I woke up early on the day I left Cambodia. It was the monthly cleaning in the dorm and I
had offered to help. I found myself
scrubbing the kitchen tiles at 6am – back and forth, back and forth. My students were wide awake, and playing music
while they worked. And while I scrubbed
I could not help thinking back over what I had observed while living in Cambodia
and pondering what lay in store for these young women who hoped to become doctors
and lawyers and businesswomen.
***********************
The weekend before I left Cambodia I traveled south to visit
the home of one of my students. She
lives in Kampot, one of the southern provinces near the Vietnam border. It is a province that was once famous across
Europe for its pepper, but whose plantations were decimated during the Khmer
Rouge. My student is studying to become a midwife,
but toying with switching to international relations. Her parents are bakers; they bake a thousand baguettes
a day.
We spent Chinese New Year with her family: kneeling and
lighting incense and sending up prayers in the perfumed smoke and sharing a feast
of stews and noodle dishes -- eat more, eat more -- prepared by her mother.
The New York Times
reported that in the northern forests of Rattanakiri and Mondolkiri Chinese
Companies are illegally logging teakwood and rosewood from protected
forests. Last April a leading Khmer
environmental activist was shot dead following an encounter with local police. America’s National Public Radio recently reported
how early this September a local journalist who had exposed a connection
between local military officials and the foreign companies was found chopped to
pieces in the trunk of his car.
In my final week I make a round of my favorite markets and sought
out the older women who had conversed with me as I practiced my rudimentary
Khmer.
There was the grandmother with the broad smile who sat on
used styrofoam boxes and sold me mangoes and pomelos. There was the mother who sold dried fish, who
had promised to find me a Khmer husband and had given me a curl of brilliant
red dried snake and who, on learning I was leaving, packed up some of her best
sausages from Siem Reap and refused to accept a single 1,000 riel note. There was the grandmother who sold jewelry and
who always sat me down to converse and who made me practice the Khmer words for
earring and necklace and bracelet. For her
I printed out a picture I had taken of both of us months back. I have been told by a friend that the picture
now hangs on the wall of her shop.
The BBC reported that
Khmer journalist and radio host Mam Sonando has now been imprisoned for the
third time. A longtime critic of the
ruling party Sonando’s radio program is widely considered as one of the few
strong voices for democracy. In this
most recent arrest, Sonando was charged with inciting a separatist plot in a
provincial community that protested last spring against a rubber plant company
accused of illegal land grabs. The protest led to soldiers firing into a crowd
and the death of a teenage girl. Late
this fall Sonando was tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
One night during my last week I went out for soup and BBQ
with one of my students. For the past
month-and-a-half I have been working with her on the art of public
speaking. In the middle of January she
competed in the final round of a British sponsored public speaking competition
in front of an audience of two hundred.
In the upstairs kitchen of the dorm we had practiced possible questions:
How could you address the issue of prostitution? How could you increase tourism in
Cambodia? Should women become leaders? Between
questions, we fell into discussions about the future. She is a law student with aspirations to work
in the public sector. Next year she
will study in America, having won a scholarship. Afterwards, she plans to
return home. There is much she wants to
change.
With national
elections on the horizon in July, a series of laws are being brought before
parliament. The Cambodia Daily – one of two English language newspapers – has been
covering the developments: One law would prevent parties from “insulting” each
other – effectively curbing criticism of the ruling party. Another law would prevent lawyers from
talking to the press without the approval of the Bar Association.
On the Wednesday before I left, the women at the dorm threw
me a farewell party. There was a
boom-box and a table heavy with sodas and curry and platters of peppered meat
and sliced green tomatoes.
These girls -- who are usually so studious; who wake up at
5:30 to clean and to buy groceries and to cook; who then study, attend class
and come back and continue studying -- tore up the courtyard with their dance
moves. We danced and we danced and we
danced: Gangnam style, Bollywood, Call Me Maybe, Traditional Khmer, Korean Pop.
Over the Chinese New
Year, early this February, The Cambodia Daily reported, two hundred military
and police personnel from Phnom Penh flocked to the mansion of a prominent
Senator’s wife, who lavished the armed forces with traditional red envelopes
filled with cash “gifts.” “We are military forces and we are also
assistants to her,” said one waiting officer. “We always help with whatever she
needs help with.”
In our weekly news discussions my students talked about the
case of the red envelopes. It was 9pm
and the mosquitoes were out in full force.
The girls were in pajamas, but there was no yawning. Everyone had their books open, their pens out
and were busily scratching notes. Two of
the girls presented a researched history of the senator’s wife. They highlighted her connection to a major
company in charge of land seizures taking place across the country. As the clock hands closed on 10pm, they
debated. No solutions were devised before
the girls dispersed to last-minute exam studying that stretched late into the
night.
According to the
Cambodia Daily, late one Sunday night in January a truck driver was
transporting chilies on the north side of Phnom Penh. He was stopped by two veteran policemen at an
unofficial roadblock who demanded a 2,000 Riel bribe (the equivalent of 50
cents). The truck driver refused. When he attempted to drive away, the police
threw rocks at his mirror. When the
truck driver got out to inspect the damage, the policemen shot him in the chest
before fleeing the scene. The
truck-driver’s wife and sister rushed him to a local hospital, where he
survived to tell the story to reporters.
On Valentine’s Day the girls and I drove to a park in the
center of the city where a crowd was gathering.
For weeks now we had been practicing the moves to the One Billion Rising flash mob dance – a
dance performed all across the world on the 14th to raise awareness
about violence against women. The song had been on constant repeat in the
dorm as the women danced. We were
wearing identical black shirts with our logo in red and white, on the back: a
heart composed of handprints around the Khmer word “Stop Violence.”
The Cambodia Daily
reported that last spring a 60-year-old woman was set alight by her husband
in Kampot province. Fifty percent of the
woman’s body suffered burns that day. Months
later some of the wounds are still oozing and infected. Her husband, a long time soldier was never
charged. The police said that no
complaint had been filed against the man and noted that he was ill: his hands
had been burned in the process of burning his wife.
The Phnom Penh Post published a story about the most recent attack on a tourist, which happened
over Chinese New Year: the naked body of a twenty-five-year-old French woman washed
up on the shores of the main river in Kampot.
Lacerations were found on her head and body; rape has not yet been ruled
out. The police have no suspects or
leads. I was staying barely two miles
away, in the sleepy center of town, when the murder must have taken place, but
I did not learn of it until I read the newspaper the following morning, safe in
Phnom Penh.
The night before I left, my students and I went on a boat
cruise down the muddy Tonle Sap River. We bought spiced lotus seeds and sweetened
iced teas. The sun was setting, tinting
the water orange and yellow and red and gilding the swooped roof of the Royal
Palace. We spread out along the rail,
chatting, laughing, taking silly pictures.
My students are so busy studying that rarely do they relax enough to have
an adventure: only half of them had ever been on the river before. As the sky darkened there were more pictures
and a little dancing on the top deck.
For the 40th
year in a row, the US-based Freedom House, which assesses the state of
political rights and civil liberties in countries around the world, ranked
Cambodia as “not free.” 2012 has not
been an encouraging year for the country.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch and the international Reporters
Without Borders both highlighted a decline in both political freedom and
human rights.
I left Cambodia on a Sunday.
Normally I would have said my goodbyes at the dorm and caught a tuktuk
alone, riding out through the bustle and the dust to the airport. But my students would have none of that. A dozen women insisted on accompanying me to
the airport, my own personal escort.
None have ridden an airplane and only a few had even been to the airport
before – to greet a returning aunt or uncle.
At the airport they arranged themselves on the benches. There was an hour before the check-in counter
opened and despite my assurance that they need not wait, they stayed with me. We talked and laughed and reminisced about the
Shakespeare we had performed and the puppet show we had attended. We took
pictures: group shots and funny poses.
Then it was time for me to pass through security. There was a last round of hugs, final goodbyes. I waved as they walked back towards their
motos -- to drive back into the city, back to the dorm, to studying, to classes
and to constructing their futures. I
waved until I could not see them anymore, then I hoisted my backpack onto my
shoulders and turned toward my flight.
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