Home- Housing differs greatly from the thatched cottages-on-stilts of the rural regions to the cement-city that is Phnom Penh, as would be expected. Yet within our neighbourhood itself there is a staggering differentiation between how people live. The majority of people in Phnom Penh live in p'teah l'vangs, tall skinny 2-3 story buildings with up to 4 bedrooms (often housing a whole extended family). They only seem to come in one layout and are all identical on the inside (and the outside, save for the garish paint-colour schemes). Yet our neighbourhood, on the outer part of town in Sangkat Teuk Thla, has very few of these apartment-like houses. Instead, there is a strong contrast of very rich and very poor. Ben and I live in one of the 'rich' houses, a villa. Luckily, ours is the smallest around (also the brightest, being fluoro orange) and we only have half of it- another family will soon rent the rest- so we do not feel too bad. But some of these villas are full-on-mind-blowing mansions. They average at 3 stories high, must have around 10 rooms or more (too many for even a Khmer extended-extended family), spiraling staircases and massive glittering chandeliers positioned in giant windows for all the world to see. Most have giant tacky Romanesque columns (the more the merrier) that hold no structural value, and lavishly embellished front gates that make those of Buckingham Palace itself look cheap.
I have not seen homes like this even on the millionaire river-front back home in Perth. And then, right next door, will be an old, black-stained and falling apart building that has a deep dark corridor. And either side of that deep dark corridor is lined with single rooms where entire families live, often 10-12 families on one floor alone. Imagine a family of six all living in one small room? These little 'communes' are scattered all around our neighbourhood, and each one may have a sole water supply and bathroom area that each of the 10-12 families share. Because of the limited space inside the one-room homes, the families spend their evenings outside on plastic mats and little stools, using the street as an extension of their homes.
*I'm still figuring out how to get to grips with such a contrast. How can the rich be SO rich and happily build such disgustingly-excessive palaces next to their impoverished neighbours, without batting an eyelid? What do the poor think? Are they settled with the idea and content in Buddhism that this is just the way the world works, and perhaps they will have the mansion in their next life? Perhaps it is better this way, to have the rich and poor in the same vicinity so there is at least a forced acknowledgement of the economic differences, rather than segregation and ignorance?
Work- The Khmer idea of work is also very different to our own. Work in Cambodia is a necessity only, and that is very obvious from the faces of the hundreds of women we see trudging down the market street around 6pm every evening on their way back from the garment factories. Very few Khmers work in the area that they want to or enjoy, but work long hard hours for a small wage and in often very poor conditions, purely because that's the best they can get. Men typically have very hands-on jobs like the 'kamekorsomnog', who spend the day high on top of rickety bamboo scaffolding in construction, or in factories mass-producing plastic goods. Others are moto mechanics, own little restaurants or stores, or travel around selling shelfish or collecting recycling from little carts by the side of the road. Women have quite different jobs to the men. As mentioned, thousands of women across Cambodia work in the sweat-shop garment factories, sometimes sitting for 12 hours a day or more behind a sewing machine in a large warehouse on the outskirts of town.
Women also are the primary vendors in markets; selling clothes, shoes, dry goods, homewares and fruit, vegetables and meat. Many women in our neighbourhood are 'mei p'teah', or housewives, and by goodness does that word mean something here. They often have 4-5 children who are snotty and dirty from playing in the piles of sand or rubbish on the side of the road. The women are the first to wake up, they head to the market to buy the day's fresh food (there are no fridges so no food can be kept) and then spend the day preparing it with mortar and pestle until they have wonderful smelling concoctions of spices ready to cover their meager meals of dried fish and rice. Doing the washing alone is tough work- we currently do not have a washing machine so I am doing it all by hand Khmer style; squatting on a wet floor with a tub of cold soapy water and a brush, and that's it.
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(Please excuse these terrible photos, it was first thing in the morning). By the end, my hands are wrinkly and red from the scrubbing and the rinsing and the wringing. To do this daily for a family of 6 would take it out of me!
Play- While the Khmer's often work very hard during the day (apart from the hour or so midday when everyone seems to be awol- breaking for lunch or snoozing on the back of their tuk tuk), one thing they do very well is to NOT work when they are not at work. Work does not come home with them. It is very clear that one works when at work, and one plays when at home (well, apart from the women who do their never ending work at home). The Khmer love their games, and especially around Chinese New Year; their gambling! There is a family (or three, it's hard to tell) who live down the road who are always -every evening after dark- playing cards and having a hoot. It makes me nervous to see them throw down the thousands of riel, knowing that the 25 cent notes still mean a decent amount to them, but if it is amongst their friends and helps them get through it all then why not. They certainly have fun doing it. Another past time is volleyball. There is a court- well, it's a large patch of dirt that has two old broken nets strung haphazardly across it- just around the corner from us, and every evening from around 4.30-7pm there are games on!
The young men hoist up their pants and take off their shirts and really get into the volleyball. It may even be a different game as they seem to use their feet and heads and any body part they can to hit the ball over the net. The whole neighbourhood comes out to watch. Other popular after-work past times include playing football in the street, snooker at some dark shed full of pool tables, plenty of beer and few women, and 'tv houses'. From what i've seen, these are primarily used in both the mornings and evenings. They are essentially open sheds with a big tv and lots of rows of chairs, and as many folks around here do not own a telly, they come to these quaint cinemas to watch their Khmer soaps (or horror films) and enjoy an well-earned ice coffee.
