Julia wakes up in Cambodia

Greetings,

Julia is from Stockholm, Sweden. She is 36-years young. She was married for 10 long angry violent years to a Black man from Atlanta.

We met at a guesthouse in Siem Reap, Cambodia. She was a tight bundle of burning anxieties. 

She opened up. "I don't know what I'm running away from. I don't know what I'm running toward." We talked about the amazing passages inside Angkor temples, being an allegory of her travels.

- One door opens and one door closes but the passages can be a bitch, whispered a traveling ghost.

I suggested she'd evolved as a willing victim of old lies, how she'd believed the old lies from the authority figures (family, husband, boss, friends) in her life. How she'd believed, in her heart, the old controlling attitudes and belief systems of others. How her new day in Cambodia, this beginning, offered her new opportunities for awareness and growth.

Like other humans, to become real, she'd eventually face her deep multiple fears. Plural. It was either that or keep on running scared. Wild animals on her trail.

"I want to cut all my hair off." It was long curling blond movie star mane quality hair. We went to a salon. She was naturally nervous. She swallowed hard. A woman cut it off. Julia felt lighter and more free. She altered her outward appearance, releasing old anxieties.

By cutting her hair with bright shiny silver scissors, a complete symbolic gesture, Julia realized how she felt was more important than how her stone cold colleagues back in stone cold freezing Sweden might react. It was a small significant step on her new path. 

One day Julia went far away to see, hear, touch, taste, and feel a temple's influence on her consciousness.

She visited My Grandfather's House and the village school. She bought them a water purifier. She bought them a battery so they'd have lights after dark.

Another day, returning from temples she stopped in a village and met some children.

The next morning she invited me to join her. We stopped at a shop where she purchased bags of toothbrushes and toothpaste. We rolled through the flat countryside passing simple bamboo homes, women selling, cooking, cleaning, washing and working. We were far away from the big bright town filled with happy white tourists doing Angkor.

Julia talked a blue streak...unloading all her honesty, hopes, and dreams well mixed with anxieties and fears.

"I feel good doing this," she said. "I've never done anything like this before. My past life was all about anger. It was shit. Way too many problems and conflicts. Now that I'm in Cambodia, what, less than a week, I'm beginning to learn about myself, seeing how my life was empty with no meaning. How it was all about pleasing others, buying useless things to make myself feel better."

We turned off the paved road onto a thin dirt track leading to a bamboo thatched home on stilts in a field. Half-naked kids played. Old women and men sat in the shade. Julia met the kids and a young mother.

"Here," she smiled, handing them toothbrushes and paste, "these are for you." The kids and mothers were amazed. An 80-year old woman, a former Apsara dancer performed some quick movements.  Julia copied her to the delight of everyone.

We left. "I'll be back," Julia yelled as kids ran behind waving. 

"I now feel more fulfilled," she said. We stopped in a small market village for coffee. Young girls selling small colorful bamboo paper birds descended on us. "Buy something?" 

Julia met Rita, second from the right. Rita's 14 and in the 5th grade. Rita learned her English selling to foreigners at the temples after school. "I saw a leader in the girl's eyes," Julia said as we rode back to the city. "Maybe I can help her, get an English teacher for her village. Give her an opportunity to really grow."

The short version is that Julia had to modify her dream for the girl. "Let's be practical," I suggested. Finding a Khmer English teacher for $80 a month was like finding clean drinking water.

The next day Julia bought a brand new pink bike for Rita. A bell, basket, the works. It said, 'NEW STAR' on the chain guard. We went to a bookstore and she bought a whiteboard, boxes of markers and 20 basic English books, picture dictionaries and story books. We loaded them on a tuk-tuk and rolled to the village. 

Rita, her family - they raise pigs, dad kills them, mom sells the meat in the market, older sisters hustle wealthy tourists hoping to get a boyfriend and get out - and friends were waiting for Julia.

"Here, Rita all this is for you," said Julia. "The bike will help you get to school, the temples and home. The whiteboard, markers and books will help you teach English here." Rita smiled. "Thank you."

Rita jumped on her bike and pedaled through dust, broken leaves, around the house. Julia spread the books out and all the kids explored new images, words, ABC alphabets and color. Julia exchanged email and postal addresses with Rita. 

"I feel real good about this," Julia said as we rolled through Cambodia. "Real good. I've made a small difference in a young girl's life. I am so grateful."

Metta.

Julia and kids...

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. 

Buy

Greetings,

Hands of Cambodian children.

"Mister, wanta buy a book? Wanta buy some postcards? Cold water mister? No money for school. Book mister?  Good price. You buy..."

Metta.

At breakfast

Greetings,

I'm sitting in the lodge. People eat breakfast and chat. They remember last night. They plan a new day above ground.

There's a super serious Danish family of four. Sad blond dad and morose mom resigned to her fate. Two young boys about 10. They love to play pool, run around and make noise. A lot of noise. They need a behavior modification lesson for public places.

They're slamming balls around the table using their hands. Suddenly the young one blasts off into a terrified shriek of pain. It wakes up the eaters. His right hand was inside the cushion and brother's ball caught him squarely on the fingers. 

Dad rushes over. He cradles his son, escorting the bellowing child back to bread and eggs. Mom looks bored. She's dreaming of ice crystals in Copenhagen.

Three middle aged Americans and two 28-year old girls arrive and sit on soft cushions. One is the niece of the man. They've just arrived from a horrendous scam-filled long bus ride from Bangkok. 

The man is soft spoken. He's an Asian tour guide. He reminds me of Robert Thurman, the Tibetan scholar. His wife is an attorney in Portland, Oregon. She deals with suits. No one at breakfast is wearing a suit. I know her job because of the way she cross examines the two girls. An older woman with regal bearing is with them, perhaps one's mother. She is patient, kind and asks intelligent questions.

She lives in Eugene, Oregon as does one of the girls. The older woman grew up in Eugene, attended Portland State College and loved languages, especially Italian. She moved to Rome for six years. She came back and got her M.A. in Italian and Foreign Languages at the University of Oregon. She taught Italian until retiring. 

The attorney and the woman talk about growing up. The attorney is from Michigan.

"I was only able to get away for two weeks. My boss said, 'What happens if someone sues someone and you're not here to handle the case?'"

The older woman said, "It was just coincidence I ended up back in Eugene. It was hard growing up there."

"Why," said the attorney.

"It was the late 40's. We didn't have enough to eat. It was only steak and they cooked it to a cinder. It was that and potatoes. One brand of rice. I remember my mother and father loading us in the car and we'd drive to San Francisco to buy food."

"To sell?" asked the attorney.

The older woman looked at her. "No. To eat." I hear her thinking in Italian, "Mama mia! What a crazy question!"

The group talks about the bus, lodgings, cost and border hassles. The girls are dead tired. They compare travel stories. One girl has just completed a month teaching English in Burma. She says she managed to find a job through a foreign woman running a tour company.

"Yes," said the man, "there are people there who know the system. Where did you teach?"

"I didn't teach school. I taught teachers."

The man knows Burma. "I see. The authorities are very suspicious of foreigners. It's difficult to really get to know the people."

"I hoped to spend time with the Burmese in their homes but it was forbidden," said the girl.

I see the girl teaching a class of Burmese "teachers."

Half work for a government agency designed to acquire western educational pedagogical plans. The other half work for the secret police. One is a real teacher. Can you find the real teacher?

Metta.

A teacher.

Moon, silk, kids and water

Greetings,

I've been in Cambodia one month. The year is flying by, away, intent on new and completely unknown possibilities. 

New imagination galleries on the sidebar include:  Siem Reap, Artists and Pagodas, A silk farm (included in Bamboo Monkeys Photo Blog) My Grandfather's House rural school project and a floating village Kampong Pluck, presently high and dry.

Here's a sample. Feel free to explore at your leisure.

Metta.

Boiling silkworm cocoons to extract raw yellow silk. It will be separated into soft and fine threads and dyed using natural materials: banana (yellow), Bougainvillea (yellow), almond leaves (black), lac insect nests (red and purple), prohut wood (yellow and green), lychee wood (black and gray), indigo (blue), and coconut (brown and pink). Cambodian weavers also weave Ikat, a technique creating patterns on the silk threads prior to weaving. It is called "HOL" and there are more than 200 motifs. 

Raw silk on loom. 

Kampong Pluck floating village outside Siem Reap in the dry season. The wet season is July-November and the water level will rise 9 meters, (30 feet).

 Children at My Grandfather's House, a rural elementary school supported by volunteers. It will supplement their local Khmer education. Children will begin with basic English classes. Plans include math and basic computer skills.

Inside the floating world of nature, water, and light. Be light. About it.