Let Them Eat Cake
It was our last day in Siem Reap. The morning before, I’d held my last English class with the women at the Sewing Training Center at Wat Damnak, and I wanted to do something to celebrate our time together. A party with a cake, I reasoned, was the proper way to commemorate the sweetness of our mutual learning. These women did not eat cake often, and birthdays are not the confection and candlelit extravaganza that it is for us in the States. I want them to know they are special to me, and I want something everyone can share. So I will bring them cake.
Siem Reap is a city of bakers. Every good hotel bakes its own breads, croissants, cakes and donuts. The order is made at the Soma Devi hotel for three kilos of butter cake with almonds slivers, fresh pineapple, mangosteen and apple on top for a 10 a.m. pick-up.
Of course, that was more than enough cake for 30 shy women to eat. They were thrilled, but had to be asked repeatedly if they’d received a slice. Half the order went untouched, which was just enough for the resident monks to have with their lunch.
Monks eat sparingly each day. After breakfast at 4:00 a.m., they must consume all solid food before noon. So the 11 a.m. lunch is a pivotal point in the day, and adding cake to the menu would be a treat.
One of the sewing instructors was appointed to walk me to the dining hall to make my offering. She spoke no English, but was the perfect combination of kindness, deference and willingness to serve as my guide.
Shoes were removed at the entrance of the hall. The monks were already eating when we walked down the long dark corridor with the precious cake, a white-boxed offering for God’s saffron-draped attendants. They were to our right behind a line of marble columns, seated on the floor in two neat rows with their backs to us. But they could see us in our procession of trepidation.
We turned right at the end of the corridor and began walking across the vast expanse of floor to the two monks seated at the other end of the room, in full view of what I now see are the junior monks. The two we are approaching have about 20 small bowls of food arrayed before them, each a separate dish. At a glance I see soups, rice, vegetables and curried meats. These two must be special, the most venerable of venerables. When we reach the edge of their mat, I see they are Somnieng and Choeurn.
I’m relieved to see that its two monks that I know, but I have never seen them in their official capacity as deputy head monks. The look on Somnieng’s face reveals recognition and hesitation simultaneously. We are on display, in front of his charges. Suddenly I know that it is critical I do this right, and I show the proper respect for him and his position.
It’s impossible to convey the landslide of emotions swooping from my brain to my gut. This setting is surreal. I am both in the scene and observing it at the same time. There is an ocean of cultural and language difference between us and I am swimming frantically. I know there is a ritual in offering food to monks, but I did not – could not- discuss it with my guide. I rely on mimicking her actions and take refuge in the hope that I can get direction from Somnieng, quietly, in English.
At the edge of the mat my guide drops to her knees and sits on her feet. Head bowed, she passes me the cake box, pushing my hands down. Choerun is saying something to me repeatedly in Khmer. It sounds like “Pronam, pronam, pronam,” which I know means prostrate. But his insistence suddenly makes me not want to do it. This is not the laughing, playful Somnieng I have seen for weeks in the LHA office. This is not the Choeurn that took English lessons from me. There we were equals. In fact, I was superior. I was older, knew better English, and had more experience with non-profits and funding, data they needed and appreciated. But in the dining hall I must be subservient and I sense Choeurn is enjoying this reversal of positions.
I place the box on the mat and ask Somnieng, “Am I doing this right?” “No,” he says gently. The junior monks are laughing. When I glance to my left, my guide is bowing profusely again and again, her hands pressed palms together at her lips, head dipping to the floor.
Somnieng gestures for me to pick up the box and place it closer to him. I do so, and tilt my head, nodding once. But for the life of me, I cannot bow. I know that’s what I am supposed to do. I see my guide in repeated supplication right next to me, yet I cannot do it.
It is the briefest of exchanges, mere moments have passed. But in those moments I feel a myriad of emotions. Self revelation is almost instant: my embarrassment at being laughed at; my confusion about what to do; my desire to be generous and good; my resentment at being placed in the woman’s role yet again; the sadness of my imminent departure; my love and admiration for Somnieng and the frustration at my inability to express it; my irritation with Choeurn; my pride and stubborn hesitation; my longing to belong and to be seen as special; my deep respect for the pagoda’s rituals; my refusal to bow before a monk half my age and before a God I do not really understand.
Somnieng says “Thank you for bringing this.” I reply, “Thank you for letting me come here.” He then turns his head to his left and speaks in Khmer to the junior monks, pointing to the box. I assume he is explaining the gift to them. My guide gets up, turns and leaves with me hurriedly in tow. Our walk back to the Sewing Center is as silent as before, yet I am stirred to my core.
It is the last time I see Somnieng.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Killing Us Softly
S-21 and The Killing Fields
Thanks to a hit Hollywood movie of the same name, Cambodia is most known for the “Killing Fields” of the Khmer Rouge regime. After the ruins of the temple city known as Angkor Wat, it is the next largest tourist attraction in the country. There are over 300 makeshift burial grounds and caves in Cambodia, dotting the landscape like scar-covered wounds. They mark a five-year period of pain and brutality that is now completely removed from the country’s textbooks. But the fields remain as testament to this tortuous time.
Re-tracing the tragedy of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh is a two-part endeavor. First stop is Tuol Sleng, or Security Office 21 (aka S-21)), part of the most secret organ of the Khmer Rouge regimeS-21 started life in 1962 as the Ponhea Yat High School, named for an ancestor of King Sihanouk. Re-named during the U.S. backed Lon Nol regime in the early 70’s, it was later established as S-21 in 1976 by Pol Pot (short for both political potential, and the Khmer words for poison stake). The Khmer Rouge leader #1 was himself an academician who later turned on the country’s intelligencia, professionals and artists as Western lackeys and traitors to the communist cause.
S-21 is a 3-storied, L-shaped building, surrounding an open courtyard, enclosed by two folds of corrugated iron sheets that are covered with electrified barb wire. The classrooms were converted to prison cells and torture chambers. The photographs on the walls depict the gruesome, almost medieval methods of interrogation. Others reveal some of the faces of the more than 10,000 prisoners – men, women and children - who passed through its gates on their inexorable march to death. Eyes wide with fear and disbelief, flat with fading defiance, sunken in desperation or hollowed out by resignation stare out of the black and white headshots that meticulously record the faces of the victims.
The complex is nestled in the heart of the city, in the midst of a well-populated neighborhood. One can imagine the terror its residents felt as they listened to the screams of the victims late into the night.
Our guide has a personal connection to S-21. Her father and sisters were slain during the Khmer Rouge. In fact, there are nearly no Khmer above the age of 30 who do not have a relative that was killed by the regime. Usually they have several, along with stories of colleagues and neighbors who turned them in to save their own skin or kin.
When the regime was finally defeated, many of its leaders become members of the ruling government, or were pardoned by the victors. They never stood trial for their actions. Our guide pointed out several pictures of S-21 officers who were left to ripen to old age, unharmed and unpunished, alive to this day.
They have whitewashed the events of the period and eliminated any reference in the textbooks so the rising generations have no knowledge of those terrible times. Our friend Theary, who is in her early 20s, had never been to S-21 even though she lives right there in the capital. To her the Khmer Rouge, the interrogation camps, the killing fields are fables told by her parents of a time long past and almost unfathomable.
And so healing has taken the form of forced forgetting that your president has merely changed uniforms, and your family’s former betrayers still live just down the road. In fact, they comprise the few elderly living in Cambodia. The generation that would be old today was wiped out decades ago.
Choeung Ek Genocidal Center is the Khmer name for The Killing Fields, a 30-minute ride by tuk tuk into the suburbs of Phnom Penh. It is a national monument. In the past decade, they have erected a grand, gleaming stupa, or Buddhist temple, housing the bones of the dead. Ascend its marble steps to the glass walls that reveal ascending shelves of skulls, relics of the souls interred in the meadows surrounding it.
Grass now covers scoured out depressions of earth, resembling the impact of a meteor hit. These are the mass graves dug by the victims themselves before they were killed and tossed inside. Swatches of clothing emerge half buried in the ground, strange plants in this garden of death. Butterflies dance among the wild flowers.
Each evening, a score of monks huddle at the door of the stupa face the skeletal remains and chant for the dead, their marigold robes swaying in the breeze. These souls, those times are not forgotten.
They are part of Generation One, carefully retrieving the shards of a shattered society, struggling mightily to remember the legacy of loss of the past. They are on a mission to rescue the traditional art forms and spiritual practices that carried their cultural heritage for centuries. This generation is leaping into the 21st century, attempting to span the breach in technology and industry between them and the western world. They are weaving a bridge from the looms of their history, and reclaiming their past along with their destiny.
Thanks to a hit Hollywood movie of the same name, Cambodia is most known for the “Killing Fields” of the Khmer Rouge regime. After the ruins of the temple city known as Angkor Wat, it is the next largest tourist attraction in the country. There are over 300 makeshift burial grounds and caves in Cambodia, dotting the landscape like scar-covered wounds. They mark a five-year period of pain and brutality that is now completely removed from the country’s textbooks. But the fields remain as testament to this tortuous time.
Re-tracing the tragedy of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh is a two-part endeavor. First stop is Tuol Sleng, or Security Office 21 (aka S-21)), part of the most secret organ of the Khmer Rouge regimeS-21 started life in 1962 as the Ponhea Yat High School, named for an ancestor of King Sihanouk. Re-named during the U.S. backed Lon Nol regime in the early 70’s, it was later established as S-21 in 1976 by Pol Pot (short for both political potential, and the Khmer words for poison stake). The Khmer Rouge leader #1 was himself an academician who later turned on the country’s intelligencia, professionals and artists as Western lackeys and traitors to the communist cause.
S-21 is a 3-storied, L-shaped building, surrounding an open courtyard, enclosed by two folds of corrugated iron sheets that are covered with electrified barb wire. The classrooms were converted to prison cells and torture chambers. The photographs on the walls depict the gruesome, almost medieval methods of interrogation. Others reveal some of the faces of the more than 10,000 prisoners – men, women and children - who passed through its gates on their inexorable march to death. Eyes wide with fear and disbelief, flat with fading defiance, sunken in desperation or hollowed out by resignation stare out of the black and white headshots that meticulously record the faces of the victims.
The complex is nestled in the heart of the city, in the midst of a well-populated neighborhood. One can imagine the terror its residents felt as they listened to the screams of the victims late into the night.
Our guide has a personal connection to S-21. Her father and sisters were slain during the Khmer Rouge. In fact, there are nearly no Khmer above the age of 30 who do not have a relative that was killed by the regime. Usually they have several, along with stories of colleagues and neighbors who turned them in to save their own skin or kin.
When the regime was finally defeated, many of its leaders become members of the ruling government, or were pardoned by the victors. They never stood trial for their actions. Our guide pointed out several pictures of S-21 officers who were left to ripen to old age, unharmed and unpunished, alive to this day.
They have whitewashed the events of the period and eliminated any reference in the textbooks so the rising generations have no knowledge of those terrible times. Our friend Theary, who is in her early 20s, had never been to S-21 even though she lives right there in the capital. To her the Khmer Rouge, the interrogation camps, the killing fields are fables told by her parents of a time long past and almost unfathomable.
And so healing has taken the form of forced forgetting that your president has merely changed uniforms, and your family’s former betrayers still live just down the road. In fact, they comprise the few elderly living in Cambodia. The generation that would be old today was wiped out decades ago.
Choeung Ek Genocidal Center is the Khmer name for The Killing Fields, a 30-minute ride by tuk tuk into the suburbs of Phnom Penh. It is a national monument. In the past decade, they have erected a grand, gleaming stupa, or Buddhist temple, housing the bones of the dead. Ascend its marble steps to the glass walls that reveal ascending shelves of skulls, relics of the souls interred in the meadows surrounding it.
Grass now covers scoured out depressions of earth, resembling the impact of a meteor hit. These are the mass graves dug by the victims themselves before they were killed and tossed inside. Swatches of clothing emerge half buried in the ground, strange plants in this garden of death. Butterflies dance among the wild flowers.
Each evening, a score of monks huddle at the door of the stupa face the skeletal remains and chant for the dead, their marigold robes swaying in the breeze. These souls, those times are not forgotten.
They are part of Generation One, carefully retrieving the shards of a shattered society, struggling mightily to remember the legacy of loss of the past. They are on a mission to rescue the traditional art forms and spiritual practices that carried their cultural heritage for centuries. This generation is leaping into the 21st century, attempting to span the breach in technology and industry between them and the western world. They are weaving a bridge from the looms of their history, and reclaiming their past along with their destiny.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
12 Step Program for Silk
The Hard Labor of Soft Silk
In the process of making silk, it’s a toss-up as to who works harder – the silk worms or the silk weavers. Of course, for the worms, it’s a total commitment. They are born and raised for the sole purpose of giving their essence to the process, and then they give their lives in its cultivation. But the craftsmen and women are also deeply and physically committed to the work. The entire enterprise is another Khmer example of an art form born of creativity, infused with cultural tradition, and married to a respect for and understanding of nature.
Silk worms are one of life’s pampered creatures. At the silk farm we visited, Artisans D’Angkor, they live in elevated wooden houses, kept darkened and cool during the bright and blazing day. A 2” trench is built into the cement around the base of the stairs and stilts that hold up the house to keep the ants from entering and destroying the worms. For the first half of their lives, the silk worms live on wood framed mesh flats, and dine exclusively on mulberry leaves that are grown in the field in front of the silk houses, in a feeding cycle of seven days feasting and three days fasting.
Once they are sufficiently nourished they stop eating, and begin the process of cocooning. For this, their living quarters are changed to oval shaped, shallow, woven baskets. The worms secrete the silk from their mouths in one continuous strand until they are completely swaddled, resembling yellow cotton Q-tips.
The cocoons must be harvested before the worms emerge on their own. If they’re left alone, they will bite through the cocoon to get out. This destroys the silk, rendering it unusable as thread. So the cocoons are placed in boiling water (this is the commitment part for the worms)where some patient soul, usually a woman, unwinds the single strand. She can do several cocoons at once, spinning the strands together into a larger thread. It takes about 120 strands to make raw silk thread, and 80 to make the finished silk thread.
Tired yet? That’s only half the process.
In one large room, the thread is dyed with natural substances – barks, herbs, flowers, and rusty nails. Another room houses looms of various sizes, where more patient souls, this time men and women, some equipped with i-Pods, weave the traditional cloths. Some patterns take 6 or 7 different colors of thread woven together at the same time. Some looms are for tie dying with plastic thread. Some traditional fabrics take a month or more to create about 6 meters of cloth.
I can’t seem to get enough of the colors and textures. The markets keep calling me back for just one more piece of cloth. They are truly luscious, rich and evocative of the complexity and the heat of the country. Just what I will need to warm me, body and spirit, some chilly NY day.
In the process of making silk, it’s a toss-up as to who works harder – the silk worms or the silk weavers. Of course, for the worms, it’s a total commitment. They are born and raised for the sole purpose of giving their essence to the process, and then they give their lives in its cultivation. But the craftsmen and women are also deeply and physically committed to the work. The entire enterprise is another Khmer example of an art form born of creativity, infused with cultural tradition, and married to a respect for and understanding of nature.
Silk worms are one of life’s pampered creatures. At the silk farm we visited, Artisans D’Angkor, they live in elevated wooden houses, kept darkened and cool during the bright and blazing day. A 2” trench is built into the cement around the base of the stairs and stilts that hold up the house to keep the ants from entering and destroying the worms. For the first half of their lives, the silk worms live on wood framed mesh flats, and dine exclusively on mulberry leaves that are grown in the field in front of the silk houses, in a feeding cycle of seven days feasting and three days fasting.
Once they are sufficiently nourished they stop eating, and begin the process of cocooning. For this, their living quarters are changed to oval shaped, shallow, woven baskets. The worms secrete the silk from their mouths in one continuous strand until they are completely swaddled, resembling yellow cotton Q-tips.
The cocoons must be harvested before the worms emerge on their own. If they’re left alone, they will bite through the cocoon to get out. This destroys the silk, rendering it unusable as thread. So the cocoons are placed in boiling water (this is the commitment part for the worms)where some patient soul, usually a woman, unwinds the single strand. She can do several cocoons at once, spinning the strands together into a larger thread. It takes about 120 strands to make raw silk thread, and 80 to make the finished silk thread.
Tired yet? That’s only half the process.
In one large room, the thread is dyed with natural substances – barks, herbs, flowers, and rusty nails. Another room houses looms of various sizes, where more patient souls, this time men and women, some equipped with i-Pods, weave the traditional cloths. Some patterns take 6 or 7 different colors of thread woven together at the same time. Some looms are for tie dying with plastic thread. Some traditional fabrics take a month or more to create about 6 meters of cloth.
I can’t seem to get enough of the colors and textures. The markets keep calling me back for just one more piece of cloth. They are truly luscious, rich and evocative of the complexity and the heat of the country. Just what I will need to warm me, body and spirit, some chilly NY day.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Trouble With Monks
The Trouble With Monks
While Makara helps care for the children at the orphanage every day, my primary work is teaching English. I started out teaching the young women at the Sewing Training Center at 6:30 each morning. But I’ve now added private tutoring for Venerable Choern, LHA’s Deputy Director, and Sovatha, LHA’s financial director, every afternoon.
They both speak English with varying degrees of ability. The young women come more recently to English, and some have had no schooling at all. They will return to their villages when their training is over, and some of them believe they will never encounter an English speaker again. They approach our classes with varying levels of interest, but they remain unfailingly gracious, polite and respectful to their teacher.
I am assisting their usual teacher, a young monk named Savoun who allows me to lead the class and translates for me. We are covering words and phrases that pertain to sewing – needle, thread, sleeve, cuff, “Do you have the scissors?” and “Is your sewing machine broken?” We had a moment when I was explaining to him the difference between a zipper and fly, and he pointed out that monks do not use a fly because monks do not wear pants (or drawers for that matter).
Let me now explain the ground rules. Monks are not permitted to touch or be touched by women. No shaking hands, no standing too close in pictures, no sitting in the same part of a car or van with a woman. We aren’t even supposed to hand them anything directly (but they’re not especially strict about that).
Now, when you consider that they are some of the finest looking men around with those shaved heads (Shaving Day comes twice a month), wearing the hottest shades of the color spectrum (rust, marigold, butterscotch –they even have matching umbrellas), in those off-the -shoulder robes against that café au lait skin… and no pants to boot? I mean, is that even fair?!!?!!? O
Lord, I hope I’m not blaspheming.
The monks I’m around the most are in their 20’s-early 30’s. As you can imagine, I’ve caught myself more than once, just in the nick of time, reaching out to touch a monk arm. They are sweet and sincere young men, hardworking, dedicated to helping others and improving themselves, lovely human beings almost impossible to resist.
Almost.
While Makara helps care for the children at the orphanage every day, my primary work is teaching English. I started out teaching the young women at the Sewing Training Center at 6:30 each morning. But I’ve now added private tutoring for Venerable Choern, LHA’s Deputy Director, and Sovatha, LHA’s financial director, every afternoon.
They both speak English with varying degrees of ability. The young women come more recently to English, and some have had no schooling at all. They will return to their villages when their training is over, and some of them believe they will never encounter an English speaker again. They approach our classes with varying levels of interest, but they remain unfailingly gracious, polite and respectful to their teacher.
I am assisting their usual teacher, a young monk named Savoun who allows me to lead the class and translates for me. We are covering words and phrases that pertain to sewing – needle, thread, sleeve, cuff, “Do you have the scissors?” and “Is your sewing machine broken?” We had a moment when I was explaining to him the difference between a zipper and fly, and he pointed out that monks do not use a fly because monks do not wear pants (or drawers for that matter).
Let me now explain the ground rules. Monks are not permitted to touch or be touched by women. No shaking hands, no standing too close in pictures, no sitting in the same part of a car or van with a woman. We aren’t even supposed to hand them anything directly (but they’re not especially strict about that).
Now, when you consider that they are some of the finest looking men around with those shaved heads (Shaving Day comes twice a month), wearing the hottest shades of the color spectrum (rust, marigold, butterscotch –they even have matching umbrellas), in those off-the -shoulder robes against that café au lait skin… and no pants to boot? I mean, is that even fair?!!?!!? O
Lord, I hope I’m not blaspheming.
The monks I’m around the most are in their 20’s-early 30’s. As you can imagine, I’ve caught myself more than once, just in the nick of time, reaching out to touch a monk arm. They are sweet and sincere young men, hardworking, dedicated to helping others and improving themselves, lovely human beings almost impossible to resist.
Almost.
Battambang By Boat
Battambang By Boat
We joined the photographers for a 3-day excursion up-country to Battambang, Cambodia’s 2nd largest city, a French-influenced province north and west of Siem Reap. We set sail on the small ferry boat early Monday morning, July 16th. Had I read the description in the tour book, I might not have gotten on the boat so easily or eagerly. The sentence, “The boats in no way meet international safety standards” does not exactly inspire confidence.
Still there were life jackets on board, scores of similar tour boats docked two and three deep, and thousands of skiffs, pontoons and other floating craft along the river bank. In fact, these were floating villages. Families for generations have lived their lives on the river, with everything they own crammed onto a covered boat no bigger than an oversized canoe. Even the schools, restaurants and little convenience stores float..
Cambodia is a country with strong knees. The people crouch to do everything. The smaller boats are rowed and steered from the very front by a person in a kneeling /squatting position. The covered house boats seem to provide no room for standing, so cooking, washing over the side of the boat, or doing any of the daily chores of living occurs from a crouched position. They even rest by squatting low to the ground.
In the Buddhist tradition, veneration is performed with the feet always facing behind the body, never in front. The monks and nuns eat sitting on the ground, with their legs turned to the side and feet tucked beneath or beside their bodies. My 50-plus knees remember with fond longing the days of the lotus position, deep knee bends, and sitting cross-legged Indian-style on the floor for long periods of time. Now I need a chair to sit on and something to brace myself with when getting up from a kneeling position.
Our boat ride took us across the northern end of the Tonle Sap Lake, the largest fresh-water lake in Southeast Asia, and up the Sangkor River, a tributary of the Mekong in Viet Nam and Laos. But it quickly turned from a leisurely glide under hot and sunny skies into a sodden crawl after a sudden rainstorm hit. The four-man crew struggled mightily to keep the passengers dry while periodically clearing the propeller of weeds, pushing off from the now narrowed and reedy banks, and steering safely around the bends in the river (someone had to stand in the rain at the front of the boat to point). Add to this the task of preventing the jerry-rigged engine from overheating. (Repeated sopping by rags doused in river water seemed to be the preferred cooling method.) But the crew worked together like a well-oiled machine, and we were none the worse for wear when we docked 9 hours later.
The highlight of our trip to Battambang was the ride on the Bamboo Train. The word train is used euphemistically, and only in the strictest technical sense. Yes, there is a train track. But dispel all visions of train cars, doors, windows and seats from your mind.
Battambang is the coconut and rice bowl of Cambodia. Its fertile soil feeds most of the country. The Bamboo Train was first constructed by the French many decades ago to transport produce and other goods to the capital, Phnom Penh. It was actually a train then. Now it’s a unique and creative form of local travel, peasant style. The “car” is a flat bed of bamboo slats about 10’ long and 8’ wide, covered with mats for seating and powered by a motorcycle engine. It runs on small steel wheels joined by a rod that look like a weightlifter’s barbells and weigh just as much.
The one railway track stretches on for miles.
Your fellow passengers are mostly farmers, local merchants and factory workers, but motorcycles, small tractors, sacks of produce and barnyard animals are also welcome and frequent riders. After a running push by one of the train crew you’re off at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour. No roof, walls, no windows, no seats. Just you and your travelling companions with trees, streams and rice paddies zipping by on either side, the wind in your face, and God in heaven as witness.
The fun really begins when your train meets an oncoming train from the opposite direction. The right of way is determined by the train carrying the heavier load. For example, five mere humans are easily trumped by 2 humans and an iron plow (even minus the ox that pulls the plow). The train with the lighter load unloads it cargo and gets completely dismantled on the spot so the other train can pass. Off come the passengers, the mats, the flatbed, and the wheels, then all back together again for the ride to proceed. So don’t forget to factor that into your travel time if you’re on a tight schedule. But one would not want to hurry on such an exhilarating ride. It is the essence of Cambodia – resourceful, cooperative, efficient and completely surrendered to the beauty of the natural world around it.
I celebrated my birthday on our return boat ride to Siem Reap. As a Cancerian, there’s no better way to spend a birthday than on the water. No rains this time, just watching life lived on a river. For these Khmer , it’s the source of everything – food, drink, cleansing, playing, buying and selling, connection and community. I thought about the wondrous places I have spent past birthdays: at the Pyramid of Gizeh, in a grotto on a Greek island, with my family in Guyana, in the mountains in Colorado, on a near-deserted beach in Mexico. I have been most fortunate to have seen the planet from many different vantage points. And maybe because it was on my birthday, all of them were holy moments. This was no exception. Blessed be.
We joined the photographers for a 3-day excursion up-country to Battambang, Cambodia’s 2nd largest city, a French-influenced province north and west of Siem Reap. We set sail on the small ferry boat early Monday morning, July 16th. Had I read the description in the tour book, I might not have gotten on the boat so easily or eagerly. The sentence, “The boats in no way meet international safety standards” does not exactly inspire confidence.
Still there were life jackets on board, scores of similar tour boats docked two and three deep, and thousands of skiffs, pontoons and other floating craft along the river bank. In fact, these were floating villages. Families for generations have lived their lives on the river, with everything they own crammed onto a covered boat no bigger than an oversized canoe. Even the schools, restaurants and little convenience stores float..
Cambodia is a country with strong knees. The people crouch to do everything. The smaller boats are rowed and steered from the very front by a person in a kneeling /squatting position. The covered house boats seem to provide no room for standing, so cooking, washing over the side of the boat, or doing any of the daily chores of living occurs from a crouched position. They even rest by squatting low to the ground.
In the Buddhist tradition, veneration is performed with the feet always facing behind the body, never in front. The monks and nuns eat sitting on the ground, with their legs turned to the side and feet tucked beneath or beside their bodies. My 50-plus knees remember with fond longing the days of the lotus position, deep knee bends, and sitting cross-legged Indian-style on the floor for long periods of time. Now I need a chair to sit on and something to brace myself with when getting up from a kneeling position.
Our boat ride took us across the northern end of the Tonle Sap Lake, the largest fresh-water lake in Southeast Asia, and up the Sangkor River, a tributary of the Mekong in Viet Nam and Laos. But it quickly turned from a leisurely glide under hot and sunny skies into a sodden crawl after a sudden rainstorm hit. The four-man crew struggled mightily to keep the passengers dry while periodically clearing the propeller of weeds, pushing off from the now narrowed and reedy banks, and steering safely around the bends in the river (someone had to stand in the rain at the front of the boat to point). Add to this the task of preventing the jerry-rigged engine from overheating. (Repeated sopping by rags doused in river water seemed to be the preferred cooling method.) But the crew worked together like a well-oiled machine, and we were none the worse for wear when we docked 9 hours later.
The highlight of our trip to Battambang was the ride on the Bamboo Train. The word train is used euphemistically, and only in the strictest technical sense. Yes, there is a train track. But dispel all visions of train cars, doors, windows and seats from your mind.
Battambang is the coconut and rice bowl of Cambodia. Its fertile soil feeds most of the country. The Bamboo Train was first constructed by the French many decades ago to transport produce and other goods to the capital, Phnom Penh. It was actually a train then. Now it’s a unique and creative form of local travel, peasant style. The “car” is a flat bed of bamboo slats about 10’ long and 8’ wide, covered with mats for seating and powered by a motorcycle engine. It runs on small steel wheels joined by a rod that look like a weightlifter’s barbells and weigh just as much.
The one railway track stretches on for miles.
Your fellow passengers are mostly farmers, local merchants and factory workers, but motorcycles, small tractors, sacks of produce and barnyard animals are also welcome and frequent riders. After a running push by one of the train crew you’re off at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour. No roof, walls, no windows, no seats. Just you and your travelling companions with trees, streams and rice paddies zipping by on either side, the wind in your face, and God in heaven as witness.
The fun really begins when your train meets an oncoming train from the opposite direction. The right of way is determined by the train carrying the heavier load. For example, five mere humans are easily trumped by 2 humans and an iron plow (even minus the ox that pulls the plow). The train with the lighter load unloads it cargo and gets completely dismantled on the spot so the other train can pass. Off come the passengers, the mats, the flatbed, and the wheels, then all back together again for the ride to proceed. So don’t forget to factor that into your travel time if you’re on a tight schedule. But one would not want to hurry on such an exhilarating ride. It is the essence of Cambodia – resourceful, cooperative, efficient and completely surrendered to the beauty of the natural world around it.
I celebrated my birthday on our return boat ride to Siem Reap. As a Cancerian, there’s no better way to spend a birthday than on the water. No rains this time, just watching life lived on a river. For these Khmer , it’s the source of everything – food, drink, cleansing, playing, buying and selling, connection and community. I thought about the wondrous places I have spent past birthdays: at the Pyramid of Gizeh, in a grotto on a Greek island, with my family in Guyana, in the mountains in Colorado, on a near-deserted beach in Mexico. I have been most fortunate to have seen the planet from many different vantage points. And maybe because it was on my birthday, all of them were holy moments. This was no exception. Blessed be.
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