The video project continued swimmingly this short week. My Mith Samlanh partner Sovanna was embroiled in a dramatic office-wide file deletion debacle on Monday, so I set my jaw and walked into Club Friends with digital cameras held high and a bright but pleading smile directed at the center’s dance teacher. The dance teacher, Thoum, and I became easy buddies and worked together well across the language barrier—he had the kids in a circle clapping and stamping for each performer in no time. It was delightful to get to know Thoum over those few hours. He has one lazy eye, is about my height but his body type is that of a bean, and he positively wriggles with the energy coursing in his bones. Thoum is possibly the least shy Cambodian I have befriended and from all appearances he is the kids’ most enthusiastic advocate, forever bopping about shouting praise and friendly reprimands and slapping bony backs. The taping session for the younger kids, or Educational Center (EC) group, was thus pulled off neatly within their break time, although also within whirling chaos as usual. This group’s animated and excited attitude about the project has risen steadily, although unfortunately their comprehension of the big picture involved has not.
The crowning accomplishment of Monday for me was the taping session for the older kids, or the Training Center (TC) group. This is the group I have decided the project must center around, since the EC group doesn’t have the capacity and maturity yet. Three girls around age seventeen in the “beauty” training program were intensely interested in operating the cameras, and to my delight they were interested in learning to tape properly and skillfully. Thoum helped me boost up their morale until they were brave enough to get on the stage one at a time to dance while the other two practiced taping. Female involvement at last!
An even better development then happened. The girls beckoned four of their male friends over and started explaining how the cameras and dance competition worked. Giggling and shyly ducking all the while, they got Thoum to turn on traditional Khmer music and filmed clips of each other dancing in couples with the boys in the customary ancient style. After the girls’ break was over and they returned to training, the boys picked up where they had left off and asked me for camera tips via gestures so they record hip hop dancing clips. Independence, creativity, an understanding of the project’s current theme and goal—my grin showed every happy tooth.
I had a meeting that afternoon with the Friends-International international coordinator, Caroline, and received news of a Vietnamese NGO’s planned visit to Mith Samlanh and Friends-International during the first week of December as part of an idea-swap sponsored by the Dutch government. This Medical Committee NGO has been recording video clips of their kids performing raps, and is interested in an exchange between the rap videos and the breakdancing videos we are recording at the center. Caroline and I devised a morning during their visit that has the Medical Committee representatives coming to Club Friends and watching four or five of the best Mith Samlanh breakdancers selected from the video competition perform. Then the representatives will have the opportunity to screen a selection of their rap videos for the EC and TC kids, they will be given a selection of our breakdancing videos to bring back to Vietnam, and thus the exchange channels will be open. I must admit to stuttering with excitement several times over the course of the meeting…
This swap visit seemed to be sent from the fates, as the cake that arose from Tuesday’s taping was four utterly spectacular breakdancers laying down professional-level clips. I was able to check finding exactly the talent I needed for the December performance off my list a day after adding it on, quite the welcome feat. These four dancers, Veasn, Thoen, Bunthorn, and Maren, are in the older range of the TC age group and were deeply inquisitive about the video project and the recording process. Sovanna, freed as the deleted office files were restored, explained the project and gave them a fast recording-101 overview. They practiced taping twice each and went back to class shouting, which Sovanna translated as “I will tell my friends! Very cool! I will practice for next week!”
The EC kindergarten class came in with a beaming Thoum as the TC group was leaving, and I spent an hour romping around the stage with thirty gap-toothed, effervescent, gap-toothed tiny bodies exultant to be waggling and squirming to loud pop music. One little boy, Phanna, caught my heartstrings with his little fists as we grasped hands and “did the twist” over and over. Two-thirds of his shaved scalp and face were coated with the purple gooey substance used by the Mith Samlanh medical staff to treat chemical burns that in children are more often than not caused by substance abuse in the home. Watching his round black eyes dart playfully as we shimmied up and down, I nearly slowed to a heartbroken stop as I wondered how confused, scared, alone, and ill-omened he feels as evidenced by his damaged head and face. I felt incredible anger in that moment at whoever had inflicted chemical burns on this child’s young flesh, with that selfishness, irresponsibility, and whatever system had caused it all. Phanna pulled me down to a crouch so we were eye-level, leaned in, and made a “tick-tock” motion with his finger at my nose while he shook his four-year-old hips to the swing music.
I wrote my first-ever project report on Tuesday afternoon to my superiors, and I felt an overwhelming pride for the kids and the enthusiasm, openness, and competency they have demonstrated over the past two weeks. A renewed trust for their self-sufficiency in pulling themselves up and above.
On Monday at ANDC I had a ball watching the some of the boys from both my classes do their laundry and helping out when they would let me (or noticed I was participating.) They wash their clothes by first running them through the center’s washing machine for about a minute. The cloth appropriately saddened, they spread each item out on the concrete and squat to scrub it with a soapy brush. Rinsing is a process involving placing the item in an open-weave plastic basket, drawing bucketfuls of water from the collection point that resembles a giant bathtub, quite commonplace here, and shaking the basket inside of the bucket. I cherished the minutes of seeing these kids so dedicated to doing their chore correctly and the spirit of sharing they exhibited as bottles of detergent and advice was traded with pleasantries.
Tuesday saw me introducing summary-writing to the advanced English class and the present tense to the intermediate level. The advanced kids had just finished reading the story “The Welcome Note” and I thought, why go through the vocabulary again by repetition when they could show what they learned? This concise-report concept was entirely new to the class. Handed in to me were sheets of detailed explanations of half the story line and copied phrases from the book of the other half. I refused to give a grade above a zero for any paper that had lines straight from the book on it, read and discussed the example I had written—and crossed my fingers ahead of time for the next attempt. The present tense and introduction of the “ing” ending went surprisingly better. Class time ended with shriek-volume choruses of “I am swimming with my friend!” “I am speaking with you!” “You are playing with him!”
Today is Constitution Day and therefore a holiday for most of Cambodia. I spent the day at ANDC helping provide activities and general control for the 98 kids rocketing up, down, and around the center. There were two traditional dance teachers scheduled for the morning, late per what seems to be custom. The kids went wild with outdoor games during this unexpected free time, from volleyball to marbles to my favorite, “jumping.” This means two people holding a string of looped rubber bands at increasingly greater heights for the players to jump over and clear—a la limbo, just over not under. You must clear the string completely, because if you touch it you switch places with one of the people holding the string. “Jumping” is highly competitive here, played in schools as a sport. Once I had tried my hand at a game or two my mouth was gaping at the agility and height even the youngest kids were achieving as they galloped and swung their legs over the string.
The dancers finally arrived, a man and a woman, and they promptly organized all the kids into neat rows by gender and height in an extraordinarily fast and peaceful fashion. The woman separated out the rows of younger girls and taught them the basic seated position, legs tucked under at specified and meaningful angles, feet flexed, arms bent with one elbow resting on opposite knee, hands bent backwards with fingers in a position resembling a stylized Western “okay” sign. The older students were put into standing and kneeling rows gender-determined rows by the man and taught a counted series of positions, claps, and looks. Everyone told at the beginning of the lesson to sit or kneel on the ground participated in a madcap scramble for discarded flip flops lying around the yard to use as shields, which was quite the sight.
My favorite part was watching the few kids who are beyond questions natural dancers. They paid attention to the teacher with rapt expressions, gracefully and easily assumed the positions and executed the movements. It was beautiful to watch their simplest shifts. The other Western teacher present, Jennifer, and I let ourselves wonder for a few longing minutes what these budding dancers could do with one class a week—we later watched one of the smallest and most inspired practice by herself after lunch tucked in a corner, going over and over what she had learned, shaking her wrists and ankles when they got tired.
The afternoon went by in electrolyte packets and songs. The other Western teacher, Charlotte, brought a friend to the center who plays guitar, so we spent a cheery few hours running through whatever kids’ tunes with simple words that we could think up. “Bingo” was a big hit, on account of the clapping. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” was an insurmountable mass of syllables to our young English Language Learners. I had a blissful few minutes sitting on a table teaching “Bambole’la” by call-and-response, the one song I’ve ever heard the kids quickly grasp (likely because the words are simply various dissections of “bambole’la”) and a tune that brought back sepia memories of singing rounds to bongo drums in the Southwest High School choir classroom. The kids astonished me by performing their existing repertoire of American songs: Jingle Bells, The Banana Song, an undetermined song by Journey, the refrain of Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls (when they found out I knew the entire song, I spent fifteen uninterrupted minutes of beating out a Caribbean rhythm and singing it for them, quenching their curiosity at the unknown remains of the song), and Old Mac Donald. Jennifer mixed a cauldron-sized pot of water mixed with electrolyte packets, and the kids lined up for their half-cup each as we ladled into the shared plastic mugs. The reactions to the exotic Gatorade flavor ranged from eye-popping glee to cheeks-puckered “Good….”
This last part recounts a tragedy that happened today, and I would please ask everyone who reads this to remember this family in their prayers and good wishes. Right before lunch there was a commotion at the ANDC front gate. I ran over and on my way passed my advanced student Sokna in gasping tears staggering away from the crowd. I reached Jennifer’s side and we watched as another young girl collapsed in sobs while her fingers lingered on the clothesline. We asked one of the kids around what had happened. Sreyleak answered solemnly, “Her mother. She… [Cuts hand across throat and pretends to faint.]” We asked incredulously, “She died?” Sreyleak nodded her calm eyes sad. Narit who works at ANDC pulled up on his motorbike as someone lifted the distraught young girl behind him, her back heaving in distress as she pressed her forehead to Narit’s back. Her younger brother was lifted up behind her with his mouth wide open mid-cry. Their lids were shut tight against the news. As the smoke from Narit’s bike disappeared the kids were shuttled to lunch.
Jennifer and I listened to the staff’s discussion—the mother of the two had been seriously ill for four years and unable to take care of them, but they had had no prior warning that she was sick enough to die. The news was completely unexpected, and the two were being taken by Narit to join their sister and go to their mother’s body in the provinces. The mother was Sokna and her younger sister Chema’s aunt, and these two girls were already orphaned. Hearing about the death of their aunt seemed to be an appalling loss of another family member and bring a searing déjà vu.
An hour after lunch Chema came and sat next to me, resting her cropped black head on my shoulder and interlacing her sticky fingers with my dirty ones. I said, “You okay?” She looked at me with puffy eyes that betrayed no emotion and buried them back in their sockets as she nodded slightly and turned her face into my neck. I sat patting her knee and rocking a little as she fell asleep, holding her head as it dropped on my palm.
Holding this little head, trying to conceive the memories, emotions, and dreams in it, opened my beliefs and tore at them like nothing else has. I wanted to take my backpack and put Chema’s burden in it to carry home with me instead of leaving it weighing on her. I wanted every person with an intact soul to take a piece of these burdens so a little part of their hearts can be carved out instead of a hole knifed through a child’s. How does it feel to have no mother and father? To be seven and adrift without that root?
