Cambodia 2011 Peace Project Event (Part1 The Story)

PREVI HEAR JOURNAL 2011 ! The Peace Project
PREVI HEAR JOURNAL 2011 ! The Peace Project
that but lack of
finances mean I need
to juggle my tasks.
Now its juggling a
million lists.”
Daybreak, bird
song and Honda
motorcycle horns.
People are waking up.
As we cruise through
Previ Hear town the
engine coughs and
the red ochre dirt and
crackling dead leaves
streets blow up onto
the windscreen like
an old man spitting
out phlegm from
emphisemia. The
street is empty except
for five stray dogs,
billowing empty chip
packets made from
shining cellophane
and motor cyclists
going nowhere fast
but somewhere slow.
I need a strong coffee
to wake up. We stop
in the only coffee
shop in town open
at this hour. Its next
to the bus station.
The station is really
only a vacant lot that
fills up with buses by
8am. People with scarves
and blank expressions
come up to us asking if
we are leaving by bus for
Phnom Penh! The waitress
with black eyes, a swivel
to her hip and a crying
child tugging her dress
is making yellow noodles She was part of the
and watered soup but also film and our work. Six
cafe with condensed milk. months later Sambo was
Once happily caffeinated, told she was 24 years of
we search for a cake shop age and already engaged
to order Sre Pich’s birthday to a thirty-nine year old
cake. Her 16th birthday! doctor. I suppose this
She tells me she has never was the families way of
had a birthday party before insuring she remained
in her life. So as a result of engaged. But it is always
my unfailing generosity disappointing when
or the fact she’s a good families lie to you. Kids,
assistant and the boys need yes, but when they are good
a wrap party I decide we will respectable families who
do this.
lie to your face, I hate it.
“Change her life,” as But that’s what I see. The
we order it with icing good respectable families
sugar candy droplets. “ are usually mortgaged up
We will have it in Soksan to their assholes trying
restaurant a few days before to present an untroubled
finishing. It can be a wrap middle-class face to the
party for the crew as well. I rest of the neighborhood
will foot the bill, as they say.” , their peers, bosses and
Then we take the orders lovers.
from the people there for a Anyhow we order for
cake for Sre Pich’s birthday. the birthday girl Srey Pich
The family had told us her the three layered sponge
age was fifteen. I accepted cake with a thick green
their answer without icing that looks like it
question, but thought, “As should be used as mortar
far as I am concerned she for the Sydney Harbor
looks twenty-two. Maybe Bridge cake. The words
twenty-five. But hey, whose read “Happy Birthday Sre
counting? And in this world Pich,” scrawled in flowing
people grow up fast here, wedding script across it
that’s for sure!”
in Fluorescent Acid Night
Club pink.
We are the first clients
inside the bank. Its cold
and empty. I can hear the
echo of our footsteps. . I tap
my feet in impatience. Mao
happily stares at his cheap
Nokia phone. He thinks that
if he looks at it hard enough
it will materialize into an
iPhone. We sit and wait.
Impatient and fidgeting I
pull out the white Apple
notebook computer and
begin work on my book-
The Word.
Little did I know the
title would soon change
and a month later the
computer would be stolen
in an Audi in Moscow by
a low level bratva. Such
is life! We wait and wait.
Forty minutes pass. Tick
tock! No one comes to our
attention or aid. There is no
ANZ withdrawl ATM here
in Previ Hear town. The
nearest ANZ is three hours
away by bus in Siem Reap.
Two hours by car. Slowly
the bank with its scuffed
yellow linoleum floor and
crusty certificates in sepia
comes to life. On the walls
I see glossy prints of the
Director of the World Bank
shaking hands with an
Alceida CEO grinning.
He’s bald, of course with
a tweed jacket and looks
like this expedition will
go into his scrap album
next to the photos of him
in the Sechelles with his
secretary.
Mao grins,” It sounds
like Alqueda, doesn’t it.”
Slowly the bank fills with
embarrassed and hushed
customers.
I look around the bank
hall. Its semi-modern. But
that just means it looks
like it comes from the
nineteen-seventies. Not
2011. There are sap green
plastic chairs. Military
corporals, old grannies
with wrinkled brows,
brown and wrinkled from
too much sun, rice-paddie
farmers who have come to
deposit savings and small
business men with cheap
plastic attache cases. As
I am waiting with it’s one
computer in the Alceida
Bank a chaotic rattle of
doors and scufflles occurs.
Confusion. The drawnout
wait is suggesting
that the staff don’t want
to give us the money. Mao
has his head squashed
against the perspex looking
at a spectacle. There is a
secretary buried deep into
her screen. Mao translates
for me what she says.
“On the form we have
received it says your name
is Dominic Ryan but your
passport says Dominic
Rupert Charles Ryan.’
“Oh God.” I realize
they don’t want to give
me the money. “Four
thousand dollars in this
bank is probably half their
deposits!’
Finally after much
wrangling and arguing
the money is handed over.
Especially since as I claimed
I had received money from
the in this bank a few days
ago from the same person
with my name and passport
the same.
--------------------------------
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11am
Two hours later we have
returned and are now
prepared to trek up to the
summit to begin the daily
November ritual of art,
photography and peace. Out
of breath we stagger up the
granite steps, surveying
the dusky horizon carrying
the usual back packs
of equipment along the
mountain. As we climb I
find out some interesting
information. Sokkeng as
an side mentions, “Did you
know that the Cambodia’s