Takeo Province

Just before I wrote this today, I was taking a stroll along the riverfront in Phnom Penh. Not many people were out, because the rain had just stopped, so I was quite suprised indeed when an elephant strolled by. Elephants, I had forgotten, are really quite large, and they're hard to miss. As I'm typing this now, there is a very small and very furry puppy yelping at my feet in the otherwise quiet internet cafe. This concludes my monthly animal update.

Yesterday Sambor and I, along with Sinath, a highly talented student on the khsae dieu, traveled to Takeo province to visit the master teacher (look gru) Sok Duch. One of older CLA masters, Sok Duch has a lively personality and a great laugh. He is not only master of the khsae dieu, but also is proficient and knowledgable about nearly all major Khmer instruments. And he not only teaches his students how to play the instruments and the traditional music associated with them, he also teaches them to build their own instruments. This was the most impressive part of visiting his class, to see students playing on instruments that are two hundred years old or on instruments that they had crafted themselves.

In fact, when we arrived, Sok Duch was literally putting the strings on a chapei dong veng that he had just completed in time for a student to use in the afternoon class, after working on it for about a month. Sok Duch actually did not spend much time with the class that afternoon; he mostly smoked and paced about the yard before sitting down to talk with me and Sambor. But his work with them was evident; the students had memorized 41 songs over the past year! And these are not short pieces of music, as most are well over ten minutes or more.

After visting the class and meeting the students for a while, Sambor and I went with Sok Duch to his house to talk further with him. I shared some of the Chinese erhu songs I knew on his tro sau, which he had built for his grandchildren. It was amazing to see the dedication and craftmanship he put into all the instruments he has made. In his house he kept a radio for the Sihanouk era (1950's and 1960's in Cambodia), which he used to use 70 batteries to run. When it wouldn't work, he would just replace a couple of them to fix it. It is hard for me to imagine living without electric power lines in the Cambodian countryside.

He also talked at length about his concern for the current situation in his country, especially the gangs and the corruption. Almost everyone I talk to, actually, is pretty upset with the corruption and the current government. I won't attempt to explain the political situation here, but is mostly stems from a prime minister who neither cares for his own people nor for the demands of other nations. Whatever people may complain about the government of the United States, it's hard to overstate how much more corrupt the situation is in Cambodia. The country is safe, but so many things that I take for granted as the duty of a government to do simply do not exist in Cambodia. For example, I have been trying to post this post on the blog for more than a day, but have been delayed by power outtages, very common in Cambodia. I'm not frustrated, but it is interesting to see exactly how much we have in the United States, how much is provided for us, and how little we actually, in fact, need.