What I found when I got to the Post was a crusading spirit.  Reporters had to follow the machinations of the political parties because we were covering the election.  But we were also hungry to show how these machinations were affecting everyday people.

One of my assignments, after proving that I could handle reporting in a foreign country, was to investigate claims that the government was aiding local fishermen in their fight against illegal trawler boats.  Early on a Saturday morning, Chou, one of my regular translators and a gift of the Asia Foundation – she was paid through a foundation grant – a driver and I drove west to Koh Kong province. 

Before leaving, I asked one of our other translators, Sam Rith what he knew about Koh Kong. “There are a lot of ignorant people there,” he said. It is one of the least developed provinces in Cambodia, which is saying a lot. Covered with rain forest and with a long coast on the Gulf of Thailand, it is the poster province for many of the country’s environmental problems. Illegal forestry has cleared much of the province’s lush greenery. Large trawlers coming into shallow waters and taking the rich stocks of fish have pushed the private fishermen on the coast to even greater poverty.

Trawlers come in from Thailand and from Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s main port from the south. Cambodian and Thai companies own the boats, and trawler crews killed 22 fishermen between 1989 and 2003.  No one has ever been arrested for the murders, and the government claims they are powerless to stop the illegal fishing.  An official in the Ministry of Forestry and Fisheries told me that government boats were too slow. 

The American Friends Services Committee, a Quaker group, helped set up a community fisheries project, where villages pool their resources and catches to compete with corporate fishing boats. On June 29, MoFF officials were placed in villages to help community fisheries arrest trawler crews. The elections were set for July 27.  Thirty-five trawlers were caught between June 29 and July 10, according to a Department of Fisheries official based in one of the villages I visited.

But no one I spoke to, even the fisheries officials employed by the government, thought the program was going to keep going after the elections.  The villager’s votes were more valuable to the government, and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, until after the election.  The fishermen understood this, as did the AFSC representatives.

What impressed me most about the community fisheries project that I visited was that the AFSC was one of the few NGOs in Cambodia planning for its exit.  The point of the community fishery was for Cambodian villagers to take care of themselves.  Most of the other NGOs, while doing valuable work, seemed to forget planning to leave.  They became entrenched in society and often were the only groups providing services.  The government certainly wasn’t.

One side effect was that organizations had to play ball with corrupt government officials.  The Asian Development Bank, while doing important work in the country, was hamstrung by officials taking their cut.  As much as the ADB tried to put in transparency measures to control skimming, the government still got what it wanted.  The privatization scheme that I wrote about my first week in the country was aided by the ADB.  But everyone, including ADB officials, knew that the government was underreporting the value of the properties.  The ADB couldn’t say anything because they would have been shut out, and their important work would’ve been cut.

The most egregious example of this I ran into involved funds for dengue fever prevention.  Dengue is a highly contagious, mosquito-born virus that is also highly preventable.  It is barely existent in Phnom Penh and other urban areas around the country.  But dengue and its relative, dengue hemorrhagic fever, are serious when contracted by adults, often deadly when contracted by children.

Officials at the government’s National Malaria Center, part of the Ministry of Health, told me that dengue rates were much higher this past year than in years past.  They also told me that much of their funding was slashed to run the election.  While other factors contributed to the rise, including the natural cycle of dengue outbreaks, many preventive steps normally taken were not, and many cases, especially within Phnom Penh, could be traced back to the cut in funding.  Larvicide was spread a month late, and the mosquito population was far greater than in other years.

While one would usually expect the government to deny that anti-dengue funds, which were a loan from the ADB, were being used to run an election, that was not the case.  The secretary general of finances at the Ministry of Health told me, “We have to have money to run the election.”  Doctors within the government and the World Health Organization pleaded with me to get the story out, but they could not go on record because they were afraid of losing their jobs.

Despite the corruption, Cambodians had what they felt was a normal life.  People knew they were poor – Cambodia is one of the world’s poorest countries – and people saw the numbing number of people who had lost limbs, either in war or because of the unexploded land mines and bombs left behind, but a civil society was starting to develop.  Artistic communities were starting to develop, and Cambodians were learning to take care of themselves.

My fiancée, Rebecca, who had come along to Cambodia for lack of anything better to do (a stunning show of faith) worked at a Japanese-funded home for orphaned children.  The kids formerly picked trash on Phnom Penh’s garbage dump, a spectacularly tall pile of trash.  Most didn’t wear anything on their feet but rubber sandals.  Now they were learning English and Khmer, and were living in a clean and safe environment.

Along with teaching English, Rebecca, pursuing her Master’s Degree in business and social work, worked with the Khmer staff on teaching methods and child psychology.

I was able to report on budding Khmer rap stars and the burgeoning film industry.  Both have a long way to go, but no society can develop without a vibrant arts scene.  I also became the Phnom Penh Post expert on the weird and wacky world of Cambodia’s small political parties.  None of them had any chance to win seats in the parliament, and some of them had truly bizarre ideas.  One party leader said that his plan was to give every person in Cambodia a cow and some rice seed.  It was the slow, tortured, and amusing development of a civil society.

As a reporter, I was able to see the best and worst of Cambodia.  No RPG rounds were fired into any of the political parties I met, and the parameters of a deal for a new government were arrived at on November 5.  But still no government has been established. 

By far the most amazing thing I saw was election day itself.  Cambodians from 18 and up lined up early in the morning on July 27.  They filled the door and smiled proudly as they walked in to the polling station.  The photographs that I took of beaming faces made me hope that their votes would mean something, but I have my doubts.  The one thing I hope is that since Cambodians were so eager to elect their representatives – close to 90 percent of the eligible population cast their ballot – that their government eventually becomes one they deserve. 

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