New Year's Resolution: How Not To Be A Role Model
on Oly's Cambodia Blog (Cambodia), 03/Jan/2011 15:01, 34 days ago
You can do no wrong.Really, as a rich Westerner in a poor Asian country, pretty much anything you do is seen as good, based on nothing more than your wealth and skin-colour.Like it or not, you’re a role model.If you don’t like it, here are a few tips for how to fail:·Disrespect the culture:it’s important to show a complete disregard for your hosts.Talking loudly helps (never in‘their’ language), and make sure you include plenty of ill-informed criticisms of the country and its people.·Show them how to travel:a Lexus is a great way to get around– it keeps you insulated from the unpleasantness of street life, and the aircon and western music help you forget you’re here.Never walk or cycle– that would make it look sensible and acceptable, and lead to awkward questions about parking the Hummer on the pavement.If you must ride a motorbike, make it an unnecessarily powerful one– and ditch the helmet.·Eat:as with the big car, so with the Big Mac: show them that to emulate our wealth they must love burgers and KFC.Don’t worry, the Buddhist respect for animals is already shaky, and people don’t yet realize that eating heaps of cheap factory-farmed flesh will destroy both their bodies and their environment.·Drink:show them how glamorous it is to get horribly hammered.You could always have a fight or drive home afterwards for bad measure.·Smoke:enjoy your right to enjoy smoking tobacco, to drive home the cool impression created by the pretty white models on French cigarette adverts.And don’t miss the chance to toss your butt on the floor with the other trash.·Bribe:beat them at their own game, give and take‘informal payments’, make sure you show that only money talks.If you work in the oil or logging industries you’ll be well placed for this.·Go Private:make sure you demonstrate that there’s no way you would use the public health or education systems, and encourage others to aspire to get out too – you can help people to understand that money is power and greed is good.·Contribute to some abuse:a bit of sex-tourism maybe, or at least encourage kids to stay out of school by buying stuff from those who work on the streets.Orphanages make great freak-show entertainment.·Show them who knows best:steamroller centuries of Buddhist culture and get them to change religion.You can do this under the guise of charity.Make sure anyone working for you has to convert, and you could insist the recipients believe too, in exchange for your‘help’.·Reinforce bad behaviour:sometimes you don’t even need to show the way, just join in – jump the lights, skive the afternoons, shout at your mobile.·Avoid Poverty:perhaps most important of all, make sure you stay in town, away from reaky rural rice-farmers.On no account travel to remote villages - they don’t have air-con.A good way to avoid contact with poverty is to work for a well-funded international NGO, allowing you to remain indefinitely insulated in chilled city offices.