Cambodia

Cambodia

After Kenya, Cambodia is the second poorest country we have visited.
I can feel the changes slightly taking place inside of me, that I consider to come from traveling: as I write "second poorest", I feel it is not quite right to say it like that.
Similarly to Kenya, the Cambodian people is a smiling one, and were it not for a century of economic and cultural domination of the West, we would not be stuck in certain mindsets and standards when it comes to measuring "wealth" and "poverty".
On the way from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, we stopped in front of a house, in the middle of a dirt road, a half-hour truck drive from the closest urban center.
The house was standing on its stilts, which looked strong and built to last. The house itself looked like it was only one room. In the space below it, without walls to close it from the wind, dirt, or gaze of passer-bys, a middle-aged man was napping in a hammock. Around, kids were playing with second-hand toys, their clothes worn, the youngest boy simply running around naked. In front of the house, a water pump. "Like it was for you a century ago", as they say. Or even "like in the middle ages".
Animals sniffed around in the neighborhood, looking for grass or grain. To separate each house and the piece of land around it from the next, identical-twin looking one, some fruit trees (banana, coconut) or cereals. No flower, no ornament of any sort was visible, except the odd shrine at the corner, with burnt incense sticks and small porcelain Buddha statue.
The encounter with the family living in the house was a materialization of the word "uneasiness", and I forbid myself to take pictures. I wanted to leave some of my extra tshirts to them, but did not know if they needed tham at all, or whether they would feel offended that I thought they needed my charity.
Cambodia has been out of civil war for less than 20 years, and the country lacks all the basics. A government spokesman explained in a Western business investment magazine that they did not have electricity until 1994 (in the Christian Era calendar, yes...), and now they do but it is still very expensive.

The image of that family, living in that house, is burnt in my mind. This is where we come from: a house made from natural material (wood and leaves), a household of many generations with numerous children, living outside during the day, sleeping all together on the floor, or a shared mattress with any luck. A hand pump in front of the house, which provides water for the whole "block", or at least a handful of families.
This is what every country went through, at some point of their history. For generations and generations, until "development" came, bringing nation-wide infrastructures and revolutionizing the role and power of the individual, and therefore the structure of the society. But we do not know what it feels like to be without running water and to be left hungry, rather than with a full belly, at the end of a meal. In our world travel, we have been to a few places where we did not have running water ourselves, or we had to cross an open field to reach the toilet, which was nothing else than four planks nailed together around a hole in the ground. But it is not our life standard.

And I believe this huge gap in daily reality, between "us" from the West, and "them" the more than 60% or 70% of the world population without access to all of our goodness (comfort/luxury), is a critical issue blocking us from effectively thinking new ways for "development", "community building", and "help".

It also reinforces an idea I've had for 6 years now, which is that as the guy sitting at the top of the world, with everything anyone could ever wish for, I have a responsibility to give back. Not give money and not care how it's used, nor give money and say "do what I command you". Rather, I see my responsibility as coming into contact with underprivileged people, listening to their needs, but most importantly their ideas; as understanding what works and what does not work, and why, when it comes to fighting poverty; as building bridges to bring joy and new means of expression without sacrificing the old customs and the human energy that flow in those communities.
The investment I am to make cannot be measured in euros or dollars, only in years. It is not about how much I can help to increase the income of a household, it is about how can I support their smiles.
The proper response to life is applause.
I hope to help in re-writing the scenario a bit, so we can all applause together, the sooner the better.

Motorbikes and unstable trucks swarm on Cambodian roads, carrying all kinds of load on their back, from wood beams to live pigs to whole families. Haystacks line the roads across rural areas (right side, on the picture above)

 The world-known profile of Angkor Wat, reflected on the water

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Happy me :)

A traditional dance show, with a 50cm-high head-wear, at the back of the stage a replica of stone carving from Angkor Tom temple.

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Stone monkey-men guarding the central tower and the shrine in an old temple around the Angkor Wat area. In early 20th century, French writer and future minister of culture André Malraux came in the region and "borrowed" a few archeological pieces, that were later sent back to Cambodia

Stone faces carved at the top of Angkor Tom temple

Living the right life

For the past weeks and months, I thought I had it figured out.

I thought I had everything, or most of it, under control: manage work before it gets too big, keep time on the side for personal interests and projects, and enough social interaction to produce new opportunities regularly.

It was without counting with family! Family gets happy or gets sick, relatives visit you or they need you at their bedside. Family needs to talk, and you'd better be there to listen, because they have been there for you before.

I need to be honest here: oftentimes lately I feel like I should just send whoever to hell, go traveling round the world. I feel hindered by my relationships to a certain place, a certain history, and that it's gonna keep me from realizing my dreams.

Luckily, I have been reading a bit. "The 7 habits of highly effective people" and Dan Buettner at a TED conference provide me with an answer for this situation:
- be trustworthy and caring with those close to you and you'll build up an "emotional account" that is beneficial both to you and to those people, by making the relationship easy and a source of positive feelings
- live by principles, so that when you disagree with someone, you have enough confidence and wisdom not to make it personal or aggressive; it's just that you are different, and if you are mature enough you'll respect each other for having different views on some topics
- the moment I start feeling "hindered" by my family, I know that I need to change perspectives, and see the opportunity. My life balance principle tells me I should not try to avoid all contact and responsibility just because I feel like being on holiday.

It is a huge opportunity to:
- show your gratitude to the people who raised you up. It is not about "I sacrifice for them because they sacrificed for me". I don't like the idea of sacrifice, there is guilt and regret associated to it. It's about openly, proactively, extending a generous hand, lending time, feeling actually glad to be able to help.
- listen. We like to talk, we fill our living rooms with the sound of music and TVs. But to have the chance to listen to someone, who has lived a rather long life, share some of the wisdom and talk about insignificant event of the daily life makes you reflect on your own life. And think twice about what you really want to give priority to.
- connect. I believe when you manage to listen and empathize, and as you are here you have shown your involvement and caring, a connection between you and another individual simply happens, that participates to the feeling of fulfillement of someone's life and sense of purpose and achievement.

What do you think? I'd like to read your thoughts about it.

A thousand trees

..."It only takes one tree to make a thousand matches,
it only takes one match to burn a thousand tress. " ....

A Thousand Trees, written & performed by the Stereophonics, in the album "Word Gets Around".

Got me thinking about responsibility, and my understanding of that word.
My paradigm about responsibility comes from one of my most impactful experiences ever. Let's rewind, step by step, back to that meaningful moment:

2008 is a year to remember for many reasons, on a global perspective.
Personally, it was the first year in which I took the time to reflect on what moments had been critical for me, in my life until now, and what they meant, why they had happened the way they did, and is there something I should do about it if I ever find the answer to all my questions.

In the course of that thiking, I remembered one of the most impactful moments of my life; one which set me out on the Sustainable Development path and were I made to myself the commitment to care about the environmental consequences of my actions.

Looking back, it could have set me on a lot of other courses.

It happened in Aiesec.
Fall 2004, I’m in my LCP term at LC INT (now IT-SudParis), and I decide to attend EuroCo, the very first edition of this pan-european conference for LCPs. So, 121 LCPs from all the cities, from Lisbon (Protugal) to Iasi (Romania), and from Milan to Stockholm. 121 students from all over the continent, ages ranging from 19 to 26. On the 3d or 4th day of the conference, after a mind-blowing Outdoor Day where I truly understood the word “team building” and the challenge of facilitating a session, we went into a different kind of simulation.
A current-state-of-the-world reproduction, on a smaller scale.

Here is exactly how it happened.
As we entered the plenary room, each LCP was given a small piece of colored paper. Soon we found that there were different colors, and not all in the same quantity.
I was in the white group, the largest of all. In fact, I think we were almost 50 people in there. We had to split into 5 10-people groups. We were advised to all sit on the ground. The pink group, with 30 people, split as well in 3 smaller groups. the blue, green, and yellow, were accordingly getting smaller and smaller. In fact, the Yellow “group” was just one girl, from the Netherlands or Denmark maybe.
Then each group was given the details of its current situation, and of the situation of others. To sum it up, the largest, white group, represented countries with the most difficult socio-economico-political situation.
- We did not have stable politics ensuring the development, roll-out, and improvement of national policies
- our people did not have permanent access to education, even for children
- we did not represent a market significant enough that foreign investments would come fortify our economy: only international grants & donations were coming in
- possibly, we would undergo civil unrest and/or war, environmental pressure from flood and earthquakes, disease epidemics…
- women were being discriminated at all stages of the society, starting from school
- etc.
you get the picture.

For each group between us and the yellow group, the situation was increasingly better, so that this girl sitting on her chair, alone, represented what I could call the modern, western society:
- higher education available for the large majority of the population
- political stability and strong diplomatic relations with other well established nations
- public service for basic survival needs (housing, water, existing healthcare system)
- economy providing at least 80% of the population with jobs
- research & education running and cooperating with peers in other countries

After we read what we had, the facilitator (Caroline Gertsch from Switzerland, if memory serves) gave us our task:
- identify what you, as a country, can OFFER to and RECEIVE from countries that would be in the groups just “above” and just “below” your own.
- for the bottom group (49 people and me), we could only look “up”
- for the top group (the girl alone), she could only look “down”

We had 25 minutes to discuss in my group of 10 people what we could find to offer to any country, to attract investment. It was probably an intense discussion, full of interesting thoughts and remarks. It may as well have been dull. I don’t remember it. But I remember the conclusion. I can let you think about it if you want. You can take 5 minutes now, to think about what you would have said in our situation.


If you don’t want to spend this time now, I give the answer now, and you can do it later, by imagining, say, the second group (pink) and thinking about what they can offer and what they can receive from countries with relatively close situations.
Basically, all we had to offer were :
- our arms & legs for working
- our natural resources, scarce or hard to mine ourselves, due to lack of know-how and equipment.
And what we could expect from other countries:
- everything…

To be more specific, the first needs identified (my memory seems weak on this point)
- support for building infrastructure
- support for stabilizing the political society
- international help on meeting basic water & food demand
- funding for child education & support for creating quality higher education

That moment has impacted me up ot today, and will continue to do so: I don’t even have a clue how many countries in our actual word are part of that huge group so much in need of help.

I think I saw more the other end of the issue: the girl at the top of this giant pyramid of needs, the only one, closest to the top, had everyone to help. And she was really alone. She had everything the others did not even know they could want and have. I do not believe that this will happen by itself if we just let time pass. The top countries had a blank page and enough ink to write their way to the stars and back. Now the planet is crowded ("hot, flat & crowded" as some would put it) and we are "consuming" the environment faster than it renews itself. (see latest studies from Science & Vie in France, or your local science magazine, about the ratio between population and 'minimum required space of earth"-per-person... well, it doesn't look good right now, and its still going down).

A famous french writer wrote "if you dont do it, who will do it? if not now, when?" (André Gide, in Les Faux Monnayeurs).

That is the sense of responsibility that I got from that cold day of october 2004, in the middle of a room full of students I never imagined meeting one week before.

Last week, at the Winter National Conference, in my closing speech I mentionned the idea of "connecting oneself" to the world, and how aiesec helps you to do that, when you go through the full @Experience.

I felt connected to the world, and I saw myself sitting at the top of it and doing nothing but eating it away and not even knowing the consequences of my way of life and my actions.

I hope I made my experience understandable for you. If not, I'd like you to leave me a comment, and we can talk about it more in detail.

It's really ironic that we make matches from trees. We have to be careful with each match.

Goodnight world.

Human condition

Lately I have been reading quite a few things about the Human condition. Or put differently: the condition of Mankind, as an evolved animal species on a uniquely plentiful planet.
And now, I am thinking a lot, about why are we here, and what are we supposed to do with ourselves, with our neighbours, with our world.

I think this is a discussion that will come back regularly on this blog, and I think before getting it started, I would need toset some definitions and objectives as well as some boundaries.

it's a bit late tonight, so I won't do it today, but here is some of the literature I was mentioning at the beginning of this post. Seriously, it's LIFE-CHANGING stuff!!!! Paradigm-shifting, glasses-removing (the theory of intercultural understanding and colored glasses....), thought-feeding... call it what you want, it really brings you to a whole different level of thinking.

Litterature:
"The World Without Us", by Alan Weisman. Interest of the book: what would happen to our planet, the fauna and flaura, nature in general, if humans vanished from one day to the next? That strange question starts an very documented, mind-boggling and eye-opening discussion. Looking back at what the world was before us, we see the natural evolution that we caused as an animal species, and the "artificial" evolution that we brought as we evolved into more and more complex societies.

"La vie - mode d'emploi" (Life - User's manual), by George Pérec. A French writer trying to make a style exercise comes up with an original way to give us a snapshot of parisian society around the turn of the century (from 19th to 20th). The "user's manual" describes the lives of all the inhabitants in a parisian building, in all apartments, from parties to adultery, from war crimes to art lessons, from the everyday, tiny events to the unleashing of human passion and fury.

"Apprendre à vivre" (learning to live) ,by Luc Ferry. French philosopher and former Minister for Education, his book is probably the best introduction ever to philosophy. His approach is simple, practical, and inviting to everyone. Looking at philosophy at the "doctrin of salvation without a god", he retraces the history of philosophy since it appeared in ancient times, explains the different schools, and why we went from one to another, and what is man's place in each of the main philosophical perspectives on the world, as well as in the main monotheistic religions.

Those 3 books are extremely significant to my thougth process, because they have been very easy to read (except maybe the 1st one, that sometimes gets dry, though alwyas very insightful), and totally changed my paradigms on the topics they adressed.
You know that idea: "once you have had that thought, once you have seen things this or that way, you can never go back. you can never forget those thoughts, it has changed your perspective on the world". Those books had that effect on me.

... and a few other things about sustainable development, that got me thinking about why we need it today, and what will be the human species like, if we ever make it through our global ecological crysis.

I want to write also about the idea of "change", as I got some new persectives from "The World without us", seeing that other species have alwyas known very slow change, following the long-term rythm of geological evolution, whereas we humans have brought so much acceleration into the game that we cannot even keep up with our own thoughts and actions, and who we have become. Another day, maybe.

The ambition of leadership

After a few trials here and here, for specific occasions, this is "the" blog, the one i am going to keep writing on, wherever I am.
My ambition is to bring to you, family, friends, aiesecers, unknown readers, some mind-opening facts and ideas.
I look at life with eyes standing sometimes very close, sometimes very far, from the daily events that everyone encounters. I believe there is something to get, to learn from most of what happens. Not a lesson, in an off-putting way; rather inspiration, new points of view, paradigm-bending ideas. Dont worry, we will talk later about what a paradigm is ;)

I believe no single approach, like economic or social, encompasses the whole of the Human Condition. It is not possible to look at just one of those topics and aim to understand some key rules that will be sufficient to make the world work.
On the contrary, I believe in a global, all-inclusive approach. One has to take in everything, all that is now and all that has been before, and all the interactions between all things to understand how the world works and how to make progress on our "big problems".
Of course it is impossible to achieve ultimate knowledge. Let's leave that for superior entities, whichever belief (or non) you embrace.
But I think we should try. Let's try to find out more about how our planet works, our society develops, what it means to be human. Here as in many other situations, the final destination - ultimate knowledge - is not as interesting as the path towards it.