Made in Cambodia

A big thanks to Phalline, Chhuon, and all the other people who let me into their lives. This slideshow pretty much puts a wrap on my posts for Cambodia. I’m off to China.

My All-American Cambodian Blue Jeans

In the USA we didn’t invent the blue jean. We just made ‘em cool.

Jeans were first worn by the Italian Navy. But riveted jeans were first produced in San Francisco by Levi Strauss. He was a German immigrant. So, maybe blue jeans aren’t as All-American as I’d like to think, but I’ve got two words for you: James Dean.

Here’s one more: Fonzie

Levi’s has such a connection with the average American that they were one of the last companies to start sourcing internationally. The delay hurt them. It’s impossible to compete when your competition can make their product using labor that costs a fraction of what yours does.

So, now my Levi’s 501 Carpenter Pants are Made in Cambodia. Well, actually not anymore. Now that particular style is made in India. And the factory that gave life to my jeans in Phnom Penh doesn’t work with Levi’s anymore either. The Levi Sourcing Manager told me that the factory had issues with quality, efficiency, or meeting Levi’s labor standards.

The industry is nothing, if not fluid.

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Levi’s

Their San Francisco office told me to contact the International Labour Organization when I arrived. This surprised me.

Every correspondence I’ve had with Levi’s or their factory has been a positive one. I won’t hesitate to buy a pair of Levi’s Made in Cambodia.

I visited the Roo Hsing factory. They washed my pants.

—
The Garment Miracle

In Cambodia the garment industry is seen as a miracle because it developed so fast (primarily in the last 10 years). It is Cambodia’s largest industry and accounted for about $2 billion in exports in 2006. Without the garment industry there wouldn’t be much of any industry in Cambodia.

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A really, really short history of Cambodia

In the 1970’s, wiped-out by war. Awful stuff happened. People suffered before, and after. International aid organizations came to the rescue. Stuff still ain’t good.

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Cambodia vs. Bangladesh

In Bangladesh I stopped traffic. I was too famous to attend rock concerts. In Cambodia I’m just another foreigner.

The presence of foreigners has shaped the garment industry here in Cambodia. There are many different organizations explaining the workers their rights and teaching them disease prevention (STD’s, malaria, dengue fever). The average worker in Cambodia gets paid about twice as much as the average one in Bangladesh.

The International Labour Organization monitors the factories and produces reports for the government and the brands that buy from the factories. I have a 62-page report from the ILO titled Women and Work In the Garment Industry. 62 pages! In one-month in Bangladesh I didn’t see a single page report.

The union I visited in Bangladesh was simply a bare room with 3 full-time employees and, as far as I know, it is the only union in the entire industry. Cambodia has 800 union and only 300 factories. Some of them are in actual offices too! Some are aligned with different political parties, some with the government, some with the factories themselves, and some are independent …kinda sort of. It’s pretty much a guarantee that if you are a factory owner, a bunch of people are going to be pissed at you no matter what you do.

In February, a union leader was shot and killed on his way home from work at the Suntex factory (where Kent’s underwear were made). I stopped in at their office and they aren’t sure who killed him. It could have been another union, it may have been the factory, or, they speculate, it even might have been the government!

The factories I saw in Bangladesh seemed to have okay conditions, but the pay sucked. In Cambodia the pay is okay and the conditions seem to be okay (although I haven’t toured any of the smaller operations that are usually the guilty parties of most of the violations).

But like I said, stuff still ain’t good.

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The Workers

Chhuon, my translator, knew a neighborhood where some workers lived. We showed up and made some friends.

8 girls live in the 8’X12’ room.

A toilet is walled off in the corner.

A water spigot comes out of one wall. This is the washroom, the kitchen, and the laundry. If the door to their room isn’t shut passersby could watch them bathe from the street.

Two bamboo beds are pushed together. They’re big, but not big enough to sleep eight. Four of the girls sleep on the floor. It’s always the same four girls on the floor. They like it. The concrete may be harder, but it’s cooler. Once the window and door are shut and locked, for security purposes, there is not any ventilation. Eight people in a small room gets pretty hot.

Other than the beds, the only other piece of furniture is a metal clothing wrack, which holds the wardrobes of all eight girls.

Faded negative prints of Snow White and Cinderella posters hang on the wall. The girls don’t know either character. But there was an empty spot on the wall and they got a good deal on the posters at the market.

This might all sound depressing to some, but it isn’t really. The place is filled with giggly energy. It’s like being in a crowded room of college freshman co-eds, except these girls don’t go to class. They go to work and make our clothes.

They get paid a minimum of $50/month plus any overtime. That’s more than teachers in Cambodia get paid. It’s enough for them, but they have more people than themselves to be concerned about. The average worker supports seven people on her income.

The girls don’t like their job. But they don’t have much of a choice. Their family needs them to work, so they work. The worst part is that they live far from their families. Most of the workers are from villages in the provinces surrounding Phnom Penh. They miss being home. I wanted to see why, so I went with two of them back to their home village near the city of Kompong Cham.

Their villages are surrounded by green rice fields. The only thing more abundant than fresh air are friendly neighbors. There is enough fresh fruit to eat off the trees to make your belly ache.

I would rather live in the village than Phnom Penh…if they had internet.

Nari is 25. She’s outgoing and slightly oversized in all directions for a Cambodian girl. She had to pay a $50 for a man with connections at the factory to land her an interview. Her family owns pigs, fruit trees, and rice fields, but it’s not enough to support them. She sends money home so they can buy rice. She wants to open a beauty salon in her village and is currently taking classes in makeup application. She’ll fancy-up girls for their wedding day. Soon she will start learning how to do hair. She’s already purchased a hair iron and hopes to buy more equipment soon. She asks me a lot of questions about the cost of manicures in the USA and if girls wear extensions in their hair. I do my best to answer, but the truth is I haven’t touched my hair with a brush in ten years. Hers is the life of the average Cambodian.

Ai is 24. She’s shy, but quick to smile. She doesn’t have a contract with the factory and therefore can be fired at any time for any reason without justification. She irons some 10,000 pants/day. It’s a hot job. She would like to be a teacher, but has had only three years of education herself. She laughs when I tell her that some Americans wouldn’t buy Levi’s that were Made in Cambodia because they don’t think she’s treated fairly. Ai thinks this is ridiculous because if they don’t buy the jeans she won’t have a job. It seems simple. Her bosses won’t let her or any of her co-workers talk while they are working. She misses working in the rice fields around her village. In the rice fields they talked a lot. To get to her home we have to wade through two streams. Her father is a construction worker. He doesn’t own much more than their home. Their water buffalo was stolen two weeks ago. Her grandmother is worried about her safety in the city. Her mom visits her twice a year to bring her jackfruit, mangoes, darian, and a bunch of other fruits that I’ve never heard of. Two of Ai’s sisters live with her in Phnom Penh. They are also garment workers. Her family is poorer than Nari’s

Also, garment workers don’t like bowling. Who knew?

—
I came to Cambodia. I met the girls who made my pants. They giggled a lot.

28: It’s the new 65!

(Note: That’s not me in the picture. I’m not letting myself go that much!)

Between me and you, the temple at Angkor killed my knees. They feel old. Going up is no problem, but going down…yikes! Elderly Japanese women were asking me if I needed help.

One of my favorite parts about Angkor was talking to the young girls who sell cold drinks, t-shirts, scarves, and about anything else you could possibly need and not need. They are pushy but fun and very clever. They got some money out of me and I didn’t want anything. Many of the girls speak multiple languages. One girl I met spoke 11!

Another girl, who I feature in the upcoming slideshow, knew the Capital of Ohio along with most of the other states and countries in the World. I had to buy something from her too.

Each interaction always seemed to have one part that disturbed me. They would ask me my age. I would tell them I’m 28 and then they would tell me that I don’t look that old.

Is 28 old? Between my grandma knees and these girls, I’m thinking it might be.

Scotty Lee’s Spirit of Soccer

A little crazy goes a long way.

Take for instance professional soccer coach and former player Scotty Lee. Scotty met some Iranians at a bar and the next thing he knew he was working as a humanitarian in Bosnia during the war for the Iranian government. Scotty has stories with snipers, mortars, and tense check points. All crazy.

But he’s a good kind of crazy.

While on a return trip to Bosnia some kids were killed by a land mine during a game of soccer. Scotty had a crazy idea. Teach soccer and teach land mine awareness. It may not seem like the most logical correlation, but as Scotty puts it, “You can’t be a football player without legs. And you can’t be a goalie without arms.”

Scotty put some materials together and visited villages where he conducted soccer clinics followed by mine awareness sessions. The program grew into the Spirit of Soccer, “a grass roots childrens football charity which is registered in both the USA and UK and operates two soccer/football coaching projects at present in Bosnia and Cambodia.”

When I’m traveling somewhere, especially when I don’t speak the language, I’m always looking for a pickup game of something: basketball, soccer, pool, Frisbee, hackey sack, Kabbadi, baseball. You name it and I’ll play it. Sport has the ability to break down the social reservations that the players may have and open lines of communication. There is no better way to win over a village worth of kids than to play a game with them.

I suspect this is why Spirit of Soccer has been so successful and has passed on the love for the game and its lifesaving message to more than 50,000 kids.

I saw the organization at work in a village near Battambang (you can see pics and hear audio in the Made in Cambodia slideshow) and I later met Scotty in Phnom Penh.

Besides being the founder and backbone of a good cause, Scotty is one of the most interesting people I’ve had a drink with in awhile.

Learn more about Spirit of Soccer

Oh and I promised Scotty I would pose this question to you all: Yes or No, Art Garfunkel and I are twins separated at birth?

WAIW? to hit the airwaves

I taped my second interview for the World Vision Report on Wednesday. The first covered the premise of my quest and my experiences in Honduras and Bangladesh. Wednesday’s just covered Cambodia.

When I look back at all of the interviews I’ve given over the years….wait, these were my first two. Anyhow, I think they went well, but I don’t have anything to compare them to. At the end of both interviews, I felt like I should have mentioned something that I didn’t get a chance to work in:

I should have told Peggy, the host, that the most surprising thing about Cambodia was getting a shoulder massage at the urinal. Or when she asked me what else I’ve been up to I should have told her about visiting the dump and playing Frisbee with the kids who collect plastic for 25-cents/day.

So on and so on…

In hindsight, some things, like the dump, I probably should have mentioned and, other things, like the urinal massage, I was wise not to bring up. All-in-all I think I do well enough for the professional producers and editors to make me sound semi-intelligent. Of course, I haven’t heard the final cut yet.

There hasn’t been a date set for the first interview to air, but you can be sure that I will keep you posted. The 3 interviews (I have one more left to do on China), once started, will air over a 3-month period, mirroring my trip.

I’m looking forward to hearing them. You should too. How often do you get to hear a guy that sounds like Joe Dirt talk about his Bangladeshi boxers?

Not often enough, my friends. Not often enough.

— Here’s a link to my first ever radio contribution for the World Vision Report’s Reporter’s Notebook. In this one, Joe Dirt (ME) talks about playing soccer in Honduras.

The Father, the Hammerhead, and the Holy Spirit

Beholdeth, the shark is borneth. And then he is killeth by a stingray. Will he riseth again?

—Thanks for the link, Mom—

Impure Thoughts on Angkor

The temples of Angkor are amazing, but there are a couple of things that could be done to ratchet up the temple’s appeal. Some suggestions:

- Flood it. Angkor is the best dive site in the world. If only there were 50 meters of water sitting on top of it. Swimming through the narrow corridors and hovering over the iconic spires would be unforgettable. Add marine life. WOW! What’s better than swimming through the Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas? Swimming through the gallery of a Thousand Buddhas with a shark!

I know this is a sacrilege. You might be thinking, “I don’t know how to SCUBA dive and I want to see Angkor.” Know this: I’m not thinking about you. If I owned Angkor and I was featured on an episode of Pimp My Temple, I would flood it. Sorry. But it’s my temple.

Okay, Okay, I don’t own the temple and flooding it is insane (I really need to do some diving. I’m having withdrawals.). So, try this next suggestion…

- Moat waterskiing. The moat is there already and it’s calm as glass. Just add a boat. I’d pay $20 for one pull around the moat. So it’s noisy and might cutback a little on the ancient-world feel Angkor has going for it. But so does the thousands of tourists with there clickety clackety cameras and the guides talking through their waist speakers. And not to mention the tuk-tuks, tour buses, electric cars, and cell phones (I text messaged someone today from a temple - sorry).

So diving Angkor might not be too practical. I do believe that Moat Waterskiing is the future, but don’t go thinking just because there are a few boats pulling skiers that someone should add jet-ski rentals.

Jet skis? At Angkor? Now that would just be wrong.

In case you were wondering where I’ve been…

This is where

Moto drivers are people too

“Moto?”

“Sure, why not?” I went for a run tonight and don’t feel the need to walk.

The Mondo BBQ has the cheapest fruit-shakes in Phnom Penh and that’s exactly what I want for dinner. I’m not very hungry.

It takes about five minutes to walk there, one by moto. A pointless moto ride for sure, but why not give this fella something to do instead of harassing all of the other ME’s out there?

“Join me for a fruitshake?” I ask.

At first he thinks I want him to wait for me. I make the appropriate hand gestures and he gets it, takes off his helmet, and sits down across from me.

“Order whatever you like.” I say.

He orders a small orange juice, the cheapest thing on the menu, and I order a fruit-shake and the anemic spaghetti (2 nights in a row eating Italian, what’s up with that?).

We chat.

Today he gave four people rides, five counting me. On an average day he makes $1 to $2, which is barely enough to support his stay-at-home wife and his two kids. Six months ago, due to downsizing, he lost his job working for an NGO as a security guard where he made $200/month and had health insurance. Now he makes a fraction of that and has no health insurance.

At no point in time does he complain. He just states facts.

He smiles when he talks about his wife and laughs when he mentions his kids.

He drops me at my guesthouse and rides off.

Everybody has a story. This is what makes life interesting. And once we know that story, even small pieces of it, we can begin to understand each other.

Editors and Moto-Drivers

Everywhere you go has its own form of transportation. In Bangladesh it’s the rickshaw, in England it’s the tube or the bus, and in Cambodia it is the Moto.

“Moto” sounds much manlier than it should. These small, efficient bikes are scooters. Nothing more. For 50-cents you can go about anywhere. They aren’t hard to find. Every corner has a few moto-drivers gambling at cards, napping, reading newspapers. But no matter what they are doing or how focused they are doing it, they will spot you from half-a-block away, throw their hand in the air and holler “MOTO! MOTO! HELLO, SIR! MOTO!”

Walking the streets of Phnom Penh, I can hold my breath in between Moto-offers and not go blue in the face.

Two-thirds of the time I try to give the driver a negative headshake or a “no thanks,” but the rest of the time I just ignore them. Tonight I was returning to my hotel after eating a disappointing pizza a block away and I didn’t need a Moto. Why should I respond to the driver who pulls in front of me and stops or the guy hollering from…I can’t even tell where? I don’t owe them anything. If I acknowledge every driver, I’ll get nothing done and I’ll go nowhere.

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Wait, where have I heard that before?

At every writers’ conference I’ve ever been to I have heard an agent, a publisher, or an editor say something like, or exactly, this. I could understand where they were coming from, but had nothing to compare it to. Now I do. Manuscripts, proposals, and queries are offered to them from every direction. Maybe they just ate some bad pizza or having a rotten day and they don’t want to take the time to read a writer’s submission or give it the time the writer thinks it deserves.

They don’t owe the writer anything.

I’ll try to reject the Moto-offers more kindly from now on, hoping to boost my writing karma, but I’m not going to make any promises. Part of me really wants to tell them to F#*!-off!