The sounds of Phnom Penh

As I sat on the balcony this evening, it occurred to me that every city has a distinctive soundscape. One of the things I love about artful radio broadcasts is the background noises the producers include -- even if it's only traffic noise, the types of engines and horns evoke an image of the city. In retrospect, I wish I'd recorded various sounds from the places I've lived. Without decent audio equipment, though, I'd probably catch only a muddle of static.

The courtyard in front of my house contains two dense, mature mango trees, the branches of which I can reach out and touch from my balcony. These branches are also where birds gather for their pre-dawn kaffee-klatsch. There is one especially loquacious bird, whose gossipy, burbly chatter stands out. "And then I told the dog down on the corner...oh, you haven't heard the latest... her nephew is gay, did you know?" The other birds twitter or chirp, but this one babbles.

I've gone native in that I'm up with the birds, cleaning my house before the sun comes up and the temperatures rise. All my neighbours are up at this hour, too, all doing the same thing. I hear brooms working in all directions as we sweep floors, balconies, courtyards, staircases.  Soft brooms, stiff brooms, sweeping, sweeping. It strikes me as ironic that I moved to Cambodia and turned into an obsessive-compulsive clean freak.

There are Cambodians who comb the curbs for whatever they can use, recycle or sell from the rubbish. They're typically among Phnom Penh's poorest citizens, pulling carts stacked to dizzying heights with cardboard, crushed plastic bottles, scrap metal, bags of aluminium cans. Invariably their carts are outfitted with little plastic squeeze-horns, so you can track their progress as they go up and down the streets looking at what we've set out. My landlady, Yee, occasionally sets some mangos out for them.

Then there is the official rubbish collection company, Cintri. In 2002, the city of Phnom Penh inked a 47-year contract with Cintri.  Yes, you read that right:  47 years. I wonder, when you've got an exclusive contract for that time period, what's the incentive to do a good job?  Evidently the folks at Cintri wondered the same thing. Complaints about infrequent or altogether absent rubbish collection started pouring into City Hall. The city threatened to revoke the contract, and then officials decided to fit the rubbish trucks (or at least some of them) with GPS, so they could monitor the trucks' movements and be sure they were doing their rounds. So far, the Cintri fellows have been serving my street at least every couple of days (except over long public holidays, of course, when we won't see them for a week). They don't come at any regular time, though, so if I have rubbish to go out, I listen for their horn.  The Cintri trucks do not use the pleasant little hand-squeezed squeaky-toy horn. They blast a high-pitched air-horn that can be heard from five blocks away.

We'll take your rubbish and leave you deaf.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are very few intersections in Phnom Penh controlled by traffic lights. As drivers reach a junction that doesn't look too busy, they'll beep the horn to announce their approach. If it's moderately busy, they'll beep the horn to signal, "I'm going now. Make way!" If it's gridlocked, they'll beep the horn as a sign of wishful thinking. Or frustration. Anyway, the nearer your house to an intersection, the more car and moto horns you can expect to hear. I hadn't really given that any thought beforehand; I was simply lucky to have rented in the middle of my block.

In another earlier post, I mentioned all the peddlars who sell various goods from carts: Household cleaning supplies, cockles, breads, coconuts, sugar cane juice, flip-flops, coffee, bananas...  The more successful vendors have motorised carts with recorded calls, but the rest pull or push their carts and go hoarse by the end of a day.

I firmly believe that when a government decides upon a national anthem, there is a subcommittee sitting down with its composer in a back room somewhere saying, "Now, can you write a few bars for the country's ice cream vendors while you're at it?"  It never seems to matter what types or brands of ice cream you sell, or in which part of any country you sell it, or from what type of vehicle. There is always that tinny little signature tune which every Turk, Jordanian, Argentinian, Malaysian or Cambodian hears and thinks, "Ice cream!"

I hear the Cambodian ice-cream jingle several times each day, and as with all the other ice cream anthems, this one drives me nuts. Come to find out, though, I can't hold a Cambodian composer responsible for it. No sir, it's the Walt Disney Company that's to blame.  Damned globalisation.

One expat blogger sadly noted as she was  preparing to leave Phnom Penh that she expected to miss the way in which Cambodian life is lived on the streets. There are small shops on ground floors, the shop-keepers snoozing, a baby swinging in a hammock. Tuktuk drivers gather at intersections, and it's common to see four or more of them crammed into one tuktuk playing cards. It's not unusual to turn onto a street and find it blocked by a rented tent filled with tables, chairs, catered food, flowers and audio equipment. If the people inside are wearing mostly white, it's a funeral; otherwise, it's a wedding.  My neighbours two doors down hosted a wedding last week, so we had a day of music and monks chanting in our street. Drivers just seem to accept this as a normal part of life in Phnom Penh, and they patiently wait until they can back out into the busy intersections to go another way.

The residential parts of Phnom Penh get much more quiet after dark. I've heard repeatedly that many Cambodians do not like to be out at night. I asked if this was a legacy of the Khmer Rouge days, but it seems to go back much further than that -- there is a deep-seated fear of ghosts or evil spirits that lurk in the dark. Of course the riverside area, with its bars and restaurants catering mostly to tourists, and BKK1, home to mostly expats, are busy late into the night. My part of town, however, pretty much rolls up the sidewalks after sunset.

If I sit on the balcony, chattering cicaks (little geckos) and fluttering bats keep me company.  At some point in the evening, I begin to hear a rhythmic creaking, as regular as the ticking of a grandfather clock. When I first heard it, I couldn't quite figure out what the sound was. One night I came home well after dark, and as I was locking the gate behind me, I heard Yee's disembodied voice greeting me. I could barely see them, but she and Srey, her severely handicapped, 37 year-old daughter, were swinging gently in the dark. They do that for an hour or two every night. I find it almost as comforting as they do, I expect.