The cultural gap is increasing, against initial expectation

Now I have a better grasp of what “I don’t know” and also what I sort of see but really don’t see the nuances. Likely there is stuff don’t even know that I don’t know!

It is my 3^rd anniversary coming up in August, of living in Cambodia and I am obsessing over a wheelbarrow using labourer. Yep a wheelbarrow-pushing building construction site labourer has come to represent everything I know I not understand about this culture.

How it all happened, was that I could see a well being dug along with a new enormous brick fence being built in the property 2 houses from mine. The way my balcony faces, I was looking across a short 10 metres of my neighbour’s open yard to where they were working. To see 2 men hand dig a very very deep well was amazing. Over a week, I saw a hand winch being turned and up came a bucket of dirt. The man up top took the bucket of a hook and emptied the dirt onto the ground and lowered the empty bucket down again. Only at the end of the well construction did I happen to look up at the moment that the person emerged from the bottom of the well. He was diminutive, wiry and seemed to have climbed up by splaying his legs and levering himself up the well he dug. How hot and dark must it have been at the bottom?

Anyway, my immediate neighbour got involved as the pile of dirt from the well was being placed in her yard – likely no negotiation over the placement of dirt into her yard, as its very Khmer to simply do these things of using convenient space nearby. I also don’t think it was negotiated, but maybe I wrong, in that my neighbour used the dirt to spread out over her yard, raising the level of her yard. I was gobsmacked, it was only word to use, as I saw over course of an entire weekend she and her elderly relative spread out the dirt by hand. But at end of weekend, as I laze on my balcony trying not to watch all the physical activity as it was making me feel guilty, I then saw a new worker, the wheelbarrow man.

The wheelbarrow man was taking dirt from the same pile on the ground that was in my neighbour’s yard and wheeling it through my neighbour’s front gate and back into the construction site area. Now my neighbour had been using a woven basket that carried at most 2 small shovel loads of dirt and she then shook out the flat based basket spreading the dirt evening over her yard. It made sense that the well winch man had kept emptying his bucket on the same pile of dirt he always had. At times there was a large knee high pile beside the well and at times it was down to nothing. My neighbour had completed her distribution of dirt over her own yard by the time the new wheelbarrow man arrived on.

So the wheelbarrow man would arrive with his empty barrow and stand with a shovel in his hand and watch the well man dump the bucket on the ground right beside the wheelbarrow. Then the wheelbarrow man would shovel the newly dumped dirt into his wheelbarrow and wait for the next bucket load being winched up. The new bucket load would be placed on the ground by the barrow, so the second man would then move it to the wheelbarrow.

It was so frustrating to watch. I tried not looking and yet as I was reading a good book and listening to music and trying to focus on my own space, ignoring my neighbour’s space, its true that every core of my spirit wanted to shout, “hey just empty the bucket of dirt directly into the wheelbarrow! Shez!”

It made me realise what the west might possibly have been like before time-in-motion studies revolutionized factories. Was a wheelbarrow man double-handling dirt in the west at some time? Or the equivalent?

Yet the cultural issues it raises are fascinating. For me a saw a waste of time in that the wheelbarrow man could have been doing some other task and just come and fetch his full wheelbarrow once the well man had filled it. The well man was in calling out distance to the bridge building exercise a mere 5 metres away, which was were the dirt was going.

Some guesses as to what I might have been seeing;

- maybe it was a good deed to have created a new job for someone.

- Employment as the wheelbarrow man could have newly created position but not want to reduce anyone else’s work as you only get paid for what is worked.

- If hurry the entire construction jobs, everyone works less hours and so less pay

Maybe it is more like the ‘bad’ union days of the west, than I realize?

- maybe actually no-one ever thought about the above and I am making this up!

- maybe the wheelbarrow man was frustrated and hated shoveling up the dirt that could have just as easily been tipped into the barrow. Maybe he was not say anything as it would not be respectful? Was the well-winch-emptying-bucket man the boss of the outfit?

You gotta think the dude at the bottom of the well filling the bucket within a cramped space has to be the worst off. Bet there is no ‘danger’ money or extra bonuses for being in a well half a day with no toilet or drinks breaks that I ever saw. They only stopped at 11.30am and then start again at 1.30ish until dusk. Starting at dawn of course

There was an occasional joke in the past amongst expats I knew, that is serious, which is when someone starts a question such as “why do you think my colleague did such and such” or “why are they digging up the newly laid road out to the lake to lay pipes under the road” or “why did my staff go to the market 3 times today instead of once” the remaining people gathered sang out “why are you still asking why!” The comment is based on belief that there is no rational explanation and that to continuously ask why about a different culture’s behaviour is itself pointless and indicative of the western culture we belong to

Having said that, I am still pondering the why? If I knew what was going on to justify the wheelbarrow man’s task I feel I have the key to something significant.

Yet what if there is no explanation! Really, no explanation other than absolutely no-one ever thought to save the double-handling of the dirt? If it’s that simple, it’s also so complex an answer. This is where I get a bit deep and philosophical. As what does it say about a nation’s future, if no-one actually saw that one man’s shoveling of dirt was not required at all? Still it might be as complex an explanation about respect, avoiding conflict, not telling people what to do or creating jobs for people so they an get ahead in their own lives.

Thus, the longer I stay in Cambodia, the more complex it all gets. The division, the gulf or impossibility between the culture I represent and this south east asian Buddhist post-conflict trauma society is growing larger every month

Likely I will never know what was happening in the dynamics of the wheelbarrow man’s tasks. Also likely that someone from a different culture or with different interests would have observed other things of interests (clothes, food or the rope being used etc). For me, I wondered how the wheelbarrow man could cope with watching a man empty a bucket of dirt in front of him, which then needed to go in the barrow that was directly there beside the dirt. But the use of the word ‘cope’ is itself another western value; people don’t cope with frustration here. Not sure what they do with frustration and yes I know that Khmer people are open to feeling frustration. But when they do feel frustration, they do something different with it – and cope is not adequate to describe it.

But ‘coping’ – or lack of this concept/emotion – is a topic for another rambling piece about how much that I don’t know but can sense. It’s like hidden treasure that glints but is not revealed.

I wonder what my colleagues think of my behaviour (or fellow expats) as there must be the equivalent for them, of utter incomprehension of an action taken by myself or expats.