He made a call or two and then we gave a letter, to be hand-delivered in Cambodia with weaving instructions along with a ten dollar bill USD “consideration money.”
Around this time, driving, bumpily, in Takeo province in Cambodia, the kind acquaintances we were traveling with asked if we were hungry - just as we approached the most filthy - by anyone’s standards! – unkempt, wayside restaurant imaginable. (Even the Buddhist shrine was completely covered in spider webs, as was most of the restaurant). Unknown species of rodents scurried along the edge of the plastic tarp “roof.”
Asked what I was hungry for, I paused briefly, glanced at Marianne, and said, ”well, maybe-e-e . . . fish”. As we heard the ‘thunk‘ of pieces of fish being chopped up, Marianne nudged me to look next door. Adjoining the restaurant, sharing the same countertop as the fish was the local pharmacy. A truly Khmer arrangement.
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Another time we had a very nice project in a small village in this same area. Making a very nice pink stripe silk we agreed to have two women who were very close friends “supervise” this aspect of the project.
We gave them the sample of the silk to be woven and they began weaving. In a month or so the first meters were delivered to us. Something very unusual was afoot: half of the silk was exactly as the sample piece but the other half was very unusual.
The darker pink stripe had morphed into a kind of jail-band prison-striped motif – on all the looms. I hopped on a scooter and went (with our translator, Mr. Thy) to our first chief weaver to ask her about this anomaly.
Mr. Thy, a very calm gentleman, began gesticulating wildly; clearly something has “gone wrong”.
We headed between homes to the other supervisor, and her door opens. She also begins to flap her arms and points toward the looms containing the “prison design” silk.
The source of the problem, as is often the case in these things, was a man.
Specifically the husband of the first chief weaver who had (during that month) moved in with chief weaver #2. The first chief withheld the silk sample, forcing her ex-friend to guess the design, hence the divergence in pattern.
And of course the “prison garb” discrepancy was seen as “bold”
and “striking” by our designer client – and it sold quite
well, perhaps to the slight disappointment of the jilted weaver.
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