Civility

10 May 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Oggi sono rimasto senza parole a pranzo. Ero la Ministero degli Affari Esteri per un meeting con la perosona che segue i progetti di Werde. Mi ha invitato a pranzo alla mensa del Ministero. Un altro collega viene con noi. Una bella mensa, self-service, funzionale, pulita. Ci sediamo. Parliamo di sviluppo, progetti, Cambogia. Dopo qualche minuto, mi accorgo che Erkki Tuomoja, Ministro degli Affari Esteri, si avvicina vassoio in mano, la tavolo del pane e si prende un paio di fette di pane nero. Si siede ad un tavolo qualunque e scambia qualche parola con un commensale. Termina il suo pranzo e porta il vassoio al nastro che serve per trasportare le stoviglie usate in cucina. E se ne va. Io guardo i miei commensali: tutto normale. Normale? Da noi sarebbe possibile?

Altra sopresa questa sera a casa. Accendo la televisione. Danno un servizio nel quale una telecamera ed una giornalista seguono la giornata di lavoro del Primo Ministro. Ha un auto blu e autista, ma noente altro: niente codazzo kilometrico di auto la seguito. Il servizio segue una serie di appuntamenti, meeting, fino a quando alle 17:40 il Primo Ministro va a casa. Una volta arrivato, scende, entra in casa: Esce con abiti sportivi e va con suo figlio al supermercato a fare la spesa! Esce con due sporte in mano e parte con la sua auto per tornare a casa. Adesso, é vero che era un documentario, nal quale ha magari voluto fare vedere che si in casa aiuto, ma dopo il pranzo la ministero penso cha a fare la spesa ci vada davvero. Magari non tutti i giorni, ma abbastanza spesso.

Io mi chiedo:perché da noi questo senso civico (civility), di semplicitá legata al proprio dovere e alla propria funzione sono cosí diversi? Magari qui non sanno che cosa é il prosciutto, magari mangiano male, ma forse hanno altre lezioni piú importanti da dare.

Ciao

Sunny days

25 April 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

We came back from Italy. Just one week outside Finland. We came back and the snow was gone. Roads are now clean. The park nearby our falt is now cleared and soon it will become green again. Olga can play in the sand and run. She has to wear less clothes and this makes things easier for her. I like this time of the year in this country. Everything is like weaking up after a long sleep. We meet young parents in the yard playing with their kids and it is easy to talk with them. The sun sets already at around 10 in the night. It is possible to go for a run in the forest after dinner when Olga is asleep. I will go also tonight and explore the longer path that is without snow. I will let you now later on.

civility and a stapler

8 April 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

I told already about the reserved character of the Finnish people and my impressions after jumping from Asia and being back here. But what about civility? Here I believe this country can give lessons to many others. Here’s a small example. Every morning I go to the University to work on my dissertation. I arrive at the main entrance. Lock my bicycle. Enter the main lobby. Get to the right to take the stairs to the lower floor. Next to these stairs there are several PCs used by students to check emails, few photocopy machines and a round black table with a stapler. A simple office stapler, on the table for the students to staple photocopies or PC print outs. The weirs thing to me is that the staple is there and is not attached to a chain or a lock or anything to prevent it to be stolen. It is just there, on the table. In the lobby where hundreds of students walk in and out every day. I cannot prove it, but I believe that the same stapler would not last more than five or ten minutes is this would be an Italian University. This is just a small example, but I thinks it tells a lot about the sense of civility that Finnish people feel and have. A sense of civility and also of responsibility that makes the stapler to stay there where it is, up to the efficiency in public offices and of the national administration. Some may say this is a small country with few people. But I think there is more than that and more importantly there is a lot to learn.

Have a chat!

6 April 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

So what to say? It now three months we are back in Finland after so many years in Cambodia and the real impact of change starts to become more vivid just now. One main difference which is very easy to spot is the silence in public places, the soft noise in the streets where cars run modern engines that are almost noiseless. Then there is the silent and reserved character of the people. This is not so easy to take after years in a country where all these noises create a daily background that is part of life. Here (meaning Europe) is different and people keep things more to themselves. That is why it is not so easy to start a conversation with a stranger or also assist to conversation between people who speak the same language. This is the also enhanced by the fact that, for example, in the train many people now listen to mp3s that cut them out from the surroundings.
Three daisy ago I went to the laundry room of our blockhouse. It was 8 o’clock and met there a guy from Tanzania who was doing the morning cleaning. “Good morning”. “How are you?”. “Where are you from?” ” How long have you been here?” The usual questions with the usual answers about the long winter and the cold. The usual chat between foreigners. And being foreigners makes us foreigners all equal over here and therefore easy to start a small conversation. It helps to break the ice.
I left the laundry and on the way up to our flat I though about my conversation. It was good and reminded me of how easy was to talk with foreigner strangers in Cambodia. Over there the usual topic where the heat, development projects, Cambodian people. Easy because we were all in the same boat. Here the same. We foreigners in this country are all in the same boat. But at the same time I felt that there was something more.
Maybe it is me who does not make enough effort. Maybe it is me who should not assume that a Finnish person does not want to talk to a stranger. It is probably me who has to change a bit the attitude and see what happens.

Answers to three French students

27 January 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Julie, Marie and Victor are three students at ISA in Lille who joined the intercultural week about living and working abroad conducted by David Hoffman of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). They have posed me few questions about living abroad that I am happy to answer through my Ubatuba blog.

With my wife Katja and our daughter Olga we have just moved back to Finland after spending 4 years in Cambodia working in development and cooperation projects. We are just in the middle of the process of adjusting to Europe, its climate, the people and the rules, while a part of us is still in South East Asia still waiting to leave.

Here are the questions.

How close was reality to your expectations about living and working abroad?

Cambodia was not new to me as I did spent a period of 5 months in the capital Phnom Penh in 1998 working as a volunteer for local Non-governmental Organisations (NGO). More new to me has been the experience of living in a small provincial town, Kampong Thom, in the middle of the country. There are only 15.000 inhabitants and the whole province is pretty rural with its economy based on subsistence agriculture. One is never prepared enough to see poverty and directly observe the extent of the struggle that some people face every day to survive, the lack of health care service, the lack of safe drinking water, and so on. I think that even though one can expect these things, it is not possible to picture them as the reality we have seen in some villages. But ultimately this is the work I want to do and I like to experience extended periods of life abroad with its positive as well as negative side.

One more important issues being a couple who decide to work and live abroad in a small place as we were is the importance for both the partners to have a fulfilling and challenging job. Even though I had the working contract while moving to Kampong Thom, Katja soon got in touch with local NGOs did some volunteering work and after one year was also contracted by DED (German Development Service) to advise and expand the environmental projects of Mlup Baitong, a local NGO with office in Kampong Thom

What is the most important thing you have learned from your experiences? What do these experiences bring to you? Was it worth it?

The decision to go to Cambodia was definitely positive and worth it under various point of views. Professionally it gave me the rare opportunity to work at the grassroots level on issues related to participatory local governance and involvement of villagers in decision making project and development activities that could improve their life. I had the privilege to learn a lot about the role of traditional institutions such as pagodas in community development and see the value of traditional social capital as a means towards the end of improving people’s livelihood. Staying for a longer period has also given me the chance to learn a bit the language and establish good working relationships with Khmer colleagues: This allowed to build to some extent trust between me and them and I learned their personal stories about the terrifying years of the civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime. With a short term assignment in the country this is normally very difficult. It is difficult form me to differentiate between professional and personal point of view as the two things are linked. Development and change is what I am interested and what I want to do and research. From a personal point of view I have had two very strong moment that have shaped in my mind and feeling Cambodia: the birth of our daughter and the death of my younger brother. These two extreme of life have showed the essence of life itself and in a way it has been positive for me to be in Cambodia where basic needs are the every day reality in order to cope with them and grow out of them.

Do you still feel Italian?

My background is of two nationalities as my mother is German and my father was Italian. I have been used to travel between these two countries since I was very young. Though I feel for a great part Italian as that is the place I grew up and I my roots are, I never felt totally Italian. This has not change and I believe it will not change in the future as well.

Or for both of you, do you think you have more than one identity or possibly multiple identities?

I try to keep one identity. I come from Cremona, Italy. That the place I grew up and where the family is. I have been living abroad since 1996 and stayed for shorter and long period in Scotland, Spain, Finland, Nepal, and Cambodia. But I still feel the one I was, though maybe my world view may have benefited from these experiences and to would be difficult for me to go back.

What has been the most interesting challenge when you were abroad? (Family, friends, way of life, integration…)

I think living is a small pace like Kampong Thom. Where besides the work, there is very little to do than going to the market or riding the bicycle along the rice fields in the later afternoon when the temperature drops a bit. During our first months there in 2001 I remember that we used to go for weekends to Phnom Penh as both of us felt the need to see people and go out. But this urgent need reduced with time and later we liked more and more the idea of staying the weekends in Kampong Thom, trying to get back from meetings and work in Phnom Penh. This showed to me how I personally adapted to a new kind of life. The hot season from March to June was indeed very hard to stand. But Kampong Thom or Phnom Penh would not have made a big difference. Now being back in Europe, one thing that I miss or that has disappeared is the smile of the people.

What could be the reasons for you to stay in the same country for a longer time or even forever?

I can’t really think in terms of for ever. That seems to me too definitive and I still enjoy the idea of change, though it can lead to positive or negative experiences in coping with new environment. In the development and cooperation work 4 years are a good time in a project. This could be stretched up to, say, 6. But if one stays too long in a project he or she may loose objectivity and energy. Cynicisms can than break in and an experienced advisor working in Cambodia once said, Cynicism is a very contagious disease that must be avoided, maybe by changing country and project now and then.

Arnaldo

Tampere, 27. January 2006

Colombo rain

13 January 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

It is afternoon. Raining here in Colombo. We have packed our things and tonight will fly out. We will fly home. During this trip here in Sri Lanka I always knew that it is a one way trip and that it will end in Europe. BUt this feeling never got so real as now. To me it has been a journey in anothe rtropical country, and coming from Cambodia we would also go back there. Stay in the warm climat, feeling the moonson rain over the roof of the house as in this moment. The winter, the clear cut Europe have been far from me. But tomorrow we will be there. Another strange thing happened in this trip and is related to the realisation of how quickly Cambodia seemed far in the time although we have been out for just three weeks and I remember and my last presentation in Phnom Penh took place barely one month ago. However Cambodia, Kampong Thom, the projects in which we have put so much effort were quickly distant, faster than Europe getting closer. Maybe it is easier than I thought to say good bye to a place where we have lived for so many years and the excitment of starting something new has taken soon my thoughts.

Sri Lanka has been a good break, the right place think about Cambodia (I found myself comparing all the time this country with Cambodia) and start to figure out how to organise the life of this little family in Finland. As I wrote yesterday the part of the trip in the South made us see the effect of the tsunami of one year ago. The national road to Colombo as well as the main railway track follow the coast and it is possible to see the damages and to some extent the reconstruction effort. We could see that the houses built too close to the shore have been wiped out by the sea, we could see several temporary settlements made by wooden shacks that risk to become too much permanent, to of three tents, roads and brithadges that have been rebuilt, and twisted rail tracks and a damaged train that gave some idea of the power of the water. Tourist are getting back as well and in Mirissa where we have spent most of the time on the coast, sereval people came to our guesthouse while we have been staying longer. It is a beautifull small bay, with nice beach and great waves for surf. The water is clean and it is amazing to think that in front< of us there wa just ocean all the way down to the South Pole.

Colombo and the New Year

12 January 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

We are back in Colombo. The idea of this diary was to follow with short stories the various stages of our trip in Sri Lanka, but it did not work out very well. One reason is that during the Christmas and New Year we ahve been in very small places and tried aslo to choose guesthouses not directly in the town or village. Access to internet has therefore been reduced and so the possibility to update this diary with what we sawa nd what we did. Tomorrow night we will fly out to London and the Helsinki. We checked in the web and a temperature of 0 C if waiting for us. Not too bad I must say. Olga will see and experience the snow for the first time as well as the cold air entering her lungs and making the nose dry. We will see how she will take it.

We have had some cold weather in the mountains in Neuwara Elaya (1.800 m) and Haputale (1.000). We needed jackects and Olga put a wollen hat (pippo). We had great views during the train journey of the tea plantations that the British started in thsi country about 150 years ago and that still today represent a large share of the country exports to the world. The green hills and the white mist that covered them in the early morning will remain in our memories.

The trip down to the coast went well and smoothly, feeling the air getting warmer and warmer and the sun stronger and stronger. Familiar feelings for us. We reached the coast and this also meant to reach the effects of the Tsunami of last year (26.12.2004 9:20 am).

Mirissa

1 January 2006
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

So we are now in the South. In a small fishing village called Mirissa. The new year has come and we want to wish to all of you all the best. Electricity is now out and the PC will shut down in few minutes. I do not have the time to update you about the Christmas in the mountains, the train journey to Neuwara Elya and the great views from Haputale. I will do so in the next days.

Kandy

23 December 2005
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

Kandy. The name of this town in the hills of Sri Lanka reminds me of a young woman and in some way does not seem to fit with the country other towns name. We are at about 500 meters of altitude. The town is spread over several hills covered by jungle. The houses seem to dissapear under the thick layer of trees. In the middle of the town an artificial lake borders the Tooth Temple, one of the most important pilgrimage places of Buddhism. It is said that in side the golden shrine at the center of the temple is kept a tooth of Lord Buddha. People come from all over Asia to visit this temple and have a quick glance, as we did the at the other day, at the shrine which is shown for few minutes every evening at 6:45. Yesterday we had our tourist day: Royal Botanical Garden and elephant orphanage. At the Garden it seems that we either are in London during a very hot summer day or that the British have just left the place. The grass is green, perfectly cut, tree of all species grow high towards the sky. We found one that was planted by the latest Tzar of Russia in 1891. This reminded us of the quiet pace of time. An old man was our guide yesterday, Samuon. 65, he is the father of the lady running our guest house, he is a known naturalist here in Sri Lanka who has worked for the government for 40 years, training public servants working on environmental conservation. While driving one hour to the elephant orphanage, he had a lot to tell about the history of Kandy and the various countries that took control of the place: the Portuguese, the Dutch and last the British. But one story has caught my attention more than others. He belongs to a large family which along the years has spread in various countries: India, Britain, Australia, Italy. This year he felt the risk that the ties that kept the family together for long time would become thinner and thinner. So he decided to set up a Family Society, for the welfare of the family members. He is the elected president and will oversee that every family contribute about 500 Rupees (5$) each months to a fund that can be used by the one who get sick and needs treatment, the ones who gets too old and need home care, the ones who face some financial difficulties and are in need of a small loan. I found it a very nice idea. Sri Lanka as every other country is exposed to market economy that through competition can cut loose the links between extended families or make people concentrate on their business only. Solidarity is normally in danger in this game, but his Family Society will certainly strengthen the bounds between families and relatives. While listening to his story, I had to think to our countries where, despite treatment provided (almost) for free to all and functional public services, we are ending up being more and more alone while life is getting faster and faster. Sick people in the hospitals and elderly in home care houses or in their homes. I believe that there is always a trade off between solidarity, welfare and market. The difficulty is in finding the right balance.

Colombo

19 December 2005
by Arnaldo Pellini
Diary

So here we are. This is warm and humid Colombo. We thought to have left the moonson behind us in Cambodia, but here it is again. I am writing from the home of a friend, Denis, whom we know from Phnom Penh. He has recently moved here with his wife Olga to work on peacebulding issues a sector which is quite relevant in this country. Our Olga is sleeping upstairs. A long morning nap after the flight from Bangkok of yesterday night. We had a short walk this morning to see what is around this house and I had this nice feeling of deja vu. Reports about Colombo are usually not nice and tourist tend to spend here as little time as possible before heading to the coast or the hills. To me it seemed to be back in Kathmandu (without the views of the mountain of course). Old and noisy busses run in the streets, tuktuk (also called three-wheelers) approach the side of the road to ask your destination and are ready for the negotiation of the price. It is noisy and bustling here, but not so crowded and people have a gentle approach to us tourists.
This is the other nice feeling: the three of us are now tourists as most of the foreigners on this island in these Christmas and New Year holiday. We travel on local means of transport and started to read variuous guidebooks in order to decide without rush our itinerary for the next 28 days: Kandy, Ella, Galle, and other nice places.