Loak Tha sits in the garden
staring at the fleeting shadows as they traverse the walls around our house
or, at the flashing christmas lights in the palm tree
as he does each night
maybe he is listening
to the drifting sounds of clinking glasses and the irregular music of the gamalon
for it is wedding season
or the frogs,
or the hundreds of voices echoing among houses without doors and windows.
perhaps he is waiting
Our conversations are simple, limited by swinging doors of language
and the magnitude of his experiences in a scale with my twenty-two years
adding weight to each word
I was only going to get something from my car:
Tou Nah?
Where are you going?
aut dtung dtey
don’t know,
I don’t know.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Oodong
Yana and Chris and I went out to Oodong for a day, which was the capital of Cambodia in between Angkorian times and Phnom Penh times. I think that was about 1400s-1700’s or something. there are several large stuppas on top of a mountain, with beautiful views and some okay architecture. nothing compared to Angkor, but still interesting.
My favorite thing about Oodong was another small mountain, where at the very top was a Muslim place of worship and a buddhist temple sharing the same mountain top. And the monks from one and the Muslim Khmer teachers from the other would visit each other and talk. It was this beautiful picture and image of religious tolerance and harmony. it seemed poignant to me.
On the way back from Oodong, we stopped and walked through a rice field, and watched the sun set over the paddies.
Silk and rice
I spent the day in Takeo province today with my friend and weaving teacher, Somnang, and her family, allegedly working on my weaving, although only a couple of hours of it were spent only doing so. I also learned how to harvest rice, and got a couple of quality snapshots taken of myself feigning working hard under the Cambodian sun. I took several pictures of the little children who laughed voraciously over seeing their own picture in the back of my camera. And the trip out to the country side was one of the best things so far.
Somnang and I had to take the “Public” van which I have been always so curious about. They wait by the side of the road on the outskirts of the city until enough people show up to satisfy the demands of the owner that she should make her keep and meet the costs of upkeeping a monstrous vehicle. In this case it was 23 people, and often I think there are many more, in a vehicle the size of a minivan. Someone was also sitting on the roof, and I have seen many cans with multiple people sitting on the roof. it cost about 6 thousand reil, or $1.50. I guess the guy on the roof pays less. Originally they had me sitting in the choice seat of the front with 3 other people, but after a women who had just given birth got on with her infant, I was asked if I would be comfortable giving up my seat and happily opted to join the multitude in the back. All of the khmers thought this was the most amazing thing and kept asking questions about what life was like as a barang (it means “french” but is used to apply to all foreingners) in Kampuchea, if I ate khmer food, how old was I, weather I thought bread makes you stronger or rice. Those who had camera phones took pictures of me and told me I was so “sa-at.” sitting on the edge very close to the window I was quite squished, but comfortable with a nice breeze
coming through the crack where the door couldn’t be closed all the way. we rode like this for an hour, me chiming in with the conversation here and there where I could, and trying to understand the jokes and chatter in Khmer.
When we got to Samnang’s house, I was immediately put to work at my warp, threading every thread through the tiny teeth of the weaving comb. the naturally dyed colors we had made the previous week looked so beautiful, even in stark contrast to the dirt of the floor of the house, and the plain wooden stilts and the floor we were sitting under. it’s so interesting to see these women weaving the most luxurious silk imaginable on looms made of old worn wood, floors of dirt, and chickens and cows walking around them. They are all so curious about me too, and why I am doing this. But they are happy that someone is taking an interest in what they are doing I think. And it is also giving them new ideas for what they could do with the amazing weaving skills that they have. I don’t think they
understand how special what they do is. They have all done it since they were young, and it was passed down to them by their mothers in the very same way that they pass it onto their daughters. It’s so natural to them, and so mundane.
Much like farming rice,
which is primarily done by the men. I was invited to try out harvesting the rice by Somnang’s brother in law, who was joking with me throughout the time I was there. It’s really quite simple, you just grab clusters of it and cut it with a small curved blade. The rice is then staked in bundles, and later, the grains are cut off and it dries in the sun. It is now the harvesting season for harvesting rice, and they grow only the amount which can feed their family for the year.
The Cambodian country side, was all green and flooded the last time I was in it, were
is now becoming dry and yellow, and the fields of rice now blow in the wind like the fields of wheat in the midwest. Its quite incredible the way that the rice grows according to the seasons here, which are completely different from our seasons, and the plants we have are adapted to our changing weather. When I first came here, I felt this whole year would be like one long season and that time would not feel like it was passing. But I was quite wrong about this fact. There are seasons here. They are just completely different than what I have ever known as a season.
Somnang and I had to take the “Public” van which I have been always so curious about. They wait by the side of the road on the outskirts of the city until enough people show up to satisfy the demands of the owner that she should make her keep and meet the costs of upkeeping a monstrous vehicle. In this case it was 23 people, and often I think there are many more, in a vehicle the size of a minivan. Someone was also sitting on the roof, and I have seen many cans with multiple people sitting on the roof. it cost about 6 thousand reil, or $1.50. I guess the guy on the roof pays less. Originally they had me sitting in the choice seat of the front with 3 other people, but after a women who had just given birth got on with her infant, I was asked if I would be comfortable giving up my seat and happily opted to join the multitude in the back. All of the khmers thought this was the most amazing thing and kept asking questions about what life was like as a barang (it means “french” but is used to apply to all foreingners) in Kampuchea, if I ate khmer food, how old was I, weather I thought bread makes you stronger or rice. Those who had camera phones took pictures of me and told me I was so “sa-at.” sitting on the edge very close to the window I was quite squished, but comfortable with a nice breeze
coming through the crack where the door couldn’t be closed all the way. we rode like this for an hour, me chiming in with the conversation here and there where I could, and trying to understand the jokes and chatter in Khmer.When we got to Samnang’s house, I was immediately put to work at my warp, threading every thread through the tiny teeth of the weaving comb. the naturally dyed colors we had made the previous week looked so beautiful, even in stark contrast to the dirt of the floor of the house, and the plain wooden stilts and the floor we were sitting under. it’s so interesting to see these women weaving the most luxurious silk imaginable on looms made of old worn wood, floors of dirt, and chickens and cows walking around them. They are all so curious about me too, and why I am doing this. But they are happy that someone is taking an interest in what they are doing I think. And it is also giving them new ideas for what they could do with the amazing weaving skills that they have. I don’t think they
understand how special what they do is. They have all done it since they were young, and it was passed down to them by their mothers in the very same way that they pass it onto their daughters. It’s so natural to them, and so mundane.Much like farming rice,
which is primarily done by the men. I was invited to try out harvesting the rice by Somnang’s brother in law, who was joking with me throughout the time I was there. It’s really quite simple, you just grab clusters of it and cut it with a small curved blade. The rice is then staked in bundles, and later, the grains are cut off and it dries in the sun. It is now the harvesting season for harvesting rice, and they grow only the amount which can feed their family for the year. The Cambodian country side, was all green and flooded the last time I was in it, were
is now becoming dry and yellow, and the fields of rice now blow in the wind like the fields of wheat in the midwest. Its quite incredible the way that the rice grows according to the seasons here, which are completely different from our seasons, and the plants we have are adapted to our changing weather. When I first came here, I felt this whole year would be like one long season and that time would not feel like it was passing. But I was quite wrong about this fact. There are seasons here. They are just completely different than what I have ever known as a season.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Without color...
I can’t believe it is December. 
Without the dramatic change of the seasons my life feels far less grounded - I am floating through time and it doesn’t seem to be passing. Perhaps this accounts for the seeming agelessness of so many of the people here. But then all of a sudden they are very very old - I feel that here I only meet very young people and very old looking people. That’s probably because a generation in the middle was erased.
Today I bolted home to watch the sunset - weaving in and out of traffic. And now I am sitting
on the roof, watching the sky, and the colors are just starting to come. Salmon and lavender, bright
peach fire in the very bottom when the sun is saying it’s last goodbyes for the night. As if he has to call more attention to himself, because otherwise people will just keep looking down at their tired feet and empty stomachs, too hungry and tired to appreciate beauty. As if to say, what is not bread, cannot feed us. And when you live like that, your world is in black and white.
A few days ago, I was in an art gallery of some modernist artist in Cambodia. He must be pretty big, to have a whole gallery right next to the national museum to himself. All the paintings were some pretty lame collages and abstractions of dancing apsaras and temples, as well as some black and white photos of dancing apsaras and temples that were messily painted in with oils. a little warhol-y. Faking that tinted old photo look, but obviously exaggerating it. And all over
them was this slogan, “without color, people die”. I mean, it was just so ridiculous. What does that have to do with temples anyway? They are all gray and brown. The whole thing was just so obnoxiously arbitrary but would certainly make some trendy bs to hang in the house of a tourist who wanted to let people know about the socially minded trip they took to Cambodia.
I talked to one woman in Lowell who told me about her experiences during the Pol Pot time in Cambodia. I think she said she left when she was about 6 or so. and she said that all her memories were in black and white. Black uniforms, gray skies, no color. and when she went back to Cambodia for the first time when she had grown up, she was struck by the intensity of all the colors, flying over the country side of bright green rice fields and lush tropical forests and bright blue oceans.
Cambodia is a country of color. And also a place of intensity. People don’t die without color, because we live in a world of color. But people die of many things here all the time. Things that would not kill someone in my home country, because the cures are so simple.
Last night I watched a play called, “Where Elephants Weep”, a Khmer Rock opera. it was part in English and part in Khmer, mixing Khmer traditional and contemporary music, as well as dance, shadow puppetry, and costuming. I thought it was so beautiful and touching although my friend didn’t like it so much because of the aspect of “dark tourism” referring to a lot of the
audience being foreigners and what could be seen as an oversimplification of Cambodian culture and their situation. I thought the message was poignant though, mainly that the pol pot time and the trauma that has happened is not a reason to keep perpetuating it. Which is something I have been thinking about a great deal. There is one part where one of the main characters is talking about Cambodia, and why he loves it. he lived there when he was a boy, left to go to America, and came back as an adult to find his heart and soul again. he said, “Cambodia is a place of very sharp joy, and also sadness.” and it struck me that these extremes need to be coexisting...they make and sustain each other on some level.
Without the dramatic change of the seasons my life feels far less grounded - I am floating through time and it doesn’t seem to be passing. Perhaps this accounts for the seeming agelessness of so many of the people here. But then all of a sudden they are very very old - I feel that here I only meet very young people and very old looking people. That’s probably because a generation in the middle was erased.Today I bolted home to watch the sunset - weaving in and out of traffic. And now I am sitting
on the roof, watching the sky, and the colors are just starting to come. Salmon and lavender, bright
peach fire in the very bottom when the sun is saying it’s last goodbyes for the night. As if he has to call more attention to himself, because otherwise people will just keep looking down at their tired feet and empty stomachs, too hungry and tired to appreciate beauty. As if to say, what is not bread, cannot feed us. And when you live like that, your world is in black and white.A few days ago, I was in an art gallery of some modernist artist in Cambodia. He must be pretty big, to have a whole gallery right next to the national museum to himself. All the paintings were some pretty lame collages and abstractions of dancing apsaras and temples, as well as some black and white photos of dancing apsaras and temples that were messily painted in with oils. a little warhol-y. Faking that tinted old photo look, but obviously exaggerating it. And all over
them was this slogan, “without color, people die”. I mean, it was just so ridiculous. What does that have to do with temples anyway? They are all gray and brown. The whole thing was just so obnoxiously arbitrary but would certainly make some trendy bs to hang in the house of a tourist who wanted to let people know about the socially minded trip they took to Cambodia.I talked to one woman in Lowell who told me about her experiences during the Pol Pot time in Cambodia. I think she said she left when she was about 6 or so. and she said that all her memories were in black and white. Black uniforms, gray skies, no color. and when she went back to Cambodia for the first time when she had grown up, she was struck by the intensity of all the colors, flying over the country side of bright green rice fields and lush tropical forests and bright blue oceans.
Cambodia is a country of color. And also a place of intensity. People don’t die without color, because we live in a world of color. But people die of many things here all the time. Things that would not kill someone in my home country, because the cures are so simple.
Last night I watched a play called, “Where Elephants Weep”, a Khmer Rock opera. it was part in English and part in Khmer, mixing Khmer traditional and contemporary music, as well as dance, shadow puppetry, and costuming. I thought it was so beautiful and touching although my friend didn’t like it so much because of the aspect of “dark tourism” referring to a lot of the
audience being foreigners and what could be seen as an oversimplification of Cambodian culture and their situation. I thought the message was poignant though, mainly that the pol pot time and the trauma that has happened is not a reason to keep perpetuating it. Which is something I have been thinking about a great deal. There is one part where one of the main characters is talking about Cambodia, and why he loves it. he lived there when he was a boy, left to go to America, and came back as an adult to find his heart and soul again. he said, “Cambodia is a place of very sharp joy, and also sadness.” and it struck me that these extremes need to be coexisting...they make and sustain each other on some level.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The strong ones
Part of my project here involves working with a group of women with HIV to give them employment by producing garments and accessories that can be sold to provide them income. I am setting up a business that I hope to help them make self sustaining, although we have a long way to go because most of the women that I work with haven’t had an education, although they seem to be some of the most resilient people I have met in my life when I hear what they have had to go through.
Four of the 5 women are widows, but one of them is a young woman who had been sold by her family at the age of nine. Her father abandoned her, and her mother had sold her to a family as a
housekeeper, but subsequently she was raped by the father. Through this and other rapes, she contracted HIV. Somehow she escaped and was taken in by the HOPE HIV clinic, who I work in conjunction with to help their patients. I don’t know all the details. Now she is 19. She is a beautiful, smiling girl who speaks a couple words of english and now lives with her cousins. Her mom wanted to get her back, but she refused to go because she knows her mother will sell her again. This is the way in cambodia, as I am beginning to understand. Slavery is real. alive and well. You can be a sex slave but you can also be a slave in a house or as a worker. Women and children are often still looked at as property. Property that can be bought and sold.
When Sing Nimol first came to the clinic she was seriously depressed and mentally unstable, with suicidal tendencies. Over the last two years she has received treatment and physiological attention, and they have determined that she is now doing a lot better, so the last step is for her to work with me, to help her become self sufficient with job training.
Together we make paper and she makes cards with her own paintings and designs on them. we exchange a few words in our broken languages, mostly smiles, gestures and laughter. sticking my hands besides hers and mussing up soft fibers of old newspapers and water in the paper making tub is the best thing I have felt since being here. I love to make things, to create things with my own hands. to be messy. but to see the joy on someone else’s face when they, for the first time pull the paper tray out of the vat, press down all the fibers, and make a brand new sheet of paper
where before there was only broken shredded bits of old newspapers- This kind of joy is more special than anything I can think of. She shines now, she is gaining confidence. And she shares her story with people, to tell them what is happening to this day to so many women in Cambodia, so that others will be protected from her situation. And at first I wanted to cry, for her, for all the things that happened to her. But instead I laugh and smile with her. and it is ever so much better. We are moving on together. Making something new. And rather than trying to share in a past I can never comprehend, I get to share in a future that can provide a way out for her.
I can complain about nothing. just sit bleary eyed and stunned. stunned by the brightness of a few striking rays of light, peeking out from behind the walls of corruption, creeping around the devastation and atrocities, to move forward without tripping over the wires and mines of the past.
Four of the 5 women are widows, but one of them is a young woman who had been sold by her family at the age of nine. Her father abandoned her, and her mother had sold her to a family as a
housekeeper, but subsequently she was raped by the father. Through this and other rapes, she contracted HIV. Somehow she escaped and was taken in by the HOPE HIV clinic, who I work in conjunction with to help their patients. I don’t know all the details. Now she is 19. She is a beautiful, smiling girl who speaks a couple words of english and now lives with her cousins. Her mom wanted to get her back, but she refused to go because she knows her mother will sell her again. This is the way in cambodia, as I am beginning to understand. Slavery is real. alive and well. You can be a sex slave but you can also be a slave in a house or as a worker. Women and children are often still looked at as property. Property that can be bought and sold.
When Sing Nimol first came to the clinic she was seriously depressed and mentally unstable, with suicidal tendencies. Over the last two years she has received treatment and physiological attention, and they have determined that she is now doing a lot better, so the last step is for her to work with me, to help her become self sufficient with job training.
Together we make paper and she makes cards with her own paintings and designs on them. we exchange a few words in our broken languages, mostly smiles, gestures and laughter. sticking my hands besides hers and mussing up soft fibers of old newspapers and water in the paper making tub is the best thing I have felt since being here. I love to make things, to create things with my own hands. to be messy. but to see the joy on someone else’s face when they, for the first time pull the paper tray out of the vat, press down all the fibers, and make a brand new sheet of paper
where before there was only broken shredded bits of old newspapers- This kind of joy is more special than anything I can think of. She shines now, she is gaining confidence. And she shares her story with people, to tell them what is happening to this day to so many women in Cambodia, so that others will be protected from her situation. And at first I wanted to cry, for her, for all the things that happened to her. But instead I laugh and smile with her. and it is ever so much better. We are moving on together. Making something new. And rather than trying to share in a past I can never comprehend, I get to share in a future that can provide a way out for her.I can complain about nothing. just sit bleary eyed and stunned. stunned by the brightness of a few striking rays of light, peeking out from behind the walls of corruption, creeping around the devastation and atrocities, to move forward without tripping over the wires and mines of the past.
The glass window effect
Two friends and I took a trip to the seaside area during a national holiday where the city was due to be overflowing with people. On the drive down to Kaep, the country side bounded and bounced before my eyes, rising and falling above the line that slit the tinted window of the bus in half, like a water table line in the portholes of a boat. Tiny splatters of orange mud hit the windows and dripped down. I wanted to jump through that pane of glass. jump straight through and out to the people bent over their rice in the field. and say, look at me! I am like you. we are the same, touch my hands, laugh with me, open your mouth and sing. but I am mute, and I remain behind this protective layer. and when I push my palm up against it, on the other side, small orange splatters drip down, touching my hand and not at the same time.
Once in Kaep, we took a small fishing boat out to Rabbit Island, which is the primary place for tourists to go, although there are only a small number of bungalows and a couple of fishing villages.The real beauty of it was on the other side of the island opposite the beaches where all the bikini clad tourists resided in the sun by their bungalows. Lauren and I traversed the whole island, through mud, over sharp rocks, along long stretches of beach. we talked to the residents of the other side - using my limited khmer and gestures - who’s homes faced out to the open ocean. They lived in relative simplicity. fishing, making nets, collecting pink and purple stripped clams to eat in water bottles. I thought about how often we glorify poverty and simplicity. I wondered if they were happy. I wondered what they knew about the rest of the world. I wondered how often they walk to the other side of the island, or leave it. They live on a tropical island, surrounded by coral, glowing fishes, palm trees, white sand, and the grand mountain islands of Vietnam in the background. I hate using the word exotic, because to them, it must be mundane. well. there are other reasons why i hate the word exotic.
After this we went to another town called Kampot where we visited a pepper field, sampled some fresh green pepper, and tried the strongest alcohol I had ever tasted made by a local pig farmer. It was served to me in the filthiest cup I had ever put my lips to, but I figured, you can’t get sick drinking alcohol. and this will kill every bacteria in my mouth, so why not. we thanked him and went back to our tuk tuk.
The next day I was the one who suggested that we bike the 12 kilometers to visit some caves, which was a little bit crazy considering how little time I have spent on bikes in my life. So I fell off my bike twice, of course by the fault of the bike and the road. The first time I got nervous because I thought another child on a bike was going to run into me, and shortly I was careening off the side of the road into a huge puddle in front of a modest grass hut and a rice field. Some one was saying phone? phone? as they pulled my dripping, broken cell phone from the water, the only connection to my worried cambodian family back in the city. A crowd of kids circled around me, and a mother with no teeth. the one who knocked me off the road slunk off while the mother helped me wash my feet and scrapes with bottled water. They all had their pictures taken by my dutiful friend with a camera, said 100 hellos! and we were off again.
The caves were pretty amazing. we didn’t do much in the way of exploring, but we climbed the 302 (or was it 212?) stairs to get there, saw a tiny temple and huge rock formations hanging from 100 feet above our heads. we were given the stories about the caves by 6 uninvited tour guides, local kids trying to get some money from the friendly barangs.
On the way back, I hit a rather large bump in the road and the kick stand of the rickety bike fell down, got cut in a rut, and sent me flying front wards over my bike, into soft mud. I sustained only the bruises from the bike, but my camera wasn’t so lucky. Once I realized that again, nothing was broken and I was just a little shaken up, I turned around and saw my camera floating in a nearby pond. The camera I just bought, a week ago, to replace the one that had been stolen. Life could be a lot worse I told myself, simultaneously cursing out loud.
Despite all this, biking is by far the best way to travel through Cambodia. On a bike you are still a tourist, but you are more curious. and you are different, but you are on the same level in some ways, as the people you wave to on the side of the road. You know many things they can never know and they know things you can never know. But you both know something about the joy of riding a rickety bike down a jumpy red clay road with the wind blowing over your skin. you can talk to people. you can breathe in the air and the mountains and the waving rice fields of the country side without rushing by it. you can wave at the kids screaming the one word they know in English at you. hello! Or you can stop and take a picture. or, you can just stop. you are powerful, and totally vulnerable at the same time. and there is no pane of glass between you and the world that you are in. Or at least, it feels less tangible.
Would you like a sangsa with your coffee?
I’m sitting in Cafe Sentiment trying to check my e-mail and drinking some tea which I paid for as a price for my internet that I am supposed to be using, which won’t load. the cafe is bustling, regardless, and everyone else seems to be safely checking their e-mail, except for the few people who are just talking and enjoying coffee. Such as the two young khmer women and the older white man who are sitting near by me. I can’t help but keep glancing at them. The two stare intently into his eyes, elbows propped on the table. His back is to me, but judging from the prep yellow collared shirt, glasses and thinning gray straggly hair, I guess he is maybe 60, and they are around 18. Every time I see this kind of thing, which is almost every day, my stomach tightens a bit. They could legitimately be his wives or girlfriends for that matter, and not prostitutes. But either way, exploiting doesn’t even seem to remotely describe the situation. Or maybe he really is their long lost uncle.
There is nothing you can do to change this. My friend told me. It has to come from the Khmers. they have to decide for themselves that they do not want this.
I glance up again. The girl looks at me.
What do you want me to do? her eyes question? Please, don’t judge me.
Or maybe I am putting thoughts in her head. Maybe that’s just how I would feel if I was sitting in her shoes. Me, having no idea what it would possibly take to fill them.
There is nothing you can do to change this. My friend told me. It has to come from the Khmers. they have to decide for themselves that they do not want this.
I glance up again. The girl looks at me.
What do you want me to do? her eyes question? Please, don’t judge me.
Or maybe I am putting thoughts in her head. Maybe that’s just how I would feel if I was sitting in her shoes. Me, having no idea what it would possibly take to fill them.
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