Oh the dreaded D word :( I felt gastric-y the other day while waiting for the beach kids to eat their food. Megan and I went to the beach for the weekend. We spent 2 days at a beach bungalow on Serendipity Beach. The little bungalow was on stilts on a steep hill with other stilted bungalows for friends. It was perched above the rocky beach below and overlooked the sea and distant islands. At the bottom of the hill was the resort bar and restaurant which had a deck that edged straight onto the beach. In the mornings, when it was high tide, the waves washed under the deck and it was as if you were right on the water.
Well, back to the beach kids and the D-train… The first day there, I was excited to go swimming! The beach is almost a cove sheltered by coast and other islands so the water is clear, shallow and calm. Pretty much a natural swimming pool (minus the rocks near some of the shore). But while I desired solitude in such serene beauty, Cambodia is Cambodia. What I mean by that is I cannot live and enjoy Cambodia while closing my eyes to everything else. And what is evident on the beaches are kids peddling their goods. As I lay on the beach, sure enough, the kids came. Am, Mohm, Peter, Nice, Ana, Dteuk…
My first instinct was to complain: Can’t they see I’m trying to enjoy myself? Can’t they leave me alone? I don’t want to spend money! And then there was the part of me that sighed: You can afford 20 bucks for a beach bungalow but you can’t afford even a few minutes for these kids. You are willing to spend $3 on dinner later but you can’t even spare a few dollars for them.
Oun, a 17 year old girl, drew a picture of my decadence vividly. She came up to us smiling sweetly and didn’t try to mince her words like the other, younger and much more tenacious kids. Oun didn’t try to sell us anything but just talked… about anything. Everything. Oun has 3 siblings, 6 people in her family. She is the second eldest. She has been working since she was 7 years old. For 3 years downtown and the past 7 years on the beach. Obviously, an old hand at bartering, bargaining and working hard even at her young age. She’s one of the older kids. Her sister used to work on the beach too but is now too old to work there. People only seem to buy from kids it seems. So at 17, Oun must provide for her family. Her dad makes $20 a week. Not enough. So Oun wakes up at 4am everyday, cooks breakfast and lunch for the family, goes to school from 7-11am, comes to the beach at 12 noon, and goes home at 6pm to cook for her family again. She can go to bed at 11pm. And the cycle continues the next day.
Oun stood there telling us her story, still smiling sweetly. And still, not asking us to buy anything, she says: “you are so lucky”. And I am silent for a moment. Because how can I respond to that? I got my first job at 17. She’s 17 and been working for a decade. For me, I chose to come to Cambodia to live on $200 a month. Do you get how crazy that sounds? I have been given everything in the world at my fingertips. I am so wealthy that I get to choose to be poor. She, has no choice.
“I am so blessed” I finally respond. Nothing more, nothing less than God’s blessing on my life. I certainly do not deserve what I have.
So I am learning. I still don’t know what to do when street kids come and ask me to buy their things. It drives me crazy not knowing what to do when the handicapped man comes over to me. But little by little I am understanding that doing nothing is worse than doing something wrong. According to little pamphlets and some people, we shouldn’t buy from those kids because it keeps them out of school. But good business or bad, these kids will still be on the streets and I can choose to ignore them or befriend them. So I got them some food. 4 of them to a plate. And they wolfed it down using their hands. They may not have been malnourished but those kids were hungry. And I told Mohm that I didn’t need bracelets but I would like to learn Khmer. We spent quite some time with her this weekend and hopefully I’ll see her again the following weekends.
So that’s my story of D-train. Kind of.
:)
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