***
Today, my life changed. In a small village, if you can even
call it that, outside of Siem Reap, Cambodia, I saw, or rather, experienced,
something that unfortunately very few people like me will ever allow themselves
to see. Humanity stared me in the eyes today and begged me to change, and I
think I have no choice but to listen.
After a week of touring around Thailand, we traveled to
Cambodia for a short visit to see Angkor Wat – the majestic 13th
century temple which could be considered one of the wonders of the world, if it
isn’t officially one already. But visiting the temple this morning did nothing
to my spirit compared to our ‘leisurely’ boat ride around a nearby lake. I
expected this to be one of the cheesier moments of the day, seeing as how our
vacation has been mostly planned by travel agents and local tour guides and I
tend to assume that there is an implied degree of forced touristy appeal to
some of the activities that they plan for the average visitor. But what I had
low expectations for turned out to be one of the most shocking and important
experiences of my life. We drove through Siem Reap, through the outskirts of
the city (which are mostly straw huts on dirt ground), and out to the dock of a
very small and very impoverished fishing village on the edge of the lake. The
four of us, and the many other tourists around us, hopped on our personal boat
and took a ride around the lake. The final destination was a slow and sobering
drive through a floating community of Vietnamese fishermen and their families
living out of decrepit boats. This was the slums. I have been to Colombia and I
have seen poverty, but I have never seen it like this. This will haunt and
inspire me for the rest of my life.
Each family had their own boat, which was essentially just
something that floated that they could stand on. A boat is an overstatement.
They were floating huts, like the ones we saw outside Siem Reap, but much
worse, and on water. This was a village. They had pig pens floating on water,
ducks in floating cages, “shops”, a mechanic, even a school, and all of this
was floating down a long stretch of water and flooded trees and bushes. They
lived here because apparently the fishing (and thus chance of survival) was
better here than in their hometowns in Vietnam. This was better than what
they had! A woman held her child over the edge of their home so he could
defecate into the water… the same water that another child was bathing in not
too far away, the same water that served as a gigantic floating trash can for
all of their debris – the same water that provided their food and all of their
life.
We stopped for a moment because our tour guide, a man with a
very big heart and only good intentions, wanted us to drink some champagne that
he brought especially for us so that we could enjoy our afternoon. I nearly
barfed. He pulled out his nice champagne bottles and a bottle of Taittinger
champagne which he kept in the ice cooler along with bottled water, sodas, and
a plethora of fruit for our enjoyment, and he served us each a glass. I felt my
4 course lunch creeping back up my esophagus as quickly as I felt the tears
forming in my eyes. And after a half-hearted “toast” (to what?), we spotted a
small canoe with three small children, one of whom was holding a snake around
her neck. We had not seen the worst of it yet and our touristy excitement
kicked in, so we summoned them over so that a few of us could take a picture
with the snake in exchange for a dollar. We soon learned that this was not the
first child-with-snake act we would find during our afternoon with reality, as
about four other boats with snake-children pulled up as soon as they saw us
stop for the first. We didn’t want any more snake pictures, but hearing the
heart wrenching “Madam, please, one dolla” over and over again made us
willingly give away many “one dolla’s” for the rest of the afternoon.
After the snake, I chugged my champagne in one horrible gulp
because I didn’t want to waste it nor did I want to offend the tour guide, but
I hated myself for drinking it and I wanted to spit it in everyone’s face
(everyone in my boat, that is). We proceeded through the village, floating
through as we took photos like crazy, in awe of what we were seeing, but taking
too many photos to really process where we were. It wasn’t until we stopped for
the supposed “Cat Fish and Crocodile Attraction” that reality really started to
sink in. Our tour guide thought we might enjoy seeing some local cat fish and
crocodiles, so we stopped at another floating stop, this one made specifically
for idiots like us. He eagerly called us over to look at the amazing cat fish;
it was disgusting. It was a small cat fish farm, meaning a small contained
space in the river with filthy water and so many cat fish in it that you
weren’t even sure if there was any
water in their container at all. It was a black slippery mess and it was
incredibly sad. But that seemed like paradise compared to what we saw next. We
approached the crocodile pit cautiously, not knowing what to expect, and
certainly not expecting to find a huge pit filled to the brim with crocodile
piled upon crocodile, piled upon another layer of crocodiles, covered in flies,
warts, and fighting for the dead fish floating around them. I have never seen
animals treated so horribly. They were just laying there and we weren’t sure if
they were alive or dead until one struggled from underneath another to grab a
dead fish that floated near its mouth. My sister and I stared in shock and
again, my lunch begged to come out from where it entered. And what really put
us both over the edge was another tourist, like us only EVIL, who took a long
bamboo stick lying nearby and decided to poke a group of the crocodiles to see
what they would do. She poked, and naturally the first one snapped as
crocodiles will do, but when her squeal and giggle passed, she continued to
poke and poke, making them all very angry, uncomfortable, and forcing them to
move to another part of the croc pile. My sister and I yelled at her to stop,
but she didn’t hear and continued. When
she was over it, she dropped the stick and walked away, laughing. I like to
think that everyone gets what they deserve eventually and I’d like to think
that some day she will fall in a croc pit and the crocs will poke her over and
over again, with their teeth, and it will not be pretty.
After that, and after the taxidermy baby crocodiles posed
for eternity in supremely humiliating poses (for sale, of course, to tourists
like us and that stupid lady), and after seeing what a crocodile bag really
looks like, we all crawled into our boat again, tail between our legs, and got
ready to head back. But not before being approached by more than a dozen
children in little metal containers used as boats (fit only for a small child)
begging us for money and food. We handed out some of the fruit we had, but our
boat started the engine and we were about to leave. A few children clung to the
side of our boat, begging desperately and I wasn’t sure if I should photograph
them, wave, cry, or ignore. My emotions were a wreck and I didn’t know how to
handle these children. The last one clung on, looked at me so desperately, and
begged “yum yums?” I scrambled around for some food, but I couldn’t find it in
time, and she was forced to let go of the boat and float away in our wake. I
cried in silence the rest of the way back. No more photos. Just silence. From
all of us.
Our boat pulled into the dock and I was nearly shaking. We
took our bag of fruit, our cameras, our purses, and all of our filthy excess
and stepped back onto land through what felt like a portal from dream to
reality… or reality to dream? I’m not entirely sure. As we walked back to the
car, I came across a gorgeous little girl in red pajamas and I stopped to
photograph her. As I walked away, she yelled out “one dolla!” and I had no
money and I’ve become accustomed to ignoring a lot of beggars from my many trips
to Colombia, so I continued walking, though feeling incredibly guilty. She ran
after me and I decided I had to give something, so I asked my mom if she had
anything and she didn’t, but she had fruit, and she was handing it out to the
children that had swarmed around her. I gave my little red pajama girl some
fruit and before we knew it, my sister, my mom and I were surrounded by
children with their hands out, begging for food. We were talking with them
kindly, smiling, and handing them nectarines and other local fruits that I’ve
never heard of before. But things got rowdy very quickly when a girl reached in
our bag and grabbed a ton of fruit and ran off. The others followed her lead,
and within seconds, the bag had been ripped out of our hands and they were
fighting for whatever “yum yums” they could get. We took that as a sign that
our slow and deliberate delivery of food was no longer working, so we left them
with the bag and stepped into the van to drive back to the hotel. The drive
back was the longest drive in the world. The air was thick and the lumps in our
throats were big enough to see from a mile away. Nothing can ever be the same.
Today has been tattooed onto my memory forever, and I am
happy to have it that way. I never want to forget what I saw today – only a
short glimpse into what 99% of the planet lives every day of their lives. I
felt sick taking a shower after, feeling so filthy and fortunate while so many
people, not so far away from where I sit right now, are starving, begging for food,
pooping in their drinking water, and sleeping in hammocks in the open air where
malaria and dengue fever abound. This injustice is beyond me, but I can’t go on
knowing what I know and not make a change. Health and education. Those are the
keys to release them from their slum prison. Those people are born into a world
that is not too different from the world that those crocodiles live in and
someone has to do something to make things right. Might as well be me.
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