Udong, photography course Feb 09

I had an interesting mix of a week this week, sadness, adventure, learning and experiencing new surroundings. Let us begin with the sadness so that things move upwards from there :o). I’ll attempt to put into words my emotions from Thursday night but suffice to say it was such a moving few hours where the reality of living in Phnom Penh, which is not my experienced reality, hit home. We cycled to “Meta House” which is an art studio with mini movie theatre and bar on the top floor. Lights were already out when we slipped into our seats and the sights and sounds of modern day Phnom Penh beam out at us. The theme of the short movie is “Red Earth Village - Dey Krahorm” one of the last real “village” communities left in Phnom Penh and scene of an unfair and unlawful eviction in January this year. It’s quite a sobering thought that while I was laying in my bed on the 24th January, families were experiencing the total and complete destruction of their homes, belongings and livelihood. The movie started its story well before the eviction by introducing us to some of the families, the circumstances that led them to find a home on this piece of ground, their initial struggle to establish their homes, their struggle to earn a living, their families growing up and the obvious happiness of their children and grandchildren at being able to attend school. The piece of land the developers wanted and ultimately took, was 3.6 hectares of prime real estate valued at $44million UsD. The land was originally given to this whole community through a Social Land Concession Grant by the Council of Ministers back in 2003. Some of the families buckled under the pressure and took the money, or alternatively the house the developers were offering. The money incidentally, is not enough to buy any form of housing within Phnom Penh so taking what was offered meant settling for living miles from where their family, friends and social services and businesses were. Significant to the people of Dey Krahorm is the total loss of any sort of community and support network if they took the offer. That sense of community is something that has been lost to us but which here it is so much a part of life. People come out of their houses and squat on the street chatting with their neighbours for hours. I’ve lived in places in Australia where I never even knew my neighbours let alone sat and chatted to them. Even borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbours has all but disappeared. At 3am on the 23th January without any warning armed government forces, police and private contractors employed by the developer surrounded Dey Krahorm. At 6am they moved in using weapons, tear gas and bulldozers as residents screamed their shock and disbelieve. Scenes of children crying, old ladies wailing and people running as destructive machinery crunched through the rubble of what remained of their homes filled the screen. The families had no time to salvage belongings as in a matter of hours the village had been flattened and over 100 families displaced. Following the movie, three very brave students from the Dey Krahorm school who along with their families had lost their homes, got up to speak on their experiences and feelings as a result of the eviction. Very simply and with great composure they described how sad they were, sad at the loss of their school, sad for their families and upset for their friends. The displaced families, now homeless and emotionally distraught have been placed on land 14km out of the city with very few facilities. However this situation is only temporary and since the developer has withdrawn their offer of money or housing, it is unclear what will become of these families. For now they are reliant on the assistance of donations. There are many NGO’s providing legal advice and advocating fair treatment for these types of development/eviction situations. No one seeks to stop progress but they do seek to ensure families are not pressured into accepting minimal compensation. In this case and in many others there has been no fair compensation for people that legally own their land. Because this eviction was situated in the centre of Phnom Penh it received a lot of media attention but such evictions are continuing to happen around Cambodia. So that was the sad part of the week, for the rest, I spent my Saturday on a photography course which provided me with the learning part of my week. Adventure, came in the form of travelling in a Cambodia taxi out on the country roads and experiencing new surroundings through visiting the floating village and the ancient city of Udong. There were two other people on the course and believe it or not they were both from QLD! We spent the morning in the studio going over technology, techniques and also composition. At 12.30 the four of us hit the road in a taxi which truly was a “thrilling” adventure. You know the deal, overtaking on blind corners, overtaking so far onto the wrong side of the road that you almost run over a pedestrian walking along who justifiable hurls abuse at you. Worse was the return trip in the dark where you could already see 5 or 6 lights coming straight at you when the driver decids to overtake! As one of the others girls said, “best just to shut your eyes and hope for the best”. Today would have to be one of the hottest I’ve experienced yet and so it was nice to be propelled along the river in a boat which created some breeze. We got to experience and take 100’s of photos of what life consists of for these people. I wonder if they are sceptical about these people floating past, cameras in hand, taking photos of them doing what they normally do. I guess it would be like a busload of Japanese tourists being let through our homes and offices to take photos to show the folks back home. The children are a delight, yelling out hallo and waving and waving. We see people washing their hair in the river, men dropping off and weighing loads of fish, shops floating past selling their wares and all to the back drop of vibrant colours, all blues and yellows mixed in with the grey of faded wood. Our next stop was Udong which was the capital of Cambodia a few hundred years ago. Although some of the structures have been destroyed by the Khmer Rouge a lot remain intact and some of the others are being restored, like a massive gold Buddha that is pretty much back to new. We have a couple of kids accompany us on our journey around the buildings and monuments and up and down the many, many stairs. They are very entertaining as they laugh and fool about, singing and dancing and posing on some of the statues. We are here just as the sun is setting and it truly is glorious as in the fading light we capture images of the stunning structures while hearing the chanting of monks from the Wat we can see far below us in the distance. Hopefully my photos do these two places justice, I have saved them at the Picassa web page:

Udong and the floating village

Other than that, I went for my first run at day break on Friday morning at the Olympic stadium. There were 100’s of Khmers already there, doing Tai Chi, aerobics and running around the steps. The experience was great, the run not so much - lets see if I repeat the exercise.