STANDING VIGIL FOR...HOW MUCH LONGER?

Every morning outside the ASIA-EUROPE bakery on Sihanouk street in Phnom Penh there are two or three almost-teenage girls who stand vigil, freshly printed copies of The Cambodia Daily gripped in their hands. Foreigners are what they are waiting for. Foreigners with money. Foreigners who may buy what they're selling. Foreigners who might, if the girls are lucky, buy them a croissant or a cookie or the always popular Coca-Cola.

These young girls don't actually go inside the cafe; they wait just at the edge, as if an invisible force shield prevented their access. There's no door to the place. It's all open air, tables and chairs facing out with a view of the hot and busy street, so you can read your paper and drink your orange juice and nibble at your almond chocolate pastry-type-thingee and, if you're so inclined, tilt your head just a little bit up and to the right to catch a glimpse of cars and motos speeding by, and of teenage Cambodians watching you eat, bite by bite.

They don't go to school, these girls, probably because their families need them to go out and make some money, damnit, and, anyway, they wouldn't be able to provide the fine educational services that the Kingdom of Cambodia so graciously provides to its people; many students have to bribe the teachers just to attend class, and you can't bribe if you got nothing to give.

So let's look at their options. They are eleven, twelve, thirteen. They come from dirt-poor families. They have no educational future. Newspapers are theirs to sell because they are young and cute and liable to trigger the guilt-complexes of foreigners -- backpackers and residents, teachers and NGO workers. Soon they will no longer be cute in that 'Cambodian Little Rascals' kind of way that breeds sympathy and handouts.

And what's left for them is...

Probably the sex trade. Possibly not. They might get a gig selling gasoline from bottles on the side of the road. (Always a viable career option for the young, smart, upwardly mobile, poverty-stricken Cambodian female.) Or, if they can somehow swindle a mobile phone, they can set up their own little booth, a bona fide business, so phoneless people like me can stop by when I need to make a call for the pricely sum of eight cents a minute.

In any event, there will come a day, probably soon, when one or two of those girls won't be in front of the bakery. No excited, almost violent cries of : "Sah! Sah! Daily? Sah!" The morning air will be crisp and cool, and the good, sweet smells of freshly baked goods will welcome me inside, and I'll wonder where those girls are.

I'll try not to wonder too much.

After all, this is Cambodia.