June 11-20
Weeks of June 11th t June 18th
This week I worked on a project proposal for Cambodia for the UN DEF. This project tried to combine the use of technology and legal aid in order to broaden the access to justice for people within the country. We hope that one day the project could be implemented on a much broader scale. The week was kind of hectic because we had to prepare for Karen’s trip to Cambodia the next week, planning meetings with government officials and coordinating with our local Cambodia office as well.
I had a couple meetings with the team working to update the IBJ website this week. There is a new attorney in the office this week and she has taken leadership on the Sri Lankan trainers manual and Gabby and I have been helping her out with it as well. We are using the Myanmar manual as a template and updating it. The more that we go through it though the more differences we notice and realize that much of it has to be rewritten from scratch.
I had planned to go to Amsterdam after work on Friday and then arrive back at Geneva before work Monday morning. It was an ambitious plan but I want to make the most out of the opportunity of being in Europe for the summer and found a cheap flight and accommodation. On Friday afternoon at 3pm, three hours before my flight Karen called me into her office. She asked me to join her in Cambodia next week. I booked my flight and committed to being in Cambodia all of the following week. My new travel plans were to fly from Geneva Friday to Amsterdam and then Sunday night fly from Amsterdam to Cambodia and then back to Geneva Friday night.
The weekend in Amsterdam was amazing. My friend Alex and I arrived late Friday night and immediately explored the city. Amsterdam is unlike any American city that I have ever been to, it reminded me a little of Venice because there were canals everywhere and some people traveled by boat. On Saturday we went to a few museums and explored the city again and took some generic tourist pictures by the giant Amsterdam sign. We found an old fashioned cigar lounge and the owner invited us into the VIP section where we smoked Cubans and drank whiskey. Later we took the tour of the Heineken factory. I had been to a few brewery and distillery tours in the past, however, this one was different because it was much more interactive and seemed more tailored to tourists. We met some locals at the museum and they helped show us around later that day and we got to see some of the local hang out spots in Amsterdam.
On Sunday afternoon I had to fly to Amsterdam. It was an 18 hour trek with a layover in Qatar. The flight also had to make a mini pit stop in Vietnam for an hour. Once I arrived in Cambodia I had to get a Visa at the airport. My co-worker was waiting for me at baggage claim and we took a tuk tuk to our hotel. Cambodia is completely different than anywhere I had been in Europe this summer. A tuk tuk is a little motor bike (sometimes a motor scooter) pulling a little open aired cart. When we arrived at the hotel it was magnificent with a Jacuzzi tub and an infinity pool on the roof. Furthermore, everything including the hotel was incredibly cheap. I dropped off my bags and immediately had to join Karen at a meeting with the head of the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (BAKC). It turns out that when Karen was in Cambodia training the first legal defenders in the 1990’s one of Karen’s students turned out to become the head of the bar. Karen has so many deep roots and connections in Cambodia because of the work that she had done and her constant presence in the country. It was very neat to see the amount of praise and respect that she got.
After this meeting we had a dinner meeting with 8 Cambodian attorneys at an all you can eat buffet. At the restaurant everyone was speaking Khmer so I sat quietly and didn’t participate much in the conversation. The food arrived at the table via conveyer belt and everyone took food and threw it into the boiling pot in the center of the table. It was an authentic representation of the communal culture in Cambodia. After the dinner meeting I struggled to fall asleep because of the jet lag and decided to explore the neighborhood around the hotel. There were street food stands and people playing music from mini radios. The tuk-tuks were parked on the side of the road and the drivers had set up hammocks in the carts and were sleeping in them. There was a bar 2 blocks away and they had the World Cub on a jumbo screen for everyone to watch. It really made me appreciate the global nature of soccer, something most Americans do not realize. One thing in common between Croatia, Cambodia, Amsterdam, and Sweden is that they were all watching the world cup. The vastly different cultures all had a similar interest in common.
The next day we spent the majority of the day in the IBJ office in Cambodia prepping for our meeting with the UN representative about funding. We went over the proposal with Vandeth the head of the office in Cambodia and made sure that both the Geneva office and the Cambodia office were on the same page about the outcomes of the proposal as well as the steps necessary to fund it.
Everything in Cambodia is much cheaper than in Europe or the US. A tuk tuk ride is anywhere from 1-3 dollars and you can get a nice meal for 2 dollars. It is one thing to notice that services and food is cheap. However, working through the proposal I learned how little attorneys make in Cambodia and it really put everything into perspective. For relatively little money a huge impact can be made in Cambodia and affect the lives of many. If just a small fraction of a US attorney’s salary was put towards funding foreign legal aid there would be no lack of help in a developing country such as Cambodia.
The next day we met with the UNDEF representative. She spent the whole day in the office asking us many questions about the proposal. She wanted all the answers to come from the Cambodian field workers, which made it extra effective that we had spent all of that time preparing and getting on the same page. At the end of the day it seemed that although she was a little hesitant with the technology aspect she understood the need for funds to go towards the attorneys so that they could take on more cases and help more people. She seemed to really understand the impact that we were making and the successes that IBJ has had in Cambodia.
The next day was my last full day in Cambodia. It started with a meeting with someone at the US Embassy and the US State department. We talked to them about the work that we are doing and tried to start a relationship between the US and IBJ. Later that day I met up with Maddie, a William and Mary law student who was interning in Cambodia. She showed me around her office and we talked about the different work that we were doing.
I arrived back in Geneva Friday night and spent an hour at the end of the day in the Geneva office before the weekend. Friday night I went to a public music festival in a park. They had a 100 piece orchestra that was only Cello’s. The entire set consisted of theme music from movies and tv shows, it was pretty intense.
That Saturday I went to visit some family friends in the Swiss government in Bern. They showed me around the city and pointed out some of the historical buildings. That night we went to a Kentucky derby party at the home (castle) of a member of the Swiss Supreme Court. Despite not actually being the date of the derby the party was wonderful very, American themed with delicious mint juleps. I spoke with a few Swiss attorneys and members of the Swiss government on a variety of topics such as US Politics, public welfare, as well as international issues such as Israel and global warming. It was pretty neat being at the party, it seemed as though everyone there spoke 3-4 languages and depending on who you were around the language might change mid conversation. Everyone was polite though and when I introduced myself people started speaking in English right away.
On Sunday I went to Zurich to visit a close friend from college, Kevin, who I haven’t seen in years. He wasn’t able to see me until the afternoon though so I spent the whole day exploring the city listing to an audio book, Still Alice. Still Alice is a tragically sad book about a Harvard professor who struggles with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. In Zurich I stumbled upon a patio orchestra on the water. Kevin and I met up at a café and spent a few hours sitting outside, drinking espresso and catching up. After Zurich I returned to Geneva Sunday night and went to another public music festival in the park a great way to end an exhausting 10 days of travel.