Arms in the air. Toph

One of my most persistent memories is of the traffic in Phnom Penh, motos everywhere weaving in and out, each of them honking at every intersection, two to five people on each, helmets a rarity. In amongst them, every few days, there would be one with the passenger holding his arm in the air. Holding an IV bottle. Sometimes the bottle was wrapped in a black plastic bag, perhaps intending to offering protection from the sun, but in fact absorbing its heat, internalizing it. Welcome to outpatient care in Cambodia.

This is my image for the country: balanced precariously, dodging obstacles, sustained somehow despite reason, safety, and common sense. Business as usual, despite external circumstances, despite personal hardship.

Cambodia has endured so much in my lifetime—unprovoked American bombing, genocide, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, exploitative foreign investment… It’s a continual cycle, and the fact that the country persists at all is in many ways amazing. And behind it all is a culture that once created an empire that lasted five centuries, which built massive stone monuments with beautiful carvings that continue to stand, even though they were built without mortar, just stacked, liable to collapse at any moment. There’s another image of the country.

We’ve told lots of stories on this blog, but we haven’t told them all. Some are private, deep feelings that struggle to find words. Some are painful, with memories that clench our chests and make it hard to breathe until we choose to think about something else. Some are confidential, left unmentioned for issues of security. Some are sublimely ridiculous in their beauty, such as the SWAT-team efficiency of our stealth leapfrogging Presbyterians snapping photographs of pedophiles. Each of us have brought different perspectives to the stories we have told, and we have each been selective. In many of my posts, I have wanted to see hope in Svay Pak: but is this really saying something about the village, or does it just say something about me?

I know what stories I am omitting. I haven’t written about Room 8, and I’m not going to. It hurts, and it’ll be inadequate. So I always found something else to write about, and on the days I didn’t, well, I just didn’t post. But Room 8 stays with me, even though its walls have come down. I feel the hollowness inside me whenever I think of it, and I don’t feel better because it is gone. That story is just for me, I’m afraid.

Returning to life in Vancouver doesn’t involve forgetting, but it means we need to carve out a space for the thoughts we’ve had. “Did you have fun?” I am asked. “Was it a good trip?” Well, let’s see. I began to re-evaluate everything about my life and the world, and this process will likely continue. I’ve begun to realize more about human evil than I had ever allowed myself to think about before, and feel disgusted and ashamed, vicariously assuming responsibility for others. I hope to God that I emerge somehow a better person, truer to who I want to be. “Yes, fun. Very good, thanks.”

There are stories I am omitting.

The trip is over, but this isn’t an ending. Rahab’s house is beginning a new identity, and we will never know the details of what happens in the building. All we know is that we were able to make it a place that would better serve the rescued girls who offer community outreach there twice a week, better serve those who teach there, who offer medical help, who offer themselves, week after week, to improve Svay Pak. And we, who were there just briefly, who were balanced precariously, despite reason and common sense, are now holding our stories above our heads, wrapped in plastic, and letting them feed us, and give us life.