Cambodia, Part I (the children)

Red Light Green Light gets out of hand

The 4th Graders I taught for 3 days

girl with rice

three children one bike

smiling girl

Jon feeds the children of Cambodia

schoolhouse on stilts

laugh

You could literally walk out of the tarmac and out of the airport without passing any security or semblance of a customs checkpoint and be engulfed in the muggy Cambodian afternoon. Feeling the sun truly for the first time in months was worth the trip.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the warmer the climate and the farther south towards the equator you move, the friendlier the people and the bigger the smiles (also the fewer the teeth, or at least its more noticeable). I always assumed but never really tracked it as closely as I did this time. By the time one gets to Cambodia, even one of the worst mass genocides ever can’t keep their spirits down. Its not as if the Khmer Rouge is an episode lost in the pages of ancient history. Every Cambodian 40 years of age or older directly experienced the worst of it and every Cambodian of any age now continues do deal with that bloody legacy on a daily basis. There are still upwards of three million landmines pock marking the countryside.  You look around and see people of all ages who have lost a limb to a mine or an unexploded hand grenade. Before we arrived a car was pulverized by an antitank mine left buried on a country road.

The Street Children: A Comparison

Changsha, Hunan, PRC: In Changsha, because of their aggressiveness, one is quickly jaded to the sorry faces of the beggars who lie sprawled on sidewalks or shake their cups in your face. The little snotty nosed children, faces streaked with soot and grime, as freakin’ adorable as they are, will wear anyone’s empathy thin. They come up and either kneel in front of you adjusting their position to block any attempt at maneuvering around them, or they latch onto your leg like koala bears, refusing to let go until you’ve given them something. The worst part about it are the older women behind these kids, pushing them on, using them as emotional bate. The pyramid is more diabolic than this even, and these old ladies are just one rung up in the ladder. The pyramid. All these beggars, as I have been told by various Changsha natives, are employees (to put it nicely) of a sort of beggar boss. This person probably has multiple lookalikes and decoys–and I’d guess–he runs with a pretty tough crowd.  The is the icing on the cake of course, because even if you decide to take pity on these lowly people in their brightly colored and very soiled winter pajamas, is the money you give them will probably never really go to them.

Siem Reap, Cambodia: Cambodia on the other hand is thick with begging entrepreneurs, some of them no more than 5 or 6 years old. Hardly any of them are beggars per se, but peddlers of cheap knick-knacks and counterfeit books. All of them speak a certain level of English and some of them are just downright clever. My friend Jon can tell you that after a couple of beers, even he was susceptible to their charms and their smarts. He ended up losing consecutive games of tick-tack-toe to a young boy and having to buy two of his books from him. Another couple of girls, no more than seven or eight years old each, approached us in a typical manner, asking that we buy a bracelet or a charm. “For a girlfriend… a wife?” … No we have neither. “Maybe that’s why you should then, maybe that’s why you have no girlfriend…” Touché… “What is the capital of Burkina Faso” … … … “Ouagadougou” You’re very smart, kid. “You can’t tell me the capital of Brunei, you buy.”

If these kids just applied themselves, well if they had the means to, they could do something worthwhile.

Then the infamous night that left holes in our pockets. The tuk-tuk (little motorbikes that pull wagons with benches) drivers by this point had become very good friends of ours, and they decided to take us to place only Cambodians eat. It was a long strip of blankets and food carts along a main road that lead to Angkor Wat. The food, as a side note, was delicious. Perfectly BBQ-ed chicken, snake, and frogs stuffed with peanuts and lemon grass—it was by far the best food we had in Cambodia, and the hungry children seem to know this all too well. As soon as we sat down, they had us surrounded—about six or seven of them at first. Jon, being the sucker that he his, at a certain point—I don’t know his heart swelled up and popped or something—decided he would guide these kids over to a stand and buy them something to eat. The kids, as if they had rehearsed it followed and began to point to the food they wanted, yelping at the owner in Khmer. Quickly they amassed and before too long, 20 plus children were gathered around an overwhelmed and panicky looking Jon. I was the only one who offered my help and began purchasing baggies of rice and carrying them over to a large mat next to a drainage ditch. More children appeared as we scrambled to get more food. I’m sure at this point some parents just shoved their children towards us and distanced themselves enough so we would feed the kids for them. They circled around and as we rationed out the chicken and skewered meats as best we could. You wouldn’t believe the patience and manners they had. They shared with one another and waited respectfully until each person had been served and we were ready to let them eat. Then, in unison, the bowed there heads to their fingertips and dug in.

Consequently we didn’t go back there after that night. I think it was for the best, and Jon would probably agree.

I volunteered there for a mere four days. Both at an after-school program for high school and up, and for a monastery run primary school that paid for underprivileged rural kids to come and learn. The teachers were thrilled to have the days off. If only my students here in China showed the same kind of enthusiasm and excitement towards just about anything that these kids did, the weather wouldn’t get to me so much. But maybe that’s why they seem like they are dying in their seats–the weather. I’ve never seen smiles so big (I’ve also never taught kids so young, and probably couldn’t for very long) on faces when asked to come and write a letter or a word on the board. They literally leapt out of their seats to do it. Don’t get me wrong though, they were little psychopaths. When we took them out for game time, they thoroughly harassed a cow and her calf (and managed to avoid getting crushed) by hitting them and attempting to mount them, as well as completely destroying a tree and carrying the branches off in different directions like trophies. I’ve never seen a group of kids more thoroughly enjoy a game of duck-duck-goose or abuse the rules so blatantly. It was a really great time, and I couldn’t have been happier with the way things went.

With the older kids I picked up in a book where their teacher had left off. On the last day of class, I had two kids open up in a way that just knocked the wind out of me, a foreigner they’ve known for three days. I did a lesson on the future tense and, brought my hippie friend Crystal in to do mock tarot card readings to illustrate the idea. Two kids remained after class, completely eager to have a full reading done. One guy wanted his fortune read to make sure that his one wish to have his family reunited was part of his future. As Crystal sort of made it up as she went along, he told us about his how his father had been gone for years and about his brother who had witnessed a beating and been wrongfully arrested by the Cambodian police, easily some of the most corrupt people in Asia. He has been in prison for three years, with no end in sight. Crystal did what should could to ‘read’ in his favor. These two students, with nothing to offer, put their gifts of green mangos and ballpoint pens in our hands as thanks before our goodbyes.

Wow, look at the time, sorry to keep you so long (those of you who are still there). I’ll bore you with the sites later.

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