It's mid-Sunday afternoon in Phnom Penh and it's hot outside. I was supposed to go biking to see some temples outside PP with Tim this morning, but planning ahead is utterly ridiculous here and alas, I spent last night running back and forth between the bathroom and my bed. Cambodia strikes again. "It's good for cleansing your body," Tim says. Well, when you put it that way...
This morning was spent in Micaela's "Cave", on her white couch, watching a movie with Fitria and Tim who were keeping me company.
Micaela's nice apartment on the Tonle river front serves as a cool refuge from the outside world. It's good to have friends that can take care of you when all you want to do is go home. At noon we peeled ourselves off the couch and Fitria and I joined another neighbor for some lunch. Little did I know we were in for a 2 1/2 hour meal.
While I hate getting sick and giving in to the negatives of living in the developing world, I love the people I come across. Yesterday I met a young American couple that had just quit their jobs and had been traveling for 9 months in Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia on their wedding money, and today here we were... An Indonesian law intern, a Malaysian-Australian chemist, and a Mexican-American kid (me) eating Vietnamese in Cambodia. When you dig into other people's lives, getting past the where they are from, how long they are here for, what they think of Cambodia, you discover another part of the world in a way. Based on where they grew up, where they went to school, and how they came to be in a certain place, you are suddenly handed a chance to look at the world a different way. In an illogical world, in an illogical place, certain things suddenly make sense, like why electric companies have to create shorter contracts upon the request of the Cambodian government in order to lease a 15x15 m. plot of land to put up a tower (the answer: the Cambodian government can't be bothered to read long paragraphs in English that can't be translated into Khmer), or why the tribunal court has been wrought by allegations of kick-backs when it is perfectly normal in Cambodia to pay for your judicial seat. A 5 second snapshot of traffic in Phnom Penh would be enough for 5 lawsuits in the U.S. No helmets? Babies driving? 4 people on the back of a moto? Their simply wouldn't be another way here, at least now.
This linear thinking- this thinking of "this is the way things are done in Cambodia" of course, presents problems for those who want to think otherwise. Those people are generally expats, or Cambodians who have studied abroad. To challenge the norm doesn't always have to be political. It can be done with the subtlest of changes. What if today I ask a street kid selling books what his name is and his age? What if I suddenly take interest in him as a person, not as a vendor or beggar? Maybe I get a smile in return now and then, and a blush of youth comes back to his face for a short moment. It's a good start, but it is not enough. Sitting in nice restaurants complaining about the problems we run into with a new culture certainly isn't a solution, but when I meet people that are passionate about living with those problems my mind is awakened by the little things I can do by not accepting norms. I certainly didn't come here to change Cambodia or any person. If anything, I came here to change myself and become more of who I am.
There is a good paragraph in Shantaram that sort of sums this up:
"There is a kind of luck that's not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment."
I'm working on the giving of myself... I guess I'll know when I'll have reached that golden moment.
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