Coming back to Cambodia after a short stint home in Canada last September, the first thing I noticed when walking out of Pochentong Airport in Phnom Penh was the smell. It wasn't even the heat that struck me the most, after the pleasantly cool air of an Ontario autumn, because you get used to the heat, expect the heat, almost wait for the heat to begin its long and slow process of breaking you down, second by second.
The smell, though, is so strange and potent that its presence eventually, somehow, becomes an afterthought; its unique aura is in and of itself the very reason it sinks into those beautiful and hideous natural phenomenas that we take for granted, like sunsets, or rain, or Richard Simmons' hair.
This is the smell of life, intensified: gas and dust and roads and rice and grass and sweat and motos and people screaming and laughing, dirty and alive. It hovers in the air, this smell, following you around, clinging to your memories. It is not an altogether unpleasant smell, truth be told; after a few days, it simply is, a fact of life, a reality of Cambodia. It is earthy and real.
In Canada, there is a clean and freshly milked glow to the air, for lack of a better word. The air is good. The air is alive. The air, when you are in parts of nature that are pure and unspoiled, feels and smells and tastes like whatever air is supposed to be, in all its pristine glory, the apothesis of our hopes for our future selves, healthy beings at one with the world.
In Phnom Penh, the air is the way we actually are: unkempt, indifferent, intrusive, fundamentally the opposite of what we could and should be. It stinks of people and their efforts, mechanical and natural. It lays claim to our worst-kept secrets, and reveals them, constantly, effortlessly, as the day dies down to night. As we're left in the dust.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
WHERE'S PERRY MASON WHEN YOU NEED HIM?
The Phnom Penh Post reported the other day that prison authorities here in Cambodia are in a bit of a bind, given that there aren't, in fact, any laws on the books forbidding prisoners from breaking out of prison.
Kind of a Catch-22 thing, I guess. You're put into prison for doing something bad. You're not supposed to break out of prison, but if you do, well, there's not much we can do about that, because it's not against the law.
Sorta defeats the whole point of a prison, doesn't it? Having a sort of 'revolving door' policy and all.
Just one more example of how seriously twisted the Khmer justice system is.
Where I work, a lot of the, like, really smart and important and talented people are actually working on important and relevant stuff, a lot of which has to do badgering the Cambodian government, pleading with them, cajoling them, convincing them that, yes, laws are, contrary to what you might believe or have heard, important. (I've never used the word 'cajole' or any form of it in a sentence before. I swear. I don't know what got into me. I try not to use words that sound totally strange and ridiculous in everyday conversation, but I think I just violated my own oath.)
Case in point:
A lot of the tsunami coverage has focused on the fact that (gasp) orphaned children may, in fact, be sold into the sex trade.
Guess what? It happens all the time. Every day. Every hour.
And a lot of these kids that are kidnapped or coerced into working in Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam eventually, for various reasons, find themselves trying to sneak back into their native lands any which way they can. (I also try not to use titles of Clint Eastwood movies in my writing, but I think that that last phrase was the title of a flick featuring Clint and an ape. And wasn't it a sequel, too? But I promise there'll be no 'pink cadillacs' or 'magnum force' phrases.)
You know what often happens when the authorities catch them? The kids are charged with being illegal immigrants! (As if they had any say in being, I don't know, sold.)
Back home, if you're a kid, and if you do something bad, no matter what it is, they can charge you with something. Here, there's no, I repeat no, laws for young offenders. They receive the same sentences as adults, and, not only that, they're put in the same prisons.
Scary stuff. As functional and seemingly thriving as Phnom Penh is, it's little details like that that can make you shiver, if you think about them too long, if you ponder them too much.
Lots of work remains to be done here. Lots of rules to be written up. In the meantime, lots of boys and girls wait. Crossing borders, passing through hands, travelling over unfamiliar roads to destinations they'd rather not think about, as the indifferent machinations of government continue their creaky ways.
Kind of a Catch-22 thing, I guess. You're put into prison for doing something bad. You're not supposed to break out of prison, but if you do, well, there's not much we can do about that, because it's not against the law.
Sorta defeats the whole point of a prison, doesn't it? Having a sort of 'revolving door' policy and all.
Just one more example of how seriously twisted the Khmer justice system is.
Where I work, a lot of the, like, really smart and important and talented people are actually working on important and relevant stuff, a lot of which has to do badgering the Cambodian government, pleading with them, cajoling them, convincing them that, yes, laws are, contrary to what you might believe or have heard, important. (I've never used the word 'cajole' or any form of it in a sentence before. I swear. I don't know what got into me. I try not to use words that sound totally strange and ridiculous in everyday conversation, but I think I just violated my own oath.)
Case in point:
A lot of the tsunami coverage has focused on the fact that (gasp) orphaned children may, in fact, be sold into the sex trade.
Guess what? It happens all the time. Every day. Every hour.
And a lot of these kids that are kidnapped or coerced into working in Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam eventually, for various reasons, find themselves trying to sneak back into their native lands any which way they can. (I also try not to use titles of Clint Eastwood movies in my writing, but I think that that last phrase was the title of a flick featuring Clint and an ape. And wasn't it a sequel, too? But I promise there'll be no 'pink cadillacs' or 'magnum force' phrases.)
You know what often happens when the authorities catch them? The kids are charged with being illegal immigrants! (As if they had any say in being, I don't know, sold.)
Back home, if you're a kid, and if you do something bad, no matter what it is, they can charge you with something. Here, there's no, I repeat no, laws for young offenders. They receive the same sentences as adults, and, not only that, they're put in the same prisons.
Scary stuff. As functional and seemingly thriving as Phnom Penh is, it's little details like that that can make you shiver, if you think about them too long, if you ponder them too much.
Lots of work remains to be done here. Lots of rules to be written up. In the meantime, lots of boys and girls wait. Crossing borders, passing through hands, travelling over unfamiliar roads to destinations they'd rather not think about, as the indifferent machinations of government continue their creaky ways.
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