Disintegration, Beauty, Suffering and Life

[Warning: This one gets a little dark, and includes explicit language and imagery. Please take note before reading. I'm in no place to administer an age limit; just know that I'm talking about something very painful and real. There is a happy ending, though, I promise! Don't give up...]




Everything is collapsing.

The most tragic part is the futile attempt in attempting a description, the chagrin invited by typing the first feeble, puny, frail characters, hopeless arrangements of lines and curves facing off against a ravenous force that has maliciously unraveled my grip on reality.

Imagine finding oneself on some abandoned infinite beach, and being dispatched with the task to describe each and every particle of sand that fills every the space around your body, a solid moving as a liquid en masse. It is that numbing realization that to convey the intricate individual beauty of each and every particle means giving it to you audience, letting them touch it, feel it against their cheek, the way it runs between their fingers, how its myriad particles glint when held at specific angles to the passing sun. In writing about this, or anything, I’m limited to not only a handful, but an infinitesimally small pinch of substance from this endlessly expanding landscape before my eyes, begging to be described in all its simultaneous bliss and agony. Thus is the nature of reality, a fierce, furious, beautiful rebel against the forces of encapsulation, shrugging off humanity’s miserable, sorry attempts. The world around us, reality, subjective and objective, its tangible and intangible aspects, are a flurry of details that overwhelms the senses and in even existing as part of it we are simply running our small hand through the current of a tremendous river fed by innumerable tributaries, all leading to the infinite expanding ocean of collective human awareness.

Instead of encapsulation we can only attempt to work in harmony with reality, and struggle to paint a complete and compelling picture of our experiences, visions, humilities, fears, shortcomings, and so forth.

So I will try to pick out a few pinches of sand and pass it on to you, the reader, but I do so with a warning, for what I have been struggling to express coherently is so urgent that I don’t believe any amount of revising could ever produce a satisfactory result. What I aim to delve into is an intellectual journey the likes of which I have never experienced before. Its bottomless depths, its titillating, shuddering downward spiral across the fiery red apocalyptic skies of my own consciousness with both engines ablaze and smoking, rocketing me towards the unforgiving ground, the rock bottom of perception of the material world that grows closer and closer, thousands of feet closer with every passing second, mayday call still unanswered, the death force of intellectual gravity sinisterly mocking my feeble attempts at flight and harshly reminding my tattered, petrified brain that all that goes up must, after all, come down.

It all began collapsing around me. The flame retardant walls containing the system of thought upon which I have built my overarching sense of well-being and ethical security began melting.

Cambodia is numbing, and just like the inside of your mouth which you chew to oblivion after a visit to the dentist, this numbness is alike, leaving you blissfully anesthetized as you idly gnaw away on the bloody pulp of your consciousness until the feeling returns in a flurry of pain signifying the return of brutal reality, waking you to discover the dismembered remains of your perception, that while you have been chewing away with idle pleasure reality has splintered open on all sides, and now the layers peel back, excruciatingly, one by terrible one, revealing the incalculable, endless pain and suffering, that exists or remains to be exploited within every individual.

This numbness is spawned from necessity. As you walk the streets of Siem Reap, you are assailed with innumerable offers, requests, demands, pleas. Tuk tuk drivers assault you with offers to visit countless temples, hordes of children try to sell you books while beggars and amputees cling to you with the remaining functioning limbs they have, asking for 2000 riel, one dollar, 5 baht, a coke, a bottle of water, anything to feed my baby because look, sir, here she is, crying in my arms, starving to death and its your fault if she dies, I’m so hungry sir, anything, save, feed me, PLEASE, anything, anything, anything, anything....

You become numb, broke, or insane. Most people choose the blissful emotional void, shooting up with a glorious shot of intellectual anesthetic. You can’t help everyone, so you put up your shield, helping yourself and those you have pledged to serve. The beggars become simply a backdrop, just like the crumbling brick walls of every building, the flickering signs offering massages in poorly worded English, or the swollen river that lolls lazily by the town. You ignore their advances, shrug off the pleas for money, shake your arm loose from the mother clinging on desperately with her child like a shipwrecked survivor to driftwood, parched bottle dangling loosely from the baby’s blistered lips, walk past the hordes of tuk tuk drivers sleeping in their tragically ornate chariots for lack of anywhere else to go. The offers of tuk tuks, motorbike rides, marijuana, cocaine, crack, prostitutes, they and the individuals they thoughtlessly exploit in the name of hedonistic pleasure become simply obstacles to stride over. You reduce these human beings to simple annoyances, something to be surpassed. You ignore them as they are, after all, destined to muddle in the vile scum of humanity’s boundless hedonism, reducing themselves to the lowest possible standards, transmuting their body into a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder for a paltry sum. You pass them by at the corner of every block; the legless beggar crutching himself to table after table of tourists begging for food money, the prostitute swinging down the sidewalk in her sexual swagger, 6 inches of heels and one of makeup, throwing hungry eyes at you like a starved wolf eyeing its quarry. Then the pack of mothers race up to you in a furious panic at the outskirts of town, waving their infants in your face like squirming, wailing votive offerings, the ubiquitous drained plastic bottle in hand, they’re screaming, crying out in vain in the only English word they know, please, please, please, please...

You walk on. Not everyone can be helped, and so you sleep soundly nestled in the false security of an intellectual house of mirrors, each surface rigged to distort the introspective wavelengths of thought and superimpose an unquestionable ethical superiority over the challenges outside your doors over and over again, the reflections marching into the reflections in an infinite parade of disastrous optical illusions that perpetuate unfounded reassurance.

It is an intellectual fortress constructed of sticks and twigs, a ramshackle shelter that barely protects against the eroding cosmic wind of reality. The reality laying siege to the gates need only wait until the mirrors are corrected for outright internal chaos to erupt.

This day arrives, and you wake up comfortable and unassuming. Button up your shirt, wrap the belt around scrawny waist, grab your books, kick start the old moto and you’re underway for another day of teaching.

But one day you arrive in your classroom and you see the faces, eager for learning, yet so eager because they know full well the unfathomable alternative. The realization dawns that their impeccable study habits and devotion to education is not a virtue, but a response to the alternative, the precipice of poverty, a life of difficulty, struggle and suffering, and suddenly basic geometry doesn’t seem so bad.

With this realization comes the spinning, and the faces encircle you in a hopeless blur, faster and faster until they are barely discernible, and suddenly Sophal is the child wrapped in filthy rags with an empty bottle hanging from his toothless mouth, Rithyka the armless beggar on the streets with nowhere to call home and a swollen, disfigured stomach begging for nourishment. Now their gleaming eyes yearn for learning, and they obediently recite the tedious rules of plane geometry, yet they could just as easily be reciting the latest discount for the sale of their unripe bodies They are that close, one miniscule step away from the eternal tragedy of human existence that writhes and squirms uncontrollably like some malevolent, multiplying serpent beyond the walls of the school, modern Lernaean Hydra, innumerable heads sprouting and twisting with every attempt to lop them off.

We are lulled into thinking that we have stumbled upon some happy ending, but this happy ending does not exist, it never has and never will, and as we cling to the fragile ideal of education, expecting it to rocket us to such great heights, it is in fact the harsh alternative that forces education, not the idealistic goals we aspire to. What good is an education if one’s willingness to submit oneself to the perverted desires of the common pedophile with the fattest wallet will always be worth far more?


This is it, right here, the never ending, malevolent whirlwind of human suffering and wrongdoing, compounding, growing, exponentially expanding outwards like the death throes of some perverse supernova of affliction, ejaculating its infinitely condensed mass on and on until an event horizon of torment envelops the students, the Cambodian citizens, every individual living in squalor, eternally extinguishing hope from escaping its infinitely powerful gravitational field of confinement. By sheer willpower, goodwill and luck the students were snatched up into comparative safety, yet the reality of Cambodia still besieges the gates of our school with every passing hour. With every restless thought in the minds of our older students it gains ground, forcing us further and further into a corner with no escape.


Yes, here it is, every last bit of our fucked up world, a vile, putrefying orgy of hedonism where anything is possible with the right amount of money, a place that shames our American pits of debauchery, where hookers start at $5 before the bargaining begins. A place where the wishes of a backwards, deranged 43 year old Spaniard can finally come true in the cherubic form of a 12 year girl; she submits herself to his every perverse whim and desire, every forced grunt and moan and drop of blood a necessary offering to feed starving siblings still unripe for the oldest profession, her young, boney, underdeveloped body the sacrificial lamb, offered up right along with her naivety and innocence, the only things she has ever had and now they’re gone, stolen away and devoured by the voracious appetite for destruction along with the few dollars he paid for her, gone to her pimp, for he too has many mouths to feed, and here she is, left with next to nothing, a few thousand riel, bedraggled, bleeding, corrupted. And this isn’t just a horror story to guilt you, the reader, into donating money to an obscure organization; you must imagine it, really think about this girl, a girl I know, a girl that calls me borng-bproh, brother, who looks up to me and loves me and I love her right back. We shake our heads in despair at the problems of this twisted world, and our fucked up predilection to sweep unflinching, cumbersome reality under the proverbial rug of our collective consciousness, preferring the numbing, deafening blinking lights of our TV programs that hypnotize and turn attention away from what really matters, and what really matters is how a culture that we lift up and praise and transmit to others like some malicious infective virus is capable of producing full grown men with complete knowledge of right and wrong who pay exorbitant sums to travel across the world and have terrible, painful, agonizing sex with 12 year old Cambodian girls.

And there she is, begging your tragically anesthetized consciousness for recognition, crying in a heap of skin and bones on the filthy cum stained mattress, yet he’s back for more, the insatiable satyr of infinite corruption, fucking and groaning and beating and humping and ejaculating, appeasing a ravenous hunger that burns deep and hot, tearing at the seams, melting through the prescribed societal code of ethics and exploding outwards to incinerate those around him past recognition, an unrepentant arsonist of innocence and naiveté. He’s paid his money, and damn right he’s getting his fill, so its back to the forced grunting and moaning and screaming, but its no longer convincing through the choked sobs, the thrusting and plunging and humping far too much for her malnourished body, used to jumping rope with friends instead of receiving the angry fury of his venomous engorged voracious cock. Now the satyr walks out the door, incognito in his pressed suit and tie, but he’s left something behind, the virus coursing through her tiny capillaries to every cubic inch of her body, lying dormant for now, to awaken one day and systematically tear apart her fragile tissues with the same malice, hate and unslakable thirst which so abused her aching, bloodied body, yet the most dangerous is the newfound intellectual values that this strange man’s cavorting has instilled, deadly in that they are far more contagious, the newfound willingness to stoop to any level, for although she lies beaten and abused by this strange man, she lies among her leaking, poisoned bodily fluids several thousand riel richer, and that is something after all, isn’t it?

The most crippling aspect is the petrifying realization that every single human being, not just my students, but my family, my friends, the love of my life, everyone in this sad, aching world is an infinite reservoir of pain, suffering, corruption and perversion. Innocence, purity, naivety, these now transparent qualities are delightfully pillaged in a heartbeat, the qualities we are born with and hold so dear to us. It is intrinsic to living; we are torn screaming from the womb, snipped of our lifeline and expected to understand that in taking that first choking breath of air that defines as an individual sentient organism, we submit ourselves to the horrible potentials of this world, without knowing that it extends far past the sanitized white walls of our mother's hospital room.

I am here to help avert the terrible reality that my students are hurtling towards, however the fear of this reality, just briefly considering the potential of it, is absolutely terrifying. I became useless, every day the compounding petrification sinking me deeper and deeper like a stone tossed in the ocean into sheer befuddlement, in turn bringing less and less to my students and inadvertently ushering in the reality I so feared with every inch of my form. I was panicky, terribly sleep deprived, arguably delusional, brow constantly furrowed, the severity of the endless train of thoughts tearing through my frontal lobes, accelerating towards a crippling critical velocity.


Everything had collapsed.


What jerks you out of these trances is never some grand unifying theory to the grand questions of why, but something very simple, a pure clarion call that usually goes overlooked, and when given the chance to breathe, blossoms in your mind and brings rejuvenating life to your entire being.

It started with a cloud

One of those enormous, billowing monsoon season thunderheads gathers above my head, mushrooming upwards towards the sun and blocking its rays from my tired red eyes, backlighting its wispy limbs in glorious phosphorescence. As I crane my neck upwards to fully enjoy its beauty, I accidentally swerve my moto towards the opposite lane of traffic. Sopheak’s riding behind me, and I feel his knees involuntarily tighten around my waist in fear.

“What’s wrong?” he yells against the wind.

I nod up. The lumbering dark mass continues its exponential expansion, and the road becomes perceptively darker as the sun’s rays struggle to pierce through its moist bulking mass.

We pull over to enjoy the late afternoon sunlight and stretch our legs. Its Sunday, our day of rest, and we have little to do. Sopheak suggests driving to a nearby mountain to watch the sunset. My troubled state and tired eyes could use some natural beauty, so with hopes of catching a spectacular display of nature, we decide to set off on my small moto.

A quick conference at the wood house brings Sopheap, Jon, Soda and Tear along as well, a party of six split between my and Sopheap’s motos.. Tear and Soda, the smaller of the group, hop on the back of my significantly weaker vehicle, and we’re off, with the road and the comforting sound of the 90 cc engine ferrying us off into rural, ancient Cambodia.

Dark clouds coalesce as we gather on our destination. The road empties out, becoming a long, narrow, sun speckled alley, shadowed by tall leafy trees that hang over the road, refracting the golden late afternoon light into beautiful patterns on the tired pavement kissed by my worn tires. The road leads all the way to Angkor Wat and continues onward, zooming past hordes of tourists and tuk tuk drivers. The slow, sweeping, euphoric realization embeds itself in my consciousness that we are no longer Americans or Cambodians or tourists or classifiable by any syllabic word, but six individuals, members of this beautiful surrogate family called The Global Child, on a mission together, appealing to the basic natures of our being in pursuing adventure and happiness in a mysterious, unknown destination, clutching each other close and tight, anxiously leaning forward into the wind, ushered into the unknown by the beautiful packed sound of the engine beneath us.

The road leading to the mountain we originally embarked for is closed. The setting sun and thickening clouds bring premature darkness and threaten to end our journey, yet we press on, and suddenly we are surrounded by stone sculptures thousands of years old, a long line of wide faced warriors with neatly patterned hair, occasionally missing an arm or part of their face, in a long line tugging an enormous serpent that rises up to greet us as we fly past. Now under and through the large imposing stone gate with its welcoming, ancient, heavy wooden doors and now a sanctuary, a wilderness bisected by the narrow asphalt road, serene, leafy, and peaceful. Faster and faster now on our small motos, my tiny gears reaching their limit under the weight, floating around gentle turns, and halfway through banking into a particularly deep one I suddenly feel Soda’s fingernails dig deeper into my sides, and there it is, right up ahead, Bayon Temple, a crumbling, dreamlike stone fortress, dark and looming, fantastically beautiful, radiant, and dreamlike. Lightning arcs across the inky blank sky, backlighting the ancient stone pillars in cool white luminescence. I slow the moto as we approach the next curve, wrapping us around the temple in a slow, lazy circle.

The lightning storm illuminates this ancient relic of millennia past in stunning, breathtaking clarity, and lights a path from my dire intellectual straits, beckoning me to walk along a middle path of recognition, acceptance, and understanding

Yes, the pain in this world is incomprehensible at times, but to dwell on this pain and not recognize the inherent beauty is an exercise in hopeless self-destruction. The beauty is harder to discern, however, because we are culturally unaccustomed to recognizing it in the myriad ways its presented. No one makes movies about a child jumping rope, or a volunteer visiting temples with his students. Child prostitution is a universal, recognized evil that is ubiquitously attacked for its moral transgressions with great vigor. We know that it causes pain, distress, despair, and even the citizens of this ethical netherworld realize the terrible ramifications of their perverted desires. Yet, the life’s omnipresent beauty counteracts this plunge of the ethical altimeter, tirelessly tugging it upwards. It’s terribly easy to overlook, but once we take a step back we can begin to comprehend it. We look so closely for it, in bite sized television programs, relationships, books, art, literature. The purest form of this beauty is so large, so sweeping, so overarching, that we need to take a few steps backward to see it in its entirety.

Some hours later I’m at the wood house, buried in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, which is beginning to seem horribly selfish in light of my recent musings. I often bring a book with me, in order to both pass the time and also direct some attention away from myself and see the kids interacting among themselves in a more natural environment. A small group of the younger children, all of them in my primary class, run outside where I’m seated cross legged on one of the cushioned benches. They begin jumping rope with a jumprope that threatens to unravel with every beat against the red tiled patio. The sound of the rope hitting the tile, the rhythmic dancing of its shadow under the sole tungsten floodlight illuminating the patio lulls me into a deep trance. The kids begin counting in their beautiful native language, each number following the sharp whack of the rope against the burgundy tile. Muoy, bpee, bpie, boon, prahm, prahm-muoy....My eyes glaze over and my mind begins musing over the experiences earlier that day.

Some time passes before I snap up to find Leakena has joined them. Despite being one of the youngest, she is my brightest and most diligent student, and matches her impressive intellect and drive with an endless affinity for mischief. I look on. She is wearing this stunningly beautiful solid orange dress, and in the strange limelight emitted by the single fluorescent bulb, hopping and jumping and laughing, she is incandescent, cherubic, magnificent, her boundless soul exploding outwards into the space between us, laughing and jumping and rocking back and forth, falling over the rope, chasing her friends who she loves with all of her tiny indefatigable heart, her eyes twinkling, smiling, laughing at this crazy world and her place in it, and I realize this is it, the beauty that fights back the seemingly unstoppable tide of pain and suffering, and I find hide behind my flimsy paperback to conceal the tears streaming down my face.

This girl, this little, radiant, mischievous 13 year old girl, has taught me a lesson I have carried with me since. She dragged me back to the world of the laughing and smiling, reconfirmed my role in this life, brought me back from the ethical void that I was teetering on.

This beauty is everywhere. Slow down, take a few breaths and really pay attention to the intricacies of what is happening around you, and there it is, right in front of you where you least expected. It is in the face of a chubby korean child forgetting the words to his choir’s song at the opening of a school. In Sophal’s furrowed brow as he struggles with a geometry problem. In Chamroun’s glowing pride as she shows me around her simple abode. In the caring eyes of Sopheap as he rubs my dirty feet to keep them warm while I’m shivering in bed in the throes of some mysterious illness.

We are sitting on that great, infinite beach of life, and although we can only pick up a few grains, we have a choice. In Cambodia, the grains are coarser, more painful and difficult than back home, but the grains of beauty still exist, and when we pay attention grow and blossom into alabaster pearls, small containers of infinite beauty and happiness. We just need to be observant enough to recognize them amidst this great landscape, pluck them out, cherish them and allow them to flourish into their full beauty while still acknowledging the pain and suffering of those around us.

This is it, right here, kind reader, this is life, sweet, tragic, unpredictable, beautiful life, with its pain, bliss, triumphs, tragedies, but life, unavoidable, undeniable, unspeakably beautiful life, and we must drink it all in, with our bodies, our souls, our eyes, and when its last drop falls from our bodies we can look back with satisfaction and know that we did not shy from the one reality that we ever had the possibility of knowing: sweet, horrible, entrancing, infinite, euphoric life.

Sophal

Sophal; Hero, hooligan, soccer imp, up and coming rap star, and so much more

Sophal is simply Sophal. He is the student you identify with and sympathize for, even if he never does his homework. He’s the kid who’s absolutely brilliant and makes enormous leaps of insight in every class, despite not doing said homework. And, regardless of these periodical leaps, he unfailingly flunks evaluation after evaluation for trivial reasons that drive you off the wall. After showing him the correct solution to one of his errors, he looked at me as if I were some lesser Neanderthal. “Of course I know that, teacher Robbie!” He is an enigma, sharp as a tack, endlessly inspiring you to laugh, smile, tear your hair out or shed a tear, all at a moments notice. He is Sophal.

Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve grown so close to this child is that I see a bit of myself in him. I identify with him. Its the classroom ADD, the quirkiness, the dangerous ease of underestimating him, the everyday rebellion against any and all authority (myself occasionally included), that reminds me of a much spunkier version of my younger self.

Sophal is always quick to come to my defense, both physically (despite his status as the smallest and youngest student) and socially. When my other students erupt in a communal chirping to each other in hopelessly indistinguishable Khmer, giggling and yelling back and forth, Sophal administers a quick, sharp admonishment, which, although I am not entirely sure what he’s saying, is effective at quelling the uprising.


The most shining example of Sophal’s defensive instincts arose from a peculiar aspect of my classroom.

The whiteboard I use is unique in its faults. Its smudged with myriad streaks of blue, red and black (seemingly) permanent ink, spread across in dull, hapless patterns resembling a failed attempt at designing some psychedelic tapestry, which persists no matter the potency of cleaning supplies I apply to it or the strength with which I try to erase it. This whiteboard is untamed, and laughs at my puny attempts. Cambodia being a humid environment, the bottom of the whiteboard has warped so badly that it is no longer attached to the wall, so while the very middle of it remains flush against the plaster behind it, the edges curl up several inches off the wall, making writing difficult as the board is constantly moving as you apply pressure in an attempt to write. At first, this was merely a pesky annoyance.

One day, while erasing a lesson emphasizing the intricacies of comparative and superlative adjectives, my eraser strayed towards the left edge of the board, pressing it down against the wall behind it slightly. This slight pressure startled undoubtedly the largest spider I have ever seen into jumping out from behind the board onto the wall, several inches away from my face. This thing was gnarly; full, thick, hairy abdomen, long elegant legs, pinchers, eight eyes, and fast as hell. I saw a flash of furry exoskeleton and eight legs, which was enough to engage the flight instinct (I’m a pacifist, what can I say), sending me to the other side of the room with a quick graceful leap and high pitched ungraceful shrill scream. Sophal, who seconds before was diligently writing the comparative and superlative forms of various one syllable adjectives, jumps out of his desk without a moments pause, dives into the corner of the room in a flash and begins scrambling for our hairy adversary. Fear tends to produce ignorance about the object in question; naturally I assume the spider to be capable of seriously injuring Sophal. This assumption further fueled my amazement when, several seconds later, Sophal cries out,

“Teacher Robbie! It ok! I have the spider!!”

He emerges with its abdomen pinched between thumb and forefinger, eight spindly legs firmly outstretched. I look on in wonder as he calmly places it in a plastic container, securely screws on a lid, and proceeds to show me how harmless his new friend is.

The following week, while all the other students tease me endlessly with taunts of “Spider! Spider on your shoulder!” Sophal played it cool. I trusted him as an ally against the significantly more robust Southeast Asian arthropods, and he was right by my side at every class, checking behind the board for any threats. Sure enough, last week, when a small tarantula poked out from behind the board next to my head without me seeing it, Sophal was there without a moments hesitation. This time, not only does he hunt down the spider and capture it, but effectively tames it, and for the rest of the day has his “pet” crawling over his shoulders and face while we practice identifying angles and discuss the literacy rate of South Korea. At the end of the day, he holds the spider out for me to touch, encouraging me to conquer my illogical fear.

Another memory of this child is burned into my memory, albeit an image of him in a somewhat rawer state. The end of the school day here brings a sigh of relief from both staff and students, usually ushered in by torrential downpours.

One day, as the kids play soccer in the courtyard of the wood house (Note; classes take place at the schoolhouse, the students live at the wood house, down the street), dark clouds collect overhead, and thunder begins grumbling from the distance. As I decide to partake in their game, the first few drops of rain begin falling. Within minutes, in typical Cambodian style, this has accelerated into a full monsoon, bending trees, igniting the sky with lightning and dumping rain on our cement playing court, transforming it into an ankle deep pool. The rain is falling so hard it hurts. Features become indistinguishable. Teams break down, and sounds are muffled for the falling rain. Harsh claps of thunder grow closer until the sky above dances with electricity, shedding enough light to momentarily recognize the players. Before long, it is chaos, no longer soccer, having evolved into some awful hybrid of soccer, mud wrestling and cage fighting. Half naked, scrambling, yelling, running, crawling, diving, tackling, laughing, we are closer to some degenerate pack of Mayan ball players than soccer players. Through the dense sheet of rain, I manage to see the opposing team’s goalie has white skin...Ah, that must mean its Jon...I wind up for a mighty kick, but am halted in my tracks as lightning flashes, its phosphorescence illuminating the scene before me. Sophal has climbed up on the metal gate behind Jon, and with both arms outstretched, hands gripping tight the wet metal bars, body arched upwards, dressed in nothing more than a small red speedo, lit by periodic bursts of white lighting, is screaming a primal roar over the chaotic scene of water, electricity and thunder before him, a naked brown imp declaring his unmistakable presence to the world.

Although the sight is authentically and fundamentally human, a scream demanding acknowledgement from the world before him that has often turned its back on this small child, it is undeniably hilarious; little Sophal, weighing in at 20 kilograms at most, morphed into this malevolent soccer devil screaming his mighty war cry against the quarreling barbarians below. While Jon and I roll in the water laughing, Sophal leaps down, juggles the ball around every defender and promptly scores; despite his small size, Sophal is a simply phenomenal soccer player.
Sophal loves rap, and is an incredible dancer. Smey and Sopheap refer to him as “the little monkey”, in a positive way. He is one of the most flexible, acrobatic and agile humans I’ve ever witnessed. After dinner at the wood house, I’ll tie a bandanna around his face, and we’ll dance to several hip hop songs over and over. Jon and I tend to do our white guy thing, while Sophal melts our faces. Naturally, I’ve tried to get him keen on some of the hip-hop I listen to, but after several songs, he latched onto only one and doesn’t seem to be budging.

“You, you got what I neeeeeeeeeed....”

Yes, Sophal, and now the rest of the students at TGC, absolutely dig Biz Markie. Sophal took it up at first, singing the chorus as we danced together between classes. It has gotten to the point where I have to make outlandish deals with my students towards the end of a dull lesson.

“Chamroun!! We need to study geometry now! I promise I’ll sing Biz Markie for EVERYONE after class!”

That usually quiets them down...



Sophal is one of those students who symbolizes the nature of the school and its students. You can see the light go on over his head when he understands something, recognize the spark of understanding in his eyes when we go over a new concept. Even though he makes silly mistakes, leaves answers blanks, has trouble focusing at times, drives you periodically crazy, it is his spark, love for life, ambition, strong sense of right and wrong and brilliance that keep me going at the end of a long day. He is outrageously loyal to his friends and teachers, and I know he’ll be there for the next curious spider who thought they found the perfect home behind my board. Unfailingly, he was there when I fell ill, snoring softly on my floor, periodically waking to check on me, the student transformed into a responsible caretaker watching over and caring for his sick teacher. And when I returned from my trip to the hospital, it was him at the airport, waiting patiently for my return with Jon and Smey.

Sophal is Sophal, my student and guardian, soccer imp and star dancer, but most importantly, a dear and trusted friend.

Thoughts and Reflections, What I Learned, and So Forth

I’m fortunate to have a robust immune system and a strong stomach, yet I completely underestimated the power of pathogens that Cambodia has to offer the Westerner. I had heard horror stories of the consequences of eating street food, and brushed these aside; after shaky beginnings, my stomach had stabilized by the second week, and I began devouring anything and everything that my students ate. As I rolled around in that hospital bed in my perpetual semi-conscious state, my thoughts gravitated around the array of foods I had consumed in the past week that likely have led to this. A maggot crawling through a salad at a roadside stand sticks out, along with myriad slices of sugar cane doused in (probably unsafe) water that I sucked on like penny candy throughout my classes.

But was it dysentery after all? Our resident volunteer doctor, Jumana, insists it was dengue fever, a virus spread by mosquitos, urging me to get a blood test should I continue to feel fatigued. The first wave of symptoms that hit were something else entirely, she says, than dysentery. Dysentery doesn’t cause extremely high fever, hallucinations, shivering, etc. What it evolved into later, seemed very much like dysentery, but it doesn’t all add up. Was it dengue all along? Or perhaps both, one piggybacking off the other, virus and bacteria joining forces to conquer evolutions (disputably) greatest invention? I’m not sure, but even the chance of it being dengue compelled me to buy a mosquito net and douse myself in bug spray; as many can attest, dengue gets far worse the second time around.

This sickness, whatever it was, hit me hard, physically and mentally. The first few days in the hospital are simply a blur of sleeping, waking, hobbling to the toilet, trying to eat morsels of overtly bland food, smiling weakly at nurses as they change my IV and enjoying daily visits from Dr. Malhotra. Its very difficult when a sickness saps you of everything, including mental abilities. I couldn’t pick up the book I was reading for several days, and when I had the energy to form complex thought patterns again, they were, well, dark. Being laid out on your back inevitably brings critical feelings of hopelessness, vulnerability and weakness, and although I was in very good hands and far from danger, it is a harsh reminder of my own human mortality. I have avoided serious illness and overnight hospital visits my whole life, yet now, there was something about spending days and nights in this enormous complex of the sick and ailing that reminds me that after all, I was born, and I will most certainly, one day, die.

The hospital stay was a wake up call, to employ an overused idiom. At 22, it is easy to feel smug, invulnerable, invincible against all odds, and I have adopted this sort of “fuck you,save your concerns for the weak, they don’t apply to me”, idiotic, backwards, macho mentality that eventually undid me, as it always will to those who adopt it. This humility exacerbated the feelings of mortality explained above; I wasn’t nobly struck down by some evil malevolent force. This was all my own doing. Dysentery, dengue or both, it arose from my own failures to protect myself, against either mosquitos or troublesome bacteria. As these realizations mounted, I solemnly resolved to check my ego indefinitely, lest it ever surge, spill over, and land me in the hospital, or somewhere worse, again

My comfortable, delusional bubble of security, the “oh it only happens to other people” web of utter stupidity, the elitist immunological snobbery, has all been brutally dismantled. No longer will I adopt such a cavalier attitude regarding my own health. I have lot more to do in this life, far more to create, to write, to teach, to inspire, to complete. I can’t go under just yet, or anytime soon. Being foolish enough to bring about a totally preventable death is an incredibly selfish act. The ramifications of mere illness were bad enough for my coworkers (already short staffed), students, family and loved ones. To go off into the void as a result of something I could have easily prevented by wearing insect repellent, or wearing a helmet, or any number of risk mitigating activities, would be, well, senseless and enormously selfish.

Looking back, this ailment wasn’t terribly serious. I am fortunate enough to have the means to be treated professionally; I shudder at thinking of what would’ve happened otherwise.

When I was in Siem Reap, I was in the hands of people who cared about me very deeply, yet did not have all the means to take care of me. In Bangkok, I was in the hands of professionals who don’t know me but have the proper means to cure me. Thankfully, there was only a several hour lapse between these two parties.

I was never in serious danger, I don’t believe, and am fortunate that the illness I contracted was bad enough to teach me a lesson or two, yet not so bad to knock me out indefinitely. As of this writing, exactly a week after my discharge from the hospital, I still feel weak at times, and am still having trouble eating the traditional Khmer food that my students consume at the wood house, yet feel infinitely better and stronger with every day.

There’s a somewhat cheesy saying that I’ve seen emblazoned on countless high school and university sports teams’ t-shirts: “That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” Tacky and overused, yes, but I learned a powerful lesson in humility and mortality from this ordeal that I won’t soon forget. It also revealed the enormous depth of caring possessed by the staff and students at The Global Child. The silly westerner gets sick due to his own supercharged ego, and they unquestionably come his aid, reassure him, comfort him, sleep on his floor, accompany him to the airport. All of this for someone whose cavalier attitude landed them in the hospital, where they can’t perform the job they promised to do, and which the children I’ve resolved to serve need terribly.

After I was released from the hospital, I spent several days in Bangkok gathering supplies with Note for myself and the students. I had planned on spending more time getting my strength back, yet I found myself very seriously missing the staff, the students, the volunteers, the entire establishment. I called Smey the next day, and with overflowing joy was able to tell her, I am coming home, home to Cambodia, home to my friends, and home to the family that is The Global Child.

Thoreau famously wrote, “You never gain something but that you lose something.” This goes both ways. I lost a few days, but what I gained is so tremendous and far reaching, its impossible to quantify, and will be shaping me for years to come.

Endnote: The days in the hospital after I was somewhat functional again were full of reading, thinking and talking to my Nepali neighbor. Unfortunately, a Bangkok hospital gets lonesome soon after you have the energy to realize you’re completely alone. Fortunately, I had the two most important women of my life calling me hourly to talk, reassure me, imbue confidence, and coax me to laugh once more. Also, I had a Thai friend, Note, who was at the hospital every day, bringing me food and drink, sharing stories, and educating me about the Buddhist religion. Smey unfailingly called everyday to remind me that I was missed. I made a quick post and sent out an email when I got sick, and the response in my inbox was overwhelming. Thank you, to everyone who took the time to send some positive words. They helped more than I have the talent to express.

Last but not least; I left my camera at home, but here are some photographs of one my caretakers, Ratha

Compassionate caretaker and also a black belt in karate, here Ratha is sparring with fellow secondary student, Vutha

The Humilities and Advantages of Falling Ill: In transit, Siem Reap to Bumrungrad International Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand

(Note: this is a continuation of the below story, documenting my falling ill and subsequent visit to a hospital in Thailand)

Ratha doesn’t sleep. As Sophal snores lightly on the tiled floor of my room, Ratha is tense, poised, back against the white stucco wall of my bedroom, long arms draped gracefully over kneecaps topping lanky legs, watching every shallow rise and fall of my chest with intensity. His eyes are wide, fearful, piercing through the dark of my room, eerily glowing in the moonlight filtering through my curtained windows. Twice an hour he dutifully rises, soaks the towels and shirts that cover my body, before resuming his post at the wall opposite me, watching, waiting for any sign that my condition is worsening, ready to jump into immediate action

Delirious dreams drag me from the tangible world of logic and reason and drop me into the aorta of an eerie, bustling megalopolis, yet I’m spontaneously, completely alone, walled in by a sea concrete high-rises, while hundreds of thousands of streets lead infinitely in every direction, packed to the hilt with smiling faces on motos and bikes that pass in a blur, only an infinite march of slightly upturned, knowing, mocking, cheshire cat smiles discernible amidst the mayhem. I wrestle with my quasi-nightmare, throwing sheets and pillows haphazardly around the bed, fighting this invisible force with every iota of strength pulsating in my tired being, until respite comes, jolting me awake and back to the cause and effect physical world around me.

The micro-organisms feasting happily on my intestinal lining finally wreck their full havoc; I hobble into the bathroom for my first brutal encounter with the overwhelming reality of dysentery. My body’s digestive tract has been completely decommissioned; nothing is to be absorbed for quite some time now, and as I haplessly attempt to quench my thirst, it becomes increasingly clear that the fluids which are becoming more and more critical must find another way to my cells.

Dawn creeps into my room, finding me dehydrated and delirious, my torso still on fire and my temperature still hovering at 40 degrees. Ratha’s usual gentle face has distorted into a perpetual grimace, his eyes red from lack of sleep, brow furrowed almost past the point of recognition. Before long the first rays of sun meander across my room and illuminate his tired eyes. Sopheap arrives, and we discuss my situation briefly. The international hospital in Bangkok is one of the best in the world, he says. I nod weakly. Thirty minutes later, we climb onto the back of a tuk-tuk bound for Siem Reap International Airport.

Siem Reap at dawn, seen from the back of a tuk-tuk, is stunning, and I feel slightly revived by the magnificent ride, coupled with the brisk, cool current of fresh air. We arrive at the airport, and I bid a distressing farewell to my companions. Although I know I must leave, it kills me to do so. I stumble into the airport terminal, unsure of what the next few hours of transit will bring.

The flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok is very short; between 35 and 50 minutes. Yet, one is still engaging in international travel, and must deal with the necessary hurdles. Security, immigration, customs, etc. These take time. I arrived at the Siem Reap airport at 7:30 a.m., and would not arrive to the hospital until mid-afternoon.

The Siem Reap airport was built with great expectations that have yet to prove realistic; countless rows of seats are empty, and the cavernous interior harbors only small groups of sunburnt, smiling tourists exuberantly trading stories of their southeast Asian adventures before returning to their western lives. Several of these good natured souls throw a smile or a friendly word towards me, in an attempt to raise some friendly banter between fellow travelers. Prostate on the airport floor, head rocked between my hands, red eyes trained skywards, counting the lazy rotations of the wooden fans overhead in an attempt to trick my brain into ignoring the agonizing contractions of my lower digestive tract, my response is somewhere between snarling and wheezing. As I stumble onto the plane, they all now keep their distance from this strange, diseased interloper in their midst. Every time the line of passengers stops, I collapse onto anything capable of supporting my weight, and as my eyes dance across the floor struggling for clarity and fighting a wave of unconsciousness, a circle widens as passengers inch away, fearful of this terrible and maligned ailment. The plane ride continued in this nature, a strange dance, as my neighbors edged as far away as possible in their seats, eyeing me with great suspicion and muttering among themselves of their now treacherous voyage to Bangkok in my midst.

Of course, dysentery isn’t contagious, so I didn’t feel too bad, not that I was particularly capable of these emotions at the time. By the time we landed, I hadn’t eaten a full meal in over 36 hours, and had not retained water since 5 p.m. the previous day. Imagine; your mouth feels like a bag of cotton balls and every inch of your body screams for the water in the bottle resting in your lap, yet you know you can’t touch a drop of it, lest you submit to a core rocking excursion to the toilet.

This was my internal quandary as we landed. Standing became exponentially difficult, and I leapfrogged my way through the prodigious Bangkok airport, finding an area to lie down for several minutes before being scolded in a flurry of Thai by a security guard, then walking aimlessly until nausea and weakness once more overwhelmed me. I cleared immigration due to the courtesy of a sympathetic Thai immigration officer, cleared custom with my single bag and stumbled into the first taxi I saw. Forty-five minutes later, the impressive heights of Bumrungrad International Hospital towered over me.

Finding a doctor in what is considered one of the best hospitals in the world turned out to be ironically challenging. I’m in Thailand, therefore every hospital worker is speaking English as a second language, with greatly varying degrees of proficiency. I knew I needed an IV and a bed, but I didn’t want to storm into the emergency room and be held up for hours filling out forms in some sanitized hard plastic chair. I entered the first lobby I saw, and in a very matter of fact tone, stated to the receptionist that I was quite sick and needed to see a doctor. Next to her name tag was the inevitable “Trainee” tag. She took one look at my face and sent me scurrying to a different floor, to another trainee, who sent me to a different department in a different building, and so forth. This exasperating game of hospital pong continued until finally I found a more experienced staff member, who realized something was wrong, plopped me into a wheelchair and swept me into an examination room.

Dr. Narendar Malhotra was my savior.

Dark, intelligent eyes are shadowed by the modest white turban that rests upon his head, and a thick beard garbs his chin and cheeks. He speaks softly, comforting me with a quick arabic accent as he pats my shoulder.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you admitted and intravenously hydrate you, then you’ll feel much better.”

He helps me back into my wheelchair and I am whisked away again to another distant wing of this enormous hospital, now into my room for the time being, introduced to the four walls I will know intimately, the clock with the golden hands whose slow march I will count endlessly, calculating angles between hours, minutes and seconds to pass the time as it ticks away. It is my home, and as I am helped into a delightfully soft bed, I begin immediately drifting out of consciousness. A sharp prick wakes me, followed by the unique and indescribable feeling of blood being drawn out of my body. Soon, the nurse switches the fresh vial of blood for one containing a clear substance, injecting it into the IV, down the tube leading into the leftmost vein on the top of my hand, from which it courses wonderfully throughout the rest of my body, bringing beautiful, euphoric, sublime pleasure to every cubic inch of tissue, quickening pulse, dilating pupils and erupting the custard colored walls around me in a phantasmagorical galaxy of technicolored stars. Through fading vision, I see a large bag of fluid connected to the tube, and so begins the gloriously rhythmic mechanical tap-tap-tapping of the IV as it administers dextrose, sodium and glucose dissolved in water to my body at 150 milliliters an hour. The euphoria lends way to fatigue, followed by overwhelming exhausting as my eyelids almost audibly drop over my eyeballs, sending me into blissful, dreamless, sound sleep.

The Humilities and Advantages of Falling Ill

It all started quite innocuously...

Several abbreviated bouts of dizziness, nausea and general feelings of weakness prompted little concern on my part in the days leading up to Wednesday, August 27. After all, coming from upstate New York, to Siem Reap, Cambodia, during its wet season, is a leap of quantum proportions regarding environmental conditions. When a particularly strong wave of weakness hit me, I attributed it to mild heat exhaustion, dehydration or lack of sleep; the last I expected was a potent amoebic adversary getting comfortable in my lower digestive tract, preparing for the microbiological equivalent of a house party.

Caffeine doesn’t help much against what I was battling, however. After a quick jaunt to the coffee shop, I was able to fool myself into feeling healthy enough for class, but I certainly didn’t have my students tricked. Their eyes, usually bright, laughing and playful, darken with concern, watching my every move as I laboriously pace the classroom explaining the present simple tense. They sense something is up, and as my condition worsens become increasingly distracted. By my afternoon classes, I had to sit down to get through my lessons, and writing on the board became an effort in itself. Their fear grew exponentially; Sophal stopped copying down his lesson at several different points to study my face carefully, now involuntarily bent into a perpetual grimace of discomfort.

By now, my head has begun to ache, my body is on fire and my brain has begun playing devious tricks on me. Turning my chair to the board to write out an example problem, my hand defies my brain’s orders in a peculiar rebellion I’ve never before witnessed. After several failed attempts, I manage to write the letter “4” on the board in front of me. But wait...did that really just happen? My head aches and my short term memory begins faltering like a misfiring engine; numbers, words, whole paragraphs of the book I read just an hour earlier fall out of my consciousness in a downpour that drives me out of the classroom covered in sweat. Sopheap has been begging me all day to go home and rest, leaving him with my classes. Now that this ailment has snuck into my head, I finally relent, turning over my final class to Sopheap and retreating to my apartment, assuming that a several hour rest with a powerful fan would cure what ails me....

Like my few remaining thought processes, this proved to be a delusion. My condition had slowly deteriorated over the course of the day, and I remained just barely capable of taking care of myself; as I step through the door of my apartment, my entire being takes a sharp nosedive. I close the metal grated door of my bedroom and my sense of balance no longer guides me. My next memory is inexplicably lying in bed, covers thrown haphazardly about, fighting a battle of thermal stress. My head was absolutely burning, and felt like some insidious foe was attempting to drive an iron stake through my forehead. That, or like the growing pains of some majestic artiodactyl as it pushes a rod of calcified bone up through the skin of its forehead; the intensity of the pain coupled with my mental state led me to believe that any second the ordeal would resolve itself in a horn sprouting out between my eyes. My extremities were cold, and in sharp contrast to the burning heat of my torso. Despite this heat, my body felt freezing, and as I tried in vain to cool my head off, my body erupted in a flurry of shivers that made breathing all but impossible.

My memory is sparse. I didn’t sleep, yet I dreamed in a strange, unprecedented way; I would call them mild hallucinations. It was as if my brain had been seized by some violent, malevolent, creative force that projected brutal images on the inside of my eyelids whenever they closed over my irises. My time consciousness waned, and hours passed before I realized how bad this was getting. I collapsed at 4:00; by 7:00, I was frail, constrained to my bed and thoroughly frightened. Despite the daunting array of physical symptoms, it was the mental ones that scared me the most, convincing me that some viral infection had bored itself deep into the folds of my brain. I have never been literally thrown onto my back like this before by illness, and I was, in all honesty, completely terrified and alone, without the slightest idea of how I would get out of this.

A flicker of intellect shown through my diseased form, and I reached for the cell phone on the wooden cabinet above my bed.

“Smey-getting worse. Not sure what to do. Any ideas?”

Soon after the SMS was sent, Raeksmey arrived with the TGC medical division. They marched into my room, armed with wet towels, anecdotal medications, words of comfort and enormous hearts, sitting on my bed, keeping me cool, rubbing my fingers and toes to generate warmth, and, most important of all, reassuring me. I suddenly found myself surrounded by Smey, Sopheap, Ratha, Sophal, and others who were constantly, insistently reminding me that they cared for me and everything would be just fine. Covered in moist clothing and towels, with their words of comfort resonating through my troubled mind, I felt my physical condition inevitably worsen, yet my fear dissipated. I was in good hands.

Sometime later, relatively comfortable beneath my blanket of moisture, Jumana, a fellow volunteer and doctor from Israel, came to inspect my condition. My temperature was at a steady 40 degrees, yet my fingers and toes were freezing. After describing my symptoms, she looked at me with great sympathy, and gave her prognosis. Malaria, or possibly Dengue, requiring hospitalization the next morning, unless things got worse during the night. The words of Allan and countless others come to mind.

“If you get sick enough that you need a hospital, forget Cambodia; get on a plane to Bangkok”

It grows late and my medical entourage begins dissipating. Jon arrives; as he had been working in town, he had no clue about my condition. We exchange a few words as my caretakers begin filing out. Sophal and Ratha resolve to stay with me. It is a Khmer custom, fueled by a vivid system of beliefs in the physical manifestations of countless spirits, to stay with the sick overnight and bring gifts to ward off the spirits that brought the illness. Ratha and Sophal settle on my floor, and I settle in for a long night. As Ratha covers my face in a wonderfully dampened towel, I dread the coming night, the thought of entering a Cambodian hospital at midnight, the lack of sleep and inevitable extension of my hallucinations and visions, and even the prospect of boarding a plane the next morning. Yet for now, with Ratha and Sophal watching over me, I am calm, at peace, under the watchful eyes of those who care deeply, resting in the eye of the storm. Tomorrow will come the trials, tribulations, dehydration, fatigue, exhaustion, and ultimate realizations of personal and essential human weakness, vulnerability and mortality. Tonight, I rest, surrounded by those I love.