Orphan Tourism

Namaste,

According to an article by Charlotte Turner, there are 269 orphanages and 12,000 orphans in Cambodia.

"Visitors see some poverty and they feel bad about it," said Ashlee Chapman, a project manager with Globalteer, an organisation that matches volunteers with local organisations.

"They want to do something," she adds, saying they might visit a children's project for a few hours, donate money and toys, "take a holiday snap and feel that they've contributed."

"Constant change of caregivers gives emotional loss to children, constant emotional loss to already traumatised children," Jolanda van Westering, a child protection specialist at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) told AFP.

Read more.

The Cambodian children pictured here are not orphans.

Metta.

Maybe 20

Namaste,

The demanding accusatory tone of voice is always an admonishing attitude of voice how reality is. Shanghai commands are simple and direct. 

Heels strike cold hard pavement in darkness. The sharpness belongs to a girl escaping from family for the night. Muted voices of an old couple walking through narrow concrete canyons echo as heels fade.

An elevator door opened on the 11th floor of a five-star business hotel in Shanghai. 

A beautiful Chinese girl, 20, in a white dress clutching a small black purse stared at a scuffed marble floor. Small puddles of rain water gathered around her shoes.

She raised her face from the ground. 

Deep dark brown rings circled old, tired, fearful eyes hiding her heart's knowledge, revealing her soul.

There was no place to hide, no magical cosmetic concealing the truth of everything she knew. The woman and witness instinctivily understood each other. Passing toward another temporary hope, another ethereal reality.

She was on the wrong floor and pressed another number. Doors closed. She was moving up in the world. Up to the room of a foreign businessman taking her through night into morning.

Everyone in town was making money. 

Billboards shouted, “Making Money in China is Glorious!”

She carefully folded hard earned hard currency into her black purse after a long hot shower and took the elevator down. Gliding through a revolving glass and brass door, she passed a deserted dark empty Japanese restaurant and negotiated gray stained industrial steps to Nanjing Xi Lu.  

One million serious adults in blue industrial clothing practiced Tai Chi with controlled balanced concentration.

Every methodical movement had meaning.

Dawn's collective mist breath crashed around her well worn heels skipping over cracked stones through shadows. 

Metta.

ice cries

Namaste,

Dreaming of ice a boy sawed crystals of clarity in a tropical kingdom. He saw but didn't see.

He stood in the back of a blue hyperventilation dumptruck with his rusty trusty bladed saw.

Blocks of ice disguised as solidified water were longer than a flowing, overflowing, flowering Mekong river feeding Asian lakes.

He unwrapped blocks. He sawed. He tapped a hammer defining worlds into melting scientific serious sections.

His friend loaded condensation on thin shoulders. He carried melting weight to a bamboo shack. He dumped ice into a waiting orange plastic box. A smiling women frying bananas over kindling gave him some money, Thank you for the cold.

Carver carved. Tap-tap-tap.

The woman assaulted ice with a hammer, shimmering blocks, refreshing beverages. 

Ice blocks in shadows melted latent desire. 

An old woman in pajamas sweeping dust heard ice.

Metta.

  Nam iceman cometh.

I want More

Namaste,

A foreigner put a pile of gold on a table in Laos, turned to the old man squinting through one good eye and said, “I will give you this pile of gold for your daughter.”

“I want more,” said the old man. “Her face and body and heart is Lao. She has Vietnamese blood. It is supply and demand. Business is business. It’s all about user value. It’s about exchange value. No plastic. Cash only. See this machete?”

He waved it in the man’s face, cutting him off.

Nearby, two male tourists hadn’t decompressed. They tried to speak in complete sentences. It was impossible. One started, trying to release sounds, impressive words, phrases, sentences and, like a game of chess, war or conquest wearing stupidity and a clear lack of respect the OTHER one cut him off at the throat with sharp sophisticated annunciation.

A verbal machete.

Frustrated, he grimaced suffering severe brain damage. Short circuit. Transmission lines went down. Thud. Crash. Burn.

In their remote jungle village near the River of Darkness they carved images of their dead. 

Metta.

Metro Woman

Namaste,

He saw her through a window when the metro pulled in.

Alone and cold, she waited for the green metro door to open.

It was late. She wore a thin black sweater and long gray skirt.

She was slight...olive pale skin, black hair pulled back, around 45. 

She limped into the car dragging her right foot. Her left foot was normal. Her right foot looked like a case of elephantiasis. She sat twenty feet away. 

She bent over and slowly raised her skirt from around her ankles. The burned and bloody skin damage ran three inches across and ten inches high. Either first or second degree burns. A layer of skin was exposed, red, lined with white. Bare and exposed. She needed medical attention.

Two men across from her stared and diverted their eyes.

She sat, fingered a phone and grimaced. No tears, just a stoic face. 

The metro rolled through night. It passed a river, a neon bright Everest furniture store, fast food emptiness and an expensive private hospital filled with antiseptics, bandages, lotions and potions and patients with money.

She inspected her ankle, touching an edge of fried skin with a white tissue. Clear cold air sent shivers through her central nervous system shutting down pain receptors. 

Metta.