Everything's Gonna Be OK

Once again, another interport lecturer has come on board the MV Explorer and piqued my interest.  This time around, joining us between the very short stretch between Singapore and Vietnam is Ben Justus, a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Management and alum of the Semester at Sea Spring 2007 voyage.  Justus is the founder of the EGBOK Mission, a non-profit NGO in Cambodia which empowers young people to become part of that country's quickly growing hospitality industry through rigorous training and job placement.  This is especially relevant because in post-genocide/post-war Cambodia, over half of the country's population is under the age of 25, and tourism to the country is increasing at an alarmingly rapid rate.  Much of the hospitality industry in Cambodia is run and staffed by migrant workers from other countries, many of whom hail from Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines.  Through EGBOK, an antonym for "Everything's Gonna Be OK," the organization is hoping to change the face of an entire industry in Cambodia while providing autonomy and independence to a young, empowered work force.

The young organization is run by young people for young people.  Ben himself is only 26 years old, and Egbok's students are between the ages of 16 and 24.  These students come from eight feeder community institutions throughout the Phnom Penh and Siem Riep areas where introductory hospitality courses are taught.  A selected cohort of these students are then chosen to participate in a year-long vocational training program with hospitality experts from around the world.  Egbok has only been in existence for three years, and it has only had a single graduating class, but of those students, all were able to find jobs within a month of completing the curriculum.  These jobs include working in hotels and restaurants as cooks and receptionists and everything in between.  In these jobs, students are expected to earn roughly six times as much as an entire household would earn in a year.  The program is hoping to expand throughout the country and, one day, to other countries, as well.  There are also plans in the works to establish a training restaurant in Chicago, and its profits would help sustain the project in Cambodia.

I ended up spending my first day in Ho Chi Minh City with Somiol and Nita, the two interport students who are currently enrolled at Egbok Mission, and eventually met up with Ben later in the evening.  It was such a chill day.  More often referred to as Saigon, the city is a quickly developing enclave much different, yet seemingly familiar, to any place I've seen.  To put it simply, it has an exotic but comfortable charm.  Perhaps it's because I have become so well travelled, but I think that there is a certain laid-back ease in Saigon, and that's something I can't quite say of many of the other places I've visited throughout this trip.  More about that in a later blog post.

Nonetheless, I had a wonderful time.  We did nothing out of the ordinary; basically, it was the typical "first day at port" cavorting which includes a stop at the market, a lot of aimless walking, and eating interesting food until the point of exhaustion.  However, for whatever reason, the experience was heightened by being in the amazing company of Ben, Somiol, and Nita.  We were all curious about Vietnam and about each other, and that all comes together to make a pretty darn exciting day.  The connections around the world that I'm making just continue to astound me.  Never would I have thought that I would be eating pho in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City with two kids from Cambodia and a random dude from California who just happened to have a good idea one day that eventually brought us all together.

For more information on Egbok, visit www.EGBOKmission.org.  And stay tuned for some amazing stories about (and pictures of) Viet Nam!