Mango!

There are mangos everywhere at the moment. Some are sweet, some sour, some sour-sweet. Some are eaten soft and juicy, some hard and crunchy. Some have dark yellow flesh, some have almost white flesh. Sometimes we eat the mango by itself, sometimes dipped in salt and chilli, sometimes with fried fish, or in fish soup as you can see in the photo. Some mangos are mango shaped, some are apple shaped. They cost around 500-2000 reil per mango. (2000 reil is about 50c)

(PS, I wrote this a few weeks ago, so there are less mangos around now but I’m still feeling very mangoafied. The trees around our house are still growing them.)

Inflation 3

Here is a link to The Food Price Crisis on the Radio Australia website.

Fire photos link

On Friday around 5am a fire started. I went into town around 7:30, there was heaps of smoke and fire trucks racing around. Later I found out that a few hundred houses had burnt down. People lost everything. Click to see photos.

Phnom Penh Evacuation April 17th

Many people had died. The war had being going for 5 years. There wasn’t any hope of winning it. The city was filling up with refugees who escaped the fighting in the countryside. But now the war was about to end. A cause for celebration?

There was some cheering on April 17th 1975, but it didn’t last long. Cambodia had actually been liberated from the war into something worse.

Khmer Rouge took the capital on the 17th April 1975 and ordered everyone to leave the city straight away. The black pyjama clad soldiers, mostly youths, said the U.S was going to bomb Phnom Penh. The city’s residents were told to only take enough food and clothes for three days, when the bombing was over they could come back. Gunfire emphasised their commands.

Over the next few days the two million people who had been in Phnom Penh had to walk out of it. Refugees who had recently fled to the city, rich families, hospital patients- everyone. And keep in mind April is The Hottest Month of the Year. CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS

But they couldn’t go back to the city after three days. This was the beginning of 3 years, 8 months and 21 days that Cambodia was ruled by the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot.

Money, schools and religion was abolished. It was to be a classless society where everyone was a farmer. Underfed and overworked people were constantly tired, hungry and often sick.

Kimsoeun was born during this time. His father was one of the many people who died during Pol Pot time. One to two million people died, it’s hard to know exactly.

For more click here : Cambodian Holocaust or here : The end of Cambodia; the beginning of a nightmare.

The Killings Fields movie (1984) shows these events.

A Cambodia girl who was 9 at the time, and another who was 5 survived. You can read their stories in “When Broken Glass Floats” , by Chanrithy Him and
“First they killed my father”, byLoung Ung

And there’s more….

Tears of my Soul by Sokreaksa Himm
Killing Fields, Living Fields byDon Cormack
Year Zero, Francois Ponchaud
Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land, Henry Kamm
The Tragedy of Cambodian History, David Chandler

And there is heaps more but I'm pretty sure my readers have stopped clicking and reading by now!

Inflation part 2

Last October inflation was starting to become an issue, now it’s become a big issue. Below are just a few things I heard or read over the weekend. Apparently prices in 2008 will be 30% higher than in 2007.


*Yesterday I went to an English language Christian church service. On the hand out there was a note encouraging members of the congregation to consider what kind of pay rise they should be giving their staff.

*Also yesterday was a protest in town against the price increases, click here for photos or here to read a Yahoo News article about it.

*Pork sellers are selling less pork; people can’t afford to buy so much food these days. But sellers of charcoal are having a boom because cooking gas is so expensive.

*Many people from all over Cambodia live in Phnom Penh and work in factories. On the front of the Phnom Penh Post this fortnight is an article about how many are going back to the provinces. The cost of living in the city is becoming too great. Rent, food everything is going up so fast. Apparently there might be a $6 a month wage increase, but people say this is still not enough, it doesn’t reflect the magnitude of inflation. (I think the minimum factory workers wage is $50 per month. And it seems people are here so they can earn money to send to their families in the provinces.)

“Cambodia’s annualised rate of food inflation hit 24% last month- the highest in almost a decade, and one of the highest in the region.” (PP Post, Cat Barton, April 4-17 2008)

Inflation

My husband grew up mainly eating rice and prahok, that’s all they could afford. I think many Cambodians are in a similar situation, and they must be having a really hard time at the moment.

Since September prices have been going up faster than usual. In October when we first noticed, it was quite scary.


According to the March SE Globe:


“Consumer price inflation spiked to more than 10% at the end of 2007, over double its average level in the preceding five years.”

“Food prices are under special pressure, with staples such as rice, fish, pork, beef, vegetables and fruit up by over 30% last year, and with the biggest rises in the last few months.”

“Rising fuel prices are adding further pressure, felt both directly and as add-ons to transport and production cost. There is evidence that the trend will continue in 2008.”

South Eastern Globe, March 2008, Philipp Coggan
www.se-globe.com


Just in the last few weeks we’ve been noticing inflation everywhere. Prahok more than doubled it’s price in the last 12 month, I read in the Cambodia Daily on March 18.



Over the next few days I heard people talking about how rice was about to get heaps more expensive. It’s already been increasing in price over the last six months, how will people afford it if it increases more? I was listening to Radio Australia one night and there was a program about the rice shortage in the world at the moment. Lots of countries have stopped exporting rice including India and Australia. The next day (March 26) I read Cambodia had just stopped exporting rice too.

Within days of this happening a bottle of cooking gas went from $20 USD to $40. In October we stopped using our electric kettle and rice cooker. To save money we started doing everything on our two gas hot plates. But now gas has gone up too!

It seemed logical to me that I should give my language helpers a pay rise. When I was explaining this to one of them she thought it was a really strange idea.



“Why? I’ve never heard of this before?” Even though the cost of everything is going up people are still earning the same amount. In some cases earning less- people have less money to spend so are buying less. For example my mother in law sells ready made breakfast food. She gets up around 5am each morning to finish cooking and start selling. Her costs are rising but her customers declining.


For us it may mean that we cut back on some things- like beef and dairy products for example*. But what does it mean for people who couldn’t afford those types of foods to begin with?

This is meant to be just a snap shot of our life, not an economic analysis. There a various reasons why this is all happening. It’s connected to agricultural/environment issues both here and internationally, as well as other things that are happening in the economy and politics. I didn’t mention land prices; these have also been going up faster and faster. If you want to know more you could start with these links : Food inflation, Rice price hike, , some more comments on this and what the BBC has to say about rice in Asia these days.

*Beef and dairy
When I first got to Cambodia 1 litre of UHT milk cost 90cents. Currently the closest shop to us is selling it for 1.55-1.70.
A year ago a kg of beef cost $4. In October it went up to $4.50. Last month it went up to $5.