Survival of the fittest

The rain here is angry. Whenever a black cloud moves in and the sky lets, I remember Forrest Gump’s description of the rain in Vietnam.

We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.

Indeed, it almost seems to come up from the ground. Sheets of water fall so heavily and continuously that it’s impossible to see where they begin and end.

The other night, Stephen and I left our apartment on his bicycle. As he pedaled, we felt a few drops. After five minutes, the sky opened up, and we, along with a few dozen Cambodians, crowded underneath the awning at a nearby gas station, waiting for the onslaught to slow. Finally it did and we enjoyed a fun night. The next morning, I awoke with a raw, red patch on the crease of my arm. It felt like a burn. By day two, the patch, which resembled a butterfly, had turned blistery and raised, prompting everyone I encountered to say, “What happened to you?!”

I have no idea what happened, but hypothesize that, because of its shape and appearance, some kind of chemical dripped onto my arm during the night of the rainy bike ride. The oddest part is that the whole experience didn’t faze me much. It looks as though it will scar. I have the tramp stamp on my arm, a souvenir from Cambodia.

Pain thresholds heighten here. And dominance, out of necessity, is unapologetic. People kick whining dogs, mothers drag children through the markets, frogs, rabbits, rats, and who knows what else come served in everyday cuisine. Initially, the brutality upset me. As a kid, I frantically scooped drowning moths from my swimming pool. Now, I grip an electrified bug zapper, shaped like a racket, in one hand, and an enormous can of Raid in the other. It’s that or let them feast upon my thin, white flesh. When I spray a trail of ants heading toward my refrigerator or stomp on a roach hidden behind my TV, I feel a thrill, no remorse.

As I write this, sitting on my front porch at 10 o’clock at night, a bat flew into my apartment and flapped frantically around until it found its way back out the way it entered. I shrieked and ran to the corner. I guess I’m not that tough after all.

Kampong Cham

Last weekend, Stephen and I traveled to Kampong Cham so I could write an update for Travelfish, a Southeast Asia travel guide. We spent three days in the city, and its quiet streets and calm boardwalk along the Mekong River offered a respite from dusty, fluorescent Phnom Penh.

The editor tasked me with visiting all the hotels, restaurants, and sights of the city, an enjoyable experience but also stressful on the time constraints. We rented a moto and drove through narrow, tree-lined Cham (Muslim Cambodians of Malay descent) villages with marshland and distant pagodas to the left and the river to the right.

First we visited Han Chay, a series of pagodas and a monastery set atop a steep hill. At one part, the hill drops off and dozens of cows, their sallow, white backs hunched over, chomp on brush. At another, anatomically correct statues of wild animals and mythical beasts dot a small garden area and path. We spoke to a monk briefly; he held the cigarette he was smoking behind his back the entire time. Stephen climbed a tall, flagless flagpole stuck into a platform that jutted out from the hillside.

Afterward, we drove to a monkey-covered pagoda set atop another steep hill. Next to it, we found an old Vietnam War-era air strip, only recognizable because of the width and flatness of the stone path. A decaying pillbox rested on the sloping hill next to it. Inside the crumbling stone walls, we found feces, some garbage, and views of the hills. As we drove down the pebble-lain runway, our tire popped for the second time that day, and we wheeled the moped two the nearest village. There, a woman with a round, pregnant belly, poured liquid rubber on the hole and ignited the mixture to fuse it. Fumes swirled up toward her unmasked face.

As we waited for her to finish the job, a crowd formed. Whenever our two, big white bodies lumber into a rural village, we cause quite the commotion. I feel a bit like E.T. after he’s discovered by humans. The kids told me their names, and we pointed to features on our faces and exchanged our words for them. A little boy pulled out a magic marker and drew the face of a white woman on a cement column near the side of the road. Stephen helped a little girl, maybe 7, take a huge, rusty saw to a giant slab of ice. We returned to town, argued with our lender about how much we should pay for his defective moto, and fell asleep.

The next day, we finished my Travelfish research by completing the arduous task of visiting the remaining sights of the town. It’s still a bit surreal that someone has agreed to pay me for this, even if it’s not much. We traveled downriver to another well-known Wat. Behind a massive temple was a small, crumbling wooden pagoda, painted blue. The Khmer Rouge attempted to destroy it in the late 1970s, but most of the paint has been scraped off to reveal depictions of traditional Khmer life and tales of Buddhist morality. Behind the temples, we found more animal statues, and, among them, live cows and horses. We met a few of the monks, as well as two men sipping a sweet, refreshing liquid tapped from the tree they sat beside. They offered me their cup and I tasted a sip.

Then we rode the boat further downriver and visited a weaving village. Underneath most of the stilted homes, young girls through old women sat at long looms, weaving together strands died bright purples, greens, and reds. They look like organists with their delicate feet maneuvering foot pedals attached to ropes that manipulate the loom’s movement. Stray dogs surrounded us, notifying their kind farther ahead that strange-looking two-leggers had descended onto their turf. A herd surrounded us, barking and snarling, their matted fur flecked with mud and bugs, their overused teats hanging down.

I felt relieved to leave the village filled with nice people and nasty canines. In general, the dogs here seem better taken care of than in other poor countries. Fewer strays, more pets. The ones we encountered that day scared the crap out of me. We left later that day on a bus back to Phnom Penh.

Public domain

A Cambodian couple in Prey Veng province decided to divorce last week. To divide their assets, they sliced their stilted hut cleanly in half. The ex husband took his piece and moved it to his mother’s lawn. This seems (and looks) absurd. Practically, it makes some sense. Most Cambodians’ possessions begin and end with their homes and its contents. Space is communal. Even the space immediately surrounding your body.

I sat at a café today, eating lunch and using the free WiFi, and the waitress stood behind me, both hands planted on the back of my chair, the entire time. Reasons for this are twofold. One, personal space is non-existent here and waiters stand beside the table waiting for you to read the menu, observing you paying the bill. Hovering is standard practice. Secondly, most restaurants and bars employ far more workers than there is work to be done. This leaves hired help standing around idly, waiting for tasks.

Surely, this has to do with the low price of labor and the minuscule wages paid to these eager-but-abundant employees. And those working in the food/entertainment sector are far better off than factory workers. Earning $5 a day working at a restaurant in Phnom Penh sure beats the average annual per capita salary of about $571.

Just another naïve idealist

A few days later, I returned to the orphanage. It was the last day of Prachum Ben, a 15-day holiday in which families bring food to their local pagoda so monks can pray on behalf of their ancestors stuck in the spirit world. The children with families had stayed home that day, as did the other volunteers, apparently.

Only the orphans remained. I walked up to the building, Ma and Ly, two six-year-old boys about the size of two-year-olds, holding each of my hands. Svay Lin, the “teacher,” nervously approached me. “Sameth is drunk,” she said. I misheard her, I thought. The kind, responsible man who runs the orphanage surely was not drunk at 2 p.m. on a religious holiday. I walked over to Sameth.

“I’m sorry,” he slurred. “I’m drunk.” Awesome.

I didn’t want to say “it’s ok.” It came out of my mouth anyway. My allowances in the name of cultural sensitivity stop at the caretaker of 12 orphans getting blackout drunk on a Tuesday afternoon. Maybe it’s because, as a child, I watched in terror as Carol Burnett stumbled around in her nightgown wielding a bottle of booze as the mean Mrs. Hennigan in one of my favorite movies, “Annie”. Sameth destroyed my briefly held image of his altruism. Afterward, I wondered…Embezzler? Pedophile? Both?

The kids laughed and pointed at Sameth. Being drunk is funny, they explained. No, it will make you sick and it will make you stupid, I explained, using simple English words I knew they understand. They nodded. A 14-year-old boy said proudly, “I don’t drink.” That is the extent of drug and alcohol instruction they will probably ever receive (not that it does much good in the U.S.). And my brief lecture will surely make no impact.

I proceeded to lead them to a smaller area upstairs to teach my first English class. The kids are eager to learn and listen well. Svay Lin, a bright girl, adept at English, studied in the corner. We drew animals and identified them, acted them out, and used them in sentences. We labeled objects. We made sentences. We sang songs that used English words. Then we played a few games. When it came time for me to leave, I climbed down the ladder to the bottom level. Sameth lay passed out across the children’s desks, mouth agape. And I left them there, with this, their chaperone, feeling guilt-stricken and helpless. I will return next week.

'Saving' children in Asia

The other day, I watched a boy, maybe three years old, standing barefoot in the middle of a major intersection in Phnom Penh. He kicked around a small, blue plastic bag as his sister, holding an infant, begged tuk tuk passengers for change.

Childhood is a luxury afforded only to some. Me, for example. Last week, I spent my first day at “Save Children in Asia Organization,” a tall order for a one-room orphanage about 20 minutes outside the Phnom Penh city center. A German man at an Internet café had told me about the place and encouraged me to volunteer. I envisioned a respite where children’s youths are preserved from the horrors of living without a mother in a Third World country.

The day began when I hired a motodup to take me out of town. The driver, who looked like the Cambodian Morgan Freeman, spoke no English whatsoever, and responded to my instructions with a bellowing, nervous laugh. Since my Khmer vocabulary includes the words for yes, no, left, right, and thank you, jointly navigating our way to the tiny orphanage on a hidden path off a no-name dirt road required stopping to ask for directions at nearly every intersection.

When we finally pulled up, a herd of children ran over and began grabbing at my hands and introducing themselves. Ma, Ly, Svay Lin, and about a dozen others. They must be incredibly used to scrungy-looking barangs people dropping by, looking for a good story to tell friends back home, I thought. Or else, they’re starved for adult interaction. I decided it was probably some combination of the two.

Two other white people sat on benches inside the one-room schoolhouse. Walker, a short, 20-something American guy with a lisp (who, back in Phnom Penh later that night, I saw fly past me on the back of a pickup truck, horsing around with a bunch of drunken friends). And Chris, a 50ish Englishman with brown teeth and weathered skin. The only other adult there was Sambeth, the orphanage’s founder, a wiry Cambodian with a wide smile and perfect teeth. He explained the organization’s history to me. He collected homeless children from various provinces during the past three years and officially opened the facility’s doors in April. He offered me a large plate of rice with a bowl of broth filled with leafy greens and animal bones.

Soon, neighborhood children arrived to participate in the afternoon class, about 30 kids who would return home to their mother and father afterward, leaving the remaining dozen behind. After the adults and children finished eating, class began. Walker, a TESOL-certified instructor, taught with the school’s main teacher—a 16-year-old Cambodian girl. Chris wrote on the dry erase board. I observed.

Walker struggled to teach pronunciation. “One, two, three, four, five, thix, theven, eight,” he said. The children repeated. When it came time to practice months of the year, Chris misspelled February. Twice.

The class exhibited why Cambodia’s president, Hun Sen, criticized NGO work in his marathon four-and-a-half hour speech last week. It seems that with foreigners trying their best to make a difference here, earnestness comes first, competence second. As a journalist who hopes to write about a country she entered two weeks ago, I am conscience of the problem every day.