Day 241: Water Filter Donation — Amansara “Anniversary” Dinner
This morning we drove and hour and a half outside of town with our guide for what we thought would be an educational morning of volunteer work: Learn about the shortages of drinking water in the region, understand how simple water filters are solving those challenges for local villages — and even assemble one such water filter and watch it get installed in a local home.
To be honest we were a little leery of the outing — not loving the approach we’ve seen here to helping disadvantaged folks (eg, over the last week, we’ve mulled over our Vietnam orphanage visit, and decided that it was not a good thing to do. It was more for us than for the orphans.).
So anyway, we were convinced by our local tour operator to stick with this one because it would be really rewarding.
I’m almost cringing too hard to type this post. We pulled up in the pouring rain to a village home — and were surprised to see there were about 40 locals, mostly women and children, gathered waiting for us.
Then we saw it: A giant banner hanging on the wall that read “Supported by Sullivan Family, USA, September 3, 2019.” I elbowed Teddy and we both said “oh my god” under our breath. As we approached, we saw there were 10 new plastic giant jugs on a table — the size and shape of the Gatorade water jugs on the sidelines at NFL games.
Apparently these already-assembled devices were a gift from The Sullivan Family.
A monk greeted us (but would only shake Teddy’s hand, not allowed to shake mine) and we stood there awkwardly with everyone staring at us until I go: “So….what’re we looking at here?”
He showed us the inside of one of the water filters while our guide and some other dude took photos of us as if we were the Obamas doing a photo op inspection of a village project.
Then they asked 10 local women from different area families to stand in a line so we could hand each one a jug. We tried to do it really quickly to get it over with — I felt embarrassed for the women, who felt like props. When everyone was holding a jug, the guide and other guy with a camera motioned for us to get in the picture and Teddy and I both practically shouted “NO!” at the same time.
Here’s a pic the guide took so you get the idea (eek, right?):
In about 7 minutes the whole thing was over. We helped make some baguette-and-condensed-milk sandwiches for the kids (also a gift from us, we learned).
This is going to sound so cynical, but as a PR person, I know the sweet snack giveaway was a perk designed to ensure there’d be dozens of cute kids there for photos.
We didn’t even take out our camera once.
EXCEPT when we spent about 10 minutes fawning over some piglets in the backyard…
But yeah, no educational morning, no volunteering, no conversation with people we’re helping, no idea how much we donated, no assembling a water filter ourselves, no learning about how they get used or installed.
Just white folks riding into town in an AC’d van for a 7-minute charity photo op with poor brown people. Eeeeek.
And then we left.
It wasn’t quite over for us, though. Our guide has his own water pump and outhouse charity project he funds with tourist donations, and he wanted to show us some examples — obviously in the hopes that we’d be moved to donate ourselves.
Truth is, we would’ve rather given his project the money since he spent an hour walking us around and teaching us about the technology and the impact on the town — the opposite of the earlier fiasco. And we really like him. But alas we’d spent all we were going to spend on this — and the projects he does are pricey — so no one pulled out a check book this time, unfortunately.
Side story: He’d told us a few days ago about a rich Australian he once had on a tour who ended up funding several dozen of his water projects. Then, in addition to donating money, this Australian guy gifted Virak and his wife an all-expense-paid two-week trip to Australia — flights, hotels, meals, etc. All because he likes Virak and wanted to give him a reward for all his good work (or at least that was what Virak indicated!).
I love that stuff. Wouldn’t it be cool to be so rich that you could just Oprah-away awesome treats for good, hard-working people?
We had a nice lunch at a tourist restaurant in town and headed back to the hotel for school.
At 6:30 pm we put on the new clothes we’d had made in Hoi An (all of us except Teddy, who had dress shirts made — too formal), ready for our big dinner at Amansara.
Back story: On our honeymoon in January 2010, Teddy and I went to Thailand and Cambodia, and stayed at the Aman in Siem Reap: Amansara. It’s in the very 60s-style former Cambodia royal guest house. The Kennedys had stayed there back in the day, etc.
We still think about our delicious meals there, and decided to return for an early 10th anniversary dinner celebration, this time with our kids.
Here we are at our own hotel, ready to head out:
When we walked out to meet our tuk tuk driver — the same one we’ve been using ever since the mini golf, we saw that the Aman had actually sent two tuk tuks to pick us up (of course they did because Aman is so perfect). This detail had been lost in our itinerary fine print — oops. We were faced with the glossy, pristine Aman ride and our sweet guy in his poncho and rickety ride. We rode with our guy (home too)!
Dinner was awesome. There were only 1-2 other people dining there. Entertainment was an elderly blind lady sitting on the sofa singing beautiful traditional Cambodian songs. I remembered her from 10 years ago! Turns out she’s earned enough money at this gig to buy a house for her family. Awesome.
We had a great time and many laughs. Rode home in the rain very happy.
MISC:
Our guide Virak calls “the day after tomorrow,” “the next tomorrow.” Endlessly confusing at first when we were trying to plan and communicate timing of activities, but endearing once we realized what it meant.
Angelina Jolie is god in Cambodia. She adopted her first son, Maddox, here after shooting the first Tomb Raider movie in 2001 (at Ta Prohm btw). She’s been back a million times on relief missions and made a movie out of the book “First They Killed My Father” re the genocide. Everyone knows and adores her.
Related: I’m reading First They Killed My Father and it is….horrific. I’m going to need a break from heartbreaking reads after my China, Vietnam and Cambodia book picks….
This part of the world reminds me of the bayou in the US. Tropical and swampy and humid and dirt-road-y with wooden houses on stilts with chickens and dogs running around. See?
When you’re a privileged kid staying in hotels and eating in restaurants and traveling around the world for a year (and getting all the oohs and aahs from people that come with that), you start to think you’re pretty hot shit. We’ve been working hard to offset a low-grade sense of entitlement that’s existed this year, particularly with Willa. They’re not totally getting that there’s a difference between entitled and lucky. I don’t blame them, it’s just something we need to be hyper-aware of and curb.
You’d think one way to do that would be visiting poor communities, meeting orphans, etc. No. It’s actually the opposite. As absurd as this sounds, the most impactful moments — the times when we really see Willa humbled — are when we have to walk past business class on an airplane. “Why can’t we sit in the fancy seats??” Um, because we can’t afford it. We’ve taken 60 flights this year. That’s 60 times Willa has been put in her place, and seeing her stop and think about it each time never gets old.
