Sunday, April 15, 2012

Elizabeth Gilbert on Cambodia


If you're a regular reader of this blog you know that Fuad & I have just spent the past 3 days in Cambodia. While traveling abroad for the first time as an expat, I've had some realizations, but I'd like to preface this post by saying...
I don't claim to be a writer (I'll leave that to my husband). I'm just a lady who wants to share her experiences with family & friends and whoever else stumbles upon these Chronicles...I also want to document this process for myself. Next week it'll be 9 months that we've been living in Thailand and when I look back at what I wrote before leaving & upon arrival, I can see my growth...I can also see my frustrations & longings...I've also shared quite a few realizations...

Our visit to Cambodia reminded me of a passage I read about a year ago from Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Committed." This is what she has to say about Cambodia...
"And my trip to Cambodia was...How shall I put this?
Cambodia is not a day at the beach. Cambodia is not even a day at the beach if you happen to be spending a day at an actual beach there. Cambodia is hard. Everything about the place felt hard to me. The landscape is hard, beaten down to within an inch of its life. The history is hard, with genocide lingering in recent memory. The faces of the children are hard. The dogs are hard. The poverty was harder than anything I'd ever seen before. It was like the poverty of rural India, but without the verve of India. It was like the poverty of urban Brazil, but without the flash of Brazil. The was just poverty of the dusty and exhausted variety..."
She goes on to say this about her guide around Angkor Wat...
"I was keenly aware of the fact that I was in the presence of a person who had grown up during one of the most brutal spasms of violence the world has ever witnessed. No Cambodian family was left unaffected by the genocide of the 1970's. Anyone who was not tortured or executed in Cambodia during the Pol Pot years merely starved and suffered. You can safely assume, then, that any Cambodian who is forty years old today lived through an absolute inferno of a childhood. Knowing all this, I found it difficult to generate casual conversation..."
She goes on to describe an experience she had with the children begging...and if you've ever had the deeply saddening experience of a child asking you for money or to buy something so they can eat or go to school...I don't wish that on anyone. It's so hard to say no, yet I do every time. There simply isn't enough to give to every child who needs it, and there's no guarantee to what the money will actually be spent on. This time, the hardest one was a young boy of about 10 who reached his hand through the fence that surrounded the killing fields we visited...It broke my heart to walk by him...
I agree with Elizabeth Gilbert that Cambodia is a deeply scarred and sad place. Honestly, I had forgotten I had read this about Cambodia until I was there...this is a place that has left its mark on me...

1 comment:

  1. I agree wholeheartedly with the above excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert's description of Cambodia, but I must also add that many of the people I met in Cambodia, especially the children, did not strike me as "sad." Yes, their situations were devastating and truly heartbreaking... but they also had some of the biggest, warmest, most genuine smiles I have ever seen. Every day I was there I had this constant feeling of dichotomy. I witnessed the hardness that Gilbert describes... the abject poverty and remnants of one of the most contemptible (and mostly forgotten) regimes in modern history. I also saw stunningly ornate and artistic temples and some of the most beautiful landscapes in my life. I felt pity for the terror these people have faced. And admiration for how they cope and soldier on... As I have mentioned to you before: Cambodia changes you. It's difficult to return to "your old life" and impossible to forget.

    ReplyDelete