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!