(I wrote this on, and immediately following, the bus trip I took from
Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.)
The Mekong Express Limosine Bus ambles down a worn, rocky road
southward toward the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. I am listening
to David Lanz on my iPhone, typing on my Lenovo netbook, chewing a
granola bar. After I finish typing, I return to my copy of "The
Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. I am wearing a polyester shirt
from the Harvard Coop, old shorts from Target, a Swiss Military Hanowa
watch. One hundred dollars rests in my wallet.
A family is riding with me in the back. The father is reading the
Phnom Penh Post, an English paper in the format of a large black and
white magazine. Sometimes he mouths the words; perhaps reading
English does not come easily to him. To his right, next to me, his
seven year old son is asleep, his stomach full of the fried crickets
his mother bought for him on the street market during our last rest
stop. Fried crickets are a Cambodian delicacy, the father tells me,
smiling. (The crickets are collected by securing a blue bug light to
a pole, tying a bag under the pole, and leaving the entire contraption
in the ground overnight. Dozens of blue lights illuminate Cambodian
roads at night. The crickets are then collected from the bags and
fried whole -- head, appendages, body.) A young, trendy-dressed girl
sitting to his left cringes as she sees him put a cricket in his
mouth. Crunchy!
The trendy girl is a sight. She is wearing Gucci glasses, has
straight brown-colored Asian hair. (Our guide near Seam Reap told us
that brown highlights are popular in Asia; even little kids in the
poor floating community I visited earlier dye their hair to make it
look like white people's. Another popular change is calve reduction.)
Her phone is white, slim, stylish. Her orange shirt complements her
hair and her tight brown pants with chaotically-strewn streaks of
white. Her shoes are open-toed in the front, closed, leathery and
high up in the back. This entire attire would cost hundreds of
dollars in the States, perhaps more -- and people would pay it. But
east Asia, knockoff HQ, is swimming in brand-name product that did not
pass factory quality control, or passed QC and made it to the street
vendors due to factory overproduction or theft.
What an unfathomable generational divide separates the two passengers
sitting next to each other on this bus! Years back, as the last
American helicopters were lifting off from the American embassy in
Hanoi, the Cambodian communist resistance was entering Phnom Penh and,
in one of the largest social experiments the world has ever seen,
marched the entire population of the capital into the fields in an
attempt to create an egalitarian socialist community. Religion,
class, elites, status, party were all eliminated -- as where the
people. A quarter of the Cambodian population was slaughtered.
Perhaps this dad's father was there, like many fathers of his
generation -- the reason so few 50, 60, and 70 year old men are found
in Cambodia. Perhaps his father wore glasses or had other apparent
markings of intelligence; if so, he would have been marched to one of
the 350 killing fields. If he lived in a village outside the
capital, he may have survived; Pol Pot's reach extended there slowly
and controlled it briefly. If the father had a simpler life, he may
not have been marked for the killing fields. In either case, his
impact on the upbringing of his son - the man who sits next to me -
was so different from the impact that the father on this bus has on
the child curled up snoozing next to me.
And what contrast the trendy girl presents! So geographically
proximate to, and yet so far removed from, the poverty of the floating
villages that hug the Tonle Sap river. So generationally proximate,
and yet so indifferent to, the near-extermination of her people some
30 years ago. Her clothes, probably bought at 5-10% of their American
price in Cambodian markets, announce, perhaps form, her identity.
Nobody on the bus is dressed like her. The tourists on this bus may
dress with her level of style in New York or London; here, they donned
trekking backpacks and North Face garb.
The trendy girl and the family interact very little. The girl is lost
in the music coming from her music player, perhaps a knockoff iPod.
The father is reading the paper; the mother is fretting about the son,
straightening him each time he threatens to fall off the seat in his
slumber.
I wonder about their son. He sleeps now, his stomach full of bottled
water, crickets, and peanuts. I wonder if he will become a man who
forgets and is forgotten by the communist revolution of the Khmer
Rouge. What will it mean to him when he is 30 years old that his
grandfather's generation was nearly wiped? How will he connect the
now-ruling People's Party in Cambodia to the Pol Pot regime, to the
failed experiment of forced eradication of class? Will he value
intelligence? Books? Democracy?
In Phnom, my hostel buddies and I sip beers at a pub. A young girl
approaches with a cart of books. Can you read, my friend asks. Just
the titles. What about in Khmer? Sort of. Would you like to learn
to read English? Yes! Buy my book, send me to school! This is a
well-rehearsed phrase we've heard from several kids in Cambodia. A
friend buys Chandler's history of Cambodia. The money, the girl says,
will go to her mother. The profit she makes will go toward more
books, toward food for the family. Little will be left -- too little
for schooling. But perhaps not. Perhaps the girl will take interest
in her wares and learn to read them, rather than taking interest in
the knockoff Gucci and DG clothes in the markets. Perhaps the father
on this bus, mouthing English words in the Cambodian newspaper, will
read the paper to his son, teach him to read, send him to one of the
international schools here. Perhaps together they can help undo the
systematic elimination of intelligence that occurred in Cambodia just
three decades ago. I have hope.
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