Its Friday 26 August 2011 and I am now back in the UK. After an epic journey of 32 hours--(over 10
hours of which were layovers) it was amazing to wake up this morning to fresh
country Gloucestershire air and Jon's lovely parents. It was very sad to get in the tuk tuk to the
airport on Wednesday night, so thank you to Joe and Meander for making sure that I got there in the end.
So, now is the time to try and share with you the last bit
of my Cambodian experience. It’s strange
that the summer is already over, and it feels as though it weren't that long
ago that I was writing the first entry.
I think it is impossible to share fully with all of you just what the 3
month adventure was like, but I look forward to catching up with all of you
over a nice glass of wine in the very near future.
I spent my last 3 weeks cracking on with work. The NGO I worked for presented at an NGO conference
on reintegration programs for victims of human trafficking a few weeks
ago. This was really the first time that
I got to see all of the NGOs in Phnom Penh who work in the same area in the
same room. The strangest part of the
conference was leaving with a feeling that many of the NGOs were all in
competition with each other, instead of keen to build on each other's strengths
and weaknesses. Governmental officials
also opened and closed the ceremony, and this, perhaps was the biggest shock of
all. I left with the impression that the
speaker’s had very little understanding of what NGOs in this field actually do
and that the problem is too big to actually be able to tackle. You can imagine the shock. Either way, it was an enlightening
experience. The aims of the conference
were not terribly well understood on the whole, (there were, however, some
wonderful presentations) and I believe a lot of this had to do with this sense
of competition (over funding and/or status I imagine).
After the conference, I received approval to begin my
research and interviews with some of the girls at the shelter, on top of
finalising all of the bits and pieces that I worked on over the last few months,
of course. After jumping through a few
hoops, my lovely friend, colleague and excellent translator, Saran, helped me
conduct 21 interviews with our girls.
This was perhaps the hardest part of the trip, as I was given access to
their case files and learnt about the horrible things that happened to them,
but on the other hand, the findings of the interviews were very useful. It
was a rather emotional experience, but it put a lot of things in
perspective. These girls are the most
grateful people I’ve ever met. They are grateful
for everything, and do not complain.
When I look at myself and children in the UK and USA, it is incredible
how selfish we can all be. All for the
sake of having been privileged enough to have born into a developed country
which offers so many opportunities, many of us lose sight of what we have. Instead, we tend to keep asking for more, and
can easily forget just how lucky we have all been. This was never more evident than in the
recent, deeply embarrassing, London riots.
Perhaps the most depressing thing about the situation of
these girls is that their opportunities are halted by a deeply embedded culture
which represses women. I believe I have
already written about the Chbab Srey, the Code of Conduct for Women, which more
or less states that no matter what the man/husband does, the woman must support
him. Even if the man beats her, rapes
her, cheats on her, she must always support him. Additionally, once an unmarried woman has
lost her virginity, she is considered of no further use to society and is
heavily stigmatised. This usually leads
to further vulnerability, which easily leads to further sexual abuse. Of
course not all men/people in Cambodia adhere to these guidelines, but life in
rural villages is very different and there is definitely a general sense that
this is the accepted attitude. The
girls, and even the young ones, are very aware of this and tend to feel very
hopeless regarding prospects of one day returning to their homes. A few have decided that the best thing to do
is to try to make it on their own in Phnom Penh through school and finding a
good job.
Instead of becoming horribly upset, it was a good experience
to become more determined to do something to try and change the future
situation for these girls. I cannot do
much from London of course, as the really amazing people are working every day
in Cambodia with these girls and women, but I think that I have a good bit of
research to try to put together something that may help in the future. I hope
that the readers of this blog will also become more active in actively fighting
against human trafficking, exploitation and abuse. These are not problems unique to Cambodia,
but occur all across the world (and especially in Europe and the USA).
I would like to end this journal with a big thank you to all
of the people who supported me on this journey, to friends, family, and my
lovely boyfriend, and especially to all
of the incredible people that I met in Cambodia. I feel very lucky to have such wonderful
people in my life, and I truly cannot thank you enough. To my lovely friends in Cambodia, I will
never forget you and I sincerely hope that it is not too long before we meet
again. You have all, collectively, made
this the most incredible experience of my life.
For that, I am eternally grateful.
This will be the final entry of this blog-- but stay tuned
in for next time, as I'm sure that there will be many more adventures to
follow. And, as always, thank you for
reading.
Love,
Sabrina
