M is doing that thing. You know the one where you want to do something but somehow don't quite get round to, well, doing it. I recognise it because I know it well.
So I play the nagging wife/amateur psychologist and drag us both out of bed and up and out so that he can go to an aikido club in Cambodia. Well that's the intention when we plan it. In reality it's him who drags me out of bed. But either way - we make it.
I wait for him in a beautiful local vegetarian restaurant, imbibing my body weight in iced coffee, and inching Neville the Novel forward bit by bit, between blogging.
We go to Battambang tomorrow - where we will stay a few days and ride the bamboo train and go to the bat cave. I am aware I am making it sound like a theme park. Frankly I think in my head it is.
Such japery will cost us, and we are also hoping to go on a sort of jungle pilgrimage to an overgrown temple near the Thai border for a couple of days next weekend - so today must be cheap.
We breakfast, once M returns, sweaty and happy, in the vegetarian restaurant. Beautiful local food at beautiful local prices.
Afterwards I cover myself in unaccustomed luxury and get my hair cut. In all honesty I had been intending not to bother. The sun is bleaching my hair to a strange but novelty streaky blonde reddish colour and I'm too curious about what colour it will eventually end up to dye it. As for a trim, well my housemates and I spent much of our university years cutting each others hair in the kitchen with nail scissors. I had planned to institute a similar approach with a rather nervous M in the role of stylist.
But the Somaly Mam Beauty Salon, for which we have previously picked up a flyer, is a training salon for rehabilitated victims of sexual slavery. It plays directly to my most recent feelings, that the answer to victim hood is to become empowered, not just to be the recipient of handouts. It costs just 6 dollars for a trim.
I trip merrily along. Only once I get home, and Google 'Somaly Mam' as research for this blog that I crawl out from under my rock and realise the huge controversy surrounding Somaly Mam herself, the foundation's namesake.
If you are as clueless as me then you might not know that the Somaly Mam foundation is a fundraiser for help for women and girls who have been victims of sex trafficking. There are Somaly Mam shelters for such women and the training salon is a relatively recent (2013) addition to its activities. But the Sonaly Mam foundation has recently closed following an expose in May this year which appeared to disprove much of the claims made by Somaly Mam about her early life and her experiences having been a victim of sex trafficking, some claims made by girls she had rescued and, disturbingly, Somaly Man's claims about the apparent kidnap and rape of her own daughter in revenge for her activism.
Luckily, for the women and girls who really have been victims of the forced sex industry (no one has claimed that all of the thousands if women rescued are lying or that sex trafficking is not an issue in Cambodia), the sister organisation AFESIP (Agir pour les Femmes en Situation Précaire) remains active, as does the salon itself.
Two observations: one - Somaly Mam as a foundation has not been discredited and two - both Sonaly herself and the other young woman who claimed to have experienced things which seem to be untrue, were the subjects of books or documentaries.
I'm not going to get into the kidnapped daughter story, neither am I sure of the facts of the case so I am not going to hold myself up as a source of any reliable insight into 'the truth'. I don't know whether there have also been any solid accusations of misuse of funding. But it seems that the organisation as a whole, is not a scam or a front. And that many young women have genuinely benefitted from it, hence the continued activities of its affiliate.
Working on the assumptions that this is true, I wonder how much it matters. If Somaly Mam herself fabricated part of her story, or embellished the facts (the latter seems more what is being claimed), does that mean we should not support the organisation? I appreciate that it casts doubt on other things (if she lied about that then what else?) but taken on trust, I wonder whether a little exaggeration to create a good story to move people to help, is not simply good marketing. People respond well to a good story. Is the money raised somehow dirtied now?
Of course, without completing comprehensive investigation I can't claim with any conviction one way or the other. I'm just asking the question. Many Americans believe that Bill Clinton was the best President ever to govern America. He was forced to resign because of an unfortunate incident in which he became confused about where to insert a cigar. But did that mean he wasn't any good at running the country? Does it turn his previous political decisions retrospectively grubby? How much does the personal veracity of a spokesperson affect the validity if the cause?
I suspect that the answer is that if you use a personality as your spring board, you are open to being discredited based in their personal behaviour. He who lives by the sword dies by it.
But Presidents aside, why do we need a story? If it's a device for understanding a problem, does it matter how precisely accurate the details are, as long as they remain largely typical of the overall topic?
I seem to remember widespread outrage some time ago when it was found that James Fret, author of A Million Little Pieces, sold as a memoir of his experience as a recovering drug addict, had exaggerated some details and reordered events to make a better narrative. But I had a friend who, having battled to give up cigarettes for decades, managed to kick it for good as a result of this book. It gave him, he said, a language with which to understand addiction and from there, the tools to fight it. The exact voracity of the detail was immaterial. Later the same book was marketed as a 'fiction based on truth' as opposed to a memoir. Presumably it would have had the same effect.
I am not passing judgement on Somaly Mam or her critics, but it occurs to me that the recounting of events, particularly where a special effect is desired upon the audience, depends more on emotional impact than accuracy. And how many of our own stories and memories, told casually over a pint, are themselves 'fictions based on truth'?
Anyway. All of this is entirely beside the point. The facts are as follows:
- I had a very nice hair cut complete with head massage and a friendly welcome
- The young people in the salon were hugely attentive and eager to learn. One person cut my hair but four observed so closely they nearly lost the ends of their noses to the scissors.
- It cost only six dollars
- Human trafficking does exist. Large numbers of women are its victims.
Just go to the salon. They give a really good hair cut.
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