Mulloskeys Adventures Abroad

It’s taken me a long time to try to absorb the things that these eyes have seen. Even after two months of reflections during which Sean so diligently wrote about our travels in Cambodia, I’m still not sure that I can find the words. Cambodia in general had a very profound impact on me, Phnom Penh had an even more poignant staggering effect.

Truthfully, I’ve never really been to a place so completely full of contradictions. The city is full of life – vibrant, electrifying, and animated. There is a permanent buzz to the streets and the city appears to never sleep. Impromptu markets seem to spring up on every corner and the complete and utter lack of rules create a truly surreal feel for anyone who has led a carefully controlled life in the West. Anything goes. There are rich colours everywhere you look such that you cannot help being in a permanent state of distraction – eyes flitting from side to side in a hopeless effort not to miss anything. Monks in eye-popping saffron robes. Tropical flowers and lush foliage growing even from pavement cracks and sewers where no living thing should dwell. Swollen mangoes, papayas and dragon fruit heavy with juices and overripe. Gargantuan and ostentatious royal palaces next to the worst poverty these eyes have ever seen. Smells abound. Lemongrass, cilantro, fresh baguettes pulled steaming from ovens, tamarind and curry… The eyes struggle to absorb the contrast. Stunning but dilapidated buildings that look like they’ve been somehow magically transported from a small town on the French Riviera… next to shrunken alleys crammed with bike traffic, stray dogs, street vendors… the likes of which you only really find in southeast Asia. Perhaps most striking are the sounds. Monks chanting in low hypnotic tones, peddlers and vendors hawking their wares, waters of the mighty Mekong lapping gently on the pier. Old and new live in a kind of symbiotic if not awkward and disjointed marriage of unlikely bedfellows. Case in point. Monk on motorcycle.

The city itself is broken. Buildings that have been ravaged by shells and bullets have remained scarred. Whether no one has cared to repair them, no one was able or they were left there intentionally as a reminder is unclear. The city is dense. Concentrated in a relatively small geographic area. A 15 minute drive in most directions leads one back to the endless expanse of green rice paddies that cover almost the entire country not claimed by jungle. Cows wander on roads, roads aren’t paved and one sees exactly how the majority of the population lives.

Here are some pictures on the road from downtown to the outskirts of the city where the Killing Fields were. The buildings in these pictures are elementay and high schools. Suspiciously few children are about.

The portrait of sensory perception I spoke of earlier is only half the story. There are other smells. Rotting garbage. Stagant water. Mold. And the overpowering stench of urine and feces. Huge piles of garbage sit mountain-like in the middle of the street as though they were just another car parked there for the afternoon. They sit there until someone decides to collect them and in a country where there is so little for so many, garbage collection is not a top priority. Most disturbing of all is the children sifting through the rubbish hoping to find something they can sell, or worse, eat. This scavenging operation, though horrible in its own right, is made far more horrific by the stray dogs bearing their teeth, growling, preparing to fight with the children over food found in this heap of decay and putrefaction. When you try to talk to them, to lead them away, to bring them to somewhere where you can buy them food…. many of them just look at you with blank eyes that say ‘yeah. right. and where will you be tomorrow lady?’. They’re right. Where was I the next day? Safe and well-fed on my flight back to my nice apartment… I felt despicable, disturbed, helpless despite my many efforts to make any real or lasting contribution to their lives. What’s one hot meal in a year filled with hunger?

Many of the kids have clued into the fact that tourists hang out on the riverside quay. Some sell guidebooks or jewelry. Some just stand there. Too tired to even extend the palm in askance. Most disturbing of all is the number of 5-7 year olds acting as parents. Too small children holding younger siblings too small or too young to walk on their own. Parents unseen. You give all you can. At restaurants you order too much and take the leftovers to the streets. You try to buy souvenirs from kids. Then you hear unimaginable tales of scams where adults essentially rent kids out from their parents and use them to wander the streets into the night in the hopes that people are more likely to give to kids than to an adult. As if an adult living in squalor is any less appalling. Still worse is that by giving money to the kids that are working for adults, you’re keeping them out of school. They miss out on a day of education and state-provided lunch so wander the streets and are taught a life lesson that keeps this cycle of poverty spiraling out of control.

For those with houses, the level of accommodation varies greatly. There are the nouveau riche of the suburban areas. They are few and far between. The rest live in neglected ramshackle old ruins on stilts perched precariously over old dead waters.

On the way to the Killing Fields we see bus-loads of factory workers standing in the backs of flatbeds on the way to work. The majority of the workers appear to be under the age of 20. Children under 10 are left to man small shops or stalls while their parents go to work.

We stop at ‘gas stations’ operated by 8 year olds. Nervously pouring gas out of old Pepsi bottles into the gas tank, rubbing the drippings on their clothes. One only hopes their parents aren’t smokers.

And yet. Somehow. As always. Life finds a way to continue on. Please don’t mistake me. These people live as valuable and worthwhile an existence as I do. They just expend so much extra energy on getting things that come so very easily to me. I’m grateful for the experience. If only to remind me everyday of not only how lucky I am but how large a responsibility we all bear for the goings on in this world. Phnom Penh. City of contradictions.