Something Like a Phnom-enon

I keep thinking that I'm going to get into a banal enough routine in Phnom Penh where I'll stop having interesting things to blog about, but it seems like that may not be the case. Saturday night is a good example. It started off at dinner with Chris, Pete, Erica, and Chris' Cambodian friend Sreay Neng. We ate at a place called Freebirds which is essentially a TGI Fridays type place. I know I know, but I was craving a burger. Plus I think sometimes the most interesting way to see a city is to see their attempts at recreating other cultures/atmospheres/food. For example, I ordered a chicken burrito at one place out of morbid curiousity, and for the first few minutes I literally thought they had accidentally brought me lasagna.

After Freebirds we went down to a bar called Pontoon. This is a bar on a boat that is floating on the Mekong. As we sat there drinking, the stereo was playing the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. I can't say I ever expected to be sitting on the Mekong River drinking beer and listening to the Kingston Trio. Thank you, globalization.

Some of my friends had received a mass email from a few expats who were advertising this party far and wide to the Phnom Penh expat community. These guys had rented out a mansion in the city and hired a DJ. So we head over there and sure enough it's a massive mansion with expats all over the place and a DJ with a stage/lights/etc. spinning. There was a pool and massive containers of beer. There was also live music; a few Khmer hip hop groups got up and performed, as well as a Khmer pop singer. So we all drank too much and then ended up back at the Heart of Darkness for the end of the night.

It was extremely awesome to be at an expat mansion party in the middle of Asia, drinking Angkor beer and watching Cambodian rappers perform. It really is one of those stories that I get to tell for the rest of my life. Still, it kind of blows the whole "development internship" out of the water for me. Part of me feels like I should be in some backwoods village swatting mosquitoes and inoculating babies or something. But, realistically, experiences like this party may be more representative of the development community writ large than those of us who stay in the middle of nowhere living in huts.

The Washington Post recently ran this article about the swank aid environment in Liberia. I have mixed opinions about the juxtaposition of Western luxury and poverty. On the one hand I think any money that comes into a developing country, even if it's to allow expats to buy sushi and U.S. beers, is good for the economy. And I can certainly empathize with having comforts from home, and I think these things in many ways can help us to adjust to foreign settings and relieve stress so that we're better able to do our job and make a difference in people's lives. But I think there's a line, and it's often the bottom line of development. That's why you're here, and everything you do should answer to it. You aren't here for affordable housing, cheap maids, or to introduce the mojito to Djibouti. You're here to reduce poverty, and those luxuries should be peripheral. Once an expat community becomes a social class within the country's society, you've stepped over the line. I imagine that's easy to do, and I also imagine it's one of the big reasons towns like Monrovia and Phnom Penh can be so saturated with NGOs and still fail to make significant strides in development.

I'm not sure where that puts me. I came over here because Cambodia has serious development needs, and I want to be a part of the solution. Still, I have cable and air conditioning. I work in an office with an internet connection, and Saturday night I drank and danced at a mansion with a bunch of white people, all the while aware that in other parts of the country there are people who can't even afford to educate their children or provide them clean water. The sad truth is you can always do more, but everyone has a limit. I guess the best thing to do is to push yourself to your personal limit, then do everything you can to make sure that your actions on that edge are true to your mission. I'm still searching for my edge, but I'm happy to see it probably reaches further than a Cambodian mansion party. Still, I have to get some Cambodian rap before I leave Asia.