Street like a River

These days I moto-dop to work and tuk-tuk home. Traffic is worse here in the evenings than mornings, and a couple of nights riding home on a moto, I feared for life and/or limb, so now it's tuk-tuks all the way for evening rush hour...

And while tuk-tuks are safer than motos, they don't do as well on the rocky dirt roads that lead to my work. The first half mile of my journey home is like a carnival ride, as I am jostled around with each rut and rock the tuk-tuk passes over. No shock absorbers onboard. I’ll slip a disc one day getting so thrown about. But in the meantime, it gives the kids in the slums a good laugh to see the foreign lady hanging on to her tuk-tuk for dear life as she rides by, so maybe I'll just keep it up.

In addition to laughing at me, these local kids find other ways to amuse themselves. There is a game I see them play, which I have dubbed “Kick the Flip-Flop”. It involves (surprise) kicking a flip- flop back and forth on an approximately 5 x 7 foot playing field of available open space. Players number from 2 to 5, male, ages approximately 8-13. I’ve seen two versions of the game: One, cooperative, where the flip-flop is passed among all players; and the other, competitive, where goals are set up at either end of the playing field. The goals are made of, you guessed it, flip-flops. The game is played in bare feet. What strikes me about this game is that it reflects the tenacity of the human spirit. These kids have nothing. Nothing. I ride by their homes on my way to and from work and peer nosily into the dark little shacks that open directly onto the dirt road. There is no TV, no wii2, no Internet, no game boys or [insert latest gadget]. I think of the lengths some people go to in attempts to have fun. These kids wake up every day and make fun with whatever is at hand...or foot. Can’t make lemonade, as no lemons. But they’ve got shoes, and that’s a start.

Next week is a holiday in Cambodia, Pchum Ben, the festival of the dead, as I understand it. During this time, many Khmer people return home to the provinces to see family and to honour their ancestors, who they hope will send them luck, good health, and maybe even a little extra cash from the nether world. In Cambodia, when people describe going back to where they are from, they call it their “Homeland”. I heard this first from my tuk-tuk driver Kem, who often leaves town to go see his family. I’ll be trying to arrange a pick-up with him for later in the day and he’ll say no, explaining “Today I go to my Homeland." And then I won’t see him for several days, until I get a text from him letting me know he is back in Phnom Penh, ready to roll. While he is away, I imagine him in a faraway mystical place, The Homeland, high in the Cambodian hills, shrouded in jungle and mist. But in fact I think his homeland is a small, dusty, mosquito-ridden village a couple hours down the road towards Saigon.

With all these thoughts of homeland and ancestors, I am homesick this week. For the first time since I left. This started in Hong Kong, I think triggered by an unplanned (and pointless) visit to Marks and Spencers--Thought I was back in London for a crazy minute. Yikes. Then once home in Phnom Penh, I had a few days of “What am I doing here”, which I’d not experienced before. Everything felt foreign, so completely had I disconnected while away. I’m over it, happily back in my routine. A seasoned Phnom Penh veteran said this happened to him once as well, so I am not alone. However, I am left with a vague but persistent ache for New England, where I have not lived for many years, but which I seem to identify as the “home” in “homesickness”.

And therefore, I now firmly believe that for an adventure like this, a little geographical “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” treatment would not be a bad thing. Memory can hold a person back during lengthy trips away, if one keeps longing for the old in the face of the new. Take, for instance, the fact that I miss Western autumn. Viscerally. Pumpkin patches, apple picking, foliage, waning days. And family: I associate fall with kayaking with my dad. I am the farthest away from home, for the longest time I have ever been away, during a poignant season. Interestingly, I’ve met some Westerners in town who have lived here so long they seem immune to memory. They are made of sterner stuff than me.

I remind myself to embrace the new-the never-ending supply of wonderful and different-take whatever the hot and humid day brings-just kick the flop-flop. So it's a different kind of autumn for me, where instead of falling leaves, there's falling water: Rain and lots of it. This posting’s title is from Kem. Thursday, he arrived to pick me up shortly after the afternoon rains began. The street had flooded within minutes and to reach his tuk-tuk, I had to step into eight inches of rainwater. This took some self-counsel. As I contemplated the untreated water, I wondered what tropical disease it might have in store. But step in it I did, with my flip-flop shod feet. And as we roared down the road towards higher ground, Kem, clearly enjoying this, kept yelling “Street like a river!!!” while I rummaged in my backpack for a camera. In the photo above we are nearly out of it, as I’m slow on the draw, but you get a view. Water, water everywhere.