No women in tuk-tuk land

Greetings,

Now here this. The tuk-tuk is leaving in five minutes. Departing for points unknown. A massive celestial event known as YOUR LIFE will depart in five minutes. You are advised to assemble all the necessary documents, certified seals of approval, water, guide books, sunscreen, funny money and so on...you will visit the following areas on your short, fast, easy tour.

Bring your life with you. And a guidebook with heavily creased pages. If you attempt to read while moving at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, you will discover a new sense of perspective.

You may be surprised or traumatized  to realize your experience at Angkor is not about "seeing" the temples. 

Angkor, Bayon and Beyond...

Please conclude various private and group discussions to ascertain your destination. The tuk-tuk driver has his helmet and vest. His vest has a green four-digit number. If he tries to bring you into Angkor without the vest he faces massive problems. For starters he will lose his job and have to return to his small, isolated village where he will plant rice. The biggest dream for many young men is to become a tuk-tuk driver.

If he loses his tuk-tuk job his family will starve to death. This is a common problem here. Death by starvation.

A tuk-tuk river driver has an easy job. An easy life. He drives you to a temple and crashes out. You feed him. He takes you back where you started. He makes $15-20 for the day. The average person's daily wage is $2.03.

Not a single woman in Siem Reap is a tuk-tuk driver. There are 3-4 women tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh. They are as rare as clean drinking water, sanitation, hospitals and schools.

Why? A woman doesn't work as a tuk-tuk driver because: 

1. it's too dangerous
2. it's inappropriate
3. it's foolish
4. they lack the education, intelligence, drive, initiative
5. they haven't broken free of deeply ingrained social and cultural stereotypes: a woman's place is in the home, taking care of kids, washing, cleaning, and cooking.

Thirty years ago a woman was lucky to finish 9th grade. She married and stayed at home. It may take another generation before women become tuk-tuk drivers. So it goes.

Metta.

Lina studies Engineering in Phnom Penh. 

Natasha from Kiev

I recently read an article about how women are treated in some countries. For example, in Turkey, health care workers report that 65% of all wives are beaten by their husbands.  It's considered normal behavior because many, not all, women are treated as property. There and elsewhere. 

We've all read stories about arranged marriages, child marriages and the desperate plight of women in many countries.

It reminded me of a story I wrote about a women named Natasha. I put it in my book. Recycled. Here it is.

At the beginning of September 2001, passengers at the Amsterdam airport waited for their flight to Casablanca. There was Youseif, a Moroccan man from Fez living in San Francisco going home to see his family after many years. He would stay three months. 

There was a woman from Kiev with her 5-year old son. Her name was Natasha and she was tall, slim and beautiful. She was married to a Moroccan man. They'd met at the university in Kiev and now he lived in Amsterdam. She had not seen him for three years and he didn’t know his son.

He did not come to the airport to see her because he didn’t have the correct papers nor was she able to leave the airport and see him because she lacked the correct papers so she waited for her flight to her new home. 

Natasha had heard about her new home but had never seen it. She was taking her son to Morocco where they would meet her husband’s family for the first time and live their life. 

She did not speak Arabic. Her cheap red, white and blue Russian plastic baggage was falling apart at the seams. Her son was a terror and pissed his pants leaving a trail of urine in the departure lounge. Natasha was beside herself. 

I'd finished a book that summer about a woman who spoke every language and I was jumping through a window into new adventures and gather new material. Everyone spoke the same language as night fell around the roar of planes leaving gravity taking people somewhere.

We were buried at gate 54D, miles from bright gleaming duty free shops full of perfume, electronics, banks, casinos, toy stores, restaurants, gleaming diamond rings and watches, customs, clothing stores and business.

Shoppers carried plastic bags saying, “Buy and Fly.” 

It was midnight when we landed in Casablanca and walked through a towering hall full of intricate inlaid mosaic tiles and waterfalls. Huge framed images of smiling monarchs watched us. Customs was a formality and the baggage conveyer belt broke down as frustrated passengers waited. Small wheels on useless baggage trolleys were bent and stuck. They careened left and right as people wrestled impossible loads through green ‘nothing to declare’ zones toward friends and relatives.

I helped Natasha load her broken bags on a cart and she disappeared into the throng with her son. I watched her husband’s Berber family approach her. It was his father, mother, brother-in-law and grandmother dressed in traditional jellabas. They welcomed her with a hug speaking words Natasha did not understand. They scooped up the boy.

As the old couple slowly walked away I knew they would take him forever, this progeny of theirs, their connection to their son. 

Natasha, an alien in their world, an aberration, would be relegated to a new life. She moved into their world with a Ukranian passport, speaking unknown languages where she'd be welcomed on one hand and relegated to a life in a new reality serving her new family. 

She was going to be many things to them and they would manifest their loss on her. She'd carry water and gather wood. She'd cook and clean and slave away. She'd carry their fading light, hopes, dreams and connections. Their grandson would realize everything. They disappeared into a sprawling chaotic city of five million.

Their son in Holland relied on his mobile. He could do no wrong. He was a grand man in their eyes and hearts. Many women came and went in his life. It was his dark eyed nomadic destiny. 

When his wife was trapped in the airport he was with a prostitute and he didn’t have the correct papers anyway. He wasn’t lying when he said his family would take care of her.

This was the story I whispered to Natasha but she found it hard to believe.

Metta.