Inside the Media with Al Jazeera

Due to the suspension of the school feeding program, we have attracted a shit load of media visits (Bloomberg, New York Times, Associated Press and a bunch of Khmer, Japanese and German media). This has led to some internal debate as media exposure is vital for attracting new donations, but these people arrive wanting to film a mini-Darfur in Cambodia but are disappointed, life is more difficult for families but I don’t believe people are starving to death because they don’t get breakfast at school.

Anyway a few weeks back we welcomed the 8^th media engagement at our sub-office, this time from Al Jazeera News Network. Al Jazeera, more famous for broadcasting the latest messages from Osama Bin Laden, has an English language news network ala CNN that broadcasts all over the world. Their Asia current affairs show had come to Cambodia to film a story about kids dropping out of school.

So being a little canny, I decided to take them to Srae Ouk which you might remember is the mixed Cham/Khmer village. The rationale was that we want to attract donation from the Middle East (last year the Queen of Dubai gave us US$1m) and well let’s face it, the Arab governments tend to only give to other Muslims. We chose O Loy School (strategically situated next to the village Mosque) and in the event the crew was completely uninterested in the Muslim angle as they were a global company…oh well worth a shot!

So the few days before we drove around trying to identify a suitable student. The media like to focus in on a student and go to their house etc. After a few candidates we chose Vijit, a 16 year old kid in grade 4
(many Cambodian kids repeat a lot of grades or enrol late for various reasons so it’s not unusual to see quite old kids in young grades especially in the poorer areas. Vijit had been attending school sporadically since the suspension of the program because he had to earn money clearing land for others. Having settled on Vijit we went to drive up to visit his grandmother (he is an orphan) who he lives with, to ask her permission as she was working on the WFP food-for work road. But on the drive up we encountered a small problem. The drainage culvert had not been installed and the rice fields adjacent were flooded and too muddy to get through.

Piseth spotted what he thought was a way around, tried to go over a high rice bund and …

We got stuck! So after determining we couldn’t get out by ourselves we requested the other WFP car in Kampong Chnang that was working nearby to come and winch us out. In the meanwhile we were directly outside this woman’s house that incidentally had a rather peculiar living situation. As it turned out, this woman and her sister were both married to the same guy and had houses about 5 metres away from each other. She had 5 kids and her sister had 4. When one sister got pregnant he moved to the other house until she got pregnant and moved back. As you can see there houses were very basic and there was no way he could provide for all these kids. Apparently he wouldn’t let them use birth control; it would have been quite funny if it weren’t so tragic. And this was a Khmer family not a Muslim family, Mony mentioned that sometimes it happens in Khmer culture but not often.

Anyway, after a while the other car arrived and winched us to safety.

The next day Al Jazeera came and it was just fascinating to watch them in action, planning the shots. Its amazing how much they had to shoot to get a final piece that will be 6 or 7 minutes, for instance they got this girl to ring the bell like ten times and filmed from different angles . The school was actually pretty interesting so I am glad we chose it.

Oh and this is their well, and they use old vegetable oil cans from the school feeding to draw water -recycling!

In this class there are not enough class rooms so one grade sits one way and faces one blackboard and the other the other way. There is only one teacher and he runs from one blackboard to another! This other class had more than 40 kids in it (and about 20% of kids were absent that day). It was really interesting to see the kids do their times tables, I remember the very monotone way we did it at primary school, but these kids seemed to make it so much more interesting!

I found it really interesting watching the piece to camera shots (you know when the reporter talks directly to the camera explaining something). The correspondent was this lady called Fauzia Ibrahim and she was pretty cool. I think she was Malaysian but used to live in Australia and basically said life in current affairs reporting was pretty much like that show Frontline.

So from the school we went to the fields to film Vijit clearing the fields for the camera. Just as we get there Mony says I think I can hear rain. I listen and say nah it’s just running water somewhere so we keep going. Then I notice it’s getting louder and louder, then this kid comes out of the forest on a buffalo absolutely soaked, then an almighty roar and this absolute wall of water comes down. It was incredible I have never seen it go from completely dry to so wet so quickly and sheets of rain move before my eyes. So we went to Vijit's house to take shelter from what emerged was a few hours…

Well at least the cows enjoyed it.

Anyway so we waited it out and then emerged to film the shots of Vijit working. It was amazing to see the dry fields we had walked across a few hours before were now submerged and somehow full of tiny fish and frogs!

Can’t wait to see the story!