Team Canada loses 4-1 -- Toph

The past few days have been tough, in part because we have not been at Svay Pak. Svay Pak is grotesque, but it is now familiar and there we have purpose. Away from there, I have been struggling with what to do, and how time gets spent.

Our time has been full, though. On Friday, we visited New Song, which houses girls rescued from prostitution, including those who had worked in Svay Pak. Saturday morning we visited a Killing Fields memorial, and see a monument to the skulls of the victims, stacked according to gender and approximate age; all levels of society had been wiped out at that time. Our lunches are at restaurants where the proceeds go to educational programs and rescued girls and their families; ethical dining comes with filter-press coffee. Saturday night, we as a team are invited into a Cambodian home, that of a worker for the Ratanak Foundation. All of these are rich experiences, one after another falling on us like the rain which begins to fall daily now at 4:10, give or take. Today, to cap it off, we were able to visit the Place of Rescue, which houses families with AIDS, orphans (some of whom are HIV positive), and even orphaned grandmas, whose families were killed under the Pol Pot regime.

It is a beautiful place in the countryside, with thatched houses and shared living, supporting orphans and widows, the ill and the destitute. Everyone of us is overwhelmed by the joy in the place.

While we are being shown the grounds, the tuktuk drivers (the same ones we hired for the day yesterday) have talked themselves into a volleyball game with the older boys. When the volleyball ends and soccer begins, I am invited to play, by a boy I have not seen before. He, like most, is barefoot. The soccer begins, and I get to play. They are all strong players, running around. They shout to each other “eye-mope”, “eye-mope”, which may be a corruption of “I’m open.” I try saying it and they laugh at me; so I say it again. I get only one or two good tackles (how hard do you check an AIDS orphan? I ask myself), and, thanks to my eager assistance, our team loses 4-1. One of the tuktuk drivers seems mildly disappointed with me. He is 29, though he looks a lot older, and so was born during Pol Pot's rule. The football was fun, but the whole time I was aware that this was one of thsoe things I would only ever be doing once in my life – soccer with Cambodian orphans – and that I was so privileged to be part of it.

The rest of the time there (perhaps an hour), my hand is monopolized by a girl, perhaps 4, who walks with me. When she is in pictures, she makes funny faces. She gets me to bounce her along as we walk to the chicken coop, as if she were in low gravity. She proves herself a mimic and a clown, and I am told that she was once living on the streets, without parents, before she was taken in as an orphan (first with someone with three other kids, and then, all four, with Place of Rescue). I have no idea what her future will bring her. I do know that she, like so many of the kids today, showed us the sort of place where joy and love can coexist amidst unimaginably dire circumstances. It is exactly the sort of place that Rahab’s House hopes to be.

This weekend has given us a renewed strength as we begin the second, longer, week of work in Svay Pak. The walls of the building are gone, and now are flooring for the fronts of many buildings along that dirt road. Concrete is poured, filling the holes in the floor, and the painting has begun. Now come small jobs, dirty jobs, more cleaning, more painting, and things we can only begin to imagine at this point.

I can’t wait.