A glimpse of another Cambodia

This morning I went to the wat to read. I’ve been reading River Town by Peter Hessler, which is about his experiences as a PCV in China, Sichuan specifically. The Peace Corps China headquarters is in Chengdu, Sichuan, where my parents grew up, and reading about his life in my parents’ home province really makes me miss it, and miss home. But that’s neither here nor there—the reason I bring it up is because Hessler mentions many times that one of his favorite activities to do as a PCV is to sit in a tea house, open up a book or a newspaper, and read. Locals stopped by from time to time to talk to him, and sometimes he’d have very meaningful conversations with them. Here, I’d feel really awkward sitting in a coffee shop all by myself because it’s usually where a lot of grown men hang out, and I’d more likely than not be the only female in there. So that’s why I ended up at the wat, a religious place of worship where one can go for some peace and quiet.

As predicted, people looked at me with curiosity and many of them stopped to talk to me. They were mostly religious old men who spend a lot of time at the wat, and one of them told me about his experience in the Khmer Rouge under the Pol Pot regime (just some light conversation). While we were talking more old men gathered around, and then some monks, and I ended up introducing myself and giving the usual spiel about how I’m going to be here for two years, I “work” in the health center, and that I come from America even though I look Korean and Japanese (their guesses. Everyone always guesses Korean or Japanese, never once have I gotten Chinese). During this conversation, two brand new looking Land Rovers with shiny Phnom Penh license plates pull into the wat, and out of one of the Land Rovers gets the fattest boy I’ve seen in Cambodia thus far. He would be fat even by American standards. Out of the other one gets a girl and her sister. Not as fat as the boy, but clearly not tiny and underweight like the village children I’m used to. The crowd that has gathered around me to talk now starts to surround the Land Rovers. Shiny displays of clear wealth will trump the token foreigner in a town any day. I’m probably not even a “real” foreigner to them anyway.

The drivers of the Land Rover get out, and I’m assuming they’re the fathers of the children who got out earlier. They are flanked by well-dressed, classy women whom I’m assuming to be the mothers of the children. They start unloading the Land Rovers, and take out basket after elaborate basket of edible treats all gift wrapped in the flamboyant Cambodian fashion. These baskets are loaded into the wat, there’s some praying, and at last everyone exits and the food baskets are passed off to the monks as offerings.

I cannot take my eyes off of these children as they prance around the wat in their new clothing and shoes to match. They look about 13 or 14, and are pale skinned and plump, a stark contrast to the children, dark-skinned and stick-thin, I’ve been surrounded with every day. Their movements are clumsy, as if they haven’t done much running around. I couldn’t help but think of my 13-year old host brother while I watched these children. That boy is so self sufficient: he hand washes his own clothing, runs errands for the family by simply hopping on the family moto, tends to the gigantic and somewhat intimidating cows our family owns, helps my host dad in the rice field, and does his fair share of cleaning—all while studying as a 8^th grade student in the morning and going to extra English classes at night. I doubt that these Land-Rover children had ever washed an article of clothing in their lives. They don’t tend to cows or work in rice fields since there isn’t room for any of it in Phnom Penh. They have their Land Rovers to chauffeur them around so there’s no need for any dangerous moto-riding in order to get errands done, if there even are errands that they need to do. These kids probably live in a completely different world than the one my host siblings have lived in their entire lives.

I start to wonder why their father has brought them here. Perhaps he grew up in this small town and has come back to do his offerings for his ancestors that have also passed away here. It is Pchum Ben, after all, a festival where the dead are remembered. Perhaps he’s here because he wants to show his children that they really do have everything, in this place that has almost nothing (my own father was a big fan of this exercise whenever we went back to China). Or, more simply, perhaps he is here because he is now successful, wealthy, and just giving back to the community. For whatever the reason, their visit was brief. It started raining, and the wealthy families with their amply-fed children piled back into their Land Rovers and drove off, leaving only clouds of dust in their wake.