Part of history On the other side of the river : a different picture of the city Our neighbourhood : near Street 130, No34 The last day in PP ... coming back from Bophana Audiovisual Resource center http://bophana.org/about/bophana/ Night Photography - Phnom Penh -
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Street´s scene, market and at the institut francais Attending an English class and a politic discussion Outside the palace and the Mekong river PP colonial Story to the city: A Lady Penh fished a floating Koki tree out of the river, inside there were four Buddha statues. To house the Buddhas, she built a hill (Phmon) and a small temple (wat) at this site. Later the surrounding aera became known after the hill and its creator: PHNOM PENH. first impressions of PP Market and temple PP - streets´impressions
The 10th day, we completed our mission and asked the manager to come and see what we did. At 3 pm he was satisfied, at 6 he was not any more. He got so angry with us in front of his customers: “He perceived a less motivated team, that day we had absolutely no result and we were abusing of his hospitality.” Unlike his Khmer team we argued back, Önder on a more diplomatic way but I did on the same tone as his which was not appreciated at all and threated me with “ATTENTION, ATTENTION” in French!. We should be aware that we lived in a 1000 $ accommodation”. He went on and on for half an hour! At the end, he just kind of accepted that he had too many issues to solve out and we were his punching ball! We heard later that on the same day he sacked two girls that were not working efficiently enough after three months training and one because she stole and ate 10 times a day! These girls were 15, 16 and 17 years old and were required to work 10 hours a day. That was it, it was a breach of trust and we still decided to stay as we had one more day to work and then two days off. After the bad discussion, it was decided to have every evening a meeting to discuss the goals for the very next day!!! We made up our mind to leave on Friday (two days after the argument). We thought it through and showed solidarity with the German volunteer, we could not leave him behind alone. Can you imagine the atmosphere after that???? As the Khmer team did, we hide from the manager to avoid any crisis and be on his way. On Thursday he came to us around 9pm to hold the meeting. It was so hilarious…as he began to give us one day off as he could not thing of any projects and he has paperwork to do in Sihanoukville. We just responded that we agreed to work 5 days and have two day off! He was uncomfortable with that. He just forgot our agreement!!! He went on for 10000 times that the very next week the resort is fully booked. We had to read between the lines that we could stay until beginning of next week and he did not need more helpers now although he has lots of projects. We were fine with that as we wanted to leave anyway. We managed to have an other job in Phom Penh. Every day we assisted to a procession. It begins with the monks who come for donations. In Sihanoukville you do not have one delivery for the things you order. Every single man will bring his products although there are supermarkets. After the monks, the iceman will come, the food delivery, the fruit one and it goes on and on the whole day, you also have the laundry man, the detergent one... It is very funny to observe! The projects we discussed to achieve results!!! Volunteers as masons and cleaners!!! Sihanoukville is in Cambodia but has nothing to do with Cambodia as everything is made for Westeners. We knew that when coming here as it is a touristic area but in low season. Prices here are European prices!!! We stayed at Otres Beach 2, few km away from Sihanoukville. It has still its charm but in a couple of years it will be completely overloaded with hotels.
We had the chance to work with Khmer people to know them better. It was very difficult to break the ice, and we were facing the language barrier and we had a problem with the working mentality. It was an experience and we do not regret it! |
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