May 30, 2004

Four songbirds flew free today, but that’s not really where my day began. After breakfast, we began walking toward Wat Phnom and turning down dozens of motorbike boys insisting on carrying us. We learned that the low tourist season has made it difficult for them to make a living. This morning I saw a cart carrying large chunks of ice, delivering it to various places on the street. The old man used a saw to cut off a piece of the ice and tied it with straw to carry the pieces, all so deliberately and expertly. He made a task I know must be difficult seem so easy, a Machiavellian prince. Through the streets, people played games, swept, or chatted. Shopkeepers working, children being bathed, everything happens in the streets in Phnom Penh. Things we reserve as private happen quite naturally outdoors from preparing food to doing laundry or bathing children, very different. We took a stroll through New Market and realized this wasn’t really a place for tourists, but always a place for anthropologists. Fruit vendors again, people bargaining for prime prices, and smiles. One lady in particular, the image so cheerful- she sat with her vegetables displayed, inviting people to buy her wares. She was different though, her smile was so warm and inviting, it made me smile too, I couldn’t help myself. Again, there was the beauty of Cambodia.

Once arriving at Wat Phnom, Vicky had her fortune read and we saw several vendors divining for locals. Around the wat’s entrance there were so many impoverished children, again Cambodia’s constant, but this time, the helplessness was augmented as grown men had been reduced to begging, most on crutches, missing a limb, hobbling on a prosthetic. They were probably victims of a land mine, another cruel reminder of the destructiveness of the Khmer Rouge. At the base of the wat, people could buy incense or lotus blossoms to offer in the temple, to gain merit, but more interestingly, hundreds of tiny songbirds in tiny cages. For a small price, you could free a couple. One dollar for four he said. As I rummaged for the dollar, he pulled four of these creatures out and placed them in my hands. There I was with four lives in my palms, so soft and warm, and their eyes searching wildly, for what I don’t know. And then, in an instant, with one small gesture, I raised my arms to the sky and opened my hands setting them free and they flew away, all save one, who lingered for a moment on the banister beside me, looking back this way, pausing and then taking flight. I needed that more than anyone could possibly know or comprehend.

You see, the senseless loss I witnessed yesterday and the constant are overwhelming. For every one person you help, there are still hundreds, thousands more you cannot. I was begin to feel as if my efforts were so futile, giving money to children, the disabled, the elderly, and stuffing riel into every donation box I see, but it just seemed so pointless, I felt so useless, I couldn’t do enough. This weighed on me greatly, but in a single moment, four birds flew free, four lives spared for a little bit longer. Does this make me a hero? Not hardly, but it made me appreciate life and certainly changed my perspective. Maybe it wasn’t much, but like the man with the starfish, I can see that it made a difference to that one.

Cambodia is a place you cannot come to without a heart, a soul, an uncrushable spirit. The wat itself didn’t impress me all that much and neither did the Royal Palace. I’ve realized that it’s not Cambodia’s buildings but her people that make this such a beautiful place to be. I’m going to dinner soon and my night will end with children begging, pulling at my shirt, asking for money, and my heart will break over and over again as I try to do as much as I can. But when it starts to get me down, where I feel so desperate and helpless, I must remind myself how four songbirds flew away today and put everything into perspective.