Personal account of a radio consultant working for the BBC in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, written by Grant Goddard in April 2004 for Ariel magazine.

1. RADIO CONSULTANT: PHNOM
PENH, CAMBODIA
by
GRANT GODDARD
www.grantgoddard.co.uk
April 2004

2. I pull back the bedroom curtains and, from my window, see a huge elephant
ambling along the promenade above the Mekong River. I know it must be
6.30am. Every day at this time Sam Bo, the only elephant in Phnom Penh,
walks to his day-job giving rides to children around the base of the city’s only
hill. The street beside him is already filled with rush-hour traffic, since most
shops and offices open daily at seven. Weaving in and out between huge
chrome-clad and tinted windscreen 4-by-4’s driven by NGO staff and
government officials are hundreds of motorbikes, which have totally replaced
the humble bicycle as Cambodians’ preferred mode of transport. If there is a
Highway Code, nobody seems to have read it. Confusingly, traffic travels in
both directions on both sides of the road and often on the pavement too. You
see young schoolchildren riding motorbikes to school, and parents carrying
three or four children precariously on a single bike. I have seen a motorbike
carrying a full-size palm tree, another loaded with an iron girder which could
easily have decapitated someone, and a bike carrying three dogs, one of
which had its paws on the handlebars. Few people wear crash helmets, but
most wear surgical masks (available in various colours from market stalls) to
keep the dust, pollution and bugs out of their mouth and nose. Phnom Penh is
the L.A. of Asia – nobody walks. What were once pavements are now clogged
with parked cars, row upon row of parked bikes, impromptu shops, and
families sat on plastic patio chairs selling petrol in old soft drink bottles from the
kerb. The few people who walk around this city – the very poor and foreigners
– are forced to negotiate the gutter, where we risk being hit by bikes coming at
us from all directions.
In the morning, I work at the Women’s Media Centre of Cambodia where I am
training four enthusiastic staff to produce a youth phone-in show that launches
in May. They are very excited that the Centre has just been nominated for this
year’s One World Broadcasting Trust Special Award for Development Media.
The team share an office in the Centre which they have proudly designated the
“BBC Office,” even though they are not BBC staff. The only drawback to
working in this beautifully airy, purpose-built broadcast centre is that we are
shadowed by a massive transmitter mast in the car park that broadcasts the
Centre’s radio station “FM 102” to 60% of Cambodia’s population. Although the
custom is to remove one’s shoes before entering the building, staff have to don
flip-flops to use electrical equipment such as the photocopier, or risk
electrocution from the mast’s 10kW electrical field (as I found out to my peril).
At lunchtime, almost everyone goes home for a two-hour siesta that offers
slight relief from the constant 35-degree daytime heat. I take lunch at the real
BBC office – a villa whose walled garden includes luscious banana and mango
trees – with the handful of the 30 local staff who live too far away to return
home. Malene, one of two BBC housekeepers, purchases our food from the
plethora of nearby pavement snack stalls, according to our culinary
preferences, at a cost of less than a dollar each. Dishes are always
accompanied by boiled rice or noodles, though Malene once glowed with pride
when she presented me with a plate of chips procured from who knows where.
After a productive afternoon working at the Women’s Media Centre, I walk
home past a school when a girl, aged about eleven and dressed in regulation
Radio Consultant: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
©2004 Grant Goddard
page 2

3. white blouse and navy skirt, rushes out of the school gates, runs across the
road and, without a hint of self-consciousness, starts a conversation with me in
perfect English. After a minute, she sees a motorbike taxi stop outside her
school gates, bids me farewell, jumps on the back (side-saddle, as is
customary for girls) and waves goodbye as she disappears down the street.
She inspires confidence that the future of this country will be bright in her
generation’s hands.
[First published in 'Ariel', 11 May 2004, p.3]
Grant Goddard is a media analyst / radio specialist / radio consultant with thirty years of
experience in the broadcasting industry, having held senior management and consultancy
roles within the commercial media sector in the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. Details at
http://www.grantgoddard.co.uk
Radio Consultant: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
©2004 Grant Goddard
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