Learning in the World at Large

Final hours in Cambodia

As I watch the minutes tick away to my bus to Saigon tomorrow to catch my flight home, I look around at the audacity and life and utter chaos that Phnom Penh is.  Breathless at the pace of my last two weeks, I feel a gratifying sense of accomplishment and closure.  I have already started to miss some things about life here: markets, sticky rice, those big Khmer smiles.  My bags, two now, sit almost fully packed on the floor of the home I somehow managed to find and create.  Saying my goodbyes in Cambodia is different than my goodbyes in the US—here you say, “See you again.”  No one, myself included, has the sense that I am leaving forever.  The network I have built wraps close around my shoulders and transcends distance and shoddy Internet, as I know Stockholm and Singapore and all corners of this wide world await my future.  I am glad for it all, the sadness, hard work, heat, trials, victories, and education.  I will look back as the Cambodian border fades into the distance tomorrow bearing in mind the full circle I have reached deep inside my being to complete, and then turn with my chin up and spirits high to the borders ahead. 

Seeing with open eyes

On Monday night my friend Christine, who also works at Friends-International, came over to the apartment to watch the Mith Samlanh documentary “What I See When I Close My Eyes.”  It had taken some diplomacy to secure a copy, since the film is only used for fund raising, and a good fight with my sorry corrupted and waning laptop to play the disc-- so we were chomping at the bit for our viewing experiences to prove that our efforts had not been in vain. 

Indeed, they were not.  We watched the computer screen with widening eyes and open mouths as the kids we know and aim projects at talked about their lives and dreams, painting black outlines of their bodies on cloth and illustrating their words with brightly colored pictures.  It was the first time for both of us hearing the kids’ thoughts translated from Khmer, and we were floored by the depth that emerged with the English.  At Mith Samlanh and on outreach, it is possible as a non-Khmer speaker to understand a substantial amount of communications from expressions and situations.  But this new comprehension was like nothing we had imagined the gargle of words we hear meaning.

One girl who was about eight years old said while swishing her paint brush playfully on her cheek, “What I see is me in the future making pretty clothes.  I want to learn sewing so I can create beautiful things –and I see a proper closet for the clothes I will have to hang in, in the home I will live in, where I will have enough to eat.”

A boy of around ten said, “I see a real family, like what other people have.  A mother who is kind to her son and a father who comes home, where the family eats together at night.”

Two of the older boys who I work with on the video project talked about the heavy drug use among their friends not at Mith Samlanh, and how sad it makes them to know that their friends put needles in their arms because they are poor, and they are dying from those needles.  I learned about an obstacle that the Mith Samlanh counselors face when helping kids start coming to the center: the perception in youth street communities that those kids who come to Mith Samlanh are “uncool.”  This made sense to me as Christine and I discussed means of bringing Mith Samlanh outreach into the age of video games and MP3 raps.

The frame that stuck in my head was a group of boys outside the center’s gate talking about what was taught at Mith Samlanh: “Oh, loads of stuff.”  “Yeah.  Welding, and hair, and electricity, and motos, and…” “Hey, can I have a go?”  “Lots of welding.  And motos.”  “Hair!”  “It’s really my turn; you’ve been talking for forever!”  Their hilarious, layered conversation shown in bright subtitles that popped up over each speaker’s head brought the boys into a light of clarity in my mind as I so naturally pictured the conversation among a group of American boys at my own high school—and then the piercing of thinking about their previous words wishing for a family and their friends to not use hard drugs.

That night my friend Charlotte moved into the apartment with me, meaning I get to have the experience of having a roommate for the first time, if only for a week and a half.  But the experience is in a developing country, making the change a lucky novelty nonetheless!  We set up cushions and an air mattress up in the “everything” room, dealt with a sick tummy and biting-ant outbreak on the first night, and have been enjoying sharing banana-buying responsibilities and joint CNN breaks since. 

Living with another person, I have found myself slipping into depressive and homesick stretches less and less.  My extroverted side is finally being fed, and the going isn’t quite so shaky and frightening when there’s another person I know I can unconditionally ask for advice or help.  It has set the final piece into the puzzle of making a life here and becoming a true local.  I’m proud that I accomplished discovering what those necessary pieces are for creating a life for myself away from home, which bodes well for my future.  I don’t regret finding the last piece so late, because learning to be alone, self-sufficient and forced to make peace with introversion is another big accomplishment that I have worked for since the moment I waved goodbye to my life in Minneapolis.

Charlotte is now not just my roommate but has continued to be my fellow explorer.  I found out on Wednesday night from an Aussie law intern working at the United Nations International Tribunal Court for the trials of surviving Khmer Rouge members that there was a free public bus taking civil observers out to the court the next morning at 7.  Charlotte and I worked out the location and hopped on the bus Thursday morning without a reservation, making our way past the first obstacle caused by lack of sufficient information (which is so normal here, I have no idea why we were surprised.)  We bounced out past the airport to the Cambodian military headquarters 20k outside of the city, officially annexed a part of Phnom Penh to satisfy the UN’s requirement that the court be held “in” the capitol. 

We stood in line before identification and security checks with reporters and television cameras buzzing about, gawking at important-looking men in black suits and laminated badges on lanyards around their necks.  Soon we discovered that our passports were required for entry into the court…which we incredibly bypassed by writing fake passport numbers by our names in the sign-in book, as we realized there was no way to locate and contact us if we were found out.  This was a scary sign of the pretension of the Cambodian court as high-functioning and up to international standards, but truly a mess of confusion and inefficiency behind the façade.

Successfully passing through security and surrendering our cameras, water bottles, motorbike helmets, and cell phones (although we saw a man texting away inside the court just a few minutes later) we joined the line for headphones and radio transmitters of interpretation of the proceedings on English, French, and Khmer channels.  The Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia are held behind a wall of bulletproof glass shielding the judges, lawyers, interpreters, guards, and the accused from the rows of civil observers.  Flags and banners upholding the Cambodian nation and UN and ECCC ideals are abundant, accompanied by flat screen televisions with close-up feeds of the proceedings.  The two rows of international judges were robed, as well as the prosecution, defense, and civil parties’ lawyers.

The pomp and circumstance was well-deserved, as the trial Charlotte and I were attending was the public hearing on the defense’s Appeal Against Decision to Deny the Request for Translation of Khieu Samphan’s Case File.  The case is less stunning than the persons involved, Khieu Samphan, defendant, and Jacques Verges, his French co-lawyer.  Mr. Khieu was president of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) from 1976-1979, making him head of state during the rule of the Khmer Rouge—the figurehead to Pol Pot’s position of power.  He succeeded Pol Pot as leader of the Khmer Rouge in 1985, and has consistently upheld the movement’s beliefs and actions.  He was arrested and is being tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes (grave violations of the Geneva Convention.)  Mr. Verges is the infamous defense lawyer of murderers, with documentaries made on his arguments of atrocious cases and peculiarities like his still-unexplained 14-year disappearance (oddly and ironically spanning the Khmer Rouge years.)  He is arguing that Khieu Samphan never denied that people in Cambodia were killed under the Khmer Rouge, but as head of state Mr. Khieu was not directly responsible. 

It was flooring to see men of actions like theirs in living flesh.  Mr. Khieu needed the arms of two guards to stand and state his name, birth date, and the names of his parents, his white hair reflective in the harsh light.  Mr. Verges ignored every person who approached him but his co-lawyer, and stroked his large belly as he eyed the prosecution and civil parties.  The appeal being presented was ridiculous to most standards, and seemed to be a blatant bid to buy time.  However, the highlight of the proceedings was Mr. Verges’s skilled argument for the appeal for translation, quoting the UN Secretary General and daringly calling out the cloaked shortcomings and failures of the ECCC.  What was striking was comparing his argument about ineptitude of translators going from Khmer to English or French to the frequently incomprehensible translation coming through my headphones—a deservedly famous lawyer indeed, although appalling.

I wondered many times how a case like this is even defensible, turning over the concept of due process of justice many times.  I looked at Khieu Samphan and then at the audience, wondering just how many of their family members’ blood was on his hands.  How could judges sit and listen and debate, “Oh, hm, here’s a reason why murdering thousands of one’s fellow human beings is an excusable deed?”

Charlotte and I left early for her to make it to work on time, worrying over finding a motodups on the mostly industrial National Road 4.  As we were leaving we asked a guard wearing a UN hat if there were any drivers available.  He shook his head unhelpfully, but then called after us in French as we walked away, “Mais, parlez-vous francais?”  Oui!  I cheerfully flexed my francophone muscles once again as I arranged with the guard to have another guard drive us back into Phnom Penh and leave us at the Java café for lunch, thinking about how cool it was that I had the skills to do that.  We were given free “commemorative” t-shirts as we left, squeezed again three-astride on our helpful driver’s motorbike down the dusty road.

A (literal) sprint to the end

In Bangkok last Wednesday violent protestors closed down the Suvarnabhumi International Airport, continuing the unrest that has been plaguing the country since August.  The gunfire and grenades being thrown meant that all travelers were trapped inside the airport, and my sister was not allowed to board her flight from Minneapolis to Bangkok for her visit to Cambodia.  I was completely unaware of the conflict and found out about the situation like a punch in the stomach from another volunteer at ANDC nonchalantly asking how my sister and I were planning on getting out of Bangkok since there were no outgoing flights.  While I waited to get in touch with my family I wildly imagined my little sister landing in Bangkok unaware of the volatile situation, meeting her there and somehow arranging travel plans to make it out of the city and into Cambodia by bus, wondering if I would be able to get into Bangkok to get her—fearing the worst.

My dad assured me that she was safe at home, saying that the protests were worse than the military coup in Thailand in 2006, and that the most seasoned travelers would avoid the region.  This brought a mixed bag of feelings: a big dose of gratitude for the amazing timing and transfer of information that kept my sister and me safe and overwhelming disappointment and sadness at the opportunity lost, one that we had been planning for since before I moved to Phnom Penh.    More than anything I regretted what my sister would be missing, the chance to experience this place through the eyes that I could give her and the doors that I could open through my work.  I felt suddenly very alone and small in the big world, full of unpredictable and unfriendly people—and my vulnerability was right in front of me again because of the close call and unexpected snatching away of something so good.

My immediate course of action was to begin re-routing my flight home to keep out of Bangkok.  My dad worked his stunning airline magic and within a day I received an email with a new itinerary that has me bussing to Saigon on December 11 and flying out of that airport to be home on December 13.  This means the adventure of a land border crossing with all of my moving-back baggage—but also that I was looking at just two weeks left of living on a see-saw at the edge.  I jumped right to making a list of everything I had left to do and see, wrap up and say good-bye to.

I started on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, my first big family holiday alone.  I felt down and homesick on and off during the day, missing my sister and picturing cold weather and football games, but perked myself up by thinking, “How many Thanksgivings am I going to have in a foreign country as a kid? Sweating away and celebrating with dragon fruit shakes!” That always felt like a pat on the back and kick to think positively.  My friend Charlotte scored free tickets to the dress rehearsal of the much-hyped first Khmer rock opera Where Elephants Weep and gave me one, and we met two of her Khmer girlfriends at the best performance venue in the country, the Chenla Theatre.  Even the hoity New York theatre crowd had been batting around rumors about the show, so we made sure to be properly expectant.  Dara, one of Charlotte’s friends, elbowed her way to front of the seats in the warehouse-like theatre, smiled winningly at the usher, and talked up her job as a TV show host until we were comfortably staring up at the stage from center-front row. 

The rock opera ended up being two hours long without intermission, and the mixed tale of two young men who had been orphaned Khmer Rouge child soldiers, migrants to the US, and who were trying to find peace with their past by entering three-month Buddhist monkhoods—and a “love at first sight, ‘till destiny do us part” saga of a Khmer popstar and one of the friends, a Sony producer.  I found the storyline implausible and the dialogue impossibly soap-operatic—although I realize those traits play directly into classic and popular Khmer entertainment.  Somehow I couldn’t take seriously the juxtaposition of rapping gate guards and soaring poetic laments of trees and the eternal soul.  However, I had huge appreciation for the social topics the show’s writer bravely touched on, from begging migrant children to women’s oppression to the lagging morality of the booming nouveau riche, especially in light of many Khmer people being unwilling to whisper a bad word about the Cambodian People’s Party government.

The American half of the cast is staying at the hotel where I do my nightly workouts and I have shared the gym with them on multiple occasions, so I had a good time seeing my casual sweat-buddies performing the scenes I had heard them discussing or practicing for.  The music was unlike anything I had anticipated, with a live traditional orchestra on one side and a modern band on the other, and ghostlike arias running into electric guitar solos.  Above all I love seeing further emergence of the arts in Cambodia, with big local excitement paired with international media attention and hence support.

Charlotte and I rushed to a motodups after the show to make our “traditional Thanksgiving dinner” booking at a café near my apartment.  We shared a bottle of wine and plates of turkey, spinach, potatoes, corn, and stuffing filled with apples and giant almond slivers, and shared memories of our differences in Thanksgivings growing up—hers with seafood in Louisiana and mine on a Minnesotan farm.  Cream cheese and saltine crackers were on the table when we arrived, which we yelped in surprise at and quickly dove into, as they are treats that neither of us have had for months.  We were most looking forward to the pumpkin pie after our dinner, which was unfortunately served with chocolate ice cream and tasted a bit like feet.  But after our initial disappointment, it only gave us another hearty laugh and the oft-uttered, “Oh, Cambodia…”

Charlotte and I decided to pair up for the next few days to tackle a few items on my “tourism list,” since she is moving into the apartment with me on Monday night to continue living in Phnom Penh for the next eight months and up for culture-soaking after a few months here already.  We headed to the National Museum on Friday morning, accidently walking into the “restoration area” straight away and getting blasted by plaster dust flying every which-way.  However, we soon lost our original apprehensive attitudes about the endeavor and stared open-mouthed at the preserved 7^th and 8^th century relics on display.  A huge reclining Buddha, the third largest in the world, lay in front of us after serving as an aqueduct and temple for a thousand years.  We saw ancient costumes from performers for the royal family, Khmer inscriptions from favorite queens of the Angkor kings, and weapons from the Khmer empire’s age of glory.  As we were leaving we saw the requisite peculiar sight, a man spraying each statue with a bottle of repugnantly strong cologne.  We were pretty offended by the destruction of the artifacts, so Charlotte approached the man and asked him what he was doing.  He looked guiltily from side to side and then pointedly ignored Charlotte until she gave him a disgusted look and walked away.  We asked our Khmer friends what he could have been doing—they couldn’t think of a possible reason and just said, “Jerk.”  Well put.

The next morning we dug utensil-less into a customary Indian-Bangladeshi breakfast with a shared bowl of yellow daal, big chapattis, and a plate of fried egg to fuel up for our planned day trip out to Uodong Mountain in Kandal province.  We hailed a surprised motodup for the 45 minute ride from Phnom Penh to the foot of the mountain, and headed north out of the city squeezed with three on the bike and our helmets clanging together.  The discomfort of the ride added to the adrenaline of the trip, since we were traveling as locals would on the provincial country roads, tipping precariously in the gusty winds from the fields and getting showered in dust from monstrous trucks roaring past.  We arrived at Uodong to be bombarded by kids shoving trinkets in our faces for purchase and facing the long, winding steps up to the top filled with beggars and “donation bowls.”  Taking a few pictures, Charlotte took charge and headed straight in, quickly shaking off the two preteen English-speaking boys who presumed without asking that they were our guides, to be paid upon descent. 

We removed our shoes at the holy top of the mountain and halted simultaneously: there was the sound of tree leaves rustling in the country breeze.  Listening to the sounds of the local people praying at the altar led by a monk, the huge spire of the main temple stretching into the marvelously clean sky, we looked out over the schools and kites and tilled land rippling out before us.  Walking around the monuments that became progressively older as we made our way along the range, we became more and more awestruck by the cultural history and architecture preserved in the stone—seeing the three-headed elephants that represent the Hindu gods who created the world, keep the world, and will end the world, and the nagas beneath bodhisattvas’ feet—grasping what these images and symbols mean to the people and country we now know.  I think that is what made all the difference for us on the mountain, feeling connected to the individuals and the place that these awe-inspiring testaments stem from, because it means we can appreciate their meaning and power and importance.  Our trek across Uodong ended underneath the beams of a single construction worker laboring calmly away at a structure to house a mammoth golden meditating Buddha, with local women holding incense between their palms held at their foreheads, doing the reverential three bows at the Buddha’s feet.  On the way down we had coconuts to get ready for the long, cramping ride back into the city, and the old woman who sold them to us came over once we were finished to whack the fruit in two with a huge knife and show us how to use a sharp piece of the skin to scrape out pieces of the sweet white meat inside.

That night I met my friend Jennifer for her last night in Phnom Penh, and we fittingly went to the last-ever show of the Sovanna Phum Arts Association— that night was a selection from the Ramayana story using the whole company of local professionals in Khmer dance, music, shadow puppetry, and narration.  Hanuman the monkey king leapt and cart wheeled across the stage to the booming of drums, sea queens waved their scarves to the crying strings, and an army of monkey minions scratched and did aerials hilariously to the unmistakable Khmer xylophone.  The shadow puppets jerked and weaved dramatically as the narrator’s voice told the story by intonation alone.  The audience ooh’d and ahh’d properly at each new stunning costume debuted, with towering headdresses and green, mustachioed masks.  My favorite part was after the show, when an audience member picked up a Khmer guitar from the orchestra and played so well that he pretty soon had everyone left in the theatre whooping and stomping with their neighbor to his song.

On Sunday I sucked in my energy (and courage!) and jumped on a truck to the river with a group of hardened, seasoned athletes to run my first HASH with the Phnom Penh House Harriers.  I happened to pick an extraordinary day for my first and, sadly, only HASH in Cambodia, as it was the Phnom Penh Harriers’ 888^th run.  They had specially reserved a boat out into the provinces and instead of a live run (meaning determining the course while doing the run) had marked a course through the countryside exactly 8.88 kilometers long.  Spray paint can and bugle horn in hand, everyone grabbed a bottle of water and headed off into the dirt along the river banks, splashing through puddles, slurping through manure-filled mud, and doing knee-to-chest- jumps across cavities in the land.  Pretty soon we were running through banana plantations and just-planted fields, ducking under low palm branches and remembering to walk past every cow (in order to keep them calm and not get charged at), listening for the “On-on” call and blow of the bugle horn.  Every village we ran through had the kids laughing and pointing at us, yelping “Hello!  Hello!” and the old women chuckling at the spectacle.  We stopped at a holding point to search for the course path by a temple and made friends with the monks there—the abbot pulled out his Nokia cell phone and had a novice take a picture of him with the group.

The regular HASH-ers told me that the pace was a quick one because everyone was so excited to be a part of such a significant run, and that pushing it out with a grin in sprints through fields of burning trees and treacherous pits covered by straw was the best way to prove myself as a “virgie.”  I made friends with an American girl teaching at the University of Cambodia who matched my pace, and we shut down our brains and gave our last burst of big speed through the final 1.4k to reach the finish with the “fast” group.  No winners and losers on the Phnom Penh HASH, just “fast” and “slow” (and where you really don’t want to be unless you threw up—“ran-then-walked.”)  I was flying high as a bird on cloud nine; with the veteran runners cracking open a beer for me and slapping me on the back as the only first-time runner on the course.  They had decided to have a celebratory barbeque on the river banks, with Khmer baguette and cabbage and bratwurst on wood fire grills.  There was a ceremony once night fell, involving all the HASH-ers in a circle singing the songs that have developed since the group’s birth in the 1920’s, the presentation of official “names” to standout repeat runners, beer-drinking from a silver cup as punishment for offenses like short-cutting, and the passing of the ritual cucumber.  I happily networked and chatted the whole boat ride back upriver, meeting a whole new world of a community.

This community and the new vision I had of the countryside were the best things I found on the HASH, besides the ultimate satisfaction of meeting a big goal without a glitch or letdown.  Once you prove yourself in this running community, they open big arms and stories and doors.  And slogging through the weeds, squinting between trees in dark, tropical groves, pounding along well-worn villages paths opens a small window of reality that I would have otherwise missed.  I fell asleep dreaming happily of my next escapade before goodbye.

Acceptance, doctors, and a dance party

I climbed the steep steps at the ANDC old center last week in my bare feet, following the yelping horde of girls up to the open-air roof where they excitedly fanned out in a circle and one by one demonstrated the dance moves they were practicing for the party on Friday.  Sreyneat was downright shivering with anticipation to show me her newest skill, a crouching spin with one leg held out above the ground.  She collapsed in her characteristic fits of giggles on the tile floor after she had made a few revolutions, then quickly jumped up and organized the girls into lines to teach me everyone’s favorite Khmer dance done at each and every party held in Cambodia—it’s so famous that even foreigners can sing the song it accompanies.  The steps were simple, walking back and forth with some hip-swinging and toe-touching, but I loved finally grasping the Khmer hand motions.  As in most SE Asian dances, bending the hands and fingers eerily backwards using only your muscle strength to achieve the hyperextension is heavily emphasized, and then the waving and turning of the hands symbolically is added.  The girls and house mommies fell into gales of laughter at my mix-ups and the lack of flexibility in my digits, although they kept singing gamely and telling me to mouth along like I knew the words, too.

Before it was time to eat rice the younger girls scrambled onto my lap tiredly and asked me, “You sing, please.”  I looked around the scene I found myself in, appreciating the fullness of what it had taken and what it meant to be looking out over the rooftops, cooking smoke, dirt roads, and soccer games in another country in the accepting arms of its people.  With this grandeur in mind I sang “I caught a little baby bumblebee…” and did the calming face massage they do during shivasina in a yoga class on each of the girls (a trick that the kids have not let slip past unasked for.) 

A series of events happened next that made me think about how far I have come in becoming close to the local people and how wonderful—simply fulfilling—that closeness is, providing a reason for all the questioning and sadness that goes with achieving it.  After eating rice I went up to the house mommy with my hands together and hands bowed to properly thank her in Khmer for the meal, something the chaotic nature of dinnertime for a house full of kids usually prevents.  I said “Akun, mak” (“Thank you, mommy”) and she came up to me, took my face in her hands, and said in English, “Beautiful girl.”  I learned later that the girls have been working on teaching her English and that she had practiced saying this since the week before.

I left blinking tears from my eyes, and realizing that Narit who usually drives me home was nowhere to be found.  I started walking up the dark road, alert for the cavernous holes marked by palm branches and cloth tied on sticks in the dirt, when the cook with whom I share Narit’s motorbike ride grabbed my arm out of nowhere and shrieked, “Aiiii!” and hustled me into a well-lit family store.  The movement inside the store stopped for a few long seconds until I put my hands together and bowed respectfully as I had done for the house mommy.  Then the mother set a plastic chair behind me, the auntie started shuffling through the television channels to find one in English, and the father went to the store’s cooler and found a bottle of water which he handed to me, a big gift considering it would have cost me the same as half a meal in the area.  Everyone smiled as I showed my appreciation for the television by making big reactions to the CNN stories and swatted playfully at the pet poultry squawking about.

I then met my first Christian missionary in Cambodia, a young man from Prey Veng province, who launched into an argument of why I should spread the good news teaching at ANDC, when who but Narit should pull up—with three boards about twenty feet long bouncing underneath him and off the back of his motorbike.  The cook took one look at the potential situation and gave him a stare.  He returned a few minutes later board-free and I put on my helmet, bobbed in bows of thanks to the family as I climbed onto the bike, and went off into the night with my legs swinging.  I have realized the significance the gesture of giving someone else a part of your food or drink holds, so when Narit stopped for gas I handed my bottle of water to the cook in thanks for her pulling me inside the store, who eyed it gratefully and drained the bottle.  The universe reciprocated in a brilliantly karmic way when we pulled up at my apartment gate and the land family, gnawing away on sugarcane stalks, handed me one and scooted over so I could squat down and suck on the sticky fibers with them. I tried to imagine this series of events happening in the US, and couldn’t, which shook me a little but drove in further my appreciation for being if only for a time part of the normality of these events. 

A few days later I helped the kids in their classes make Christmas ornaments for their sponsors in the US.  I grinned to see the care and detail each one put into their cardboard presents, but the greatest moment for me was seeing Sokha’s.  She is one of the most gifted and hard-working older students at ANDC, and her ornament had the old, extraordinarily ornate Khmer script on it.  I asked her teacher if all the kids learned this script in Khmer school, and he shook his head, saying that Sokha had taught herself the script on top of all her usual homework.  I couldn’t help my jaw dropping as I turned to look at Sokha, wishing I could box up her lessons and ethics take them with me home to show to kids her age in class.  I also helped a little boy write his name in English on his ornament, because it was his first day at the center—that morning he had taken his first shower in months. 

A team of Australian doctors was at ANDC that evening to continue their routine check-ups of all the kids.  I was lucky enough to be allowed to stay and observe, and I was fascinated by the methods, manners, and revised standards used in this instance of Western medicine applied to the developing world.  Lice and skin checks for afflictions like scabies came first, and over half the kids seemed to have at least a few live nits found on their scalps.  Most of the skin ailments were for cuts or toenails that became infected from the general dirtiness and inability to keep them dry and clean.  Several students had heart murmurs found, which the head doctor dismissed as, “Not serious enough to do anything but monitor—they seem happy.”  I couldn’t help but picture the process that would have happened if this diagnosis for a child had happened in the US.  Never would the prescription of simply monitoring be tolerated.  Almost every kid was in a need of serious dental care, all with black and yellow spots on their teeth and often missing adult ones from decay.  A few of the kids even had craters where an entire tooth had rotted away. 

The only tools the doctors used were stethoscopes, flashlights, a thermometer, and their hands—to check for fever in third world countries, one doctor said, it is useful to train yourself to detect small differences in the temperature of skin using just the two backs of your hands.  Many of the kids had cold symptoms that worried the doctors, but all agreed that not much could be done with the constant exposure to pollution, grit, and more germs.  One, however, had to be taken in for an x-ray and was diagnosed with a burnt lung.  Another girl whose overly thin limbs had been worrying the staff for awhile was found to have a serious case of worms, which explained her skeletal body but distended belly.

The hardest ailments for me to hear explained were those that carried over from the kids’ pasts.  One, ANDC’s star dancer, has odd swelling and markings on the front of his chest where his lungs are.  He can’t feel pain from it anymore, but it is leftover from severe trauma caused by a disease like tuberculosis.  Many of the kids have huge scars, some lumpy and disfiguring, on places like their backs and necks.  A couple of the sustained injuries were marked down as likely caused by the child being dropped as an infant by a negligent caregiver.  When I left the center that night, later than I ever have before, the older girls ran up and gave me a little bouquet of red flowers they had picked, before they waved me out the gate shouting, “good luck for you!” 

The dance party on Friday, a proper Cambodian and ANDC send-off to the teaching volunteer Jennifer, was a fitting crown to the week.  Everyone crowded onto wooden benches at tables for a special dinner of no-utensils, face-in-plate fare.  We wrapped rice sheets in lettuce leaves with cucumbers and herbs, spooning a peanut sauce in the middle and dipping the whole thing in thin Khmer sauce.  The kids were as excited as Christmas Day, bounding and yelling and eating until their hands and mouths were covered in peanuts and leaves.  They asked for picture after picture, with new poses and expressions each time, and showing off their specially selected outfits and hairdos.  The whole outside compound at the new center was strung out in lights, with karaoke music playing carefree of neighbors, since noise control only means letting your neighborhood in on the fun, too. 

I could have danced all the night with the kids, jamming away jumping and swinging, jiving, and even finally getting in the line for Khmer dancing they had gotten me ready for.  I liked the feeling of letting go, laughing only because I felt good and holding hands and kicking my feet up with a goofy kid made me smile.  Sreyneat danced with me all night, and even shared her celebration dessert oranges with me, not accepting refusal to the point where she stuck a slice in my mouth to make me stop protesting.  The director’s husband told me that she was one of the first kids who had come to the center, and had been painfully shy and reserved—then he said, “Look at her now,” and I did, seeing her ablaze with energy and showing her friends how to do disco hands.  I drove away in a tuk tuk crushed with volunteers with the best sort of simple satisfaction at being tired from a good time and at seeing well-deserving others have fun. 

Questions and few answers

This week I have been skewering, debating, agonizing, defending, and turning over the bloody and tender guts of the issues I work with every day.  I wish sometimes that there was an off button for the images that blare every time I close my eyes, like the shiny white SUV I saw on Tuesday morning splash putrid gutter water all over twelve-year-old John Maren and his one set of clothes as he walked a ways in front of me on his way to Mith Samlanh.  When the SUV continued towards me, it swerved away to avoid giving me the shame it threw all over John Maren.  The intricacies of those ten seconds and so many others bring my head to my hands.  Why is the child John Maren on the street?  Does he have parents?  Does he hurt?  Where did the money come from to pay for that SUV?  What has happened in this place where white skin is both a badge of honor and a suit of armor?  Am I actually helping John Maren grow into an intact young adult by putting self expression in his hands by way of a camera?  Does it all just revert back under and around in a sick cycle?

On some nights when I’m falling asleep guilt and reality overwhelm me and I cry until I can forget for awhile.  I think about the girls who are my age and hook their arms in mine, giving their friendship, and imagine the heat and stench and ache of pushing a garbage cart around and around the gravel of the city that has been their life.  I think about their mothers selling them to brothels, them escaping but their bodies still owing a debt.  I watch like a little film one of the kindergartners proudly showing me a loose tooth and the slow motion of my mind’s eye- camera roving over the deep scars on his cheeks and temples and the chunk of hair missing from his head.  I wonder how the pain feels, how indignity stings, if I could bow down like they do and take the licks dealt.  I crumple the sheet in my hands and look at the solid walls around me as I kick against the knowledge that some growing, fragile head is fearful and cold on the dark sidewalk next to a father with a knife—and that I know that fragile head but don’t know how to do anything that will help.

There lies the hardest issue.  How do I help?  How does any one of us else?  To quote Paul Farmer, “I wonder fleetingly what even a government of saints and scholars could do in the face of such odds.”  I look at the perpetuated cycle of aid right here in Cambodia, the army of NGOs that set up camp right after the Khmer Rouge and have never left.  There are so many they are ignominious, they assume responsibility from the government and society, and in many cases fail to effect any change but short-term and potentially harmful transformations when that awful aforementioned cycle turns again.  An example of just one facet is how the stereotypical aid comes from the hand of a benevolent white person and their country, which has perpetuated the God-like ascent of white skin here and created situations like that of John Maren and communities evicted to make rooms for spacious tourist pleasure spots.  Do we plead and reason with the government?  Is it time to wield the big stick for the under trodden at last?  But who would be dually self-sacrificing and influential enough to wield it?  Has the inherent selfishness of Darwin’s humanity damned some to hell on earth?  Can that lovely and convenient statement of “global understanding and community” actually lift some from the depths if ever put in action?

I know I won’t walk away from the life I have been given and built.  Deep down in my blackest soul I am glad to be one of the lucky few, to not be retching and indentured, terrified and desperate.  I’m glad that goodness and mercy are there waiting for me to grasp if I only stoop my nose to the grindstone.  But then here how do I find a pigment of truth beneath my skin?  Would I, could I withstand the frustration and anxiety and bitterness of giving voice to the voiceless?  I am finding that for all the love I feel and tears I shed, I still shut the door; it is so unbearably difficult to search endlessly for answers and action. 

Maybe this new mass soccer teams idea is the answer.  Maybe soon this next generation will rise more educated and aware than the last and mobilize a campaign for grassroots moral decency.  Maybe clean water could solve it all.  I wish I knew.  Not only that, I wish I knew how many other minds are on a self-inflicted hot plate chewing on these easily forgotten problems as well—and then I wish the answer would fall as if out of a fortune cookie and a worldwide sigh of “Ahh, so that’s it,” would go ‘round.  “Helping people” has become a business, and a flourishingly popular one at that-- from citizens setting up and assigning themselves the NGO label so they can receive government money to the vast marines of proposals, meetings, deals, and signatures masterminded by geniuses in snappy suits. 

But I still walk through wailing squatter settlements every day, and I still touch grubby hands with bare-breasted mothers, and bounce mere bones of a child on my hip.  I see them fall to their knees and I sidestep heroin needles and yamma straws and wonder if the next passerby will be too young to know and play with them.  I work with them and watch carefully designed performances with folk music featuring a little boy who has figured out he is extraordinarily flexible.  I teach them cartwheels and aerials and sing long songs when legs get tired and heads droop.  I play one-legged tag amidst broken glass and worry about their scrapes and bacterial infections, and tiny arms and intestinal worms.  I write long reports and emails and call painful meetings of arm-twisting and brainstorming in my diminutive push for something better. 

What cuts me in two and what has brought me to stir the tumultuous cauldron my brain has become is the loss of “the poor” or “the people of the third world” as a nameless, faceless entity, however pitiful or inspiring.  They are each and every one a separate, beautiful personality with eyes, sometimes twinkling and sometimes dulled, cheeks, chins, elbows, shins.  I can name a seven-year-old goofball who can’t stop giggling or coining silly faces, and a regal old woman with her head wrapped in a korma turban who proudly sells her few dried fish every day while teaching young women traditional songs, and a mentally disabled girl who loves badminton and rap music, and a round-faced boy missing his two front teeth who closes his eyes while he practices hula-hooping and disco dancing at the same time. 

As the Haitian proverb goes, “The rocks in the water don’t know how the rocks in the sun feel.”

A uniquely regular morning

This drizzly, humid Saturday morning I woke up uncharacteristically early to pay my rent and found myself cheerfully grabbing an umbrella to walk to the grocery store and ramble around the neighborhood at a time I never see it at.  Most of the regular motodups in a two-block radius of the apartment recognize me as a local that almost always waves them off, so I was greeted today by waves and exclamations of “How you today!”  One driver who used to take me to Mith Samlanh several days a week gave me a big smile and asked, “Madam, Mith Samlanh?” in a conversational tone that clearly implied, “Do you still work there?”  I returned his smile and said “Cha, but I walk now!” and mimed a brisk stomping while pointing in the direction of Mith Samlanh.  He laughed and slapped his knee as I went to haggle with the day’s coconut cart driver to get my morning hydration fix. 

My “auntie” landlady told me, with her English-speaking niece’s translation, that Khmer people drink the milk of at least two coconuts per day, and always one in the morning.  They also munch on the flakes of the finished shells, because the health benefits in the tropics are so excellent.  It took a few tries to get used to the taste, but now I look forward to heading to my routine nearby corner where either a coconut cart man will posted or will have sold a big branchful to the miniature family store for resale.   I can always feel my skin and tendons expanding a little and my head clearing.  The coconut cart driver this morning was an old pro, wielding his huge rectangular flat-knife in a series of catlike strokes to slice off the top, exposing the delicate inner skin that is easily punctured by a straw.  I balanced the heavy fruit in my free hand happily and moved on to the bread man who pedals the rounds morning and afternoon with his blanketed basket of warm Khmer baguettes strapped to the back of his bicycle—I picked an especially golden sesame loaf and handed over the 500 riel (15 cents.)    

I arrived at the grocery store fifteen minutes before opening, so I sat on the street curb under my umbrella and watched the noodle soup ladies with their big banana leaf-covered cooking pots strung on both ends of a big stick balanced on their shoulders walk past and stop for their regular customers who are ladled out a bowl and squat down to eat while the noodle lady rests.  A beggar child came and plopped down next to me, in oddly high spirits considering the bag of trash from scavenging that he was lugging.  He held out his hand, palm up, and when I shook my head he shrugged and put his hand roughly on my cheek.  I was caught off guard and alarmed but quickly realized that he was feeling my white skin when he next grabbed my wrist.  He nodded towards the grocery store and said, “Chicken?  Sohm [please]?”  I looked at his scarred fingers next to my unharmed ones, at his hair reddened from kwashikori, starvation, that he picked lice from.  I knew I could never buy him chicken, but I felt the lie when he patted the roll of cash in my jeans pocket and I said, “I have money because I studied—you should go to school.”  He probably should have spit in my face for that.  Instead he waggled those fingers at me like an old friend when I finally walked into the store. 

I have made great strides in discovering tricks for living on my $5.00 per day budget, which does not include long-term expenses.  I scour the “damaged” shelves at the grocery store to find a partially squished carton of milk marked down to $1.00, or a bunch of bruised bananas for $0.55, and have become a frequent customer in the $0.30 instant noodles aisle.  I walked with my bag of clearance finds to my favorite street coffee seller where all the old guys who hang out there know me, laugh and crinkle up their yellowed eyes in greeting, and pull me up a tin stool while I wait for my baggie of expertly mixed Vietnamese coffee.  This morning I watched the owner’s wife familiarly give her grandson a few riel to put in the silver alms pail of the monk waiting outside.  The grandson knelt at the foot of the monk’s orange robe to pray and be blessed, his nose to the ground, then he skipped back under the aluminum roof to continue helping with dishes and chopping blocks of ice.  The old men all helped hold my grocery bag and pull out my stool when I fished in my pocket for correct change to pay, and shouted their chum reap lea’s, goodbyes, as I rounded the corner and waved. 

The morning was a welcome continuation of the deepening integration into this place I’ve felt like a sweeping undercurrent all week.  Yesterday afternoon I brought a friend of a friend to ANDC, and marveled to myself that I could now explain the place and introduce children and tell their stories.  A group of the most hyperactive kids, including the center’s two young dancing aficionados, put on a singing and dancing show in the dirt yard for their guest and me, choreographed by one of the budding maestros.  Water Festival ended in Christine and I joining the unbelievably massive crowds to try for a glimpse of King Sihamoni as he left the river Thursday night, and then our walk back to our neighboring apartments being obstructed by a literal standstill a block away from our destination.  So many pedestrians and motos had tried to shove through that the artery was clogged to the point of Christine and I joining other able-bodied youngsters in clambering over the hoods of cars and back wheels of motos, aided by ready upheld hands, to avoid having our feet crushed or being pulled down in the mob.  We escaped clutching our lungs from the smog, wheezing in laughter for lack of any other reaction, and examining our shins and hips for exhaust pipe burns and bruises as the police roared up with loudspeakers and big sticks. 

I have discovered exercise to be the secret that unlocked my mind to openness and contentment.  I run and lift weights or condition for an hour or more in the evening seven days a week when the weather is cool and breezy, and I walk everywhere I possibly can within reason.  Once I conquered my fear of dehydration and pushing myself too far in an unfamiliar climate, gathering wisdom and resources, I became addicted to the thinking space running especially gives me.  It lets me put every difficult exchange, sight, and emotion through each of my mental processors, the strain and ache of my muscles lessening the feelings of guilt and helplessness I increasingly have when debriefing my days and preparing my next steps and plans.  It also allows my almost irrevocably accustomed-to-constant-activity self to take the time for reflection and simple thought about basic and essential points that mill around the edges of my conscious stream of effort.

Rain in the provinces and Water Festival

Last Friday I grabbed bus tickets with two friends of mine, Adam and Caisa who are respectively American and Swedish journalists for The Cambodia Daily, and hopped on an old Sorya Transport clanker down south to the provincial beach town Sihanoukville.  The bus was everything I had ever hoped for from a “local mass-transit vehicle,” except the air conditioning worked.  We started off half an hour late on account of various personalities clambering on and off, sitting in the driver’s seat, forgetting a bag of fruit outside, deciding they needed one more last smoke.  When a bus here overbooks, they sell tickets for “aisle seating” (plastic kid stools lined up knees-to-buttocks) and “standing room” (an unlucky group of people crushed together on the steps by the door.) 

Thankfully, all three of us had reserved early enough to relax in cracked plastic seats decorated by some great auntie’s best lace selection, mine with a suspiciously dark stain.  Adam and I were in the first row, making us first-hand witnesses to Cambodian bus driving techniques.  We gasped as the bus seemingly drove into a fully loaded oncoming lane of traffic, swerving away to miss a car or motorbike by too literally, an inch.  A horn is a driver’s best friend here, and our driver leaned on his like a soul mate—no dog too small to give out a good blast.  We knew a swerve had been an actual near-miss when the Cambodians around us exclaimed and clutched at their hair with us. 

A Southeast Asian bus ride would not be complete without the ancient TV mounted at the front playing earsplitting local karaoke and comedy.  The selected show for our ride was first assorted love-song duets, accompanied by a chorus dancing with oars, and then slapstick sketches by a fat man/midget duo.  They would have been fully enjoyable if Khmer wasn’t such an aggressively spoken language, especially on highest volume.  The bus broke down three times and pulled off the road for all the men to amble out, point a lot, and suck their teeth until someone performed some miracle fix they only have in these parts of the world and we were off again.  Adam, quite the car guru, was wringing his hands over the apocalyptic smell that puffed through the door each time it opened.  Nevertheless, we arrived mid-downpour at the bus station in Sihanoukville, hailed three motos, and headed to the Monkey Republic Guesthouse as we hunched ourselves protectively over our backpacks.

It rained all weekend, apart from a few lovely sunny hours on Saturday morning that we spent blissfully in the ocean and for a brief spell that night.  The rain was blowing and chilly, and I marveled at the sensation of being truly cold for the first time in months, wanting to wrap up in a blanket with a hot mug.  The weather meant time for catching up on reading and playing pool, shooting the breeze as we discussed what we’d left behind, what we had now in Phnom Penh, and what we’re sticking it all out for.  I loved hearing Caisa talk about growing up in Stockholm, learning from her about what the newspapers and magazines don’t say about my European peers and what normal is for them, and how she saw my American peers on her study abroad in Missouri during university.  We swapped stories about down-home cooking, our most delightful discovery being our joint enjoyment of boiled potatoes. 

When the rain let up on Saturday night the restaurants on the beach opened their seafood barbecues for business, meaning stacks of whole, fresh-caught fish thrown onto a grill and served in all their intact splendor with chili sauce.  I made an exception in my new vegetarianism (I accepted the exception because I’m not a moral vegetarian, just a health vegetarian) and had a plate of shrimp for the experience of pulling off their heads, scraping off the pasty brains and dark line of excrement, peeling away the skin, and finally yanking off the tail before I could dip.  I distracted myself from the occasional shocks to my taste buds by watching the fire-spinners by the ocean douse their sticks in kerosene, light them, and then twirl around, over, behind, under with eyes shut tight from the heat. 

We arrived back in Phnom Penh on Sunday, Independence Day, to the city in full mayhem-mode for the week’s Water Festival merriment.  Adam and I decided to forgo the compressed traffic and walk the few miles to our apartments from the bus station.  We stopped at one of Cambodia’s only shopping malls for the best cheap gelato in town and watched as families from the provinces just-arrived for Water Festival dealt with the mystery of escalators.  Some waited for an entire step to rise up and then rabbit-jump onto it, some held the rolling railing from the underneath position all the way through.  There was a special guard hired for the purpose of guiding those in serious bewilderment through the process.  We smiled as we thought that this is how they must have felt watching us climb on a motorbike for the first time. 

On Tuesday afternoon my German friend Christine and I decided to leap right into the Festival mayhem.  Cambodian Water Festival revolves around celebrating the changing direction of the Tonle Sap River, as the Tonle Sap Lake has been filled by rainy season and will now begin to drain, thereby reversing the river’s flow.  Cambodians celebrate by holding three days of traditional longboat races on the river, with boats from all the provinces competing.  Revelers from the countryside flood the capital to more than twice its usual population, even more so this year because of the coincidence with Independence Day, and clog the riverside streets to walk-with-heavy-elbow-use only during race times and the nighttime float parade on the water. 

It felt like the Minnesota State Fair.  Street stalls selling every favorite treat a Khmer kid could tug on his parent’s sleeve for, from pork buns to spicy green mango.  There were booths advertising “M-Fone Mobile” and “Yeo Soft drinks” and loud boom boxes on every corner, with big groups of people wearing giant grins exploring it all in souvenir hats and crowns.  At the river, the choicest spots are on the concrete slopes to the riverbank, and those fill up to a single mound of humanity by 9am.  Therefore everyone prods their way as close as possible to the short wall to get in on the cheering action, clutching baggies of iced drinks and coconut shavings. 

Christine and I got our favorite sugar water from an exceptionally cheery street vendor, made by cranking a whole sugarcane through a press and gathering the liquid that comes out over crushed ice in a plastic bag, then sticking a straw in and rubber-banding the top.  We also sampled a sticky rice and coconut cake, which was overwhelmingly gluey, and the uttermost Western fusion food—durian ice cream on baguette.  It would have been a pleasant take on the ice cream cone concept if durian ice cream didn’t taste as stinky as the fruit smells.    

The races themselves were staggeringly energetic rowing competitions in boats that held up to sixty men.  Captains in all varieties of festive outfits mandated the pace from the front of the boats, drummers in the middle kept the pace of the crews’ pounding at the water, and two men with poles steered from the back.  The most dangerous part of the racecourse is the sharp U-turn the boats take to return and paddle back up the current.  Christine and I watched several boats get tangled together, and one nearly entire capsizing.  It’s particularly frightening when you remember that almost every man with an oar in the middle of the swollen river can’t swim, most certainly not when worn out and trapped under a boat in a current.  However, as is the Cambodian custom, danger is shrugged off in pursuit of exuberance. 

Nighttime brings the brightly lit float parade, shadow puppet shows, random concerts, famous buildings like the Royal Palace strung with Christmas lights to gawk at, and fireworks.  I have noted with a sort of horrified amusement that every night the fireworks go off, the sounds of ambulance sirens fill the air minutes after the booming sounds have faded.  The police are actually on duty for once and most attentively so at night, fully uniformed and taking clear enjoyment in herding sellers, taking bribes, and controlling traffic via strings they hold between two officers weighted with rocks so they can raise and lower the barrier with effectiveness.  Traffic becomes more hazardous in the evening when the beer flowing through the city lightens bribe prices and motorbikes flood the streets, making it impossible to even step cleanly between two.  The lucky families from the provinces have a family living in Phnom Penh that they can stay with, but the rest are draped in hammocks strung up at the sides of the streets and sardined in big Russian trucks to sleep. 

I have been relishing the brief change in attitude of the city, as a spirited feeling of happiness and goodwill is prevailing.  Smiles and pats on the arm are not hard to come by and my skin color can be ignored in the face of pretty sights and loud music and good things to eat and racing. 

Broken teeth, veggie peeling, and hard questions

Last Wednesday I hung out in Club Friends at Mith Samlanh with the kids on break while I waited for Thoum to come with the cameras.  Two older boys were practicing kickboxing, an astonishing show of sport as one held up a pad strapped to his arm and the other repeatedly kicked, punched, and aerial-kicked the pad.  Aerial-kicking involves leaping into the air and striking the pad with one foot, then spinning all the way around and getting a good smack at the pad with the other foot, all still in the air. 

One younger EC boy, Raksmey, had been shadowing their movements in the background and finally came up to ask for a go.  The big boys agreed, and after Raksmey had taken his turn kicking he was set on holding up the pad for his idols to practice on.  They tried to go easy, but in the end Raksmey’s skinny little body was too light and one kick shoved the pad hard into his face, knocking out two teeth and breaking one.  The big boys clearly felt terrible and carried Raksmey over to his teacher, putting their hands on his head and ruffling his hair and wiping his bloody lips on their t-shirts.  It was a perfect example of the atypical hierarchy of responsibility and care that develops in situations like that of street-living children, where parents are absent.  

However, I was riveted by Raksmey’s reaction to his injury.  I have learned to control my western instincts when one of the kids is hurt, not to rush over and expect to stem hysterical crying and pleas to go to the hospital.  Instead, I have realized that kids here bear pain much like they have borne so much else in their lives—with a scowl and a few tears at first, but scraping together resilience and moving on soon after.  Raksmey came and sat by me not ten minutes after his incident, an old piece of cloth stuffed under his top lip.  He proudly took it out and showed me his new gaps and jagged line of a canine, then winced and quickly put the cloth back in, still with a smile. 

I couldn’t help imagining how an American child his age would have reacted to having teeth knocked out and broken, even an American child with a rough life as well.  The drama, the self-pity, the expectance of others’ pity and sympathy.  As I pondered this my newest young protégé wandered up, the kid who used to make the archetypal begging-eyes at me when he wanted to use the camera, as if I were another tourist, and now bows nicely to ask for a camera case so he can pretend he’s filming, too.  The skin under his left eye was completely split open in a line, black and pink flesh together.  I pointed to it and mimed shock and an “ow!” face.  He nodded but shrugged it off, grinning and bowing for the camera case around my neck so he could “document” the ongoing soccer game nearby.

Sovanna and I had a long talk after I came back from taping with Thoum.  As we slouched in semi-intact desk chairs as if that could beat the heat, he quizzed me up, down, and around about the US and Cambodia.  Why is it so hard to get a visa?  What is a Supreme Court?   Why don’t we like China?  Does everyone like “Obamara the president” as much as me?  Do Americans know Phnom Penh is even a place?  How hard should Sovanna study for his TOEFL?  Can Cambodians get scholarships to study in the US?  After hearing for a good long while about the things he dreams about, like studying abroad, being freely given to his American peers if they are willing to work hard enough, he put his chin in his hand and said, “It’s not fair.  You’re born in a rich place, you can work for anything.  If you’re born in Cambodia…nothing.  We’re all too poor.”  Then he looked hard at me and added, “I could never be able to do what you’re doing.”  It took a lot of willpower to look him in the eye after that.

I have gotten over needing a bit of willpower every time I head into a squat toilet.  These are Asian contraptions that involve a porcelain hole in the ground with two outcroppings for the feet and a water source nearby with accompanying jug or bowl to perform “bucket flushing.”  That means there is no handy, semi-sanitary button or lever at your convenience, but the responsibility of scooping and pouring however many times it takes.  Toilet paper and soap for hand washing is generally an unheard-of luxury, as I promptly learned to keep a few napkins and a tiny bottle of Purell with me at all times. 

I learned another local “skill” on Thursday at ANDC, as I hiked up the road earlier than usual and found a few girls in the old center sitting in the kitchen peeling vegetables for dinner.  They had a big woven basket with a cloth in front of them, filled with tiny root-like unidentified legumes, all with funny protrusions and fur.  The girls motioned me next to them and at first refused to let me help peel, but my entreaties and attempts to grab a knife while they weren’t looking eventually found approval.  They showed me how to push the big knife down in quick jabs at the rough purple skin, almost like grating, and difficult because of the disproportion of knife to veggie.  I held out my three I had managed to peel over fifteen minutes, looking over to see a small mountain in front of everyone else and the cloth ready to be emptied because of all the skin they had removed.  The house nanny patted my cheek sympathetically and pointed me over to play with the younger girls back from school, an activity at which I could approach usefulness. 

I realized while playing with the girls that they now come to me with issues.  When they fall down and scrape their knees, they come put their arms around me for a hug.  When they’re being teased, they want to be lifted up and carried for awhile.  If they’re worried about studying, they tell me.  It’s another of the small calls to action that I’ve begun to notice every day, a piece of them that they’re giving to me, and a piece of me that I leave with them, little things that are getting harder and harder to put in the back of my mind when the going gets rough and I wonder why I’m here.  It makes me think, could I really now ever turn away from working for the opportunities that the big eyes looking to me for comfort deserve?  That scares me and drives me, pushes me onwards to work harder but checks me as I wonder what I’ve done, getting to the point where I’ll never be able to forget.

The Beat Goes On, Never the Same

The younger kids who see me every day at Mith Samlanh now call me mak—mommy.  Sovanna told me with quiet pride that the kids who come to the center for long periods of time regard the staff who work with them the most as the loving parents the kids don’t have, and indeed call staff mommy and daddy.  It’s both searing and satisfying to be called mak by a child who lays his head on pavement at night.  The title gives me responsibility for the little souls growing up in droves and their troubles and joys, lest I be yet another neglectful, hurtful caregiver.  This new responsibility makes me weep when I let the circumstances sink in and my heart swell when I think maybe, just maybe, I am lifting a tired spirit.

On Monday at sunset I rode out to the orphanage after the rains, stopping my clearly urbanized mototup at the start of the dirt road and thoroughly enjoying picking my way across craters, through ponds, and dodging errant chicken carts.  As soon as I set my backpack down one little girl pointed out in horror the globs of mud on my Birkenstocks.  We proceeded to the giant washing tub behind the kitchen and set to work scrubbing until she was satisfied.  I grinned to myself when one of my most hyperactive young male students, Sophal, sashayed over and bent his head with focused intent at scraping off a stubborn chunk.

Barefoot and cheerful, I squatted right down with Sophal and his friends in yard to spend an hour making castles, birthday cakes, and animal sculptures in the wet sand with our fingers and sticks.  They taught me the Khmer words for each new creation—an doak, turtle, trdy, fish—and showed me how to extravagantly decorate with weeds and make patterns by slicing old string.  We sang “happy birthday” to everyone we made a cake for, and I made a “Baby Beluga” whale and taught them the first verse while we drew sea friends concentrically. 

Our knees tired and attention spans waned, so we started up a center-wide round of animal-walk races around the yard, our challenge the avoidance of the small lakes that gather from the rains.  We crab-walked and frog-leaped then fell on our faces as polar bears, finishing as dogs howling at the dark sky.  The electricity went out as our games ended and the little kids were scared as night in the yard crept further in.  Four of the older girls, Sreyleak their leader, got up and knelt in front of where our group sat nestled and crisscrossed together.  They made prayer-hands in the dim shadows and started singing Khmer songs, smiling encouragingly at each scrunched-up small face.  I loved hearing their voices wander over strange syllables and tonal shades, telling a story I could very nearly understand.

The next day in intermediate class I encountered the difficulty native Khmer speakers have with the “f” and “r” sounds, going around to the students individually as they practiced English script writing “fork” and having them say the word to me.  Most had a “puh” sound come out instead of “fuh,” a few articulated an irrational but well-intentioned “thh-ss.”   “R” is inevitably pronounced as a “w.”  I decided to give interactive learning my best shot and demonstrated sticking my top teeth firmly on by bottom lip and decisively flipping lip out from teeth while blowing out air—“fuh!”  After a chapping number of minutes all had conquered “fuh” but two students with empty youthful gums who could at least perform impressive whistles with the action.   Next was “rrr.”  I had the class point one finger down and lower it as they said “forrrrrk,” the downward motion mimicking our voices descending with the “r” sound.  It was surprisingly successful—one student, Phasal, approached me while everyone was practicing and said, “rrrreally!” with the same finger action and a beaming face.

At Mith Samlanh I have started the managerial task of delegating jobs for the video project, a blood pressure-raising task if there ever was one as I give up direct supervision and the control of having my hands in every part of the process.  Thoum is now responsible for the sign-up sheet collected from TC classes and directing taping during morning and afternoon break times, cameras, name records, time limits, and all.  Ratana from the Culture Team is in charge of communications between the teachers, kids, Mith Samlanh staff, and me, and facilitating meetings for brainstorming and review.  Sovanna handles all other outlying details, from telling me when batteries need charging to badgering IT staff about video rating capacities.

Ratana’s role has taught me the importance of making personal connections in the workplace—someone is much more likely to help you out and give a little extra that could make all the difference if they like you and therefore believe in what you’re doing.  My efforts in demonstrating unmistakable respect for Ratana, having constructive conversations where his views are appreciated and valuable, and taking the time to stop, bow, and joke a little have transformed the amount of assistance I receive from the Culture Team.  It has gone from “sorry, much too busy, wish we could help more,” to “I organized a sign-up in all the TC classes for you and a meeting with the kids after Water Festival to discuss what topics they would like to do next and what help making videos they need.”  Ratana’s help is priceless—know-how of the system (and generally how to get things done in Cambodia!) and the connections and sway to start multiple Domino effects for the project.

The biggest lessons I have learned thus far about getting things done in a totally polar workplace are flexibility, and never boxing myself into expectations for how I think things should, and will, be executed and turn out.  The process and end result is never what I originally expected, and I will be left in the dust if I don’t adapt.

Essentially every American expat in Phnom Penh turned up panting at the FCC yesterday early morning to watch the live election results come in—bonded together under banners proclaiming “Democrats Abroad in Cambodia” and “Got Hope?” with Obama’s profile beneath.  Ironically, not a single McCain supporter was present in this vast group of American working overseas… the rooms exploded in shouting and hugs and streamers when “Obama Elected President” flashed onto the CNN screen.  There was a sensation of massive relief and uplifting.  Someone gave a speech with a shaking voice about not having to talk to people here with apologies for our nation anymore, that maybe we could feel proud soon knowing good is being done. 

There was silence during Obama’s speech as almost all the upturned faces ran with tears.  It’s a different experience seeing your president elected from a foreign country, especially a president who stands for so much internationally.  I could picture the people who have said to me, “He has dark skin like me…I think he might care….maybe the USA will help us again,” and realize what this mere new face for America stands to achieve.  My hand was shaken and my shoulder clapped as a very young voter now somehow politically respected by what the American youth have demonstrated, that we are an effective force and that yes, we care.

A roaring gale hit the city at 6:30 last night, flooding the streets to ankle-level, pounding thunder, raking lightning, and eddies of thick rain drops in open spaces.  The calm and normality with which I treated this storm triggered me to start realizing how much has become ordinary to me here, things I would have turned around in my mind for hours just a month ago.  I could tell when the storm was coming and just covered up with my plastic poncho while I kept walking home, making sure my baguette and laptop were properly covered up.  An enormous cockroach scooted towards me on the tile floor while I was doing lunges at the gym, and I sighed, squished it with my shoe, and continued on.  I joked around with a waiter who knows me as a local and ran out to hold an umbrella for me, asking if he was going to charge one dollar for his kindness.  Carrying a big coconut like a baby under my poncho while fighting through the deluge running down my steps and watching the electricity flicker was only cooling for my ankles and a reason to cross my fingers for the lights to stay on until I went to sleep.  The Phnom Penh chaos is now almost an addiction, a reliable source of adrenaline and humankind.

Saigon is not in the 60's anymore

I took the six-hour bus ride to Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by most locals in Asia) last Thursday, pressing my face against the glass as stilted wooden houses and endless plains of paddies that signal Southeast Asian countryside began to appear.  I drank in the wonderful green, light rice paddies stretching into darkened, gnarled tree groves and clusters of giant palm trees quietly curving their tufts to the sky.  Longboats with a single cone-hatted farmer slid along the transport canals in the paddies, almost platforms in their small wooden depth.  Foot-wide dirt paths with perhaps a bicyclist or ancient motorbike on them led to stilted open-air houses, the lucky ones shading their height beneath a tree and the unlucky homes as stark in the sunny fields as a single streak of black against white.  I watched as a herding boy waded through a pond by the road on the back of one of his huge horned cows, heading towards four poles with a blanket suspended between them and a hammock hanging beneath the shadow.  The provinces appear an idyllic place of fresh vegetables and peaceful, wandering days, until you recall the crushing facts of disrupting, destabilizing poverty that rural people face.  Making that recollection that startled me out of my reverie was gloomy, comparing the serenity and directed life of honest work clearly filled with family to the grit, squalor, and loneliness in Phnom Penh, an unavoidable life because of starvation, sickness, or any of the other low-class killers in rural areas. 

I came to Vietnam to visit friends of mine who I met during their education training in Phnom Penh who now teach in Saigon.  It was a magnificent beginning to my “couch-surfing” career, an introduction to the beauty of being injected into a community and experiencing travel through the eyes of an established local.  I saw things I never would have glanced at twice, took risks I wouldn’t dare alone, experienced a higher enjoyment and appreciation of the surrealness in these places as I shared them with fellow eyes and thoughts.

There was a palpable difference between Saigon and Phnom Penh that struck me as soon as we crossed into the city.  Saigon is like how Bangkok would be ten years ago if Thailand had been colonized by the French—a steaming, rushing metropolis with plenty of shiny metal skyscrapers and clean, unbroken sidewalks, as opposed to the dust and squat tin buildings of Phnom Penh.  No garbage or in-your-face poverty, few desperately hawking taxi drivers and shaky begging hands.  The only abject scene of destitution I witnessed was my first night in Saigon, a flicker of movement by the wall of a building that ended up being a young woman naked from the waist down, facing the wall as she squatted over a newspaper and emptied her bowels. 

One of the strongest traits Saigon and Bangkok share is the magnificent presence of both modernism and urbanism with a preserved culture and local way of life.  It is entirely normal to walk down a street bursting with shops selling all marks of goods, with glass doors and popular music playing like any nice establishment, then sit down on a cracked lawn chair at a dirty-looking street stall drink a glass of iced Vietnamese coffee with all Saigonese natives.  The awkwardly reliant relationship between foreigners and locals that chafes me so painfully in Cambodia is nearly absent, probably on account of Vietnam’s booming economy—exaggerated in Saigon by its thriving capitalism.  A difference that struck me after a day was the absence of bowing with prayer-hands in greeting and thanks, a gesture of respect utterly engrained in Cambodia and Thailand and odd not to see in Saigon. 

The street food, beginning with the infamous pho noodle soup, is abundant and absurdly cheap in Vietnam.  I had great fun wandering the streets with my companions to search out the perfect sinh to’s (fruit shake with condensed milk) in flavors like avocado, Vietnamese sandwiches made from a mini-baguette and filled with chili sauce, meat, cucumbers, and a variety of other addendums, bready steamed dumpling with sauce in the middle and pinched at the top, sticky summer roll with a piece of sugar cane to chew inside, or plate of scrambled egg, cabbage, bean sprouts, tomatoes, and nugget-like noodles all mushed together in an omelet and dipped in salty hot sauce.  My favorite experimental dish was a giant crepe folded over and stuffed with ingredients like snails (strangely mouth-watering although slimy,) mushrooms, unidentified seasonal vegetables, and eggplant.  You slice and yank at the crepe communally with chopsticks, then quickly transfer whatever you manage to grab onto a piece of lettuce, and sprinkle various leafy herbs into the lettuce before rolling it up and dipping it in an orange-y peanut sauce. 

The friend I stayed with, Catie, introduced me to three former students of hers between the ages of 19 and 22 who enlighten her to all the stealthy nooks and crannies of Saigon.  These students, two girls and a boy, were nothing other than delightful—humorous, passionate, creative, moral, and above all friendly.  I reveled in the gift of spending hours exploring Saigon with them, hearing the real story of all the tourist attractions, letting them haggle at the market for Catie and I, sitting on little plastic chairs on the street as they talked about their goals for going to university and their futures, seeing the fruits of their hobbies like photography and drawing, goofing off in hats and sunglasses as our silly giggles bubbled over.  They are like family to one another, the best of friends, spending most of their days together, and somehow gladly welcoming Catie (and me for a too-short time) into their circle. 

Halloween in Vietnam was unavoidably bizarre.  People wandered the humid streets as Spiderman or mustached ladies—woe to Catie and me as we drove on her motorbike through a quieter area in our costumes, drawing incredulous guffaws as we passed.  When we were stopped at an intersection a girl on the motorbike next to us pointed to a colonial peeling school on the left corner and said—“Very haunted.  Ghosts who die there in the war.  Do not go there tonight!”  Definitely the most real haunted house I’d ever seen.  I experienced clubbing in a Socialist country, replete with armed and uniformed guards outside the decorated entrance and an enforced early closing time. But, the dancing was spirited, all-inclusive, and went nonstop for hours in everyone’s blissful holiday glee. 

Walking off dinner the next night, Catie and I and two friends happened past an outdoors martial arts academy.  Stopping to peer, we were beckoned through the flourished Chinese arch to take a seat and watch the ongoing advanced class.  The students, men and one steely-eyed woman, whirled, jumped, crouched, and kicked as they wielded numchucks flying around their bodies and heads with great speed and agility that they blindly caught in shocking positions.  The younger students walked about comparing their poufy black pants, red belts, and strapped slippers, showing off a few headstands and carefully copied moves in the process.  It was a show of remarkable athleticism and an exceptionally traditional sport to be invited to watch. 

I bounced back on the bus engrossed in the sunset and sorting my emotions and memories, another return to Phnom Penh with it feeling only slightly more like home.  But stepping off the bus, I snapped into an ease with the city and its cogs, giving advice to a lost-looking group of tourists and hiking off with my backpack in what I recognized as a non-threatening shower to get my fair price for a mototup to my apartment.  Being here has been rearranged in what is difficult and a breeze; not a single day is easy—but there is at least of spark of loveliness and hope now in every day that keeps the kindling burning beneath me, urging me further in and onwards through this webbed world we walk through.