Are the results more important than how you got there?

I’m learning that corruption comes in many forms.  First you see the desire for more, then the lies, then the greed (actually 2 and 3 often go hand in hand), and finally, unless their conscience kicks in, they take that leap over that very fine line to the backhanders.

With Cambodia being number 154/178 (178 being the most corrupt) on the Transparency International World Corruption Index I’m not sure why I’m so surprised. I suppose cos NZ is number 1 it’s very hard to step away from that mentality and try to understand it. And that’s if you want to understand it.  

For a country that needs so much help it’s hard to find those organisations that are genuine. Charities are BIG BIG business here with 300+ in Siem Reap alone. Finding the right charity to support takes time and patience.

Desire, I can understand, as we all have something in us that makes us want to be better/have something better in some aspect of our lives. But the greed here is unbelievable.  A small glimmer of how money can change someone’s life can make them make some life changing decisions.  Greed in someone’s eyes is like looking evil right in the face. It’s a very haunting look. 

I’ve watched people, who have little themselves, give amazing donations to people and communities only to be met with “Ah. Is that what you are donating?” Books to schools, toilet blocks for communities where the communities of 200+ people are going to the toilet and fishing in the same black stream. It appears that even though donations to the community may be needed and wanted by all the villagers there is more often than not someone who handles the money who may inflate the price, say no these things are not wanted or will insist the money be given direct to them instead of being given as gifts or have actual things built.

No one is safe from this. I’ve watched even the most respected and ‘holy’ people change and be absorbed by greed. The power and respect also gives people an inflated position in the community which then means that they are untouchable and their perspectives on what is ethical or they are entitled to can become blurred. People may start off with the best intentions but can easily become ‘bad apples’.

I get charged the volunteer rate at the market which is of course inflated, but expected, but I’ve watched these ‘caring’ people who are ‘only doing good for the poor children’ scrape money off the top and not give communities what volunteers have paid for. How do people have the communities interests at heart when they are stopping the building and running of basic schools and sanitation, which would prevent most of the community from being struck my serious illness?

We joke about how Asians often say ‘Yes’ to everything, even though they have no idea what we’ve asked, just so that they don’t show that they don’t understand. It’s no doubt frustrating but I’ve been watching this go the extra mile. Often ‘Yes’ means that you can avoid giving people an honest answer and it keeps westerns quiet for a wee bit longer and the money continues coming in. 

The sad thing is that corruption, in whatever form it comes in, could be mistaken for being cultural which it most certainly is not. But if things continue on the route they are going you can see how it has the potential, over generations, to become cultural.

A friend told me a few weeks ago that I just needed to deal with the fact that corruption was here and to just pay any money asked. I can safely say that any money I earned for the project was done so honestly and do not intend to start paying backhanders anytime soon. This is an NGO not a private business. Maybe I’m being stupid but how can I come home, hold my head high and ask people to sponsor projects if I myself do not believe in them?! Trust takes years to be built but can be shattered in an instant.

I’ve cried out of frustration some days at what I’ve heard, seen and experienced and the injustices I’ve seen by Cambodians against Cambodians but then have to remember that as many people there are in the world that want to work in this way there is 100s more that don’t want to. They are out there but they are usually the ones that you hear about through word of mouth because they are too busy doing the actual work that they are meant to be doing.

The Australian couple that I’ve met here sponsor a few projects and have taken me under their wing and shown me a different Cambodia.

They picked me up the other morning and as I got in the tuktuk there was a beautiful Cambodian woman of about 38 sitting there smiling at me. There was something about her calm nature that I instantly like.

She was an orphan who worked for different NGOs around Siem Reap, from the age of 7, translating English and Khmer for the volunteers. She saw the other kids begging and promised herself she would be an educated woman and would make something of herself.  Well, that she has done 10x over.

She’s set up a Khmer run school and invited us out to see the second school she was setting up.

We drove for about 45mins down dirt roads, which had become mud. When we got out we had to trudge through very deep, black, stagnant mud up to our ankles to get to the new school. All I could think was, no wonder Dengue Fever is such a problem in this country if this is how people live! We’d walked for about 5mins and as I looked to my right I could see a green and red painted bamboo hut, which is meant to be a school. It was so basic. 3 rooms which will educate 85 children (built for just US$500) which will be up and running as soon as they can level the ground around the school to get rid of the ponds of stagnant water and build a toilet block, for obvious reasons, and to teach health and hygiene to the kids.    

As I stood there and looked at these classrooms and listened to this woman this wave of emotion came flooding over me and tears started to slowly roll down my cheeks.  Some of it was sadness, some anger and some frustration, as I felt I’d not seen Cambodians for who they actually are. I stopped believing that any of this was possible. One, because I kept being told this was not the Cambodian way and two, because I’d met so many roadblocks in the past 3 months which indicated to me that people did not want to help themselves.  

The Australian couple took one look around and said they would do these things for her so the schools will be open and educating the kids by the end of October/early November.

I don’t know what it is but any donation, whether it is big or small, still makes me speechless.

We then carried on our journey to a school she set up 10 months earlier. The area, just outside of Siem Reap, was absolutely revolting and the stench made you gag. You could almost taste the lack of sanitation in the area.

I walked into her office and all I saw as I walked in the door was 10 brightly coloured files. I stopped. Speechless and the tears rolled down my cheeks again. Progress. In just 10 months she has set up 4 classrooms, has established a fully functional volunteer programme and detailed accounts you would expect to see in London. In her late 30s, and in just 10 months, this woman was now educating herself in how to run a business and was doing an amazing job. The standard of English these kids were speaking, in comparison to other schools I’ve seen, was outstanding. The difference was/is that this woman is willing to learn, to change and her end goal was not to get money in but to actually educate the children and continue to do so for generations to come.

I asked her how much it cost to run the 4 original classrooms per month and she said nothing. What I later established was that all of her material came from volunteers who’d visited the project, all teachers were paid by sponsors and she was absorbing the running costs, which we’re US$35 per month for electricity. She’s turned off her family fridge and told her kids they could buy cold water at the shop for 2c a bottle, so that the students could have fans in the class. When given a donation for a new toilet block she rang the person that made the donation and asked how she could return the US$20 that was left over!! Well this was all a bit new.

What set this woman apart from the rest is her honesty and willingness to learn. You can only help those who are willing to help themselves. It shows that if you are willing to grow and your desire to do this is genuine things can be achieved. This is a place I’d like to come back to in 5 years time.