While I sit here typing this and you sit there reading this, someone, somewhere, is reaching out their hand, begging, asking for more.
An obvious statement, I know -- but you're always confronted by it here in Cambodia, and the moment it doesn't make me stop, pause, think, is the moment that I have officially become one of those robotic things that completely took over the second half of The Matrix Revolutions. (Which, incidentally, I still haven't quite figured out -- the movies, I mean. Loved the second, liked the third one, but not sure what happened. Then again, The Great Muppet Caper left me puzzled, too, as did Ocean's Twelve, so...)
It's scary. How you can get so damn used to seeing homeless people waiting outside of supermarkets, or dirty, scrawny kids hanging around convenience stores, waiting for whatever you feel like giving them. (There are a couple of western style shops called STAR MART here in Phnom Penh, where you can buy Coke and KitKats and Time and Cosmopolitan, the Australian edition, or sometimes the UK one.) You start to resent their presence; you start to resent yourself for resenting their presence. The cycle continues.
It's natural, I guess; we don't like looking at unpleasant stuff. It sticks in our craw. You ever see that movie The Beach? Leonardo DiCaprio settles down in this idyllic Thai island unspoiled by the rest of humanity and culture's crass influences. (The real island where they filmed the flick was wiped out by the tsunami, I think; turns out 'humanity' wasn't the problem, just nature.) At one point one of the characters gets really, really sick, so they put him up in a tent on the other side of the island, partly for his own safety and comfort, mostly so that they can play volleyball and lounge on the beach and make-out without being confronted by the daily unpleasantness of someone dying.
When I first watched that scene, I thought: What jerks. What losers. What unfeeling, heartless, bastards.
Then I realized that the whole movie works on a whole metaphorical level too, and if I choose to approach it from that viewpoint, then you could argue that the dying man in the tent simply represents society's invalids, and the people on the beach represent, well, us, basically, those healthy, active, living citizens who just want to enjoy our days on this planet.
Isn't that what we do, after all? We put our sick people safely in hospitals, where we don't have to deal with them. We put our old people in 'retirement homes', so they can spend their final months and years playing pinochle and watching the clock. (The hours pass by so slowly!) We see the commercials for the starving and Africa and mock Sally Struthers' hair and career and physique. It's what we do. It's how we survive.
Here, well, most people don't go to hospitals. There's no retirement homes. You can see the wretchedness on a daily basis. I'm not saying it's like Dachau or Auschwitz here; Phnom Penh is, in some respects, a thriving little town, getting bigger and better due to the spending habits of the corrupt government elite. (It's the countryside that's really getting worse and worse and worse.)
The point is, it's all mixed together. You see homeless kids every day transporting garbage around. You see the mothers and children hanging out in front of the stores, always with the same nervous smiles and wounded eyes. You see little boys and girls leading by hand blind musicians around town as they play their pipe or stroke their mandolin, hoping for spare change. Occasionally, you'll see two very old women clutching hands and slowly making their way down the road, stopping when they see someone more prosperous than them, holding out their hands, hoping, hoping for anything.
Stephen King gave a great commencement speech to Vassar College a few years back that was posted on his website for awhile. Why was it great? He didn't try and give a funny speech full of ten or fifteen humorous pieces of advice. He picked a theme (giving back) and he chose one or two ways to illustrate that theme. He asked the graduates and guests to imagine a simple image: a traditional American barbeque, the father wearing an apron saying KISS THE COOK, the mother and kids waiting at the picnic table for their burgers and hot dogs. Behind them lies a fence, and behind the fence is a group of hungry, homeless people, asking for food. They aren't hostile; they aren't angry. They just want what the rest of us have: health and security. We are the people at the table, he said, and most of the rest of the world are the people behind the fence.
He wanted to make the graduates feel guilty, I think, because when you feel guilty, you give back. (Guilt is an unfair, wonderful motivator.)
So living here you always are reminded of the people behind the fence, to swipe King's metaphor, because here there is no fence. You can taste and sample a fairly authentic
proportion of the world's misery; you have no choice but to do so, and no real barrier exists between you and them, chainlink or otherwise.
But how much do you give? How do you choose who to acknowlege, respond to, help? When do you turn around and go back to the volleyball game and leave the poor and the sick to their dying days in the tents?
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