February16

I spoke with Tobias Rose Stockwell in California, who is a 29 year old dynamic humanitarian who came to Cambodia as a 22 year old. He had previously been a volunteer working in Thailand and then came to Cambodia and met Chai as a tut tut driver. Tobias has founded an NGO called Human Translation whose major accomplishment is to be reconstruct a reservoir and is now in the process of rebuilding the canal system. Chai is a Khmer who will be one of our major characters and Tobias and I spoke of how to present Chai’s story to the screen in an engaging way. Chai was a boy soldier for the Khmer Rouge and his memories are very painful and hard to get him to verbalize. The conclusion I got was that a visit to Chai’s village or the lingo here is a visit to the “homeland” , aside from the vital visual beauty and interest, would be the optimum way of extracting his story.

This conversation was all in preparation for my scheduled day with Chai to visit the canal project. Chai picked me up in the four wheel drive Toyota work horse truck and we then want to his fiancee’s house to pick up supplies for the canal workers, that consisted of about 40 shovels. However, these shovels, made in china by the way, come with no handles as the workers fashion them from wood from the forest.

Chai is getting married in April after a very difficult 7 year courtship. This is a modern love relationship in which Chai is marrying well up in class from his humble homeland beginnings near the Thai border. Apparently the first three years of dating was kept a secret from her parents and Chai had to earn the right to marry into the family. A significant dowry is customary to be given by the groom to the bride’s family to help pay for the elaborate 2-3 day wedding which is the Cambodian style. I met the financee and took pictures of her family’s home.

We went to the canal, where there was 280 local villagers from the community that the canal will ultimately serve, digging the canal by hand It will take about four months to do and should be open to coincide with the beginning of rainy season that begins in July. By using these workers it makes the community a vital part of the project and vests their interest in the success. Chai is the engineer of the project and now is a principal in a local NGO ( Community Translations) that is in partnership with Human Translations in a model of an international NGO ( HT) working with an indigenously registered NGO ( CT) to provide sustainability and empowerment to Kkmers and in this case by not using an outside contractor with heavy earth moving machinery, providing employment to the community as well as a psychological bonding to the project. Taking pictures of the scenery ,the hand digging the canal with the colorful people and the exotically beautiful dry country side was such a joy. I walked down the canal and photographed the people after stopping for a while for them to comfortable with me and my greeting them and conversing in my very very limted Khmer language. I know Lauren would have been in heaven with such an opportunity and I tried to do it some justice photographically, as Canon G10 is becoming much more friendly to me.

I had lunch with some of the workers and Chai. It was rice veggies and pork and I avoided the hot chili used by most to spice the bland food into a level of spiciness that I can not tolerate. The last time I ate some of the chili spice I ended up with a bad case of the hiccups!!

Got dropped back at my apartment at 2 and then had the wonderful luxury of a hour of AC and a hot shower to rid myself of the ingrained red dust from my half day in the field. My driver picked me up at 3 or so for the trip to Battambang. But before heading to Highway 6, I went to a video store to get some copies made of our Drop in the Bucket film so I can give a few away; and dropped a Diesel Bag that Lauren had bought for $5 in Phnom Penh market to have the zipper replaced, as it broke the first time I tried to use it.

Checked into a nice hotel for $30 a night and then met Kathy and Joanna at the Riverside Bar and Café for drinks and dinner to brief me on the next day interviews at the Circus school. Kathy is an American volunteer and Joanna is from the UK, a PHd candidate, doing a thesis on the “ Cambodia Open Face” as seen in the Bayan smiling faces at Ankor Thom and the black and white photos at S 21, of the victims killed in this Khmer Rouge prison, run by the infamours Douch now on trial.

The circus school could be a film in itself. An idea may be to come back in December and do a documentary on the Circus Festival which is to be a gathering of circus people from ten countries and performances of their circuses.

We shared experiences and impressions and Kathy told me about her trip to Mondulkiri. I decided if at all possible I should try and squeeze the time to do that in between meeting and prepping our two characters Boomer and Hengly in Phnom Penh and Lyman’s arrival on March 1 to start filming. The other thought had been to head to the beach at Kep or Kampot but I can go to the beach in so many places to the world but being in the mountains with ethic tribes who believe in animism in Northeast Cambodian jungle with elephants and waterfalls and catching trout in the stream by clubbing them , is a unique experience that I need to find a way to do.