Photosensibility by Andy Gray | Cambodia Photography, Video, and Blog

A new home and hope in Phnom Penh

Andy Gray — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:16:40 +0000

On Friday we chose a place to live. It’s a telavang – a tall, narrow apartment (or townhouse), three stories high with a rooftop suitable for an urban garden. It’s a concrete box with high ceilings and smooth tile underfoot. It was cool inside as we entered, a good sign that it’s lined up to avoid direct sun. The “quiet” street outside is lined with similar apartments on both sides. It ends at a wall, so cars can’t pass through. A few children played outside. The street is wide, creating a community space that feels open and inviting: room to make friends, laugh, play, and bounce thoughts and prayers outward and upward.

We settled the deal yesterday morning. A trusted Cambodian friend-of-my-friend found the place and handled all the negotiations. He did a great job and earned a commission equal to one month’s rent.

Our requests included: air conditioners in three rooms, small water heaters for two of the showers, screens on windows and openings, and a boost in the electric circuit for the unit (15 amperes to 20 or 30). The owners agreed. We paid six months rent up front, and they will use that money to make the upgrades. This is a great system for renters! In Japan, we would have paid lots of money up front and gotten nothing in return, and we would have to install (and uninstall) air conditioners at our own expense.

It’s standard for owners to pay a commission, even if a friend is helping another friend find a place to live. Some sensitivity is called for if multiple people are helping you find a place to live, because the commission is a significant amount of money for most Cambodians. As a general rule, I learned, it’s best to work with one person who has some experience negotiating with owners.

We can move in any time, starting from August 1st, if we don’t mind them working around us. First, we have to buy the basic necessities. Yesterday, we made our first purchases: a good rice cooker, a pound of coffee, and a coffee press. Next we need: beds, rice, etc. If all goes well, I hope we can move in by Wednesday. The kids start school the following Monday.

The school, by the way, if a five minute walk away. We have to cross one large street (the Dike Road), so we’ll become experts at doing that.

If we walk another five minutes, we’ll come to the Khmer School of Language (KSL). We like KSL, because they offer a balance of conversational Khmer and basic reading and writing. We’ll probably study there for an hour a day, plus practice time and homework.

On Friday, after showering off the dust, I settled down to read a book I’d found laying around: Twelve By Twelve, by William Powers. It’s another man’s perspective on living simply. A former development leader and activist, he wonders if his efforts were all futile. He longs for healing in a hard, flattened world oppressed by greed and despair. He comes from a different faith and perspective, but I can relate with his story and learn from him.

Our new apartment is a world removed from the twelve foot by twelve foot house where William Powers began his journey of renewal. We’ll have a lot more square footage, electricity, and concrete in place of nature…with a garden on top. But I echo his desire to live in a way that truly signals change, with hope that won’t be crushed.

Sorry about the lack of a picture. I’ll post one soon.

Going to live as a family in Cambodia

Andy Gray — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:27:05 +0000

We’re leaving for Cambodia tomorrow. I haven’t written much about the move on this blog, but I suspect the transition will bring new life to my posts here.

We’re going to get our hands dirty. This is literally true for me, because I’m bringing thousands of seeds for gardening projects. For the record, I don’t have a green thumb, but I was well coached by a true expert (and I’m at that age when men strangely take to growing things from the earth). We’ll be plunging into new relationships, learning language and culture together, and continuing to share our journey with others searching for “a better way to live.”

You may know I’ve been taking groups of Japanese to Cambodia since early 2008, and last year our family went there for Christmas. This year we completed the process of founding Project Friends, a Japanese non-profit to help sustain and organize these efforts through a learning community in Japan.

We have a small but incredible team of volunteers in Japan. We met with many of them on Sunday. As several of them shared reports of the work they’ve done, I thought about how the scene might appear to an outside viewer. He or she might ask how we did it, pulling together such gifted people and inspiring them to participate, and I would reply: I don’t know. You can’t get such people to do that; they have to choose with freedom.

I do give credit to Hitomi, and to other leaders in the group, for facilitating relationships that people want to be part of.

Here is a video that we made to publicize Project Friends for potential participants. We made it in Japanese, but I’ve added subtitles to this version. The music is the chorus of a popular song about love and life that quaintly but hopefully repeats: Your smile will show me the way.

We’re a diverse community.We dream of a learning community in Japan who truly seek a “better way to live” as they work out the mystery of what it means to love. We also dream of Japanese living alongside Cambodians at the margins.

We come to this work with faith in Jesus, yet we come open-handed without power in ourselves. We share freely but will not push others or expect them to respond to us. If people are made in God’s image, and God is calling them, why would we want to manipulate them and disrespect their journeys and choices? Rather, we can work and learn together with anyone who hungers for love, because we believe that hunger can only be satisfied by encountering the God who is Love, who became love in the flesh and lived among us.

With that parting thought, we cast off of our this new leg of our journey.

Let the adventures begin!

What is development?

Andy Gray — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:20:00 +0000

…development is the gradual emergence of a problem-solving system

Development isn’t the same as targeting aid to solve problems. The truth is, when international aid hinders or delays locally initiated and developed solutions, then it is counter-productive to development. International aid needs to work itself out of a job, but will the institutions behind international aid let that happen?

The quote above is from William Easterly.

Individuals and Society in Japan

Love, winning games, and living big

Andy Gray — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:43:22 +0000

Seth Godin keeps writing things that challenge me to live to the fullest, not settle for life in a small story. He writes:

…a never-ending cycle of optimization can become a crutch, a place to hide when you really should be confronting the endless unknown, not the banal stair step of incremental optimization. While Yahoo was optimizing their home page in 2001, the guys at Google were inventing something totally new.

There are so many ways we settle for less. Another is competition. “Winning” is supposed to have value. Demagogues are people willing to “wreck the system” to win. Demagoguery seems to be on the rise. What is the bigger story? Godin writes:

What happens when you define a win as getting closer to someone who wants the same thing? Or when you define it as improvement over time? Or in creating trust?

I don’t know Seth Godin personally, but he’s talking about love, at least in part. Winning is nothing if the story ends there. Movies that end with the cheers of the crowd at the end of the game conceal that point. Victories in the big and small games we play recede with time into nothingness, and so do we if we attach ourselves to them. Love creates big stories that ascend and expand as they go.

Lexus, Leica, love, fear, life, death, success and a Hummer in Cambodia

Finding poems in boxes

Andy Gray — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:37:16 +0000

Today I’m going through old boxes that have been in storage for years. Most contain books, but I’ve also saved loads of memorabilia: pictures, letters, journals, trophies, medals, ribbons (from when I ran), 40 year old pennants, gifts I never threw away, etc.

I found two poems in a pile of letters. I haven’t written that many poems in my life. I wish I was a great poet, but I’m not. But when I write a poem, it’s because ordinary words aren’t enough for what I want to say. For that reason, these old verses still move me.

I may regret this, but I’m going to post them, in case the originals never come out of the boxes. The first is about my youthful experience of nature, and the second is about losing in love (naturally).

Back to nature

Go to the woods
in the mountains
where light plays
through pine needles

creates lurking shadows in the bowls between hills
puts warm spots on the tops of jumbled boulders

Lay on a boulder, on a hilltop, looking up
while grayness becomes a red glow
Then darkness, then full night

And observe the lights
of the city glow still
‘neath a myriad of stars

The moon presides

Dream of she dies

My arm on her shoulder, we
rode a churning boat, which sent
mist dripping from smiles. We exchanged
words and subtleties; conveyed
a decision. Love
was an illusion

We separated. She
rode on with friends. I
pitched pebbles, whose
bubbles sought the surface. My
friends, between paramedics, bled
on white beach towels. Missing her,
bruised expressions failed
to comfort my pleading.
I wake up crying.

A Shur thing, and a great coincidence

Andy Gray — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:19:48 +0000

Last night my wife and I drove to Santa Fe and attended the public viewing of Review Santa Fe, a portfolio review featuring 100 up and coming photographers. It’s an international event, and I felt fortunate to be here for it. We were able to visit one photographer, Jerry Redfern, who has lived in Cambodia and worked in Cambodia and the surrounding countries. I also met his wife, a journalist who has written the best introduction to Cambodia that I’ve read. It’s very readable book I’d recommend for anyone traveling or planning to live in Cambodia, called Cambodia Now. She also writes an award winning food blog.

My wife came up to me midway through the event and invited me to see a picture that left her “breathless.” I followed immediately, wondering what kind of picture would have such an effect on her. She led me to Emily Shur’s table. She is an accomplished photographer with some striking celebrity portraits on her website and a popular blog. Last night she was showing a portfolio of images from Japan, forsaking the stereotypical in favor of the every day, banal (her word) scenes that most Japanese people really see.

As she flipped through her stack of large prints, I suddenly stopped breathing and my head spontaneously pulled back. I was looking at a picture of the apartment building where we have lived for the past two years. Imagine the odds of that. Tokyo is one of the largest cities in the world. Our place was a five minute walk away a train station on the edge of the city. Emily Shur walked by and took a picture of our parking lot, and then we met on the other side of the world, singled her out among hundreds of photographers, and saw it!

UPDATE: Here’s the photo, and here’s a link to see it on her blog.

White Buildings, Takao, 2009 (by Emily Shur)

Losing the battle against HIV-AIDS?

Andy Gray — Wed, 12 May 2010 23:38:32 +0000

I just read a chilling article in the New York Times about our prospects in the fight against HIV/AIDS. They’re not good.

During the past 10 years we turned a corner. Cheap medications became widely available, and millions of people worldwide began receiving treatment. Before 2005, getting HIV was a death sentence for the majority worldwide, including more than 2 million children newly infected annually. Then there was hope. But will this hope be sustained, or are we turning a corner in the opposite direction?

…for most of Africa and scattered other countries like Haiti, Guyana and Cambodia, it seems inevitable that the 1990s will return: walking skeletons in the villages, stacks of bodies in morgues, mountains of newly turned earth in cemeteries.

What happened?

Simply put, the number of newly infected people each year is exceeding the number we can treat. At the same time, funds for the fight are shrinking. Besides the global economic crisis, donors have been redirecting funds to combat malaria and other preventable diseases that actually kill more people than HIV/AIDS.

It would be a terrible tragedy to return to the situation ten years ago when people were dying in such numbers and unimaginable conditions. I’ll be moving to Cambodia in two months, and I know children who are alive because they take ARV medications every day. When those programs started, promises were made that the plug would never be pulled. You can’t give someone medicine and then take it away after a few years…can you?

The bitter truth is that we cannot save everyone. We’re slowly saving less and less. We must concentrate more on prevention, or the dam will break.

“You cannot mop the floor when the tap is still running on it,” said Dr. David Kihumuro Apuuli, director-general of the Uganda AIDS Commission.

There are no easy answers. Prevention versus treatment is more than just a debate to take sides in. Simply giving more money is not an answer. I recommend reading the full New York Times piece and Bill Easterly’s response for further perspective.

Living with HIV in Cambodia thanks to ARV medications provided by USAID funds

Living loved and loving others

Andy Gray — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:33:40 +0000

For the past few years I’ve been mentored from afar by Wayne Jacobsen. He’s known by some for his work in getting The Shack published. If you flip to the back of that book you’ll probably find a couple of his books recommended. The phrase “Living loved and loving others” is how Wayne states his life’s desire. He’s always fleshing it out what that means, whether in a book, blog entry, podcast, or in person. I trust Wayne to be real and to write or speak what’s on his mind without hidden expectations, and I feel very grateful for the couple of times we’ve met and the countless times I’ve benefited from his wisdom.

He hasn’t died or anything. I just thought I’d mention Wayne and post this short quote that caught my attention from his blog today:

Until you know you are loved you will be sucked into every religious activity and performance treadmill that exists, hoping against hope that you can do the right thing to merit that deep affection from the heart of the Father. But you already have his affection! The great lie of the universe is that you are not loved by the Creator of all. The question is only do you realize how loved you are?

If you’re interested in hearing more, Wayne has a wonderful series of audio teachings called Transitions. I’ve told several friends about this series lately, so I’ll go ahead and add some links here. You can get them from his website in the audio library section, or from iTunes, or I’ve uploaded them all in one zip file that you can download here.

I’m one of the very LAST people (trust me) to download anyone’s “audio series” and walk around listening to it. The very thought of downloading teachings or sermons makes me want to turn in another direction immediately. But this is my big exception. It’s just so good that I can’t help suggesting that others check it out. That goes for the podcasts, too.

For those who may worry I’ve fallen for some guru, Wayne is not a guru. He is a down to earth guy who knows and teaches from the Bible as well as anyone I’ve ever met, and he’s one of the most liberating, out-of-the-box thinkers I’ve ever learned from.

Traditional kimono pictures for Shichigosan (7-5-3)

I don’t want to live a lie, faith in the real world

Andy Gray — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:53:28 +0000

Peter Rollins at Baylor University from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.

Peter Peter Rollins has been traveling around the USA sharing with gatherings in bars about life as a follower of Jesus. He’s a teacher with piercing insights, intellectual depth, and persistence in trying to expose delusions that fall short of what Jesus was all about. He provokes without condemning or following up with easy answers.

Our theology, if it isn’t lived, if it isn’t grounded in reality, in our day to day existence; it’s nothing. It’s just a lie. It’s something that makes us feel good about ourselves.

If we hinge our lives on a pretense, then we must believe it unblinkingly. Any doubts or wrong questions might open up cracks that might expose the delusion: that we use the idea of God to resolve the messiness of life.

How can I have faith to live in a reality that is messy, painful, contradictory, and hopeless. Or, to put it another way, how can I embrace perfect love and joy so great that moving toward them would put me on a perilous precipice from which I would never survive the fall?

UPDATE: In the past, I might have read this post and assumed Rollins wants me to perform better in my walk with Jesus. I don’t know exactly what Peter Rollins thinks, but I don’t think he’s calling us to a better religious performance. I think we can’t live this way apart from grace–not a concept of grace but the reality of it that can’t be faked or replaced with a concept.

Abraham’s story

Andy Gray — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 05:11:56 +0000

I’ve written at length about Andong Village and Abraham Hang’s work there. Today I was glad to find his story online told well and at length. You can read it here.

A tidbit from the past I didn’t know:

When I saw this take place, I began to help the poor who were being ripped off by the gang. I created my own gang and we had automatic weapons to fight the bandits as I had become a soldier as well during that time. It was now 1998. I ended up killing the leader of the bandits and gang dispersed and ceased to oppress the people. I am the only one left alive from our original group of modern day Robin Hoods, because, as I thought at the time, my good luck came from the magical powers of a Khmer Witch doctor bestowed upon me.

Abraham on the road from the school to Andong Village

For doubters and liars who hunger for something true

Andy Gray — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:05:47 +0000

If you or I agreed with everything Peter Rollins says, then probably we hadn’t been listening long or closely enough. Yet he’s a man who often says things that resonate, they may actually shatter glass in some quarters. I love this short interview and wouldn’t mind having a transcript to underline and reference.

Normally, I would quote a teaser or two. I just don’t know where to begin. There’s the story about Hitler serving milk and cookies (okay, something like that), or the part about how he would be a liar if he claimed to believe in Jesus Christ. His message is disturbing for anyone inside the box of traditional Christianity, but it’s a breath of fresh air for those who are ditching the box or at least thinking about it.

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My gecko friend

Andy Gray — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 03:01:20 +0000

This is the gecko that was living in my room last time I time I was in Cambodia. He normally stays behind the dresser where you can see him during the daytime if you look. At night, when the lights are out, he comes out to eat. I turned the lights out and waited, then I turned them on and took this shot (just after he ate a bug, but I blew that shot).

By the way, geckos come in different varieties. When traveling in Southeast Asia it’s very common to see small “geckos” running around on the walls. Most people don’t realize there are much larger geckos as well living inside most homes and rooms. The large varieties make a very loud “uh-oh” sound (kind of like “guh koh” from which they get their name). They can grow quite large. This one is about 12 inches long, but he’s not a “big” one.

I’m not posting much recently. We’re in transition, so I’m not particularly inspired with new things to say. Today Hitomi is meeting with a few members of our Project Friends volunteer team to put the finishing touches on key processes. They will be working hard after we leave. One is handling the accounting. Another is processing applications (actually, we’ll pay her a bit for that). Another is organizing events for past and potential participants. Then there are others who will help coordinate and assist. I’m amazed at their willingness to serve.

Last night I taped together eight boxes that we’ll take to Cambodia (double width cardboard specially purchased). Today I hope to finish packing them and clean up most of our mess from my in-laws’ house. The kids will go with their grandmother to see the latest Doraimon movie.

Spotting a bug

Eating the bug (I didn’t focus on time)

I’m one of the irrational ones

Andy Gray — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:54:14 +0000

I skim quite a few blogs using Google Reader, but I can count on one hand those that I read carefully. Seth Godin’s blog is on my shortlist (and I know I’m not alone). He consistently has insights that cut through my senses and call me to attention. Today he struck twice.

First, in typical Godin style, he reminds me to dare. One large “success” outweighs dozens of failures. I use quote marks, because we all have different ideas of success. Still, the principle holds. As Godin writes,

If you spend your days avoiding failure by doing not much worth criticizing, you’ll never have a shot at success. Avoiding the thing that’s easy to survive keeps you from encountering the very thing you’re after.

Simple, right? Well, I need reminders like this almost every day. That’s about how often I find myself tempted toward doing things I can’t fail at.

But it gets better. His next post speaks directly to something I’ve long believed. The best choices in life are not always the rational ones. Love, faith, art…such things don’t require rational explanations. In fact, something vital is lost when forcing such realities into rationality. We can celebrate the irrationality of something without sacrificing its truth.

Godin asks, “Are you rational?”

Yeah, sometimes, but I’m probably less overtly rational than the average person. Yet I’m pretty intense about why I do things and about what is true (even if I don’t see truth clearly but from a distance).

What I appreciated was Godin’s closing thought:

There’s room for both rational and irrational decision making, and I think we do best when we choose our path in advance instead of pretending to do one when we’re actually doing the other. The worst thing we can do is force one when we actually need the other.

This is both reasonable and encouraging for someone like me. There are times for both rational and irrational decision making, and it’s best to discern and acknowledge which mode I’m in and have the tenacity and/or courage to follow through.

Fortunately, failure is not the worst case scenario. If it was, I suppose the world would be led by rational decision makers alone, and it would be quite a bit less interesting.

Saving the world, putting ACTS of compassion in perspective

Andy Gray — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 01:20:16 +0000

Are you acting in compassion on behalf of the poor? Imagine if the roles were reversed? What is so ridiculous about what you see in this video? What could this teach us about authentic acts of compassion?

Hat tip to Aid Thoughts via Chris Blattman (via IPA).

I speak Globish, do you?

Andy Gray — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:49:05 +0000

I’ve been living abroad for years, and now I naturally simplify my spoken English to accomodate whoever may be listening. I filter out complex grammatical structures and choose simple words. Sometimes when I want to say something too complicated to express in simplified language, I stop as if lacking the language. Or I switch to Japanese. The same thing happens in writing if I know the audience are not native English speakers. The difference is more pronounced in Cambodia. The language of Cambodia, Khmer, doesn’t have verb tenses. When speaking to shopkeepers and tuk-tuk drivers, they understand better if I keep all verbs in the present tense. This naturally spills out in more and more conversations in Cambodia.

On my last trip, I discovered it took a conscious effort to speak like a native English speaker. Rather, simplified English is becoming my default.

Now I have a word for what I do: globish (global English). Do you speak it?

Globish is a “decaffeinated English” that is increasingly becoming a widely used international language. (h/t Kottke)

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