Textile manufacturing is the biggest industry in Cambodia, employing tens of thousands of workers, predominantly women, in the many factories lining National Road 4 leaving the center of Phnom Penh.

Driving home yesterday from a visit to my wife’s relatives in Kompong Speu at 4:30 pm, I witnessed the crush of traffic as truck after truck crammed with garment workers made their way to work the evening shift.

The minimum wage for these workers is $100 a month for 160 hours (about 62 cents an hour), up from $80, following demonstrations by the garment workers unions last year. The factories are long, metal, windowless structures without air conditioning or adequate ventilation. In addition to the health risks on the job, the workers are in danger during their daily commute as they speed down the national road crammed into open air trucks.

We just completed our first full week of classes at the American University of Phnom Penh. We have class everyday from 9 -12 am in the morning and 2-5 pm in the afternoon. There are 20 students enrolled in the class, 15 from AUPP and 5 from UMass Lowell. The course deals with the topic of Cambodian youth, specifically in terms of education and employment. Cambodia’s population is very young, primarily because of the “baby boom” that followed the end of the genocide in 1979. Consequently, about 60 % of the country’s total population of 15 million is under 35 (born after 1980). Cambodian youth (9 million out of 15 million) have become a powerful political and economic force in the country, so we have a lot of material to cover in the class. The afternoon part of the class is spent meeting with Cambodian youth organizations, conducting interviews and collecting data for a class research project.

Of course, we are also trying to see and do as much as possible outside of the classroom as possible. Highlights have included a boat ride along the Tonle Sap river around the capital, a visit to the Royal Palace, and a visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Next week, we will end classes on Thursday, so we can travel to Siem Reap province, the location of the ancient temples of Angkor.

AUPP has been incredibly welcoming and generous, helping us to arrange our in-country travel, providing delicious meals in the university cafeteria, even providing all of us with cell phones to use while we are here. A film crew came to photograph our students in action. Pictured here are Elizabeth Thach and Diana Chea conducting an interview after class.

On Wednesday, the fifth member of our group Bing Moniphal arrived. (He had to take a separate flight in order to attend his sister’s high school graduation.) Bing is a lot of fun and everyone is excited to have him here with us.

It’s 3 pm on Tuesday June 2. Our Cathay Pacific flight departs in about 11 hours, early Wednesday morning. Just got a new haircut, short-short, for the Cambodian heat and humidity (see selfie). The rainy season has started, expect lots of rain and flash floods in Phnom Penh.

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