august 24, 2013

One Small Step for You: A Look Into the Slumdog Children Across the World

Where did your feet take you today? Mine padded across my apartment, into my work shoes, out to the pavement and onto the subway. There was more pavement, and then a carpeted office. Maybe, if I’m lucky, they’ll later take me to a bar, a club, a movie. This mundane route is actually a revival of one I took before I left for Cambodia to volunteer. It feels different now, because before, each step I used to take I felt connected to my feet, when in reality, they never even touched the streets at all. In that sense, I was never truly grounded: never connected to the earth, never connected to anything. So, on this morning commute did my feet actually take me anywhere at all? Did they touch the world; did they really choose my path? My answer after my time abroad is no.

june 11, 2013

Isms

The Khmer people, they of the lovely almond skin complexions and river stone eyes, have a way of expression, perhaps like none other I have, or will ever, experienced. If you have a big, protruding Western nose unlike their small flat Eastern one, the will come up to you, even if you are mid-sentence with one another, and honk it. If you are heavyset, they will run after you on spindly legs in awe of you, and your reincarnation of Buddha. Women in close quarters will grab your breasts, whether big or whether small, and squeeze them, admiring the plumpness and give and take as if they are selecting dragonfruit at the market, and mutter to themselves in agreement that you shall feed your child well. This is very good, they will say, and they will beam.

june 3, 2013

Doctors Without Orders

It started, as so many things in Cambodia often do, with Angry Birds.

There I sat, under the blush of clouds that seemed to appear only because it was my day off, attempting to roast my skin to a deeper brown under the rays of the singular Southeast Asian sun, the singular rays, at least I hoped, so strong that they would penetrate my bikini-clad body even as they were fully obscured by the darkening sky.

may 21, 2013

The Killing Tree

The land is green, rolling and gentle-seeming in the way only places far from home can seem. Valleys are carved into the ground, covered in carpets of silky grass and steadfast moss. There are meandering paths on which to walk. To view the nearby rice paddies and lotus flowers, the thick orchards of exotic fruit trees, the sugaring fronds with razor edges. Tourists of all creeds wander about with audio guides affixed to their ears, stamped lanyards hanging dorkily from their necks.