First, sincere apologies for the lack of photos in this post. Also, please comment with questions or other opinions (as I say at the end of this post).
Markets in Southeast Asia range from live fish flopping about after being severed alive (I really do wonder what Peter Singer would say to that sight), to piles of fruit I don't know the names of in English, to women screaming "buy something?!" about their kitsch and ubiquitous elephant emblazoned handbags (most of which I have been told are from Thailand or Vietnam), to circuitous halls and halls of batik sarong cloths, to where I went yesterday: a NGO sponsored market with all locally made handicrafts and goods. I went from stall to stall learning about the different NGOs while also looking at the handicrafts being sold (often scarfs not meant to be worn in tropical heat, post cards, pendants, bracelets, etc.). And I saw serious problems with much of this.
Some NGOs, it seems, have basically taken over different villages with no route of action in mind to leave. They help the children (always the children, or children and women, not the (male) adults who are also in need of help) buy school supplies to go to school rather than beg on the streets, and also provide art (the photographs are made into postcards) and English lessons. Pictures of kids brushing their teeth and looking doe-eyed into the camera dot the brochure. To compensate for the parents' loss of income, the organizations will often provide rice or other forms of non-monetary help to the families. The NGO begins to thus dictate their livelihoods. Although helping children is 110% important, so is helping the adults who force their children to do beg on the streets. What about helping parents find work? If there are no jobs (and this often seems to be the case, unfortunately), what is the underlying problem, here? There is more to the story than just the children.
Most NGOs also help women, and female-made products becomes a sort of branded attribute. It is a selling point of the commodity--one might even say a "trend." The women from one village bead bracelets and pendants for a tourist market in order to provide for their families. The Australian head told me all but three of the men walked out when I asked her what the men do while women bead. This is excellent, the women are able to help their families now when before they were not able to.
But it is also problematic: beading these bracelets still marginalizes women to do handiwork as well as relies on a tourist market to buy the goods. Without this Australian woman, and without a tourist market, the women would still be impoverished. NGO work today is reminiscent of my studying the French Indochina Empire but in a lighter and more charitable way. The white power is still coming into the impoverished country to "help" to poor people who cannot help themselves, while also benefiting themselves (goods are still being produced for a western market). Yes, this is a stretch but a reasonable connection.
You could argue: what would these women do without this NGO if there are no jobs? And this is a very valid point--the NGO has provided these women with a skill they can market to the flood of tourists in their country at the moment. By having their own business, this empowers them. But I also ask, more cynically: what would the NGO and its often white founders do without these impoverished women? Rather than have the women bead, it might be more productive to get to the root of unemployment rather than place a daintily embroidered scarf over the problem.
Many NGOs have a program where you can tour local villages and really get to know "authentic" and "traditional" Cambodian life. Yes, tourists often strive for this authenticity and yearn for simpler times--but a tuk tuk driver's life is just as "Cambodian" as a rice farmer's. Touring villages helps people who might not otherwise know what life is like sans electricity or plumbing see this, but again, the villagers then rely on the tourists for their income. Tourism is a lucrative industry, but tourism as the primary industry creates problems. The villagers have to do this day in and day out, making their village more like a museum rather than a place to live. As tourists bike through, they don't want to really see the real, nitty gritty and not pretty life. And eating lunch with a local family? They often want to try the local food, but not too local. And I am not referring to the people who really do want to dry duck egg (no, not a duck's egg, but a duck's egg with a was-about-to-be-hatched-and-then-you-ate-me duck inside the egg), I mean the people who would be disappointed eating only a small helping of rice for lunch. That's local, for you. Of course, there are exceptions to this.
What's more, the people who are buying these goods think that they are greatly helping the situation. They are certainly putting their money to a good cause, but this "passive activism" worries me. Buying ten scarves made by women in the rural village will not change the country. Eating at a restaurant where all of the profits go to some school children will not change the political situation in the country that makes things how they are today. It can begin to help, but buying your way to change is not the answer. Although many tourists and people in general simply do not care enough to make lasting change--they are going home soon. Those who stay do try to make a change, but (as this post describes), I fear it is not the best pathway. And no, I do not have a different, viable, and practical method in mind.
This is not meant to denounce any of the NGOs in Siem Reap and Cambodia at large, it is just that I find multiple flaws and many of them and hope that you, dear reader, might have a different opinions to enlighten me with. I am very very open to other thoughts as I would love to prove the cynic in me wrong. Maybe....is this NGO society the first step to changing Cambodia on the whole?
Markets in Southeast Asia range from live fish flopping about after being severed alive (I really do wonder what Peter Singer would say to that sight), to piles of fruit I don't know the names of in English, to women screaming "buy something?!" about their kitsch and ubiquitous elephant emblazoned handbags (most of which I have been told are from Thailand or Vietnam), to circuitous halls and halls of batik sarong cloths, to where I went yesterday: a NGO sponsored market with all locally made handicrafts and goods. I went from stall to stall learning about the different NGOs while also looking at the handicrafts being sold (often scarfs not meant to be worn in tropical heat, post cards, pendants, bracelets, etc.). And I saw serious problems with much of this.
Some NGOs, it seems, have basically taken over different villages with no route of action in mind to leave. They help the children (always the children, or children and women, not the (male) adults who are also in need of help) buy school supplies to go to school rather than beg on the streets, and also provide art (the photographs are made into postcards) and English lessons. Pictures of kids brushing their teeth and looking doe-eyed into the camera dot the brochure. To compensate for the parents' loss of income, the organizations will often provide rice or other forms of non-monetary help to the families. The NGO begins to thus dictate their livelihoods. Although helping children is 110% important, so is helping the adults who force their children to do beg on the streets. What about helping parents find work? If there are no jobs (and this often seems to be the case, unfortunately), what is the underlying problem, here? There is more to the story than just the children.
Most NGOs also help women, and female-made products becomes a sort of branded attribute. It is a selling point of the commodity--one might even say a "trend." The women from one village bead bracelets and pendants for a tourist market in order to provide for their families. The Australian head told me all but three of the men walked out when I asked her what the men do while women bead. This is excellent, the women are able to help their families now when before they were not able to.
But it is also problematic: beading these bracelets still marginalizes women to do handiwork as well as relies on a tourist market to buy the goods. Without this Australian woman, and without a tourist market, the women would still be impoverished. NGO work today is reminiscent of my studying the French Indochina Empire but in a lighter and more charitable way. The white power is still coming into the impoverished country to "help" to poor people who cannot help themselves, while also benefiting themselves (goods are still being produced for a western market). Yes, this is a stretch but a reasonable connection.
You could argue: what would these women do without this NGO if there are no jobs? And this is a very valid point--the NGO has provided these women with a skill they can market to the flood of tourists in their country at the moment. By having their own business, this empowers them. But I also ask, more cynically: what would the NGO and its often white founders do without these impoverished women? Rather than have the women bead, it might be more productive to get to the root of unemployment rather than place a daintily embroidered scarf over the problem.
Many NGOs have a program where you can tour local villages and really get to know "authentic" and "traditional" Cambodian life. Yes, tourists often strive for this authenticity and yearn for simpler times--but a tuk tuk driver's life is just as "Cambodian" as a rice farmer's. Touring villages helps people who might not otherwise know what life is like sans electricity or plumbing see this, but again, the villagers then rely on the tourists for their income. Tourism is a lucrative industry, but tourism as the primary industry creates problems. The villagers have to do this day in and day out, making their village more like a museum rather than a place to live. As tourists bike through, they don't want to really see the real, nitty gritty and not pretty life. And eating lunch with a local family? They often want to try the local food, but not too local. And I am not referring to the people who really do want to dry duck egg (no, not a duck's egg, but a duck's egg with a was-about-to-be-hatched-and-then-you-ate-me duck inside the egg), I mean the people who would be disappointed eating only a small helping of rice for lunch. That's local, for you. Of course, there are exceptions to this.
What's more, the people who are buying these goods think that they are greatly helping the situation. They are certainly putting their money to a good cause, but this "passive activism" worries me. Buying ten scarves made by women in the rural village will not change the country. Eating at a restaurant where all of the profits go to some school children will not change the political situation in the country that makes things how they are today. It can begin to help, but buying your way to change is not the answer. Although many tourists and people in general simply do not care enough to make lasting change--they are going home soon. Those who stay do try to make a change, but (as this post describes), I fear it is not the best pathway. And no, I do not have a different, viable, and practical method in mind.
This is not meant to denounce any of the NGOs in Siem Reap and Cambodia at large, it is just that I find multiple flaws and many of them and hope that you, dear reader, might have a different opinions to enlighten me with. I am very very open to other thoughts as I would love to prove the cynic in me wrong. Maybe....is this NGO society the first step to changing Cambodia on the whole?
