A Day in the Life

After two and a half months, my weekdays in Phnom Penh have become a comfortable routine and a breath of fresh air between my intermittent holidays and travels. I wake up around 7 AM every morning to get ready and have breakfast before I get to work around 8. Some days I wake up earlier to Skype with my parents or get some other errands done before I go to work. My “commute” consists of walking down 4 flights of stairs and then riding my bicycle for about 10 minutes down St. 63 over to Monivong. On my way to work, there is a young security guard who used to yell “Hello!” at me every time I rode by. Now that I’ve learned to appreciate that most people who say hello to me are really just being friendly, we’ve gotten into the habit of exchanging a high-five every time I ride by. It makes me sad to think that one day I’ll stop riding by and he’ll probably be left wondering what happened to me.

In the first couple weeks of work, I was gaining as much background information as I could about DAC and the Cambodia Disability Resource Center (CDRC) while simultaneously working on my 3 month project plan. With my team, I visited four other resource centers at two banks and two NGOs (The World Bank Public Information Center, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), CCC and CDRI) to observe and learn the standard in Cambodia. Each visit was fascinating, and all the staff spoke perfect English and were really helpful and informative. I used the knowledge I gained from these visits to devise the information architecture, classification code, and policies for the CDRC library and website.

Once these systems and documentation were reviewed and finalized by the the DAC directors, it was time for my team to hit the ground running with lots and lots of manual work. It’s been all hands on deck since then with an intern, an assistant from MoSVY (Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation) and even the cleaning crew helping to attach classification labels to books and arrange them on the shelves according to the code.

Since we have practically next to no budget on this project, I’ve spent most of this time calling, sending emails, and meeting with partner organizations to acquire assistive technologies for our public computer, including JAWS (an English screen reader), Khmer Reader and a special mouse for arm and hand disabilities. These visits have been even more interesting than the library visits. I visited the Association of Blind in Cambodia (ABC), where amongst other services blind people of all ages are trained to work as masseuses in the famous “Seeing Hands Massage” centers you see all over the country. I also visited Krousar Thmey, the School for the Blind, where an extremely professional and well-spoken computer teacher who was blind himself walked me through the JAWS program and the way students use it for their work and leisure. It was fascinating to learn that some blind people in Cambodia are actually better educated and better off in the international world than anyone else simply because they are forced to perfect their English: there is no such thing as Khmer Braille and the Khmer screen reader is very limited. I also made a brief visit to a school for children with intellectual disabilities, who won me over with their lighthearted fun and crazy antics.

Lately I’ve been working on my final responsibility under this contract, creating marketing material for CDRC and a promotion strategy. This is the trickiest part of the project because we can’t have a successful resource center without visitors but we can’t handle visitors until we are fully functional (which we aren’t yet). When I’m not visiting other institutions, I’m usually working at my computer at my desk in a room with 3 of my co-workers. Sarah is a British VSO volunteer who works on the Inclusive Education project with Sokhim, and Seka manages the Livelihoods project. Seka is the easiest person to relate to at work and one of my favorite people: she is a 28 year old single woman living on her own in the city (her family lives in a village) who is also getting her masters degree on the weekends. Seka and Sokhim are Cambodian and they always lighten the mood in the office by taking turns playing Cambodian music on their computer speakers.

About a third of the 15 DAC employees are disabled people who lead promisingly healthy and successful lives without the use of any assistive devices. My direct report is a bright young college graduate named Sokdin who has an amputated hand. He does an incredible job of hiding it because it took me 3 weeks of sitting next to him everyday to even notice his disability! I’m not sure if this is a very impressive or very sad fact… Our office is a small run-down facility in the parking lot of the beautiful brand-new MoSVY building whose lobby is ironically twice the size of our entire space. For a disability organization, our building is the opposite of accessible as there is a step to get into the front door, the aisles are all narrow and cramped, and we don’t even have our own bathrooms! We use the non-accessible MoSVY bathrooms all the way across a courtyard in the main building!

There are other daily frustrations at work… lack of internet, lack of electricity, lack of budget, lack of resources, lack of staff, lack of professionalism… you name it. One of my co-workers, who is otherwise a very pleasant man, seems to think I am only good for English translation, as he never approaches me for help with the project or anything other than to correct his English in completely unrelated documents he is working on. Another one of my coworkers, my direct counterpart, the Information and Communications Officer, has a bad reputation for being very difficult to work with; others had pre-warned me that he doesn’t take initiative and doesn’t follow up to the point where the directors had to create a weekly plan for him and literally monitor his hourly activities. His work is so poor that after 11 years, his contract was not renewed and will expire around the same time I leave. Needless to say, I was very wary of working with him until I got to know him better and got to hear his side of the story and the root of the problem. He told me that the DAC directors never give him any autonomy over his projects or respect his input. They make decisions over his head that he only finds out about after the fact. For example, one day Sokdin showed up to work and sat next to him and he had no idea who he was. He asked, "Who are you?" and Sokdin said "Your Assistant." He told me that when the directors started doing this, he made the decision that from then on he was just going to ignore them. Simple as that. And that is the reason why he doesn’t take initiative or respond or follow up. I couldn’t believe it.

Most workplaces in Cambodia have a two hour lunch between 12 and 2 PM, but at DAC we only have an hour and a half from 12 to 1.30. When I first arrived and before I knew any better, I used to eat at a local buffet with the DAC directors for only $2. Pretty soon I got sick of not knowing what crazy scary dish i was about to eat next, so I started eating out with my other friends, visiting the market, doing laundry or relaxing at home during lunch. Our hours also run until 5.30 PM which is kind of annoying because most of my friends are free to go home at 5. After work, I either go out to eat with friends, go online at a restaurant with free Wi-Fi or an internet café, or partake in different workout classes I’ve tried out, including yoga, kickboxing, and capoeira. When I first discovered a local group who practice capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, I was in love, and I used to work out 3-4 nights a week. Sadly, however, with all the holidays, travel, and the stress of trying to wrap things up at work these last few weeks, I've had barely any time for organized physical activities. Even though I am grateful for all the travel and adventure the timing of this placement has allowed me, one reason I sometimes wish I could extend my stay would be to live a more fulfilling “normal” everyday life here.