The Shoe Rule

I have just one question for travelers wanting to work in Cambodia:

Do you wear shoes?

Shoes are the best indicator of competence in Sihanoukville.  The town is somewhere between civilization and a deserted island where scorching hot pavement is littered with shards of glass.

Despite this, a lot of tourists insist on walking around barefoot. I'm a pragmatist, and there's no logic to this trend except for a foreigner's insistence on "going native."  But, if anyone has adapted to the heat and treacherous, man-made terrain, it's the people who have lived here since the dawn of time. And they wear shoes.  If a local isn't, then it's not a noble "be-one-with-nature" reason.  It's because he or she is poor.

Maybe my patience runs thin with the no-shoes-by-choice crowd because I worked for an NGO that had a monthly budget for children's shoes.  A good portion of our days were spent cleaning wounds and subjecting young children to painful antiseptics because they stepped on a rock or broken beer bottle.  These were not "kids being kids" cuts.  They were "Try not to retch while I wash off this hemorrhaging flesh wound" injuries.

And yet, as I walk down Serendipity Beach Road under the equatorial sun, there is never a shortage of white people playing a perverse game of hopscotch to get from point A to point B.  Point B is never one of the countless shops that sell $2 flip flops.

At least there's one saving grace for their habit.  If they walk through the river of shit that runs down the hill from Sokom Guesthouse to the pier, they'll develop incurable rashes and infectious boils that double as signs that say, "Don't interact with me." 

Also, the shoe-less provide hours of entertainment for the kitchen staff at Monkey.  There's nothing like a big Barang lad navigating scalding hot gravel and hopping past the window to give someone a moment of zen during a busy shift.

It's safe to assume that if someone comes up the road looking for a job, they have been here for at least a month.  They've realized that working on the beach as part of a revolving door of idiots will lead to an early grave, but they don't feel like going home yet.

So why -- WHY -- do some insist on not wearing shoes?  I get it.  You're in Sihanoukville.  you would wear Daisy Dukes and/or an ill-fitted tank top if the POTUS came to dinner.  But, if you hike up the road from whatever cesspool on the beach and fail to stop in a shoe shop, then I question your sensibilities.  Why should you be trusted with a cash register and an unsupervised, limitless supply of booze?

Of course, I'm not saying shoes = responsible. I am, however, absolutely saying no shoes = irresponsible.

Perpetuating White Beauty on Pinterest

Social media is tricky for international social businesses.  The coordinator precariously straddles a line between depicting their clients with beauty and dignity, and appealing to their customer.  When you are working in the West, you're trying to appeal to the people who will most likely spend money on your product.  Without mincing my words, they're appealing to White people.

Pinterest is the fastest growing social media site.  If you're unfamiliar with it, it's an online image congregate where you sift through products and save them onto different "boards." I've been an avid user since their invite-only launch in 2010.  I'm shamelessly into consumerism and find scrolling through their DIY and Women's Fashion categories cathartic.

The website has become vital in maintaining a business' online presence.  It drives the most ecommerce traffic to websites -- more than Facebook and Twitter combined -- because it's a way for customers to go window shopping at every store in the world simultaneously, and save everything they liked for later.  In fact, when it was just starting 4 years ago, I was being contracted to run a wedding stationer's Etsy account.  Within the first six months of it's debut, Pinterest was the shops second highest referral source after Etsy, itself.

For a business to run its Pinterest account successfully, it must do more than just post its products.  The business has to create online vision boards that are cohesive with their mission.  For example, a wedding stationer could create a board called "Vintage Country Rustic Wedding" and post dresses, venues, decorations, and anything else from other companies, along with their invitations, to cater to a popular theme.  It's a way to visualize a concept and sell a product in a specific context.

Social businesses in Fair Trade fashion use Pinterest to not only post their products, but to help perpetuate their humanitarian missions.  However, I stumbled upon a few organizations that inadvertently "othered" the people they aim to help.   What I mean by "othered" is "Us vs. Them."

"Us" as being the first world consumer and "Them" as the third world maker.  The example I have is from Live Worldly.  They wholesale items that are made by marginalized people in South America, Africa, and Asia.  But, here are screenshots of their Pinterest profile:

For priding themselves on being a business with an expansive worldview, their boards have the American ideal of what females should look like. These models look nothing like the women who actually make their products.  Where are the dark skinned women, the flat noses, and the voluptuous figures?  Why are some of the fashion pieces from companies that use sweatshops?  It's convoluted and, frankly, offensive.

In every Asian country I've been to, White is equated with beauty.  There are women who use painful bleaching creams because they think they're too dark.  Lighter skin is associated with wealthier classes because they are not doing physical labor in the sun all day.  Even my mother, who has always been a goddess to me, told me her dark skin was ugly and how lucky I am that my father "lightened me up."  Growing up in White Suburbia, I was well into my twenties before I recovered from the "light is better" mental conditioning.

Of course, like any social business, their is a fair labor board where we see the people who make their products.  Us vs. Them.

Conversely, Raven + Lily know their product, clients, and customers. Here are screenshots from their Pinterest Profile:

This is called "brand cohesion." There are women who represent multiple ethnicities.  The model in their 2014 lookbook proudly shows off her natural hair texture. They showcase clothing and jewelry that are culturally appropriate for their products and the products' makers. Granted, the models are still "model skinny" but I only fight one fashion battle per day.  Models are used as "placeholders" by designers.  They are meant to be unremarkable so women can imagine themselves wearing the clothing.  This is why the term "supermodel" exists -- being super in that industry is few and far between.

Part of a social business' responsibility is to use their public image to speak for those who can't speak for themselves.  They are meant to elevate their clients' standard of living by giving them access to the global marketplace.  This cannot be done if the only customers in that marketplace they are speaking to conform with what society tells us in beautiful.

A Love Story Between a Girl and Her Water Filter

The Super Tunsai is, hands down, the best purchase we've made for our home. It uses a clay pot to filter water until it's 99.9% pure.  It cost $28 from a local store called Electronic City.  We love it so much, I made Torie buy one when she got to Sihanoukville, and we gifted one to my mom so she could stop paying for water deliveries.

The most impressive aspect of the Super Tunsai is that it's made, start to finish, in Cambodia.  You can see a video (a poorly produced one, but a video nonetheless) of the Super Tunsai warehouse by clicking HERE.

I lived in Cambodia for a full year when Lee discovered the water filter.  About 9 months before, when I was working for Let Us Create, our little town was visited by the USNS Mercy, a massive, fully equipped naval hospital ship that runs humanitarian missions.

Part of their mission was bringing water filters to poor neighborhoods that may not have had access to clean water. I know three separate NGOs who were given these filters, and they were complete failures at every site for three reasons:

• They used several different types of gravel that couldn't be sourced in Cambodia.
• They required constant monitoring to make sure they didn't break.
• When a problem arose, we had to email the water engineers (who, by that time, were back home on the other side of the world), who could only troubleshoot using educated guesses.

With the amount of time we spent trying to figure them out, we could've just bought clean water for $1.25 and spent our working hours doing other things.

When Lee brought home our Super Tunsai, I had a "where have you been all my life" reaction.  All it needs is a good scrub once a month, and even our son drinks water from it.  It's paid for itself several times over.  In fact, Lee put two of them in one of his businesses.  Since the only overhead is it's initial cost (plus pennies for tap water), customers can refill their water bottles using the honor system and put 1000 riel ($.25) into a collection box for the Sihanoukville Tourism Association.  That money is then used to pay workers to clean the beach.  

The filters are an illustration of a problem with most international NGOs. It's the idea that "stuff" from the first world is better and more capable than "stuff" here. But, when money is invested in local resources, it's invested in the entire town.

Those Who Need

Charity work is a paradox in Cambodia.  Last year, I visited conCERT, an organization in Siem Reap that helps potential volunteers weed through the over 300 NGOs based in the city.  With a population of 896,309 people,  36% live in poverty, according to conCERT's website.  That's about 322,571 people, or 1,075 per NGO.  Of course, some NGOs, like Friends International will work with more, and others will work with just a handful.

Compare that to Sihanoukville with a population of  278,259 and no up-to-date data on how many people live in poverty.  The last I could find on it was from 1997 when there were half as many people and an illegible map of income per capita.

But here's some math: Sihanouk Province is 868 square kilometers, or 320.6 people per square kilometer.  Siem Reap, on the other hand, is 10,299 square kilometers, or 87 people per square kilometer. It's safe to assume that Sihanoukville has at least the same percentage of people in poverty, but probably more, since most workers here are migrants from the countryside working in the factories (which account for 655,000 jobs, nationally) or in unskilled labor like construction.  I've always said that Sihanoukville is like the Wild West of Cambodia.  It's a kingdom of its own, within the Kingdom of Wonder.

As far as I know, we can count the number of active, registered nonprofits in Sihanoukville on one hand.  In the last two years, I've always wondered why there's such a disparity in charitable work between the two provinces.  Here's my professional and scientific hypothesis: Siem Reap is a better place to live.

Numbers are moot.  You can just visit the two towns and see how different they are. The booming tourist economy that surrounds the Angkor Temples has turned Siem Reap, a small town, into the most cosmopolitan town in the country, after Phnom Penh.  When we were there last week, I saw the road to the airport had a bike lane.  A BIKE LANE.  There are also 5 star hotels that contribute to a hospitality industry rivaling any First World holiday town.  And don't forget the air-conditioned coffee shops.  Oh, the air-conditioned coffee shops!  Coffee shops as far as the eye can see!

Ask any random tourist what they think about Siem Reap.  When I was visiting with a friend at Under Construction in Siem Reap's Wat Bo area, I met a middle-aged woman from Washington.  She had only spent 3 days in Siem Reap, but had adamantly decided it was her favorite town in all of South East Asia.  And this is AFTER visiting Saigon and Hoi An.  She said the people are smiley and polite, there are lovely shops, and OH MY, the CULTURE!

I told her it's a good thing she didn't have time for Sihanoukville.  She would've left with a bad taste in her mouth.  In fact, a long-time Siem Reap ex-pat told me he was sad his ex-boyfriend wants to move back to Sihanoukville.  Because, and I quote, "He deserves better than that town."

Back to my original point, Siem Reap's 300 NGOs aren't necessarily placed where they're most needed. They're not "being the change" -- a phrase that if I see one more time on Facebook, I'll throw my computer against a wall.  They're following the change created by travel books, magazine articles, and TV shows that say everyone needs to see Angkor before they die.

Sihanoukville NEEDS change makers.  We don't have ancient ruins and our beaches aren't near as nice as Thailand's to attract tourists who demand the air-conditioned coffee shops.  But with the exception of a few extraordinary, patient people, charity workers who will commit a year or more of their life in the Wild Wild West are few and far between.

Sadly, with the discovery of oil near our shores, Sihnaoukville is on path to being a boomtown.  But, roughnecks on oil rigs aren't usually followed by bike lanes and 5 star hotels.  Instead, we'll get more human and drug trafficking, as well as corruption within our self-contained government. What do-gooder in their right mind would want to move here?