I've spent some time during the last Operation Groundswell program in a very delicious food establishment in Phnom Penh. It's a very different restaurant then your typical Khmer fare. You won't find lok lak, amok, or sweet and sour vegetables at this hip modern Cafe type eatery. Instead you find "power bowls" loaded with fermented beets and cabbage, delicious home grown sprouts, lightly oiled and perfectly cooked winter squash, crispy fingers of tempeh, roasted red pepper humus, spiralized cucumbers tender from their apple cider vinegar soak, all over a bed of tender young greens. Or choose the home made falafel served with a fresh salad, some fermented pickles and a smear of vegan cashew cheese. Sip on a fresh cold pressed green juice, have a superfood smoothie, or top it off with a raw salted carmel cashew cheesecake. You get the picture? I was in my food dream! Wonderfully presented meals fullll of flavour and full of vegetables-my kinda meal packs in the nutrition. I loved this restaurant so much i have returned every time I've stopped through Phnom Penh with operation groundswell.
And each time I made this observation that I am about to share with you...
It really is a strange thing the dichotomy of a grossly dramatic class system. I quietly people watched one of the times I visited said Cafe, savoring my 4 dollar iced coconut matcha green tea latte. I watched the young, beautiful expats flow in and out, greeting one another, surprised to see other friends in this cafe which i began to realize was quite the popular expat hangout. Over the two hours that I sat, working, reading and writing on my day away from the team, I heard numerous (none of which I identified as Khmer) people excitedly speaking in rapid fire English about their recent trips back home to Canada, their work trip to Yemen, and their reunion in Colorado.
I observed silently the young and equally as beautiful Khmer staff members serve this expat crowd, myself included, this food so far from the types of food they likely grew up eating. I noticed the confused look on one staff woman's face when a customer asked for a plastic dish for water to serve to her dog; in a culture where dogs are not pets, but guard animals whom are viewed as quite filthy and treated relatively poorly, the restaurant staff must of thought this american woman was insane. But she politely responded by bringing out a personal water dish for the pup.
And I stared at the menu of items, all of which were over 4 dollars but under 7 dollars, i reflected on how this restaurant was likely completely out of economic reach for every wait staff that worked there, and many other Khmer people (of course there are also plenty of Khmer people who could with out a doubt afford many meals here). For me, a lower end of middle class person in Canada, I found the restaurant cheap by Canadian standards an expensive by Khmer standards.
And I find it weird. So strange the situation, where I am dining at a place out of economic reach by most staff, whom are all of a different race then all of the patrons.
I'm sure similar situations are alive and rampant in Canadian towns and cities, where class systems and race are paralleled and privilege systems are very present but that I don't take notice of as readily. (Possible examples that come to mind are the local corner store run by Asian immigrants, a Sikh taxi driver who drives me home from the pub and a white urban Tim Hortons worker). But here in Cambodia it is so much more in my face. As I struggle to understand my own privilege in being in this part of the world, I sometimes get nervous - as so many do when we start conversations about power and race and class systems. As a very privileged woman from Canada I find it difficult to determine what to do with some emotions around the example above that I felt in the restaurant: guilt that I feel, and in turn the guilt I feel like I don't even deserve to feel.
I don't know what I don't know. My invisible knapsack still has some junk in there that I have not shone a flashlight on. And so I'm quite certain that there are elements of my life that are outwardly oppressive and other ways still that I could more usefully use this privilege to break down oppressive structures in society and oppressive patterns in my own habits. I'm still learning. But it's important to recognize and to talk about. And to be grateful. To be grateful for the even the smallest privileges that you do have.
