths to which the IOM Cambodia mission engaged in health promotion activities to ensure that the risks associated with migration were minimized as much as possible was limited to mental health. They had a very successful 12 year run with this mental health program, which was a priority in 1992. The years prior to 1999 were marked with civil conflict amongst a society already quite burdened with the recent genocide. We now sit in the stormy waters of the Asian HIV/AIDS epidemic, in the environment of a proactive government whose Ministry of Health is unfortunately muddled in corruption. The threat of avian flu making a big jump between humans is also on the line. Cambodia is being threatenned internally and externally by microbes of a few micrometers in length. The Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs are of course involved. Migration health is therefore back in the spotlight.
I'm now in charge with building up IOM Cambodia's Migration Health Department. That means tackling the issues of HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, mental health and avian flu in a country that has not yet even experienced a decade of stability. I'm fresh out of college, my leadership activities are fairly hefty, but limited to an array of "student leadership activities." The kind that admissions officers look kindly upon.
And so, engaging in meetings with the Ministry of Health Secretary of State, the Joint UN Team on AIDS*, and the head of the National AIDS Authority, elicit feelings I liken to staring down the barrel of a very well polished sawed-off-shotgun.
Until drinks with an slightly older well-established friend this weekend, I never exactly realized the full scope of what I was doing here. For someone my age, you actually don't get this much responsibility - developing research plans of rapid baseline assessments to identify gaps in reproductive health care services available to Vietnamese migrants, representing an international organization in large national organization. It is the experience of a lifetime.
Simultaneously, I almost liken this to medical tourism. I don't mean the type in which people, from Western countries, go to places such as India for medical procedures, in order to bypass long wait lines or heft medical costs. What I mean is taking advantage of locations, in the world, which have sparse medical personnel, and being able to do procedures that one would require years of experience back home. In my case, I am doing the work that requires a person with at least a master's degree, from an institution with some pedigree, in something like public health, health promotion with at least a couple of years of professional work in the field. The letters W, T and F are very commonly used in my head when I think about the work I have been placed in charge of.
Today is Friday and I had my third and final lengthy meeting of the week. The Chief of my operations here even introduced me as the "expert" in Migration Health. I finally feel comfortable enought to provide my opinions when asked. While the term "expert" and my business card which says "Migration Health Associate" perplexed me, I still went on to offer my two cents on how the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training could best tackle the issue of labour mobility and HIV/AIDS. Afterwards, the Secretary of State and head of the National AIDS Authority patted me on my shoulder and said that he enjoyed my recommendations and criticisms.
This would never have happened in Canada and I am still in sheer disbelief with the responsibility I have been given here. While the term 'medical tourism' still lurks behind me, I do recognize the drive and the reasons that brought me here; that I'm not merely using this experience to rev up a CV in the hopes of admissions to a medical school, or Harvard Public Health.
*the Joint UN Team on AIDS is referred to as JUTH, however, i like to refer to it as JUNTA, because its funnier that way
My experience as Migration Health Associate at the IOM has been so much more than the word "intern." I might as well be called an employee with benefits.
The lengths to which the IOM Cambodia mission engaged in health promotion activities to ensure that the risks associated with migration were minimized as much as possible was limited to mental health. They had a very successful 12 year run with this mental health program, which was a priority in 1992. The years prior to 1999 were marked with civil conflict amongst a society already quite burdened with the recent genocide. We now sit in the stormy waters of the Asian HIV/AIDS epidemic, in the environment of a proactive government whose Ministry of Health is unfortunately muddled in corruption. The threat of avian flu making a big jump between humans is also on the line. Cambodia is being threatenned internally and externally by microbes of a few micrometers in length. The Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs are of course involved. Migration health is therefore back in the spotlight.
I'm now in charge with building up IOM Cambodia's Migration Health Department. That means tackling the issues of HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, mental health and avian flu in a country that has not yet even experienced a decade of stability. I'm fresh out of college, my leadership activities are fairly hefty, but limited to an array of "student leadership activities." The kind that admissions officers look kindly upon.
And so, engaging in meetings with the Ministry of Health Secretary of State, the Joint UN Team on AIDS*, and the head of the National AIDS Authority, elicit feelings I liken to staring down the barrel of a very well polished sawed-off-shotgun.
Until drinks with an slightly older well-established friend this weekend, I never exactly realized the full scope of what I was doing here. For someone my age, you actually don't get this much responsibility - developing research plans of rapid baseline assessments to identify gaps in reproductive health care services available to Vietnamese migrants, representing an international organization in large national organization. It is the experience of a lifetime.
Simultaneously, I almost liken this to medical tourism. I don't mean the type in which people, from Western countries, go to places such as India for medical procedures, in order to bypass long wait lines or heft medical costs. What I mean is taking advantage of locations, in the world, which have sparse medical personnel, and being able to do procedures that one would require years of experience back home. In my case, I am doing the work that requires a person with at least a master's degree, from an institution with some pedigree, in something like public health, health promotion with at least a couple of years of professional work in the field. The letters W, T and F are very commonly used in my head when I think about the work I have been placed in charge of.
Today is Friday and I had my third and final lengthy meeting of the week. The Chief of my operations here even introduced me as the "expert" in Migration Health. I finally feel comfortable enought to provide my opinions when asked. While the term "expert" and my business card which says "Migration Health Associate" perplexed me, I still went on to offer my two cents on how the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training could best tackle the issue of labour mobility and HIV/AIDS. Afterwards, the Secretary of State and head of the National AIDS Authority patted me on my shoulder and said that he enjoyed my recommendations and criticisms.
This would never have happened in Canada and I am still in sheer disbelief with the responsibility I have been given here. While the term 'medical tourism' still lurks behind me, I do recognize the drive and the reasons that brought me here; that I'm not merely using this experience to rev up a CV in the hopes of admissions to a medical school, or Harvard Public Health.
*the Joint UN Team on AIDS is referred to as JUTH, however, i like to refer to it as JUNTA, because its funnier that way
Thursday, October 11, 2007
i finally figure out work...and then it's a long weekend?
Three weeks have gone by since my feet first pounded the asphalt of Phnom Penh International Airport. I'm still trying to integrate myself into the PP social and art scene, expand my Khmer vocabulary, and come to grips with the fact that I really should start applying to graduate school.
However, the more concrete event that's occured is realizing exactly the scope and focus of my work. Migration Health Associate is a fairly broad term. Focal Point on HIV/AIDS for the International Organization for Migration is also a really specific term. After a meeting with the Country Coordinator of UNAIDS this past Tuesday, I actually have something to focus upon, which I suppose belies my subtitle of "Focal Point on HIV/AIDS".
In the vast NGO environment that comprises Rue Pasteur/Street 51 to Monivong, it's ridiculously easy to feel like a kid in a candy store. Program Officers and Project Managers thurst seemingly amazing ideas at you which feel like they are the complete solution to all of Cambodia's HIV/AIDS woes. While they do this, you must jump in at those elusive windows of opportunity to promote your own projects, cause and resource needs. Because I am fresh out of university, an intern, and more importantly have an excitable personality, I have the propensity to jump on things far too quickly. It's a part of my personality that's always been present and has occassionally been an asset. Some people think it's kinda cute.
A conversation with UNAIDS,
me: "So in striving to build up IOM Cambodia's involvement with migrant health, I was thinking of integrating our safe mobility and HIV video with the regular WFP maternal-child nutrition program since women have a greater propensity for migration, as do their husbands. I think it'd also be a good way of helping the high married heterosexual HIV infection demographic in Cambodia"
UNAIDS: "that won't really work, and you're assuming that all migrants are all vulnerable to HIV"
me: "right...what do you think of integrating it with the curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training as some sort of pre-departure training, for those who are interested in migrating?"
UNAIDS: "why don't you just concentrate on migrating" [what he really means is that UNESCO is probably already working on that]
So this monster needs some control. My boss was really right about how I should've met with UNAIDS before I met with everyone else - alas these staff meetings in Geneva. Yet, the UN already has a Regional Task Force on Mobility and HIV in Greater Mekon Subregion as well as involvement, through UNICEF and UNESCO on introducing safe mobility curriculum with the Ministry of Education. Where's a girl to begin?
My big meeting, as representative for the IOM, with the Joint UN Team on HIV/AIDS this coming Tuesday will just be a show of that, as well as a test of my needful ability to suppress my excitement. I will have to really FOCUS my advocacy of HIV/AIDS topics only to concern that of the vulnerabilities of migrants, trafficked peoples and mobile populations. I've already met with about half of the team. They are all wonderful people seeking to ameliorate the same global health disparities I am. Simultaneously, each represents an organization with different agendas and resource dilemmas to promote and solve. I eagerly await to see how a meeting of this nature unfolds.
***
In the meantime however, I have a really long weekend, which started yesterday evening with dinner and drinks with a professional photographer and novice American documentary filmmaker who was screening her work on the psychological aftershocks of Hiroshima, expressed in the form of art, at Meta House. I'm beginning to really love that place.
It's Pchom Benh in Cambodia today and Friday. Many of the friends I had made before are still fresh and all had plans this weekend. Losing my phone was probably not very helpful. So, it's me in PP, whose silence today is a tad deafening.
Thank goodness that bus stations will always be unusually busy no matter the holiday. Pchom Benh is a Cambodia Buddhist celebration of ancestors. How better to celebrate than to take a trip to Oudong?
Oudong is not a deliciously thick noodle from Japan.
Oudong was Cambodia's capital city during the 17th century.
And I was, from what my observation, one of 3 Western tourists visiting it this weekend.
I had heard that it was a quiet place to visit. My train of thought was if I was to spend this weekend with a bit of solidarity, why not do it in the shadows of Cambodia's formerly illustrious and underappreciated capital, with all of its Buddhist temple wonders?
There was of course a traffic jam on the short course from Route 5 to the bottom of Phnom Oudong. After getting off a bus that took me an hour outside PP, I hailed a moto and actually sat in traffic in the middle of this fairly rural area.
Thankfully, my moto driver is adept at navigating between cars, and after minutes, I was in the midst of thousands of Cambodians visitng, and this makes sense, paying respects to the ancestors?
So, I think, I was a bit rash in my thinking that Oudong would be as quiet as my social life was to be this weekend.
Despite the great numbers of people visiting, I was able to find my quiet places of for thought and reading at Oudong. It was simply amazing to find myself pondering life, as a result of reading the philosophically dense Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner, in the midst of terrifyingly beautiful Vihear Preah Ko. Simultaneously, I was also able to see some of the remaining structures that had survived bombings by the Khmer Rouge in 1977. I have yet to go to the Killing Fields at Cheoung Ek and the genocide museum at Tuol Sleng yet, simply because I don't feel ready yet. I don't want to rush it and not be able to take it all in. Seeing the wounded remains of these huge structures, was therefore my first experiences with it. To have this matched with the sight of so many beggars missing limbs, losses from the number of landmines that still dot the countryside and the sheer numbers of people, the entire experience was quite revealing of Cambodia's state of development.
It is clear why holidays such as Pchom Ben are necessary in Cambodia's path to freedom. Although it is merely plays only a part in the grand production that Cambodia requires to achieve its development goals.
***
Since it is Pchom Ben, I suppose the ancestors were extremely pleased with their gifts and decided to make it a clear weekend, compared to the random moments of rain we've been receiving. So I decided to go out exploring again.
My attempt to get to Koh Dach ended up a bit of a farce, although quite enlightening. Koh Dach is an island up the Mekong River which is supposed to have an awesome beach plus a great silk weaving industry. The island is only 30km in area, so I thought it'd be a great place to spend attempting to read Sophie's World and buy some gifts.
My tuk tuk driver, whom I decided to use because he'd been so nice to me the first time, seemed to know what I was talking about when I said, "ferry to Koh Dach, harbour, Japanese Bridge, Mekong?" After conferring with a fellow tuktuk driver, he smiled and nodded and we were on our way!
Little did I know that the next 30 minutes would be a really confusing ride to nowhere and I would end up back at the other side of the Tonle Sap river from where I began. It was clear that my tuktuk driver didn't know where this harbour of Mekong ferries was that I had been told about. So we kept looking for about another 20 minutes. While this brought up nothing, I did get to see a different side of Phnom Penh that wasn't NGOland, expat bars and rich Khmer kids. Rather, this was a Phnom Penh founded upon boat homes and raised houses to beat the higher water levels that come during the rain season. There were also a heck of a lot of cows roaming around. It was a bit amusing and reminded me of awkward junior highschool activities. Bulls on one side of the street, cows on the other.
So after wandering around the city for a while, you now find me here...writing this post and struggling to convince myself that I really should apply to graduate school.
However, the more concrete event that's occured is realizing exactly the scope and focus of my work. Migration Health Associate is a fairly broad term. Focal Point on HIV/AIDS for the International Organization for Migration is also a really specific term. After a meeting with the Country Coordinator of UNAIDS this past Tuesday, I actually have something to focus upon, which I suppose belies my subtitle of "Focal Point on HIV/AIDS".
In the vast NGO environment that comprises Rue Pasteur/Street 51 to Monivong, it's ridiculously easy to feel like a kid in a candy store. Program Officers and Project Managers thurst seemingly amazing ideas at you which feel like they are the complete solution to all of Cambodia's HIV/AIDS woes. While they do this, you must jump in at those elusive windows of opportunity to promote your own projects, cause and resource needs. Because I am fresh out of university, an intern, and more importantly have an excitable personality, I have the propensity to jump on things far too quickly. It's a part of my personality that's always been present and has occassionally been an asset. Some people think it's kinda cute.
A conversation with UNAIDS,
me: "So in striving to build up IOM Cambodia's involvement with migrant health, I was thinking of integrating our safe mobility and HIV video with the regular WFP maternal-child nutrition program since women have a greater propensity for migration, as do their husbands. I think it'd also be a good way of helping the high married heterosexual HIV infection demographic in Cambodia"
UNAIDS: "that won't really work, and you're assuming that all migrants are all vulnerable to HIV"
me: "right...what do you think of integrating it with the curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training as some sort of pre-departure training, for those who are interested in migrating?"
UNAIDS: "why don't you just concentrate on migrating" [what he really means is that UNESCO is probably already working on that]
So this monster needs some control. My boss was really right about how I should've met with UNAIDS before I met with everyone else - alas these staff meetings in Geneva. Yet, the UN already has a Regional Task Force on Mobility and HIV in Greater Mekon Subregion as well as involvement, through UNICEF and UNESCO on introducing safe mobility curriculum with the Ministry of Education. Where's a girl to begin?
My big meeting, as representative for the IOM, with the Joint UN Team on HIV/AIDS this coming Tuesday will just be a show of that, as well as a test of my needful ability to suppress my excitement. I will have to really FOCUS my advocacy of HIV/AIDS topics only to concern that of the vulnerabilities of migrants, trafficked peoples and mobile populations. I've already met with about half of the team. They are all wonderful people seeking to ameliorate the same global health disparities I am. Simultaneously, each represents an organization with different agendas and resource dilemmas to promote and solve. I eagerly await to see how a meeting of this nature unfolds.
***
In the meantime however, I have a really long weekend, which started yesterday evening with dinner and drinks with a professional photographer and novice American documentary filmmaker who was screening her work on the psychological aftershocks of Hiroshima, expressed in the form of art, at Meta House. I'm beginning to really love that place.
It's Pchom Benh in Cambodia today and Friday. Many of the friends I had made before are still fresh and all had plans this weekend. Losing my phone was probably not very helpful. So, it's me in PP, whose silence today is a tad deafening.
Thank goodness that bus stations will always be unusually busy no matter the holiday. Pchom Benh is a Cambodia Buddhist celebration of ancestors. How better to celebrate than to take a trip to Oudong?
Oudong is not a deliciously thick noodle from Japan.
Oudong was Cambodia's capital city during the 17th century.
And I was, from what my observation, one of 3 Western tourists visiting it this weekend.
I had heard that it was a quiet place to visit. My train of thought was if I was to spend this weekend with a bit of solidarity, why not do it in the shadows of Cambodia's formerly illustrious and underappreciated capital, with all of its Buddhist temple wonders?
There was of course a traffic jam on the short course from Route 5 to the bottom of Phnom Oudong. After getting off a bus that took me an hour outside PP, I hailed a moto and actually sat in traffic in the middle of this fairly rural area.
Thankfully, my moto driver is adept at navigating between cars, and after minutes, I was in the midst of thousands of Cambodians visitng, and this makes sense, paying respects to the ancestors?
So, I think, I was a bit rash in my thinking that Oudong would be as quiet as my social life was to be this weekend.
Despite the great numbers of people visiting, I was able to find my quiet places of for thought and reading at Oudong. It was simply amazing to find myself pondering life, as a result of reading the philosophically dense Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner, in the midst of terrifyingly beautiful Vihear Preah Ko. Simultaneously, I was also able to see some of the remaining structures that had survived bombings by the Khmer Rouge in 1977. I have yet to go to the Killing Fields at Cheoung Ek and the genocide museum at Tuol Sleng yet, simply because I don't feel ready yet. I don't want to rush it and not be able to take it all in. Seeing the wounded remains of these huge structures, was therefore my first experiences with it. To have this matched with the sight of so many beggars missing limbs, losses from the number of landmines that still dot the countryside and the sheer numbers of people, the entire experience was quite revealing of Cambodia's state of development.
It is clear why holidays such as Pchom Ben are necessary in Cambodia's path to freedom. Although it is merely plays only a part in the grand production that Cambodia requires to achieve its development goals.
***
Since it is Pchom Ben, I suppose the ancestors were extremely pleased with their gifts and decided to make it a clear weekend, compared to the random moments of rain we've been receiving. So I decided to go out exploring again.
My attempt to get to Koh Dach ended up a bit of a farce, although quite enlightening. Koh Dach is an island up the Mekong River which is supposed to have an awesome beach plus a great silk weaving industry. The island is only 30km in area, so I thought it'd be a great place to spend attempting to read Sophie's World and buy some gifts.
My tuk tuk driver, whom I decided to use because he'd been so nice to me the first time, seemed to know what I was talking about when I said, "ferry to Koh Dach, harbour, Japanese Bridge, Mekong?" After conferring with a fellow tuktuk driver, he smiled and nodded and we were on our way!
Little did I know that the next 30 minutes would be a really confusing ride to nowhere and I would end up back at the other side of the Tonle Sap river from where I began. It was clear that my tuktuk driver didn't know where this harbour of Mekong ferries was that I had been told about. So we kept looking for about another 20 minutes. While this brought up nothing, I did get to see a different side of Phnom Penh that wasn't NGOland, expat bars and rich Khmer kids. Rather, this was a Phnom Penh founded upon boat homes and raised houses to beat the higher water levels that come during the rain season. There were also a heck of a lot of cows roaming around. It was a bit amusing and reminded me of awkward junior highschool activities. Bulls on one side of the street, cows on the other.
So after wandering around the city for a while, you now find me here...writing this post and struggling to convince myself that I really should apply to graduate school.
Friday, October 5, 2007
relativity, my dear watson, that's all it is
My last 2.5 weeks in PP can be described as some sort of drug-induced high. The amount of validation I'm receiving by working in this environment, from my colleagues and new friends can only be compared to the not-so-delicious taste but quite favourable outcome of some sort of absinthine concoction.
One of the most validating experiences this week was my chance to place comment on Cambodian and Vietnamese Cross Border Health priorities. To have my thoughts listened to by 20 or so older male state officials, and then to see my older IOM colleagues nod in agreeance...
However, there have been certain realizations about why I feel this way.
In a recent conversation with one of my best friends, he commented that I've always had a low sense of self; that I never believed in myself. He couldn't blame me however, given the environment I had just emerged from. The University of Toronto is a gritty place. It crushed my spirit, and it was very easy to lose sight of those alleged life goals, bliss and potentials that one is supposed to achieve in postsecondary education. In the pyramid structure of the UofT populace, you were always made to feel that you were on the bottom rather than the top. I suppose the psychology of that was to create a student populace constantly striving to perform their best. Well, let's say it didn't too much for the psyche.
As a Libran, I do have to bring out the scale and balance the situation however. I became more resilient. Patience and endurance, those open-to-close days at the library, engaging in what may seem like shouting matches in policy classes so that the professor notices you, these are skills you accumulate. They are assets in the end; especially in this line of business.
So to those UofTers who are probably not reading this blog...the academic environment you find yourselves emerging from is one which can turn you into something which is hard and cold. Don't lose sight of what you really want to do....and you can maintain being soft and warm.
***
On the subject of soft and warm, I'm actually beginning to hone those creative juices that I tell myself that I have. That's right people, that film talent I keep on going on about that I think I have...well, it's going to be put to a test.
I arranged to have drinks with the creative director of Meta House last night. Meta House is a German-founded art house that seeks to promote and develop an interdisciplinary and contemporary art industry in Cambodia.
The next thing I knew, she was asking me my opinion on curating an exhibition of work by an aging Cambodia political cartoonist and then agreeing to do a short documentary on him. While things seem to move fairly slowly in Cambodia, agreeing to do things usually happens really fast.
I'm also working on my own project. It's a bit self-involved actually, as most of the things I do are. It's self-introspective, it's illustrative of mostly me, and yet it's not about me, directly. I've temporarily titled it "Should I stay or should i go", after my beloved Clash song. I'm a tad nervous to get it started. I suppose it was spurred by various encounters I've had over the past 2 weeks I've been here.
The vision is to not only examine the micro-psychosocial elements that push individuals to enter a career that involves moving to a developing nation for a lengthy period of time, but also why they leave as well, and perhaps where they go next? I want it address larger issues of sustainable development, where Western stakeholders begin and end their relationships with nations. There are also the individuals who chose to stay. I can already name a couple of colleagues who have been here for 10+ years. I'm hoping to answer some questions about why I'm here as well while I'm at it.
However, in the short term, I need to give the partying a break. Cirrhosis of the liver is something I did not come here to accomplish.
One of the most validating experiences this week was my chance to place comment on Cambodian and Vietnamese Cross Border Health priorities. To have my thoughts listened to by 20 or so older male state officials, and then to see my older IOM colleagues nod in agreeance...
However, there have been certain realizations about why I feel this way.
In a recent conversation with one of my best friends, he commented that I've always had a low sense of self; that I never believed in myself. He couldn't blame me however, given the environment I had just emerged from. The University of Toronto is a gritty place. It crushed my spirit, and it was very easy to lose sight of those alleged life goals, bliss and potentials that one is supposed to achieve in postsecondary education. In the pyramid structure of the UofT populace, you were always made to feel that you were on the bottom rather than the top. I suppose the psychology of that was to create a student populace constantly striving to perform their best. Well, let's say it didn't too much for the psyche.
As a Libran, I do have to bring out the scale and balance the situation however. I became more resilient. Patience and endurance, those open-to-close days at the library, engaging in what may seem like shouting matches in policy classes so that the professor notices you, these are skills you accumulate. They are assets in the end; especially in this line of business.
So to those UofTers who are probably not reading this blog...the academic environment you find yourselves emerging from is one which can turn you into something which is hard and cold. Don't lose sight of what you really want to do....and you can maintain being soft and warm.
***
On the subject of soft and warm, I'm actually beginning to hone those creative juices that I tell myself that I have. That's right people, that film talent I keep on going on about that I think I have...well, it's going to be put to a test.
I arranged to have drinks with the creative director of Meta House last night. Meta House is a German-founded art house that seeks to promote and develop an interdisciplinary and contemporary art industry in Cambodia.
The next thing I knew, she was asking me my opinion on curating an exhibition of work by an aging Cambodia political cartoonist and then agreeing to do a short documentary on him. While things seem to move fairly slowly in Cambodia, agreeing to do things usually happens really fast.
I'm also working on my own project. It's a bit self-involved actually, as most of the things I do are. It's self-introspective, it's illustrative of mostly me, and yet it's not about me, directly. I've temporarily titled it "Should I stay or should i go", after my beloved Clash song. I'm a tad nervous to get it started. I suppose it was spurred by various encounters I've had over the past 2 weeks I've been here.
The vision is to not only examine the micro-psychosocial elements that push individuals to enter a career that involves moving to a developing nation for a lengthy period of time, but also why they leave as well, and perhaps where they go next? I want it address larger issues of sustainable development, where Western stakeholders begin and end their relationships with nations. There are also the individuals who chose to stay. I can already name a couple of colleagues who have been here for 10+ years. I'm hoping to answer some questions about why I'm here as well while I'm at it.
However, in the short term, I need to give the partying a break. Cirrhosis of the liver is something I did not come here to accomplish.
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