Siem Reap: Recalibration in Indo-China

by Brent Katte | 2009

We're weaving like we're drunk, but I'm not, not tonight. I don't think my driver is either; likely wishes he was, but that takes riel, dollars, or baht, and he's already told me today's been slow. We're floating over what's passing for Pokambor Avenue, dodging potholes the size of bomb craters, sliding all over in the viscous red mud, the rains mocking our earnestness. My starts at a sudden tack wrench me from our flank, tear my eyes away from the seamless alleys of life that frame the way onwards. I think we're about halfway there but have no way of knowing. Dense, wet earth licks at my shins, finds ways to kiss me. Dusk is falling and it's strange not to be immersed in a happy hour somewhere, leafing through a book, on a lookout for a connection of sorts. I've been in Cambodia for three days now and what was once known as Democratic Kampuchea's been making inroads since the first minute, talking to parts of me I've never spoken with or maybe even heard, and maybe the reason I'm headed out to Wat Thmey tonight is because it's found some part of me to complete, or perhaps wake-up.

My flight into Siem Reap cost half the country's average yearly income. The rest survive on less than forty-five cents a day. I suppose I assuaged this guilt by opting for a moto instead of a taxi for the ride into town, despite the rain and ankle injury that led me to fly in the first place. The next twenty minutes was math, some part of me attempting a framework for what I was seeing, maybe because arithmetic isn't my strong suit, maybe because all the language in me was at a loss for words. But things were different. There was a gravity.

Towards the end of my travels in Thailand things had attained a certain structure, a predictability, particular facets of it not to be lauded. In the beginning there was an earnestness, a proclivity to get out and dig, uncover, get lost. My sincerity laid me open, inviting, to any and all of the new world around me. Near the end frames had materialized, certain pictures were sadly redundant, surroundings set-like and tired. A lot of it was play, waste, extravagance. It was well-oiled. Infrastructure had been built to accommodate, locals conditioned and weathered. In the end a lot of it felt like a well-conceived theme park, no one really staying there, just going on rides. But I'd ridden too at times, disproportionately concerned with style and attitude, the language of nocturnal pursuits; gotten some Khao San on me, let things slide.

But now, fishtailing down a Cambodian thoroughfare, Khao San is where I left it, and where I'm headed is only a picture in my mind, sure to be wildly wrong. What's right is that the ubiquitous things are puddles and palms, simple bungalows off the sides of the road, durian and papaya trees. 7-11 is strangely absent, along with most overt commercialism. Neon doesn't cordon my sight. We are the traffic-there's nothing to wait for.

But there are people waiting for me. Up ahead. Because there was a throng of Korean tourists clogging the foyer at Angkor. Because I'd veered off to the right, through a door and into the southwestern courtyard. Because Sei-harr was sitting atop the library steps and had seen me.

I sat down next to him, away from everyone who had come to Angkor, finally with someone from it. He was studying languages; English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean. I corrected a few of his exercises. He asked the relevant questions, I asked what felt safe.

But even deft trepidations can't skirt the obvious forever, and in the end we went back to the beginning. He was an orphan, lost his parents around seven or eight-can't remember. After somehow surviving the war, he found a home at Wat Thmey, or as it's known locally, the “Killing Fields Pagoda”. He's lived there ever since, his daily routine an impossible wish list of ambition. He teaches and cooks, cleans and solicits, builds and beckons. Prayer fills the gaps, gaps fill the prayers. His heart aches most for what it can't provide, for the children who will follow in his footsteps, things he'll never be able to right. He never mentioned himself, never lamented his own loss; he only measured that in what he couldn't make possible, regardless of supply or circumstance.

There was a silence, maybe a few. I told him I could teach for a couple of days, that I'd done it before, would be pleased to do it again. It wasn't really an option, certainly nothing to consider. I couldn't build them bungalows or pay for someone who could. I couldn't bankroll much more than myself on a shoestring. But I could teach, for a little while. I could give something, contribute something-do something. I could do something because I felt something, a lot of things, felt drenched in a sentimental humidity. I got the address and a time, smiled as I left. It was the first one in a while, one of its own accord.

Shouts of “Hello” greet my arrival, the children magically attuned to incursions on protocol and routine. They dart in and out, their lightness belying the gravity of their surroundings. They're a lot like children anywhere, in a lot of ways that matter. In other ways, ones that matter more than they should, they're not, and never will be. Abandoned, orphaned, turned out on the streets, here with a dollar for a day's education; the stories vary but all share the same heaviness, the same density, one you can't believe is attached to the nine-year old bouncing up and down in front of you, tugging on your shirt, radiance shining through worn clothes, full of glee despite a diet of mire.

In front of the class there's a silence, a hesitation. They're positively beaming, and I'm at a loss as to why I'm trying to stifle a grin. I look down, breathe deeply, grab a hold of the moment. Why shouldn't they be happy? Why shouldn't I? How could this be awkward, this simplicity, this sharing? For a moment I'm reliving hagwon days in Korea, musing on the contrasts, how they couldn't be more stark, how I couldn't be more different from the person I was there, doing something I didn't really want to do for a paycheck. We struggle through verb conjugation and vocabulary. I get paid. No money changes hands.

By the end of the class an audience has assembled, a cross-section of the wat and a better part of Siem Reap. I shake hands, learn names, smile and share a minute here and there. There's a lot of laughter, a lot of warmth amidst such dearth and want. I tell Sei-harr that I'll be back tomorrow, same time. He introduces me to Chet, the bigger, taller kid from the back of the class, a bit shy but not because he had nothing to say. Chet had crutches. I soon learned why.

It's late afternoon and sweat's pouring from me, standing stock-still in front of a biographic showcase of sorts. I'm at the Landmine Museum, just southwest of the town center, but a world away from where I left this morning. I've spent the last thirty minutes examining a panoply of killing devices, most of them landmines. The assembled technology was defused and recovered by Aki Ra, a former Khmer Rouge, Vietnamese, and Cambodian army conscript. His tools are spartan, his ideals anything but. To undue what's been wrought, by others, by himself, Aki tests the ground with a stick, finds a mine, defuses it with a pocketknife, continues. His goal is nothing short of a mine free-Cambodia. He recently reached the 50,000 mark, clearing the whole of Siem Reap province of an estimated 20% of what's been responsible for over 60,000 deaths since 1970, according to UNICEF. He started the museum eight years ago, and it's since attracted a steady stream of visitors.

But that's not all it's attracted, and that's why I'm standing where I'm standing, in front of a makeshift family album, not noticing the heat. I'm nearly at the bottom, finishing Chet's blurb, staring at the big purple letters. A while back a family visited Aki's house and left behind one of their sons, a young boy who'd just lost his legs to a mine in the fields, a deliberate abandonment, likely thinking he'd be welcomed here, taken in. He was and word escaped, families followed suit. At the moment there are ten boys and girls living next to these displays, some delivered, some taken off the streets, all loved and accepted, despite missing limbs.

I'm thinking about this, what it means to be human, whole or blown apart, how much I consider myself one. I'm thinking a lot about my own life, vacillating between the immediate here and the immediate then, struggling to come to grips with everything I've been given. Here in this museum, these bungalows monument to death and its lesser efforts, I'm struggling to even begin an appreciation of my own health, looking down at my legs and flexing my muscles. It's very quiet, and everybody's likely feeling the same things, but I'm wondering, what difference does that make now?

‘Cause I've seen these kids, most of them, just out back, some of them busy playing football, without legs, but seeing and knowing doesn't fix anything, doesn't change the picture they know all too well. Witness to such undeniable reality, your mind doesn't really allow for the bigger picture, but the very real, very sad, very alone one just five feet from you, laughing with some foreigners, wearing an impossible smile. There's only so much you can take, so you leave, acutely aware of having that luxury, maybe understanding for the first time what that word really means.

And I'm on another moto, heading back to Wat Thmey, drifting in and out of contemplation, not attempting an order, content to let my feelings flood me. I've been in Cambodia four days, there's another twenty-six on my visa. Tonight I'm teaching English because I want to, missing another happy hour. Nothing about today's been predictable, nothing reserved, nothing built especially for me, and that's been a contrast with earlier pages, a bit different from the book I carried with me through Thailand.

Or maybe it's just that now I'm seeing the other side of the architecture, what it is that I can make, the shelter that's mine to offer. I'm pretty sure I've just started living the reasons for this trip, that I've finally stumbled on the trail I went in search of, and I'm realizing it's just as much me as a place, a frame of mind, that it always will be. Bangkok's just a quick jaunt on a turboprop, Khao San two hours, tops. But they're worlds away now, impossible places, just like the guy who'd been there.

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