Street children

When living in Cambodia and other developing nations, it's necessary to develop a thick skin. Poverty, violence and child abuse is rampant. Having been here over two years, I block out quite a bit of it - just impossible to cope otherwise.

Today while waiting at traffic lights, some children came to me and my friend and were begging. The rule is not to give to children because this exacerbates the situation but when there are four children around you it is so hard to say no. Instead we talked about going to Friends, an NGO that takes care of street kids. My friend had already contacted them on numerous occasions but the parents wouldn't go along with it. Now this is a fairly normal occurrence. Kids come up every day and we have the same conversation.

One of the girls, probably about five years old was holding a baby in heavy traffic. The baby was tiny and probably about a month old. She looked smaller than a doll. A tiny baby - smaller than my nephews when they were born. She must have weighed five pounds. It broke my heart. The child was so young and already was breathing in toxic fumes. The parents take the money given by tourists and send the kids out again. There's no point in contacting the police because they round up children and put them in "rehabilitation" camps.

I support NGOs financially but it is so hard to see young children being used so ill and knowing that there is nothing I can do.

Caught between the tiger and the crocodile

Via Juliana Rincón Parra

Cambodian sex workers talk about their experiences, and their views on the law.



The popular opinion is that the the 2008 law to outlaw sex work was an election game and a strategic international move to curry favour. Whether this is the case or not, the police are using the law to imprison sex workers in "rehabilitation" centres. Money must change hands to secure a release.

The police strategy is to lock up women who carry condoms, assuming they are sex workers. Putting aside the issue of how messed up that notion is, it clashes with the 100% condom use campaign to reduce HIV transmission. The 100% condom use was working although there are issues of secondary sex workers and police harassment. The HIV infection rate is declining in Cambodia.

There is much more I could saw on the sexism, discrimination and human rights violations that the police are a part of. Instead, the sex workers speak for themselves. Too often sex workers are silenced but Cambodians are using the net as a easy way to get information out there.

When you've watched the vid, check out more from sexworkerspresent - vids made by sex workers all over the world.

Cure for acne

Urban legends have a way of fascinating some of us. Snopes is a great resource to find out whether Coca Cola's name is transliterated as "Bite the wax tadpole" in Chinese or if chewing gum really takes seven years to make its way through the human digestive system or whether the five second rule applies.

I've mentioned urban legends from Asia before - they were all news to me but there's a new one being reported on in the Phnom Penh Post and KI-Media. That is that the lubricant from the "Number One"brand condoms, cure acne.

A condom lubricant designed for sex workers and gay men has become a popular acne cure among female Cambodians, women in the capital and local media said Thursday.

Number One Plus, a water-based lubricant produced by health organisation Population Services International (PSI), is an excellent cure for acne, 29-year-old vendor Tep Kemyoeurn told AFP.

"After I used it for three days, all of my acne dried up and went away," she said. "Many people believe in it," she added.

Khen Vanny, 29, from Phnom Penh, told AFP that women of all ages have taken to using the lubricant to get rid of spots.

"It is very effective. Some people don't believe in it but people who do really get a good result," she said, adding: "My youngest sister and my aunt use it too."

A vendor near a factory in the coastal city of Sihanoukville told the newspaper that she sold packets of Number One Plus lubricant for 500 riels (12 cents) to many women every day.

Lost cost acne treatment or urban legend? Maybe there is some active ingredient in the lube, however unlikely it seems to my admittedly un-medical mind.

Is this a slut-shaming movement that likes the idea of women rubbing lube on their faces in a non-sexual context?

This idea probably originates in the same school of thought that informed us that a fan in a closed room can cause death by sucking all the air out. What do you think?

ETA: Here's the advert for it.

Inflation

I'm back from R&R to find that prices are increasing in almost every sector. Inflation of consumer prices is at 37%. The price of gas is soaring. No doubt rice will follow especially with the drought in several provinces. Now rat meat has quadrupled in price. Rat meat was the affordable protein.

With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel (69 pence) from 1,200 riel last year.

Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.

Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.

Even this readily available source of protein may be out of the price range for the 42% (6 million people) living on less than a dollar a day according to the World Bank's latest poverty line re evaluation.

Prehaps the government can focus on issues of poverty and inflation now that the chaos of the general election has passed and there is no longer a war pending over 4.5kms of land near Preah Vihear.

Gone fishing

Kevin Myers and the editors at the Indo are abhorrent

Kevin Myers may be known as someone whose "articles often offer criticism of left-wing opinion and the "liberal consensus", sometimes incorporating hyperbolic sarcasm and parody" but engaging in racist stereotypes in disgusting. It is very important to remember at this point that this vile piece of journalism was ok'ed by three editors at the Indo. He did not act alone. All four are guilty.

The article criticizes aid work and the system of world governance for not resolving issues of poverty and political instability during the past 20 or so years. Firstly, there are certainly valid criticisms to be made about aid effectiveness and distribution. I see the problems first hand in Cambodia.

However, the article uses the most horrible racist stereotypes and Myers is rooted in white male rich privilege. He is judging what he cannot understand, despite claims of having visited Ethiopia.

Sorry. My conscience has toured this territory on foot and financially. Unlike most of you, I have been to Ethiopia; like most of you, I have stumped up the loot to charities to stop starvation there. The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a priapic, Kalashnikov-bearing hearty, siring children whenever the whim takes him.

Just because you have been there, Myers, does not mean you have any understanding. In fact you sound like the typical backpacker - "I am so at one with the Cambodian people, even though I can't speak Khmer and have only been here for a day". One visit does not make you an expert. One visit does not entitle you to make sweeping generalisations about an entire continent. Nothing entitles you to make sweeping generalisations.

You are aware I presume that Africa is a continent and not a country because you write as if there are not thousands of different cultures, languages, poverty levels, education levels and a million other differences between a South African, an Algerian, a Kenyan, an Ivorian or a Ghanaian. Within each of the countries on the continent of Africa there are different tribes and traditions and you demonise them all. How typical - white colonisers have been doing it for years.

But, please, please, you self-righteously wrathful, spare me mention of our own Famine, with this or that lazy analogy. There is no comparison. Within 20 years of the Famine, the Irish population was down by 30pc. Over the equivalent period, thanks to western food, the Mercedes 10-wheel truck and the Lockheed Hercules, Ethiopia's has more than doubled.

Alas, that wretched country is not alone in its madness. Somewhere, over the rainbow, lies Somalia, another fine land of violent, Kalashnikov-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts.

Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.

This dependency has not stimulated political prudence or commonsense. Indeed, voodoo idiocy seems to be in the ascendant, with the next president of South Africa being a firm believer in the efficacy of a little tap water on the post-coital penis as a sure preventative against infection. Needless to say, poverty, hunger and societal meltdown have not prevented idiotic wars involving Tigre, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea etcetera.

Wow you resort to the racist construct that sees black men as oversexed and intent on raping. That's not original. It's not new. It's one of the oldest stereotypes in the book.

You use racism to fuel the fear that is in Ireland that "they" are taking our jobs. "They" are using "our" women. You use your space to create and fan the fear. As thefreeslave eloquently says

Racism/white supremacy is a vicious, global system that has butchered too many human beings, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Yet, it too is a tool, a MAJOR tool and the means, the apparatus of control, rather than the end desired by the ruling class itself.

You use racism as a tool. You accuse "Africans" of being too reliant on aid. You put the blame on the victim. That's nothing new either. Rapists use that defense every day.

Broad brush-strokes, to be sure. But broad brush-strokes are often the way that history paints its gaudier, if more decisive, chapters. Japan, China, Russia, Korea, Poland, Germany, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 20th century have endured worse broad brush-strokes than almost any part of Africa.

Oh really Myers? Been to Cambodia or Lao recently?

They are now -- one way or another -- virtually all giving aid to or investing in Africa, whereas Africa, with its vast savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.

Your statement that Africa is giving nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS, is... I'm not sure that there are words to express how truly revolting that statement is. Perhaps others will find words to cover that.

Your use of "AIDS" is offensive. No one uses that anymore. "People living with the HIV virus" is how people phrase things nowadays. I will probably be accused of being the PC police but words matter. And you Myers, chose the more offensive of all the available words. As a journalist, words are your craft and you use them to incite hatred.

I would prefer to fisk every point made but I find I don't have the stomach to keep rereading this bile. Legal proceedings should be taken. If anyone wants to respond personally to Myers - I'll be dropping him this post - his email is posted on the bottom of the webpage and reads kmyers@independent.ie