A day with Apsara

Here we are again, back from an adventure with Mr Khuon, aka Apsara-Man. Ever since we started volunteering at Apsara Mr Khuon, deputy general director responsible for Land and Habitat Management in Angkor Park, has taken us under his wing and is spending a lot of time and effort in explaining the whole operation to us ... and it has been much appreciated since it is giving us a totally unique insight into Angkor and the machinery behind it. Both G and I feel that it is making a huge difference to our Cambodia experience.
Apsara was called into life by Unesco when the Angkor area was made a World Heritage Site in 1994, with the mandate to preserve the monuments. However, since then it has been realized that the monuments and their preservation for mankind are closely linked to the wellbeing of the people who live around them in the park. Therefore, Apsara's mandate was expanded to also be responsible for the sustainable development of the park and the people that live in it.
And this was what today was all about:
Mr Khuon, an urban planner by training with extensive experience in the field, has initiated a number of projects all aimed at improving the living conditions of the park inhabitants, some of whom are desperately poor. The thinking is that because the people are so poor they are engaging in activities that ultimately threaten the monuments such as cutting trees for firewood and to clear farm land and illegally settling in the park, which puts an additional strain on the already stretched water table and in turn destabilizes the monuments. Some of Mr Khuon's projects are small, aimed at “quick wins” to get the population on board with other initiatives and build trust with Apsara... where things aren't rosy right now.
The largest project under his umbrella is the construction of an eco village for sustainable development called Run Ta-Ek, into which he hopes to migrate some of the park's growing population and thus develop a new community outside of the park. The project is aimed at young families, whose parents are living in the park. Due to planning restrictions, these young families would not be able to build their own houses in the park (they could only stay living with their parents) and by granting them not only a plot of land for a house and garden in the new community, but also one hectare of rice paddy, Apsara is hoping to lure them out of the park. We visited the site of Run Ta-Ek today but right now it is very difficult to imagine it all since there is just a huge hole which will be the community's fishing lake that is being deepened and that is about it ... yet people are supposed to move there in June. Both G and I have a number of concerns re this project, not least of all because by his own admission Mr Khuon's is basing this project on housing developments that were built in the 60's and 70's in the UK ...and we all know where that ended.
I feel somewhat disloyal towards Apsara and dear Mr Khuon, who is making such an effort with us, but I can not help but feel jaded and cynical re the development work that is being done here. I have spent quite a bit of my time at Apsara reading up about these different development project, focusing on a report that describes phase one of a project aimed at reducing the poverty of park inhabitants which Apsara is running the the government of New Zealand. The document is very wordy and worthy, full of good intentions, plans to consult the populations but very little in terms of action and what they will actually do. I got to the end of the 75 page document and was only able to find three action points: we will
1)increase the capabilities of Apsara and the park population ..... no comments on what these might be and how this might be done
2)map the land in the park because right now no one knows were one plot begins and another ends ... no comment on how this will help alleviate poverty
3)provide vocational training to get people into the tourism industry ... yet in the same sentence the document says that without English it is very hard, and still ... there is no mention of teaching English anywhere in the document ...
I end this day with a new found respect for all my friends who at the end of a 3-year course of Development Studies at Sussex University did not sell their soul to financial journalist but instead are out there saving the world!!!!!!