in your face

In the almost four weeks that I've been in Cambodia I've had some great experiences and seen some really cool stuff, but for the most part it has been along the lines of a world traveler/tourist, and not a development professional. Thankfully, that changed yesterday when I got the opportunity to travel out to the Kampang Chhnang District where my NGO's water purifier factory is (though I'll use the term loosely because it's a building with one machine, a few kilns, and about 15 employees). It was great to get out to a non-touristy part of the country where kids stare at you simply for being white (ok, great but unnerving). It also gave me the difficult but priceless experience of taking development, something I've read and opined over for years, and shoving it right in my face.

We got out to the factory in a pickup truck. I got to spend the drive talking to my coworker who speaks English quite well. It was a fun and sometimes funny conversation (he's an exceedingly nice person) until we got to talking about siblings. He asked how many were in my family, and I replied that I had an older brother and a younger brother. When I inquired about his family, he told me he has two younger sisters, and had an older brother and an older sister. Yes, had. They, along with his mother, were killed by Pol Pot's regime; they tried to escape to the refugee camps in Thailand but they were too late. They, along with one third of Cambodia, were killed in a madman's agrarian "revolution".

It isn't like I didn't expect to meet people who suffered from such a recent genocide, but it still hit me hard. I was sitting beside a person who lost two siblings and a parent to the Khmer Rouge. For some horrible reason I've had a couple friends my age lose siblings recently, and I have trouble comprehending what they must go through. As impossible as that is to wrap my head around, something like this is just beyond the pale. I kept quiet as he told me about it because I couldn't even imagine what to say. He went on to tell me how his family was from the Kampot province, but moved into Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge fell because there were just too many memories at home, and because so many of their neighbors were killed. At that point I managed to stammer out an awkward "I'm very sorry".

Touring the factory was really interesting. I'll spare the boring technical stuff but explain how it works; they take a ball of clay, mix it with rice husks and stamp it into a pot shape. They then fire it in a kiln which burns away the husks and leaves the clay porous enough for water to seep through. Then they brush the inside of the pot with colloidal silver, an element with antibacterial properties. And there you go, WHO-level water quality for an affordable price.

Many of the people working at this factory (and working hard) were young. Not insanely illegal or immorally young, but young. One girl who was maybe 12 was working the whole time I was there. We stuck around through lunch, and so did she for at least half an hour, working by herself shaping the clay molds (they get paid by the pot, so she was probably just trying to make some more money).

I understand that it's a very good thing that she has this opportunity to work and bring money for her family, and that these opportunities are a massively important step towards development. Still, as I watched her working diligently, all I could think of was "it's June 10, she should have just gotten out of school and should be playing with her friends at a pool." It's so ridiculously unfair that just by being born in Cambodia this girl is working while kids from the US get to be.......well........kids.

So the point I'm trying to make in this very long and very rambling post is that this experience is both fantastic and difficult because it allows you to understand the truths of developing countries on a more fundamental level. I can watch a documentary on the Khmer Rouge and be haunted by it, but then I can turn it off and go do something else. Or I can muse about how hard people in developing countries have to work, but I can explain it away by citing Sach's ladder of development and acknowledging that it's still an important step for them. At GWU I can put the book down, I can change the channel, I can change the conversation. But here, everything is right up in your face. You can turn, and it's still there. It helps me understand (not know, but understand) that development isn't a topic or issue, it's an existence.

But it still doesn't help me understand how I could have a coworker, so incredibly friendly and with such a great sense of humor, who has had most of his family murdered, or to watch a young girl work at a factory without seeming to even understand that people her own age a world away would laugh at the idea. This is the first difficult thing I've experienced over here that I truly hope I'll never get used to. Culture shock may pass, and you can always learn languages to make your experience easier, but it is my sincere hope that these types of things continue to piss me right off until the day I die or fix them. I hope the same for all of you.