Taken down post

My dear readers, I have taken down a post here which was a eye-rolling take on the difficulty one can have with bureaucracy and arbitrary implementation of policies while working here, because the situation I was making light of escalated shortly afterwards. I don't want to add any misunderstanding to the now volatile situation or pour oil on the fire (as the Germans so nicely say), so I've taken it offline. I apologise but will be back with a new blog soon!

First steps are most often baby steps

The first few days of actual field work are now securely under my belt - and with it a mix of surprised pride which comes with the knowledge that I am now a very different type of researcher to what my undergraduate self (who loved statistics) ever thought I could become. Talking to people, taking them seriously, trying to get inside their head and understand why they say the things they do - these  are not new things to me, but they are new to me to be doing this in an academic setting. And moreover an academic setting in the provinces of a small country in Southeast Asia.

I haven't been viewing my first few interviews as a warm-up or testing the water, but inevitably first steps down new paths are not always going to be the largest strides. The first few interviews have been interesting, certainly, and I have learned a lot about the way Khmer Rouge local society was organised, how arresting worked, but for the most part the killing has remained a black box in the conversations I have had. This was what I was expecting,  but surprisingly people have brought the conversations round to killing much quicker than I ever plan - they raise the topic and want to talk about it. It seems that killing and the fear of death was so saturating in Khmer Rouge society that people keep coming back to it. Or it is a strategy to pre-empt any questions on my part by clearly stating that killings happened but that they were not involved.

While the interviews are going pretty well themselves, I have had to get used to a little more discomfort than I am used to in the ivory tower. My new mode of transport for getting anywhere and everywhere is the moto - and Duong, my translator, assistant, and all round superstar, also doubles as my safe (very important!) and not too speedy driver. No matter how careful he drives I have been over more bumps than I care to remember, my bottom feels like a hamster who has fallen down the stairs in its plastic ball. And my feet have been sunburned terribly. But we get from A to B. And there would be no other way than with a moto for some places. Over the last two weeks we have already been to a few interesting and different places and I will be telling you more about some of them in future posts, but here are two pictures from one of the first days in the field (here quite literally) in the middle of nowhere in Kampong Chhnang province. This is a place only motos, and bicycles can reach.

Arrival in Asia - Phnom Penh

Well hello to you and welcome to my blog! I am thrilled that you have started reading and hope you will continue to join me again and again periodically over the next six months while I am in Cambodia for the field work of my PhD.

While I was descending in the airplane towards Phnom Penh's international airport the view out of the window was quite striking and it was a good introduction to the reason I am here. I saw a lot of rice fields. A LOT of rice fields, and on the horizon Phnom Penh, the country's capital. In 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took power they emptied the city with its two million inhabitants and refugees from civil war. Subsequently they forced every Cambodian to work the fields and build dams, endure draconian punishmens for minor infringements of their codex, altogether turning their country into the largest ever prison camp with totalitarian oversight.

Since my arrival a few days ago I have been getting settled into Phnom Penh, as this will serve as my base for the next six months, and have been kept busy during the day prepping my translator in my theoretical framework, discussing interview techniques and practicing and meeting up with other researchers who have worked on related topics; I even managed to squeeze in a visit to the ECCC, the international tribunal trying the highest leaders of the Khmer Rouge for the crimes committed in the late seventies (a particularly interesting time as the judgement will be spoken this week on Thursday 7 August). I have found a room to live in, I know where to go in order not to starve, I even know where I could go to do some sport (but have yet to set foot in the building) - the groundwork is laid for me to be able to use Phnom Penh as a home away from home, while I spend most of the time in the provinces, returning only for short gasps of fresh town air in between.

Tomorrow I will be embarking on my first field trip to Kampong Chhnang - I will be conducting the first proper interviews with former Khmer Rouge - and I will be reporting back to you on my blog. I would love you to read my blog for the next six months and would love to hear from you. Finally, a short but important thank you to all those who have made this trip possible: my amazing crowdfunding stars who have paid for my translator and his expenses, the Heinrich Böll Foundation who has paid for my flights and living stipend and whose office space I can use when in Phnom Penh, my mentor Susanne for her academic guidance, and to all my colleagues, friends and family in Marburg and around the world for their inspiration and support - and endurance in listening a lot about a lot of gory research!

That's it for now. Over and out.