Volume floats

Greetings,

A Khmer wedding lasts three days. It's LOUD. It's a monster deal.

A company arrives in a dump truck. They set up tents, tables, chairs and huge black speakers in front of an architecturally styled wedding cake home. It's happening all over town.

Speakers blast music day and night. Audible for miles. Volume shudders, shaking the terrain, setting off unemployed landmines, volcanic eruptions and destroying oil drilling operations in deep oceans. Free oil. Oceans of love, oceans of tears.

Animals run for their lives. Birds fill the sky with shrill squawks of pure terror. Panic stricken children suffer unimaginable nightmares. All the trauma counselors are celebrating with copious amounts of food and drink. Another one bites the dust. I am a dust collector.

It costs the groom's boom boom family $3,000 and up. It's a matter of EGO, social standing, imaginary wealth and appearances. They don't send out R.S.V.P. People just show up. Lots of hungry people. Friends, strangers and many animists.

Human speakers drone on and on about marriage, family and society.
Traditional singers and musicians plaintively wail at high decibels about love, suffering, happiness, fidelity, treble and bass. Contemporary hip-hop rappers take the stage with heavy metallic thumping and pumping.

100 monkeys off stage type out Shakespeare. They chatter odes, sonnets and mystifying secrets.

The insane 24/7 volume partially explains why people here speak, or more specifically yell so loud. They don't hear each other because they can't, don't, won't hear. Repeat. What? What? Repeat. Louder!

This is the Flowing holiday. Families with millions of marriageable girls are desperate to get them married. They expect their daughters to produce flowing children. It's a heavy social security reality.

They won't have the money to feed them or house them or educate them or...because those realities are far away, like stars in the sky. They'll worry about essentials later in the long now. Too many poor desperate people will have to sell their children facing immediate financial reality.

As a serious Chinese university student, filled with humility, compassion and serenity said, "Human life here is cheap."

The main problem now is raising $3,000 minimum. If you want to play you have to pay.

No please, no squeeze.

Metta.

Dr. Fish Massage

Greetings,

Have you ever seen a fish that can do massage?

Our shop has amazing and unique fish that can do massage.

This fish eat our dead skin and make our hard skin softly.

So we call this fish as "Doctor Fish."

Please come and enjoy special massage by lovely fish!

Hundreds fish will kiss your toes and suck up all your dead skin!

Wonderful! Exciting! Funny!

New country! New Experience!

Metta.

Voices

Greetings,

A man's voice from magnified speakers echoes down river on new year's day. He talks about what ifs and maybes. Exhortations about the dire need for clean drinking water, sanitation, education and medicine.

What is the significance of new year? Another day, another opportunity for talking animals to discuss, share and elaborate on gaseous topics like:

• how to mill around without causing damage to the environment
• how to wear a yellow "HELLO" cell phone t-shirt without a license
• how laughing orphans fill up a wheelbarrow with lost dreams
• how perpetually distracted humans face unpleasant facts
• how loose tongues are required to discuss, share, elaborate or mystify a woman slicing limes
• how three foreign female educators chew nails and contemplate new programs in circular fashion
• how humans will never escape 'art'
• how teams of ants try, try, try to maneuver a large piece of sugar candy up a steep cement mountain
• how an experienced bicycle traveller from Holland named Harold helps at the grassroots level to improve children's quality of life in Cambodian orphanages and Burmese refugee camps. How he eschews large organizations working directly with the people. 

How bullet points fly to a target.

On new year's day, the woman in her blue pajamas decorates the family altar with cans and bottles of soft drinks, coconuts, durian, perfume, two crystal glasses of milk, candles, candy, bread, rice, oranges, apples, water, incense, photos of dead relatives, cockroaches, howling dogs, baboons, balloons, clouds, clones and clowns.

She turns on the TV. She turns it really LOUD. Her daughters, 4, 6, are entranced and captivated by the visual circus. They never read books. The idiot box allows the kids, servants, tuk-tuk drivers, husband and foreign guests to give up their consciousness. Another diversion, another day, a new year day. April Fools!

New day, new diversion, people pretending to be busy.

Angkor Wat Hindu dancers in gold silk lame dresses with towering headdresses perform ancient dances. Apsara fingers, delicate movements. They celebrate seasons, fertility, rice, fish, nature, courtship, and joy. 

She is frail, about 80 with silver hair. She sits in front of her house. Her left hand rests on a cane. She wears a beautiful purple sarong with golden threads and a white lace blouse. Her daughter trims her hair above the left ear with shiny silver scissors. The woman's smile illuminates her tranquil face.

Metta.

Sunset drive

Greetings,

At dusk as an orange flaming ball of gas drifts toward blue mountains, setting trees on fire, painting the sky red, the Kampot river drive comes alive. I sit across the street with an iced coffee at a rolling stall. It costs 1500 Real or 75 sense.

The woman is friendly because I am Mr. Lucky Foot and bring her good fortune. People are curious about the stranger so they visit her and buy something cool and refreshing. They stare. They drink. They mill around. They pay. They leave.

She's been here since dawn. She stakes out the corner across from the Post Office every day. She has everything she needs; a hammock for a mid-day nap, sugar cane grinders, apples, oranges, dragon fruit, mangoes, bananas, java, tea, umbrellas, plastic chairs, folding tables and a fine view. Her husband and two sons help her in late afternoon. 

Fifteen fishing boats return south from up river, chugging through wake reflections of sky. A woman with her daughter perched on the running board of a motorcycle putts past. Men and wives with their kids pass. A man with his dog blowing white hair cruises along.

Blue vans serve as a local buses. They're crammed with millions of humans and their market shopping. The roof is covered with lashed bamboo baskets, boxes, tires, and assorted packages. The open back door exposes material threatening to explode and spill into the road.

Heavy-duty construction dump trucks filled with labor boys blast their horns and spit gravel. 

Chattering Muslim girls in colorful scarves, having finished their day shift at the local P.T.C. weaving center for 200 disadvantaged youngsters from rural areas pedal home. Teams of young chattering cycle boys prowl for girls. Prim girls in blue school uniforms pedal bikes, ride scooters. Blond fat Europeans walk the front as serious local women on a weight-loss program of infinite proportions march along, swinging their gaited arms like puppets in a play.

A man with his rolling cart near the curb pulverizes ingredients with a mortar and pestle. He serves dinner noodles, vegetables and spices to sidewalk lovers, kids, moms and dads cradling infants. A busy woman next door with her rolling restaurant grills meat and fish using pieces of charcoal fired below a clay pot.

Wealthy people blast past in 4-wheel drives. One day I saw a Hummer. It was humming black money. The people inside were invisible. Someone said there are 200 very, very rich people in this country and millions of poor people. How many poor people can fit in a hummingbird? 

Humans trapped inside vehicles scream, "Look at the people outside. They are eating, breathing, living, laughing, talking, dreaming and loving. What if I die here in this cartoon graveyard? Who'll be my role model?"

Accidental children inside rolling machines pound their tiny craniums against reinforced tempered glass barriers yelling, "Look, mom! See the kids by the river. They're playing a game in fresh air. They have air-conditioning. I want to play. I'm hungry!" Mom ignored their plea of temporary insanity.

Dad steps on the gas blasting loose gravel and dust into the air. He wants to get home to his gated house with high fences wearing shards of glittering sharp green glass. To keep them out.

A young boy and and his sister finish eating corn-on-the-cob. He runs to the edge of the world, pulls out his imaginary pistol and fires at the flaming orange sun. It explodes and disappears. He laughs, "Bulls-Eye!" 

He and his sister find their father's comforting hand and they walk.

Metta.

No, thank you

Greetings,

How and why it happened to briefly consider teaching a Speaking-Listening class at a Kampot university. It's existed for three years. 700 students. 

I met a man at lunch. He called his friend the director. I pedaled over at 1430 to meet him. The impatient head of English jumped in, "Yes. We will hire you."

They needed a native speaker for six hours on Saturday and three hours on Sunday once a month. Students also take core, writing, reading and culture classes with local teachers. 

"Do you have books for the class?"

"No. In Cambodia teachers provide the materials."

"I see. What levels?"

"Pre-intermediate to intermediate." The teacher took me to a class of first year foundation students. It reminded me of teaching at the Chinese university. Hopeful, bored, alert, expectant faces. It was a beginning. Introductions, eliciting questions. Exposure to a new tongue with clarity and humor. Simple.

After class I gave the teacher some ideas for textbooks; New Interchange, Cutting Edge, Let's Go.

"Can you find them in Phnom Penh?"
"You should go to Phnom Penh and find them," he said.

I laughed. "That's not my job. My job is to teach. I need materials. The students need books. I will come back next week and see what you found."

Yesterday I returned to see him. "Did you find books for the class?" He showed me a 1-2-3 Listening book with CDs.

"Ok. It's a start. Where are the student textbooks for speaking and listening?"
"I couldn't find them Phnom Penh."
"Why?"
"Not available. We don't have the money."
"I see."

I kept it simple. "I am a professional teacher. I need materials. Students need books. Students are my customers. I'm afraid this isn't going to meet the needs of the students. I understand the nature of education here. How it works. I appreciate you and the director offering me the opportunity. However, I won't be teaching here."

"What! You're not going to teach the class?"

"That's right. Thank you for the opportunity. Please give my regards to the director. Good-bye."

I rode my bike to the river. The situation had offered students and I the chance to learn, play and explore together. Reality check. The system was ineffective. I assembled my small frustration, sadness and disappointment into a collective breath and let it go. It floated away, on, over, around and through a wide blue river. So it goes.

Metta.