In easy transit

From the modest yet elegant Siem Reap airport I find myself in the ultra modern transit area of Seoul’s Incheon airport. I collapse into a deep sleep on one of the wide, comfortable and cushioned benches designed to give transit travellers like me a much needed bed.

My dreams relay departure scenes:  My last embrace with Ming Pow. The 45 minute journey in Phalla’s little car to the airport through the crowded streets of Siem Reap. His emotional embrace seeing me off with love and gratitude.

I wake up after a few hours . $10 dollars for a coffee and bagel and not much of a smile in return to mine.

I have four or more hours until I take off again. I am not able to digest my departure and I already miss the world that I made my own in Cambodia. I am also eager to see my loved ones at home in Wales. I can’t wait to embrace Dan, to see my cousin and Michal, talk to my family in Greece.

The coffee does not really work here. I am back at my borrowed bed opening and shutting my eyes between spells of sleep, dream and thoughts. I am in transit from one place to another in mind, body and spirit.  

Transit is a place familiar to me. This might be the reason why I don’t recognise or I am not as severely impacted by some of the symptoms of jetlag in the same way that others are. I think I spent a chunk of my life in emotional jetlag recovering from Tom’s illness, death and loss in 2007. Some of you know about this.  The others and new readers are learning that I have experienced a devastating bereavement in my life in the death of my then boyfriend, Tom Woollam. His death in 2007 was preceded by six terrible months of gradual deterioration of his health.  Tom always wanted to travel far but probably in a lot more style than this (which was always a difference between us), but in his last couple of years he was limited in his travel and was eventually not allowed to fly. So at this moment I am contemplating the ease in which I am jumping on and off planes, and moving from one country to another. I am determined to do more of this.

I am healed and unscathed. I am no longer in mental and emotional transit and have not been for the past couple of years. I am grateful for my health. I healed really fast actually probably because of love.  I love and I am loved deeply by the most wonderful man in the world for all that I am and have been through in my life. I am loved by my family, Tom’s family and my precious friends. I am blessed and happy. And I am just  lucky and grateful.  So I am not one to forget Tom, what he has meant to me and what he had gone through. I know that as spirits fly and travel across the globe, dimensions and time his must have caught a glimpse of my adventure and shared my wordly joys and emotions. And probably he has had a good chuckle too. 

So this just seems a very easy place to be and the wait is negligible.  As hours pass, I am on my way home…Safe , happy  and with good luck.

The scent of departure

riverside view

Morning traffic-quiet

Candles and ice

Nia

I have found relief somewhere between dreams, angry spells in the dark hour before dawn and the oblivion of sleep. When I wake up it’s already 930, late morning by Cambodia’s standards. A text from Koosh greets me good morning.  He offers me some down time and a nice lunch at the new Golden Temple hotel. 

The sun is painfully bright for my sore eyes. But I have released my demons again. They have departed with the night. I notice significant differences in the daily landscape that has greeted me every morning for the past fortnight. Whilst the human traffic on the roads has really picked up, there are no cars and tuk tuks as the riverside roads are blocked off. The Festival has officially started. There are the occasional bicycles and mopeds sneaking in but overall this is a pedestrian’s paradise.

There is no way that you can tell the Khmer what to do.  How do you reprimand or guide a mild mannered and seemingly obedient child? There is no easy or apparent way. There is police everywhere but mopeds sneak in behind the officers. At roundabouts where traffic is still allowed the usual thing happens: cars, mopeds, bicycles turn right instead of following the ‘correct’ flow of traffic on the left and circling the roundabout. The mopeds, which can be the only family vehicle, sometimes carry up to four. I see a moped family:  the father driving, a little boy standing holding on to his shoulders, his little sister held onto the moped securely by the mother, who nearly hangs of it at the end.

This is a walking day for me.  I am not risking getting on a bicycle in the sleepless state I am in. It would not be practical anyway.  It is the day before the big Water Festival celebration and the streets are heaving. It’s time to blend in.   There are food and artisan product stalls everywhere. The closer I get to Golden temple hotel and to the centre the busier it gets. It is just 10 am in the morning. The races are starting at 3 in the afternoon.  There are various riverside VIP platforms set up for the governors, politicians, businessmen and celebrity visitors in Siem Reap for the celebrations. There are other smaller platforms but most of the crowd is taking its place at the riverside.

I enjoy the hustle and bustle but am grateful when I arrive at the quieter hotel location.  At the hotel I sit by the poolside, first I snooze in a hammock waiting for a massage I booked. Koosh joins me for a tea. It is nice to feel his sincere compassion. I have not spent much time with Koosh but (I hope he does not mind me saying) I can see he is a sensitive and reflective person but also a survivor. I appreciate his company today.

The next hour is an experience: during my energising jasmine oil massage different parts of my head tingle as the skilled masseuse squeezes the hidden tension out from the different nooks and crannies of my body. When I walk out I feel that the hours of sleep I lacked have been handed back to me. Koosh and I enjoy lunch at the hotel restaurant balcony. I am crazy about the ginger and fish Khmer dish. Ginger is one of my favourite ingredients to cook with and this dish recipe is coming with me to nourish many friends and family.

More wandering in the streets of Siem Reap is in place as the flocks of people become denser. There is loud music of all kinds at the VIP platforms, the roadside and small side streets. There are Khmer BBQs everywhere.  The human and moped traffic has gone beyond the definition of busy. This is what congestions means. People are hanging off the bridges cheering at the oncoming racing boats.  As we catch a couple of boat races , I witness the childlike enthusiasm of the Khmer when in celebration.

I spend some time roaming on my own getting a couple of presents and books. I literally breathe in the colourful celebrations and festive noise like precious air. I can attempt to describe images , and sounds of this place , I could perhaps add a couple of  my really bad photos to accompany words but I still have not figured how to effectively describe scents and aromas. Stop and think how a scent makes a place or a person unique to you.  When in Sardinia I looked around to face landscapes that seemed so familiar to me but when I closed my eyes the disctinct aromas of the place were so uniquely Sardinian that a new memory and special place for this land was created in my heart. The same is happening today. Like an obsessed recorder of the scents of lands and places I store the ingredients of the Siem Reap concoction in a special place.

When I meet the boys (Phalla and Koosh) it is getting dark and the city has transformed into a massive fairground. The traffic and human congestion is alarming at parts. At times we don’t move for 10 minutes or more. This gives me more time to look around and spy on the place that I am about to depart from.

At one of the beautiful bridges of Pokambor avenue we pause as if in anticipation. There I meet Nia whose intelligence sparkles in her eyes. Nia chats in exceptionally good English. She is there with her mother for her festival and has just returned from a break in Vietnam. The boys are circling us excitedly as Nia is an exceptionally beautiful girl. It is quite funny to see this very human side of my two friends. As we talk, an explosion of fireworks begins from a boat in the middle of the river . It is six thirty in the afternoon, and one thirty in Greece. My grandmother’s funeral has just begun and by this strange coincidence I take the liberty to make the celebration of her life part of this year’s Water Festival in Cambodia.

Half an hour later the scent of fireworks is added to my night of departure.

The darkest moment

I wake up hot and bothered. I found out that my grandmother has died  three hours ago and I am in Cambodia.

This is my darkest moment.

I make no effort to open my eyelids. They are sealed with dried teardrops. I am angry.

I keep my eyes shut. I think about my grandmother: My hands are exactly the same shape as hers: an exact replica. Even the way I raise my left eyebrow is exactly the same. I think about her life and all she has been through.  I have talked about the crimes that nations commit against themselves and I have been challenged and troubled by accounts of history here. But my family, my grandmother, my father experienced the cruel civil war in the Greek mountains not long after Second World War. I can see my grandmother hanging from her leg, a thick rope holding her upside down beneath the walnut tree in the middle of the yard at the mountain house. Hanging desperately there for days, the rope cutting deeply into her calf and healing into her flesh; being questioned as to the whereabouts of my grand father.  I used to play on that same yard in the summers. She used to sit there, watch me and laugh whilst crochetting, ousting bad memories from my secure and happy playground. When at peace, she even sat them down to dinner around her table under the same walnut tree where they questioned her, those same people. They were family after all, that’s what civil war does to families. In the same yard she had said good bye to my ten year old father hiding behind the outdoor oven pushing him away into a forest to save his life. I hid from my brother behind that same outdoor oven when we played hide and seek. The  outdoor oven where we used baked non yeast bread and spread the butter she freshly churned on warm slices before taking a greedy bite.

I keep my eyes shut.

I see her walking down the cobbled street leading to her house, young, beautiful and proud with her long brown wavy hair (exactly like mine) falling on her shoulders: stubbornly walking away from her young husband because he is late for dinner and she was worried about him. They are young lovers and trouble has not started.

I see him handing her a bunch of field flowers telling her he’s late because he had to pick these up for her, grubbing her in his arms (the cheeky chap he was).  

I see her love, laugh, cry holding her dying newborn in her arms, whilst breastfeeding its surviving twin.

I see my father lost in the mountain forest: a boy crying alone thinking he will never see his family again. I imagine their reunion.

I see my father resting a hand on his father shoulder when all their modest fortune is gone, embezzled by a cunning relative. I see him carry  a saddle bag up the mountains , working to help the family.

I think about how he lodged with monks to go to school after disaster hit the family. Waking up at 4 every morning to chant with them, prepare their breakfast, and go to school, return to cook for them and collapse into sleep. Happy, loving and caring. Never bitter, always proud independent and empowered. No complaints, no major handouts or external assistance. 

This is the wonderful family I come from, with their humanity their faults but the strongest record of dignity , selflessness and self empowerment I have ever encountered. I am sure that there are many similar stories in Greece, here and all over the world but this is my father’s.  And I have not even started on my mother’s family tale: one of uprooting , refugees, poverty, Balkan wars and farmers battling the elements and the prejudice of their new homeland.

There are different continents, cultures, nations and historical events; but war, pain, torture, humanity, family, community, love , emotions and dignity are universal. And the knowledge and acknowledgement of your family’s roots, your countries historical contradictions and political turmoil can make you perceptive to experiences of other nations. I am not the naïve and ignorant descendent of people who have lived in luxury and comfort all their lives or who erased the past (not that I have anything against comfort, peace and indulgence. I am privileged and my child if I ever have one might be too).

I am not ignorant:  so today I am irrationally angry for the moments that I have been treated or viewed as an ignorant ‘rich’ westerner.  I don’t want to be understanding and insightful right now. I am irrationally angry at  people who have allowed themselves to be conditioned and reliant on handouts,  people that have not had the pride that my family had. Maybe it’s unfair because the conditions might have been better socially even at harsh times in Greece than they are for example here. But I told you this is my darkest moment, I will not apologise for its rawness and contradiction.

Eyes shut, on the eve of my departure, after the loss of my grandmother, I am haunted by my own demons and I am second guessing my presence here. My dad’s community did fine without anyone coming over to teach them or help them, did they not? Or maybe they did not because none of us is still there…They had no income making opportunities if they stayed at their village.

A moment of anger at myself for being here giving to people I don’t really know, helping myself grow and gather experiences has exploded and I am facing up to it.  I should be by my father, holding his hand, being his daughter, returning all the love and care that he has given me all these years. Being there for him at the moment he has lost his mother.

His voice three hours earlier was soothing. He knows my guilt, he has lived away from his parents , he does not mind . I know he does not.  And he had never felt sorry for himself or bitter at his lack of wealth when he was young. My dad sure misses me but he does not mind that I cannot be there now. But I am deep in darkness and, right now, I mind. I am angry at myself. For not being able to give love and support to my father right now.

My grandmother

On the 19th November my grandmother Vasiliki drew her last breath surrounded by her four children.On the other side of the world I was being showered with flowers and love by my students on my last teaching day in Cambodia. I cannot get back to Greece in time for her funeral...but I will honour her memory and celebrate her life here in the best way I can.

Is it a coincidence that I was telling Phalla and Koosh about her life just yesterday?

Luckily I have some credit on my Cambodian phone and manage to talk to my father and aunties. My lovely brother has sent me a message to let me know. It is late. I painfully miss my family. I weep into a deep sleep and dream of her, my lovely Nona, whose soul I will not help to usher to heaven at the beautiful ceremony planned for her on the high Greek mountain that has been her home for most of her life.

Safe passage.

Kalo taksidi Giagia.

On poverty and community empowerment

Poverty is not just defined by lack of money and security. It can be a state that people or groups of people are put in when they don’t have an opportunity to explore themselves, their potential and their future in the same manner that another group of people does.

So people can be defined as or feel poor when they don’t have the same opportunities as other groups that define themselves or they defined as privileged.  

I guess poverty is really felt and prominent when people can make comparisons with others. This can be caused by societal disparities and inherent contrast. Poverty and particularly feeling poor might be dangerous because it can prevent action,  limit creativity and innovation in communities. It can stop communities from supporting themselves, and lead them to rely on external support.

A community that can support itself and its members is empowered and is less likely to be antagonised by the ‘privileged’. And it might even be able to protect itself from the risk of and impacts of resource poverty. It may also be more succesful in creating opportunities for itself and its members. It can give its members the power and strength to avoid comparisons and dare. To take advantage of opportunities and assistance in a different manner. Assistance can come in monetary form but also importantly can be help with changing attitude. I think it is important to avoid creating dependent communities, to avoid supporting needy and ‘begging’ attitudes. In my view it is important to hand out  knowledge as well as help the cultivation of essential skills (particularly skills that can be transferred to members of communities we assist).

Poverty is hard for me to define. My parents both came from  poor but loving and happy families: I don’t attach the stigma that others do to ‘poverty’. They did suffer at times (particularly my father’s family) and for this reason they made sure that me and my brother were not deprived of basic commodities and education in life. I don’t think poverty is always synonymous with deprivation, despair and unhappiness. I want poverty that endangers the well being, health and safety of children and people eliminated. However, some of those that we would define poor seemed to have a better ‘quality of life’ in terms of family, connections and community engagement.  

The project and people I worked with are dignified and honourable. They support each other.  So the community support system is clearly effective. There were other groups of Cambodian people in  urban areas of Siem Reap who seemed to be in living in a much poorer and deprived state (facing immediate health risks and famine).

I have no conclusions or statements on poverty just thoughts to share. I have a lot to think about.

Village Schools 5: Sroh

In my first week I visited and participated in lessons at the two village schools at the Pagoda as well as the 5 schools that I have documented in separate blogs. Also on my first day here I spent time at Pok’s, Rom’s  and Sro’s schools (where I first introduced the clapping game). I am gutted that I have broken my promise and left Kun’s school out but Phalla really wants me to close my visit at Sro’s school. After all Kun’s school is too far, we are late and I promised to Sro’s children I will return. They are all waiting for me…

I am greeted with a dozen flower bunches. The students prance excitedly around me. This is the most tactile of the groups. Sroh’s warmth and humanity is reflected in their behaviour. I am  proudly watching Sroh teach:  I see all that he has learnt and puts into practice. I am amazed at my students’ capacity to learn, their thirst for knowledge and new skills. Sroh is an example of what they have all achieved in a very short time and how much they can absorb. He is a testament to their thirst for knowledge and as he stands there teaching he offiers me a glimpse of the bright future that awaits them.

We sing, we laugh, we hug… I leave…

Exit Neak Ru Lia. Until the next time.

I likes you too...

I am heartbroken as I finish my last lesson with the students. Today we start earlier but unfortunately Pok cannot make it. We play the clapping game and write down its rules. We finish our chapter and discuss what we have learnt.

Precious presents are passed to me: a couple of handmade bracelets, a photo to take with me, bananas and root vegetable, notes and hugs.  Have I committed the sin of becoming too attached? I am hoping that it is not too bad. I hold my tears in and say good bye to most of the teachers apart from Sroh who I am going to see later. The teachers have corrected their most common mistake of adding 's' to verbs and nouns when they should not. ' I likes you' , which made me giggle during the first few lessons, is replaced with ' I like you, I will miss you. We love you'.

But all I want to say is : ' I likes you too'.

I really don't know what to say anymore. This has been too short and I don't feel ready to leave the students yet. There is so much more to do and say...But  there are more people to come: this is just the beginning and somehow I know that they don't need anyone to stay. They know what they need and what to take to become stronger and independent in due course.

Phalla and the teachers at CCHA (missing Pok)