This is a conference on inclusive education for children with disabilities sponsored by the NGO Education Program. It brought together this past week a lot of civil society and non-government organizations to look at the situation in Cambodia.
It looks like a normal organization meeting in any hotel in any major city anywhere, but this one had its Cambodian characteristics. Cambodians thrive on noise–loud noise–and they always turn the PA systems up very high–and leave them at that setting. Their technicians do not adjust the volume for each speaker as he or she comes to the podium. The volume stays on high all the time. And then speakers come up and yell into the microphones. If we were in the United States, OSHA would require ear protection for everyone in the room. Here the locals just consider it normal—and it is in this culture. We foreigners consider it painful.
A couple days ago we had a photo of a woman with a scale she carried around, weighing people for a few cents each. Not far above her on the economic scale is this woman with a stack of khramas (scarves) and other cloths that she is selling. She probably pays a deposit for the cloths in the morning (and maybe rents the bicycle along with them) and then walks all day to sell a few items. Will she make two, three, four dollars in day? How much of that can she keep?
Cambodia is trying to get its economic ranking raised from low-income country to middle-income country, and by some standards, progress is being made. But then you see people like this woman. She rents a scale and then walks the streets all day hoping to weigh people who may give her 3¢ to 5¢ for the weighing. Here she is counting her money. Will she have enough to buy food at the end of the day?
Cambodia has its tourism industry and its garment factories but a majority of the people make their living by farming and with small businesses they set up at home or on the street. Those handling the small businesses spend a lot of time sitting and watching for customers. 