I am sitting in one of the most beautiful flats I have ever been. I look out of the window behind this laptop screen: the cool wind of this ‘blueskysunnydaywinds’, the branches of a small tree moving softly, the green field where hay is waiting to be cut and stored for the winter time, the large trees of the forest one km from here (much larger pine trees than in Finland), the valley of Lausanne and far away, almost as giving the last brush of color to this painting, the lake of Geneva.
The flat is derived in an old restored farm house. Has wooden floor and ceiling, space, light, and a nice home atmosphere. This is a home. Our friends Britta and Iker have made it their home. In a way I feel it a bit like my home. It is because of the place, the colors, the time, mood and the my and ours memories on the walls. Britta (I think) has put many pictures on the wall of the friends yearly gatherings we used to have until some years ago before Katja and I started to live in Asia. They then became more sporadic. I walked around the flat, looked at the picture on the kitchen wall: the new year we spent in the Finnish mökki, the summer we met near Tampere, their visit to Cambodia. In the living room great pictures of mountaineering excursion which B&I are very fond of. Then pictures of their son Emil. Another where Olga and Venla are also in. Pictures before and after having children. The life then and today seem to linked to each other. A natural and logical sequence of life events and moments that bring the past into the present and do not make the past to distant.
I am reading this book of Ryszard Kapuscinski, Travel with Erodotus. At one point noting how Erodotus in his journeys had to rely so much on his memory to write his travel stories, Kapuscinski realized that memories bring the past into the present and make it real once again. Whether this is transferred also to the reader and how it is another matter. Surfing the pictures on these walls I have in away travelled in time. Been back into the Finnish winter of some years ago, the early afternoon sunsets, the clear air, the warm under the jumper and cross-country ski jacket and the ice cold cheeks, the warm dining room of the cottage, the sauna, the laughing and talking.
And not only memories of us friends together, but also memories of living in Finland, of Olga touching for the first time the snow, the first time we slid down the hill on a sledge, and so on.
We all live in different countries, have our lives and live our days in our own way. But it is really a kind of magic moment meeting again after many months if not years and on the basis of those common memories talk together about our present lives, our doubts, our dreams, our plans and our children. I am really glad I came here.
Ming Yort Norng
We enter the pagoda compound with the car and stop in front of the sala (or dining hall). It is typical Khmer wooden building on stilts. I step out of the car and see Madame Yort Norng standing at the entrance of the sala at the top of the short but steep stairs that lead to the entrance. She see me great me with the typical smile that can be found only in the rural areas of Cambodia. I also call her name: ‘Yort Norng, sok sabbai’ She comes down the stairs and despite her sixty years of age and the problem in her right leg, she almost run to me. She takes my hand with both her hands and I can feel the hard skin typical of people use to farm and manual work.
We last saw in 2005, just before leaving from Kampong Thom. I used to work a lot in this district of the province. Many meetings in pagodas with members of cash and rice association trying to help improving the management of their association and the links with Commune Councils. I remember the first time I saw her in the meeting of the pagoda committee in Stoung. She did not speak much. She seemed to me shyer than the other six committee members. However with time things got better. My Khmer improved and I was able to have small talks. She became more self confident. After some time I learned that she was a widow. Working as farmer. Being the village chief in Preah Damrei, and leader of a cash and a rice association comprising a total of fifty families. I visited her in her simple house. I remember one of the walls of the stilt house being of palm leaves, while the other three in wood. I notices how well kept was the house. I remember visiting her in the district hospital in Stoung when she was attending to her son who had fallen from a tree and had broken the two wrists. . She stayed at the hospital for about a week since the relatives are the one who have to prepare the food for the patient. Her son had had an operation. I remember the bandages around the wrists that had not been changed for days. The bed without mattress and a chicken emerging from under the bed at some point. Yort Norng was there and took care of him.
She has now been elected in the Commune Council. She is still very active with the pagoda associations and has established one saving group for the poor of the village. She is really bringing something new to the Commune and for Cambodia: the awareness of the vital importance for a greater link between civil society and local government.
At the end of the meeting I tell my Khmer colleagues from Phnom Penh that Yort Norng was once received by the King Norodom Sihanouk together with the other six pagoda association members to receive 5000 USD as his personal contribution to the work of the associations in Stoung. The young colleagues are very impressed and ask more about it.
We leave. It was short meeting but with warm memories and feelings. She thanks for all I did in the past in this district. I tell her that all I know about rural Cambodia and its social capital I owe it to her and the other pagoda association members. She smiles and takes again my hands: ‘Arnaldo, sok sabbai’.
The little child in Pursat
In never left a meeting with villagers with tears in my eyes. But today it happened. I am in the province of Pursat, on the west side of the Tonle Sap lake. In the afternoon I went with two other members of the team to a pagoda at 30 km from the national road to Phnom Penh. We thought he meeting was for ten to twelve people. We arrived in the pagoda ten minutes early. We entered the sala, the wooden meeting room built on stills typical of Cambodian pagodas. The statue of a sitting Buddha at the end of the room decorated with plastic flowers, candles, and incense sticks brought by devotees. The colorful pieces of fabric decorating the ceiling along metal lines. Suddenly a young monk start to bang the big drum which is normally used to call for emergencies or important meetings. After 15 minutes we had 60 villages: men, women, elderly people, children, babies. We are the foreigners who cam with the four wheel drive car from Phnom Penh. A group of young men dressed only with a kromah around their waists arrives first. They sit on the floor looking at us. Then they stand us and get from a nearby room some straw mats on which to make me sit, as we are the guests. More people arrive. The translator sits next to me, but it is clear that given the number of people coming he will need to be a facilitator. But I know he can do that.
More people arrive. They are all very poor. The pagoda is very poor as well. No large bodhi trees, no shaded places, just few simple wooden house as accommodations for the monks, the very simple main temple and the sala where we sit. The fields around the pagoda compound are all dry and duty.
Sixty people staring at am. Waiting of the questions. I look at my paper sheet to the first question, a question now I do not want to ask anymore: what the main problem in your village? A question which seems utterly inadequate. It is so evident that they all need basics such as water, food, opportunities. They need to improve their livelihood.
The meeting is starting in one minutes and I notice a small child a couple of meters on my side, sitting on the floor in front of the first raw of people. He is naked. After a couple of seconds I realise that he does not have the two harms. I need to start to talk, but my eyes are getting wet.
I start. I speak. The translator has not noticed the child yet. I cannot avoid to look at the tiny child who must be two or three years old, sitting there naked. Without harms. On of the young men dressed just with the kromah who arrived earlier on, takes him on the lap. He must be the father. I look at the one hundred and twenty eyes looking at me while asking my questions and waiting for the translation. God, these people are poor.
The meeting is not long, just twenty minutes. A thunder and black clouds announce the rain. I want people to get home before the rain starts. The meeting is over. Clapping of hands.
I need to go and give a caress to the child. Some candies appear to be distributed to the people. The little child gets one of those jelly sweets. He tries to open it with his feet, but can’t. I open the cover for him. People gather around us. He tries to squeeze the plastic cone with his feet. I try to help him by bringing the jelly sweet to his mouth. The people around us say that he can do it himself. But it is too hard. So I help him again. He first tastes it to see if it is good. He has a running nose and dark eyes. They tell me his name is Diph or something like that. He is two years old. He still tries to eat with the feel to his mouth. I help him to finish. Give him a caress and stand up to leave. The father looks at me and in that Khmer way with hands in front of his chest moved up and down asks me to help him and then point at his son.
They all need help. Some more than other. They did not participate in the decision of being part of this project. But the simple fact of coming here and ask questions rises expectation that we would help with their most basic and urgent needs. We are here to ask them if they participate in local governance while what they are asking are wells and food. What expectations do we rise what hope do we carry with us? Are we aware of the disillusionment we can cause by not addressing their most urgent needs and demands? We did not speak a word for the first twenty minutes on the car back to Pursat.
One often reads that blogs are for the most part just personal diaries that do not carry any relevant message. Well, I wanted to tell about that little child. And hope somebody will read and think about him.
Battambang – Cambodia
Battambang province. North West Cambodia. I am near the border of Thailand, in the commune of Samlot. The meeting just started. A young man who is 22 years old and three young women in their twenties joined the meeting. We are under a wodden house built on stilts. It hot. We are sitting on one of those large wodden beds that almost every Cambodia house has. Around us, bushes, no fields, the forest that is long gone and in the distance the mountains that separate Cambodia from Thailand. Just a border line and probably a twenty years development jump from here.
These young man and women are shy. They do not know what to aswer to our questions. They do not try. I try the few words of Khmer I know to reduce the barrier and it helps. We ask about their work as community representatives who go and meet their elected Commune councillors. They are shy and smile. I start to ask about the main problems of the village, even though I just need to look around me and I cans see many of them. I yoiung girl, maybe three yeasr old dressed with a very old cotton pijama joined the conversation and is looking at me without smiling. I think at the time when we were living in Kampong Thom and we had Olga who was one year old. She had a coupel of time high flue and we travelled to Phnom Penh to brign her to the private medical practice becasue in Kampong Thom there was no real doctor. What do parnets do here wehen they kids get hill? We are in the middle of nowhere. 3 hours on a jeep on a very bumpy road to Battambang and 5 more to Phnom Penh. How do they do when they children get sick? There are health centres but they not always open. And even when they are open there is almost no medicines. I want to stop to ask my questions since I feel I am stealing their time, while they should be heliping at home with work to support their families. We make the meeting short. Walk out in the heat of the late morning and get in the car. My day goes on. Their day as well.I just had a glimpse of it.
John Fowles – The Magus
‘Nella vita di ognuno giunge un momento che è come il fulcro. In quel momento bisogna accettare se stessi. Non è più quello che si diventerà. È quello che si è e sempre si sarà.’
‘There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.’
Co Anh
Co Anh (teacher Anh) is my Vietnamese language teacher. She is a very patient lady. She usually comes to my office. Twice a week for an hour. I have made good progresses under her supervision, though I do not put enough time and effort in my homeworks. But, as I said, she is patient and every time we have a lesson she does not ask me whether I did my homeworks or not. As I said so far she has come to my office, but today I went to her house. And what a nice surprise it has been for me. She lives in an old 1900 villa, in Cao Ba Quat here in Ha Noi. It is small street, with trees with lots of small shops . The house villa is built in French style. Yellow color. A small metal gate to enter. Few steps up to the front door. The villa shoes its age, but has a strong carachter. It is like it tels about the events that have occurred in this country since it was built. I entered the house and took the wooden stairs tot he first floor. Co Anh, opened a door and I entered a large room. Before stepping in, I realised that the other two rooms of the floor are occupied by a beauty salon. Many doctor practice bed one next to the other, with beauty customer lying under wet towels and red heat lamps. Some having strange colored facial on their faces and closed relaxed eyes. At first I though it was medical practice.
I entered the large room where Co Anh gives lessons to her foreign students. Large bright windows, with traditional green painted wooden shutters. A dark wood dining table inth emiddle with six chairs around it. On top of it a small tea pot with six glasses. A high double bed touched on of the walls. A dark wood cupboard. A modern TV that seems at odds with the old furnitures. A small light green old fridge and, on top of it kettle to boil water for the tea. A whiteboard is behind the chair where Co Anh sits and has some Vietnamese words that I do not understand on it form an earlier lesson. The chair where Co Anh sits is art nouveau style with small wells under the four legs to allow her to stand up easily to write on the whiteboard.
The lesson starts. We revise last week words: my family, children, wife, husband, street. She repeat for the n-time the simple conversation we have had for several weeks. I talk. She corrects my tones and pronunciation: I repeat. She says,”now it is ok”. But my mind is not here. Now. On my Vietnamese lesson. It is traveling through memories of similar houses in Italy that I saw when I was a kid. My grandfather house had similar high ceiling rooms. Similar okra tiles and geometrical patterns on the floor. The same dark wood furnitures. The same black and white framed picture on top of the old cupboard. Even the table I am sitting is solid as the one he used to have in his house and which I always found too high to sit comfortable. I imagine the shutters half closed of an early sunny afternoon. I am lying in the too high bed and see the lines of the shadow from the shutters mirrored on half dark ceiling. I am supposed to have a nap but I cannot sleep. I smell the fresh linen, the cool air in the room, the silence in the house. Now and then a car passes in the street. But it is summer and streets are very empty at this time of the day. A sun ray enters all of sudden through a small whole in the shutter. It is over my bed and I can see floating dust particles. Silence. I close my eyes and images fade. The sun ray fades more slowly in the dark of the closed eyes. I sleep.
I hear Co Anh voice. She calls me back. I do not pay enough attention and mixed ‘young daughter’ for ‘old daughter’.
I am happy I came here today for my lesson. I will come back again next week.
Werde projects in Cambodia 2007 – Green Garden project
Werde ry is working together with the local NGO Mlup Baitong since 2003. The Green Garden project is implemented in the province of Kampong Thom to improve the livelihood and living environments through home gardening activities.
The project reaches 2073 people in 19 villages. Experienced key farmers trained by a previous project by Werde, are now teaching other farmers about home gardening techniques. After two years of the project implementation many farmers have increased the income from the sale in local markets of fruits and vegetables
cultivated in their own gardens.
The project will continue until the end of 2008 and we already planning a further extension for three more years given the positive results reached so far. You can download the information leaflet by clicking HERE
CONTINUE SUPPORTING WERDE BY DONATING NOW!
Werde projects in Cambodia 2007 – Civil Society and Local Governance
Dear all, we are close to the end of the year and the fourth year of work for Werde ry in the province of Kampong Thom (Cambodia). In these years we have been implementing two projects in cooperation with Cambodian NGOs. The Civil Society and Local Governance project is implemented with four NGOs partners and has developed a model to organise the participation of citizens with Commune Councils. This is the final year of the projects and have reached 96 villages and 480 representatives of village groups such as: self-help association, cash association, rice association, etc. These representative have been linked through what we have called Village Networks and have received trainings on the role and functions of Commune Councils, the importance of support provided by civil society and citizen for the work of the Communes, and the involvement in local development planning with the Commune. The overall aim is to strengthen participation and therefor increase Communes (who are elected bodies) accountability and transparency towards their constituency.
We have produced an information leaflet for 2007 that you can download by clicking HERE
YOU CAN HELP US BY DONATING NOW
Sixth sense
Karissimi,
Ipotesi: dicono che il sesto senso un ce l’ha oppure non ce l’ha. Dato che non esiste una teoria scientifica che mi possa aiutare a provare l’ ipotesi di inizio frase. Questa sera alle ore 17:45 ora di Ha Noi ero nel mio ufficio a fare dello straordinario. Leggevo degli appunti che mi ero scritto per prepararmi ad un importante appuntamento telefonico per le ore 19:00 (ora locale), un colloquio di lavoro con Londra. Ero in fase di concentrazione, e scorrevo gli appunti scritti qualche giorno prima. Li scorreovo, ripassavo, mi preparavo alle domande che sarebbero venute di li a poco quando …. suona il telefono, un numero sul display che non riconosco, una voce lontana: “Skoppiato? Sei un Skoppiato! Ti skoppia la faccia! Sei in elicottero? Basmati, non ce la fai piu’!”… inutile dire chi era al telefono.
Per fortuna la comunicazione si e’ interrotta dopo un paio di minuti, nei quali non ho neppure tentato di intavolare una c onversazione dato che il fiume di parole dall’Italia me lo impediva.
Sono allora tornato ai miei appunti, cercando di riprendere la concentrazione che cercavo qualche minuto prima … ma la mia mente era altrove. A quest’estate. Agosto. Piu’ precisamente il 10. Agosto. Ore 11:42 ora di Tampere (Finlandia), mi trovo in una piccola aula dell’ Universita’, con me il supervisor della mia tesi di dottorato Prof. Tuomas Takala e il mio opponent Prof. Holger Daun. Siamo a 12 minuti dall’ inizio della difesa di dottorato. Nell’aula c’e’ silenzio. Poche parole di circostanza. La tensione sale. Il Prof. Daun ripensa alle domande e al suo discorso introduttivo. Il mio supervisor ripensa alla formula in latino di inizio. Io ripenso al mio discorso, alle domande che mi verranno fatte, al percorso per arrivare fino a qui. Il telefono e’ in tasca, funzione meeting. Lo prendo per spegnerlo, quando il display si illumina: ” nome xxx” calling! …. guardo il display la concentrazione se ne va. O meglio, sento senza rispondere una voce: “Skoppiato! Non ci stai piu’ dentro! Non ce la fai! Adesso che sei in Finlandia mangi renna o continui con il basmati!.
Non ce l’ho fatta a rispondere in quel momento. Ho respinto la chiamata al mittente e ho spento il telefono. Un respiro e via verso l’ aula della difesa.
Questa sera mi sono chiesto come e’ possibile? Come e’ possibile che le uniche due chiamate da nome XXX negli ultimi 5 mesi siano pervenute a pochi minuti da momenti topici e chiave. Forse il sesto senso esiste davvero e non e’ una questione di coincidenze. Come dice chi e’ nella ricerca, piu’ coincidenze fanno una ipotesi, che poi puo’ divenire una teoria.
Resto quindi in attesa di altre chiamate inmomenti chiave e posso gia’ dire che cosa sentiro’: “Basmati? Come va li’ nel Vietnam? Da che Ambasciatore sei stasera? Sei nella jeep pagata dai contribuenti? Sei nel workshop?”…. forse il sesto senso e’ venuto anche a me. Voi che ne dite?
Un saluto e buone feste,
Pello
Mi fido di te
I listen in my earphones this Italian song. Outside the windows the roofs of Hanoi. Ten of thousands of houses and homes with their daily lives, their happiness and their sadnesses. Lorenzo, in the meantime he is singing his ‘Mi fido di te’, and yet yesterday his life changed and is now missing, all of a sudden, such a big part of it. Yet his song tells a story of some years ago and I wonder what was in his mind and his life at that time when he sat down to write those words. When he was in the recording studio checking this songs, making changes, trying different melodies. That unexpected and unphantomable element of life called future was already there, though unknown to him. A point it time that you get slowly closer to. Like a station that is far and that will take time for the train to reach but that ultimately will not be missed. Lorenzo, thsi song is for you!