Read associate producer Joanne Shen's Diary from Cambodia
June 6, 2001
It's about 5:08a.m. and I haven't slept a wink. We flew
from San Franciso to Tokyo, that was about 12 hours
right there. Then our plane got delayed and so we sat
around Narita Airport for about five hours till we
caught a 7 hour flight to Bangkok. After clearing 9
cases of equipment through customs, we checked into
our hotel around 2:30a.m. I've been too worried about
oversleeping and missing our early morning flight to
Phnom Pehn to allow myself to unwind. I'd like to
order some room service but breakfast doesn't start
till 6a.m.--by then we'll be on our way to the airport.
Again.
June 6, 2001
It's about 5:08a.m. and I haven't slept a wink. We flew
from San Franciso to Tokyo, that was about 12 hours
right there. Then our plane got delayed and so we sat
around Narita Airport for about five hours till we
caught a 7 hour flight to Bangkok. After clearing 9
cases of equipment through customs, we checked into
our hotel around 2:30a.m. I've been too worried about
oversleeping and missing our early morning flight to
Phnom Pehn to allow myself to unwind. I'd like to
order some room service but breakfast doesn't start
till 6a.m.--by then we'll be on our way to the airport.
Again.
June 7, 2001
Jetlagged again. Went to bed at 11p.m. and woke up after
only five hours of sleep even though my body is
definitely screaming for more z's. It was an
interesting scene at the airport this morning. When we
got off the plane, there was a mad scramble by all the
passengers to get their visas. You have to huddle
around a counter--no, there's no line--and hand off
your visa to some semi-official looking type. Then, it
gets passed around between about a dozen bored looking
guys in uniforms who flip through the pages. When the
passport passes through all hands, they hold it up in
the air waving it with the photo side out. Then what you
have to do is pay up and you get your stamped passport
back.
For dinner, we went to the home of a friend who works
for US AID, an NGO. He had a dinner party and invited
a bunch of expats who work for various NGOs in Phnom
Pehn. They were able to give me an idea of what to
expect in the factories. A few of them worked in
health and social services for Cambodian women, many
of whom are at risk of exploitation and infection by
HIV. They come from the countryside to the capital in
search of factory jobs. Sometimes, they end up being
prostitutes in order to make ends meet. Supposedly
there are about 10,000 sex workers in Phnom Pehn at
present. Garment manufacturing is the number 1 growth
industry here but prostitution is on a related rise
too.
June 8, 2001
I spent all of my first day in Phnom Pehn running
around trying to meet all our primary interviewees.
Thankfully, our main character, Jason is charismatic
in a quiet way. Over the phone, I had a hard time
gauging his personality but in person he's got some
engaging quirks. Apparently, he's going to the
Cambodian countryside this afternoon to buy a piglet.
I thought about tagging along to get some footage but
he seemed to want to keep his porcine purchasing a
private affair. Plus, I wasn't sure how pig-buying
would fit in with the piece on a whole. Viewers might
confuse him for an animal husbandry expert rather than
a labor rights organizer. We wouldn't want that to
happen.
After hobnobbing with Jason a bit, I went over to the
headquarters of the International Labor Rights
Organization where I tried to persuade them to give us
more access to their monitoring program. This
U.N.program, which trains Cambodian nationals to be
independent monitors, has only recently been
implemented and they'll be making their first practice
visits to factories while we are in Phnom Pehn.
They're a little suspicious of tv journalists. I left
them a tape of Livelyhood and tried to reassure them
that we were going for an optimistic angle on the
future of Cambodia's labor laws.
In the afternoon, we were driven to a factory about
twenty minutes outside of Phnom Pehn. It's on a
stretch of road called Vreng Sreng Highway which is
really a bumpy dirt road. Actually, all of the roads
in Phnom Pehn are unpaved except for a few of the main
ones. I have yet to see a traffic light. Still,
traffic seems to move along at a fairly relaxed pace
unlike other Asian cities I've been too. Our driver is
a Zen master at weaving his way through the
motorbikes, flatbed trucks, minivans and bicyclists.
We arrived at the factory around 4:30p.m. which must
have been a shift break at several factories because
there were hundreds of women with badges walking down
the "highway." I'm glad we scouted; we gotta get this
shot for the segment.
June 9, 2001
John our producer and Gary our cameraman arrived
tonight from Korea where they were shooting something
else. Our interpreter came over to the hotel to meet
the crew. His name is Kola and the best way to
describe him as a Cambodian style raconteur. He's a
short, slightly pudgy man who looks slightly grim even
when he's smiling. Over dinner, he regaled us with
stories about everything from how he survived under
the Khmer Rouge to anecdotes about Cambodians' current
leaders. Everything he said, funny or sad, was
conveyed in the same, even tone punctuated only by
ironic giggles. According to Kola, the keys to success
in Cambodian politics are: to have a beautiful wife or
better yet, several wives, to be able to sing, dance
and write poetry, and to never, ever, be
photographed wearing Western clothes on state visits
abroad. The larger Cambodian populace, according to
Kola, likes their leaders to have all the trappings
of success like an old-fashioned king. None of us
could get a word in edgewise. I can already tell it's
going to be interesting having Kola intepret the world
around us.
June 10, 2001
Day 1 of shooting.
We started with the heart of the
piece, by interviewing with Jason and filming his
Sunday routine at the Solidarity Center where he meets
with Cambodian garment factory workers who want to
start their own unions. Most garment factory workers
are women who work to support children and husbands in
their home villages. We interviewed one woman who
seemed very angry at the conditions at her factory.
She told us that the $45 a month minimum wage she
makes is not enough. It costs her about $30 a month to
live in Phnom Pehn. She sends the remaining $15 home.
We also met Dara, a 27 year old factory worker who
lives in a tiny shack with his wife. It started
pouring as we filmed and the rain was coming through
the planks of his flimsy home. Amazingly, after
working from 7a.m. to 9p.m., 6 days a week, he studies
English every night.
June 11, 2001
Day 2 of shooting
We got up before dawn just like the factory workers so
we could get those shots of them starting their day.
The factory we visited was pretty modern and clean by
even Western standards. Nevertheless, I don't think I
could survive a day of working in such a
hyper-efficient environment where the machines drone
on endlessly. Hundreds of women producing thousands of
pieces each day to be ready to be shipped off for
stores all across America this fall.
June 12, 2001
Day 3 of shooting
The first day we filmed the activists at work. Then,
the workers at work. On Day 3 of shooting we lucked
out and managed to capture where the two meet
sometimes in real life--a strike! They had banners,
signs and megaphones but not as much marching in
circles as you see in American strikes.
In the afternoon, we visited the ILO office and filmed
the Cambodian monitors preparing for their first
practice visit to the factories. In a practice drill,
some monitors pretended to be factory owners trying to
thwart the monitors from entering their factory for an
inspection. One of the monitors, playing factory
management, was pretty effective at throwing up
obstacles to his fellow monitors. Maybe understanding
the mentality of the other side will help him be a
more effective monitor. Let's just hope he doesn't
decide to go into business!
June 13, 2001
With a few hours to spare before our flight, we
decided to go see Tuol Sleng, a school turned torture
prison camp during the Khmer Rouge years. It was very
difficult to handle, with blood still staining the
walls and the photographs of all those who had been
executed, from toddlers to grandmothers. Cambodia is
an intriguing place where progress and hope seems to
be in a half-step forward, half step back dance with a
very sorrowful recent past.
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