Finding Rita

Greetings,

After nine months away Banteay Seri, Kabal Spleen river source and Ta Som temple were a deep JOY.

One day-in. One day-out. Delightful return feeling reconnected with ancient energies. Simple, immediate and direct.

At Ta Som I was delighted to be reunited with Rita. She was with friends near the East temple. They were hoping tourists might stop. Perhaps to say hello, see their hand-made items or get to know them. They sell before and after school. I met Rita in February. She is 14 and in the 6th grade.

We had a wonderful reunion. She said she still rides her bike, uses the whiteboard, markers and English books to teach the village children. They were gifts from Julia. "I see a leader in her eyes." 

Rita looked radiant. She's a happy kid.

Below is a link to the original post. 

http://tmleonard.squarespace.com/julia-wakes-up-in-cambodia/

Metta.

Rita, (L) and her friends at Ta Som.

pain killers

Greetings,

Another brilliant day blooms zooms bright and infinitesimally small intense light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. You'll never catch it.

What you don't see is fascinating.

The clatter of foreign tourist utensils sing near dumb thumbed Angkor Wat guidebooks dancing with dusty beggar children hawking stories of orphanages and medical clinics.

The Children's Hospital has 22 beds in one room. They are full. They are filled with infants and children wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common in Cambodia. A parent holds a tiny hand.

I.C.U. has five beds. They are full.

400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. The nurse can dispense five medicines. Three are cheap generic pain killers.

Life is a pain killer.

The other two drugs are generic placeboes. The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about medicine.

One effective pill prescribed by a doctor costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. 

$15.00 is a fortune. Out of the question. Parents accept cheap ineffective drugs. Parents need a miracle. How much does a miracle cost?

They are hopeful. They wait. They have ridden on the back of cycles from distant villages. In their village everyone had the answer for their child's sickness. Babble voices of the old survivors. Babble voices of relatives seeking salvation inside a dance with Death.

An old village healer waved smoking banana leaves over their child running a fever. Hot and cold.

Mothers wait to see the nurse as sparrows seek water in broken light.

Metta.

Produce Children = Future investment

Greetings,

Yes, possible signs of intelligent life exist in Vietnam or Cambodia. Rumor control reports. Merely existing mind you. 

‘Mind yourself, how you go dearie,’ whispered an Irish ghostwriter Druid in Donegal. Well remembered.

Take my neighbors for example. Sam and Dave. Sam is the kid, Dave is the father. These are not Viet names. If they were they’d be named Binh and Thin and New Yen, like new yin instead of old yang. 

Dave had kids so he and his wife can yell at them. So they will have someone, anyone to take care of them in old age. When they are sitting on their bamboo recliners absorbing 10,000 smells from the kitchen. 

It was an arranged marriage after a three year courtship. Her parents demanded $5,000. Cash. Up front or no deal.

They pretended to need kids to support them in old age but when you’re young and naive pregnancy is always an option. 

It’s easy to have kids in the 13th most populated country on planet Earth. There are 85 million hard and fast rules of parenthood according to the wildly popular and heavily censored Party book, “Produce & Consume.” Get married early, the pressure is on. 

You do not want to be unmarried and sad, lonely and well forgotten. Loneliness dramatically increases the chances of heart attacks, strokes of genius, and arterial vestiges of debilitating forms of social upheaval and social instability in a well mannered society. 

Extreme pressure is on the girls to find a husband. Girls in Sapa, which is not part of this tale, illustrates the value for rural girls to get married at the ripe old age of 16 and start producing genetic forms of themselves. Petri dish. Wash and tear.

Metta.

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.

Julia writes from Sweden

Greetings,

I received a wonderful email from Julia today to share with you. It's direct, honest and filled with her humbling life changing experience in Cambodia. She's amazing. I'm grateful we met in Siem Reap.

"Home again.

"Time flies when you're having fun and so I find myself back in snowy Sweden a month after I left. I have however, returned a completely different person, one I really like. 

"I have learned to appreciate the value of a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses, $440 - or 2 years of university-tuition for my friend Lina in Phnom Penh. A pair of Marc Jacobs', $325 - or 4 months rent on a decent house for a family on the outskirts of Siem Reap. A pair of seasonal Armanis, $100 - or two waterfilters that will provide 2 families with ten years of clean drinking water. And that's just the shades. Insecurities are expensive. 

"When I changed my mind I also changed my hair. I cut it all off along with enormous amounts of baggage. Turns out, underneath all that hair I'm cute, fun, kind, smart, interested and interesting, generous, loving, caring and very, very happy. Who would've thunk it? 

"Tim has become my mentor and he guides me towards myself. I am writing down the bones. 

"I have learned that in Cambodian traffic one relies purely on the force. Which is easier to locate once all the buzzing stops and you start focusing on the right now. If you try to think about anything in the past or in the future you will get hit by at least one moto. I know, I tried it. Twice. Navigating through the craziest jams becomes easy if you pay complete, relaxed attention. Life is "same, same - but different" as the tourist t-shirt reads. Mine reads "I heart Cambodia". 

"I have learned that a landmine costs $3 to put in the ground. A prosthetic limb on average $3000. 

"I have learned that a government-employed teacher in Cambodia earns about $40 a month, a privately employed teacher can earn twice that. 

"I have learned that with a little help a family can make some extra money raising butterflies. 

"I have learned that papaya and lime is an awsome combination, that amok is delicious and sweet and sour fish soup is even better, that coconutwater is best had out of a newly cracked open coconut after my new friend Mo climbs up the tree to get it for me, that Angelina has good taste in drinks and that Chin's mom can cook a fantastic feast on a nail. 

"I have learned that I can be useful and that I am needed. My life is no longer an empty search for anything to hold on to. My purpose has found me. I am greatful I decided to go to Cambodia. I am greatful I went despite second thoughts. I am greatful to all the beautiful, inspiring, wonderful people I got to meet there. I am greatful that I could be of service. I am greatful for the lessons I learned. I am greatful that this happened at a time in my life when I am open to change. I am greatful that I am out of the dark. My life is the light and I am living it intentionally. 

"All the rest is just detalis. I'll fill you all in when inspiration finds me."

Love,

J

 Julia and her village kids.