EPILOG: Kanlaeng Phe vs Il Fornaio

Six weeks later: Ruminations on the Cambodian Adventure.

Seattle has an Il Fornaio restaurant located at 6^th and Pine Streets, and a lovely restaurant it is. I remember the first time I dined there with my wife. They poured olive oil on a saucer, added some sweet balsamic vinegar, and provided the dipping breads. A delightful gustatory start to the beginning of a great meal.

Cambodia’s Kanlaeng Phe has a cement guest house on cement pillars for when the river floods. You reach it by climbing a flight of stairs while keeping an eye out for the wasp nests. Some non-government organization thought this would be a good idea for tourism in a backwater Cambodian river stop that has no supporting amenities.  You get there by riding a few kilometers up the muddy-brown Tonlé Sap in a tippy canoe-like vessel called a “took.”  You know you’ve arrived when the took pulls up to a muddy landing at the bottom of a bank which you carefully ascend to keep from tripping. When I was there in March, the toilet was right over there, behind that bush. There were no linen napkins.

An Il Fornaio dinner for two with a beautiful woman can easily top $80, if you get wine and a dessert.

Pass up three Il Fornaio dinners, and you’ve saved enough money to make an interest-free loan to the fishing village of Kanlaeng Phe.

And, you know, that was great entertainment. I was treated to the friendship of some genuine people who I will probably never see again, and who are very, very grateful for the loan.

I went on this trip with Jay Hastings, a childhood friend and secretary-treasurer of Sustainable Communities International (SCI). Jay has gone to Cambodia for several years now to make no-interest loans to communities that have virtually no collateral and no local bank. The communities are using these loans in savings groups that re-loan the funds to their members. The members are using the loans to buy the supplies they need to fish and farm. They are paying the loans back at interest rates of 1-3 percent a month, allowing the communities to grow capital. So far, only eight communities are involved; the program is being kept small intentionally, so that it remains manageable. The practice of having personal sponsors for the loans and the trust placed in the communities has been matched by conservative management of the loans—and no defaults.

Jay, left, meets with representatives of Peam Popech to discuss the loan program.

And it’s really the future we’re talking about here. Those three dinners at Il Fornaio produce a salutary effect until the wine is metabolized and the food digested and excreted.

But the $250 donation I make to SCI will become revolving capital for the community of Kanlaeng Phe. Kanleang Phe and other communities will eventually repay the loans to Sustainable Communities International when they feel financially secure. SCI will then loan that money to new communities.

The interest that these communities earn on their community loans will become their own capital that will be used for community purposes or be recycled repeatedly as future loans, helping community members who seem to be limited only by their poverty. My donation will have become the seed for the creation of that sustainable capital. Like the mythical phoenix that is consumed and rises from its own ashes, that capital will replenish itself through a community loan and repayment cycle that builds community, capital, and trust.

Now THAT’S entertainment.

Love,
Robert

Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer. This is the final dispatch for this blog until further notice. I hope you have enjoyed the trip. Next adventure: Tijuana!

Grab Shots

TOKYO, April 1 -- Greetings to everyone.
This is coming to you from the the other side of the International Dateline, in the Delta Airlines Lounge at the Tokyo Airport. We have just one hour before we board our flight to Seattle. I may post another blog or two in the next few days, or maybe not. There's a lot to do stateside. But I wanted to take a moment to share some photos which most of you haven't seen yet. The quality isn't great -- some were shot through windshields or at the brightest, hottest part of the day. Most of these will come without comment. They speak for themselves. Or, you can invent your own commentary.
Love,
Robert

 

A child's pull toy at Kampong Tralach Leu, a fishing/agricultural village.

 

The balcony at S-21, the former high school, turned Khmer Rouge torture facility.

Water bottle and fish line lift drooping cable.

Homeless woman collects garbage to sell.

 

A monkey at a pagoda resembles an old man with a toothpick.

Late model car, old model home at Kampong Tralach Leu.

This memorial pagoda at the Genocide Park contains several floors of recovered bones.

Meeting to discuss loan program at Peam Popech Village.

Roadside market at heat of day in Kampong Tralach Kraom.

Childhood Friend Jay Hastings

In 95+ heat, Jay preps for workshop for community fisheries.

Five-headed cobra slithers down a railing to guard a tomb at a pagoda.

 

The children of Kampong Tralach Leu Village.

The best part of the whole damn trip.

Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer.

The Killing Fields

The drab building is a former secondary school that was converted to a Khmer Rouge torture chamber one stop away from a killing field. Why is it necessary to post a sign telling visitors not to laugh? The nearest killing field (for there were many) is easy to miss--the sign identifying it is not quite on the roadway, and the street leading to it  passes what seem to be houses and small businesses. It's a former Chinese cemetary in what might be called suburbs of Phnom Penh.

The sign to the killing field competes with other signs for the driver's attention.

Forgive me, but it's almost just another roadside attraction, a "must see" location if you are in town. It is surreal -- as emotionally remote as the human sacrifice pyramids of the Mayans in Mexico. We know it happened, but it seems so long ago....

The government fisheries employee who accompanied us to the cemetary, Lieng Sopha, lost three siblings, but survived the Khmer Rouge because his aunt was able to steal morsels for him to eat, at great risk to her life. He  disclosed to Jay, pictured at left, below, that he has had trouble convincing his children that his personal stories are true. The fact that the children can't imagine what their father went through is a testimony to his perserverence in transcending what he endured, becoming a good father and provider. But the happiness of his children comes at some cost--their difficulty in imagining the genocide.

Lieng Sopha, director of Department of Community Fishery Development, with Jay at genocide site

As Jay and I walked through the killing fields, the unreality of the genocide brought back words from Shakespear's Julius Caesar. The words are spoken by Mark Anthony, who addresses Caesar's body following his assassination. They seem most appropriate here:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial. (Act 3, scene 1)

 

Scenes from the Choeung Ek Killing Field (Chinese cemetary)

 

 

 

 

Chao Ponhea Yat High School: Code Name, S-21

Arms tied behind them, prisoners were hoisted by their arms on this gallows.

 

 

The precursor to all of this:

It was United States President Richard Nixon who ordered the carpet bombing of Cambodia to deprive North Vietnam of sanctuaries. This drove Cambodians into the cities. Within a year of Nixon's resignation as a result  of the Watergate Scandal, the Khmer Rouge arrived at Phnom Penh, forcing its total evacuation within three days. President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Untold numbers of Cambodians suffered and died. And now their memorial is another roadside attraction. Cambodians are  not showing resentment against the United States, as far as I can see, but I think we owe these people.

And so, for Mr. Nixon, this line from Shakespeare:

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

 (Macbeth, Act Act 2, Scene 2.)

This post is dedicated to the survivors--people like Lieng Sopha, shown below with his children.

 

Love,

Robert

Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer.