His Cambodian Smile

 

His Cambodian smile

His smile is more animated at night, caught in a flickering firelight he tells ever more tales of old, stories of his life and of his dreams and you cannot help but fall in love with his country, his life and his dreams. To him, Cambodia is a land fighting still- fighting an heroic battle to get back on its feet and he is at its heart.

We were exhausted. Two days feverish excitement, flights, delays, more flights, immigration and then ancient Siem Reap’s whistle-stop tours of picture perfect temples; we were exhausted. Then we drove to Camp Beng Meala. Suddenly, we are thrown back into jungle; memories of previous tours still hauntingly close. We stow our equipment, douse ourselves in Deet and generally refortify. The cicadas, ever present, chirrup their defiance. We are warned not to stray from the path, our guide warns us; this area has yet to be cleared.

Han, the guide, beams as he paints with his words and smile, the people that live here. He is walking us though the village. At one farm, he confides to us how lucky he was to be able to gift them some hens and ducks. They now have a small but sustainable income in their garden. “It is just her, alone with five children,” he tells us. Wherever he walks he is greeted with whoops and high-fives. No one passes Han without a hug or a hello. In the village centre, two young women whisper conspiratorially, he leans across to me, mimicking them whispering that the one on the left is a “lady boy”. SHe throws back her head and laughs with abandonment. Han loves and is loved by all.

An old monk calls him over to consult on some matter. As the monk turns, shifting his orange robes, across his back I see ripple a large tattooed panther. Cambodia is a country of contrasts.

As we wind our way back to camp, Han stops at a huge rock; someone asks him about it- how did it get there? This great slab of granite so out of place. He does not know. But the inner child is grabbing at him and, urging us all to join him, he scrambles to the top and there he squats and surveys his village. His people. The rock is warm. The sun has worked on it all day. In the distance we can hear the radio playing out across the village, monks are chanting, insects singing. All is calm.

Behind us we hear scrambling as an older lady climbs the rock. We are in her garden. She carries a plate filled with freshly picked bananas, small, sweet, delicious. She welcomes us all and echoes Han’s famous Cambodian smile. And the sun blushes in the sky.

The next morning, we are prepped as we head out to the local school. This is what we came here for; we have some rebuilding work to do- teacher housing and a water tower. What we are not ready for is the pit in the middle of the school grounds; Two bamboo poles rigged together in a makeshift ladder leading down to the pea green pool. This is where we are collect water for the cement. Han smiles as he tells us this is also where the children scramble up and down at breaks to drink. This is, after all, what they have. Suddenly the water tower is not just a project: we are changing maybe even saving lives.

The work is hard, the land, bare- but not barren. Ferns shrivel at our passing, in true Cambodian spirit what looks dead later re-unfolds green and filled with life. A scorpion hides in a brick pile, only to skitter out across my friend’s hand, she flicks it aside, irritated. Before she can consider what it was, it disappears back into the landscape.

Two days working under a hot sun is hard, but the humility it brings makes you proud. Then, with the water tower complete and a small donation made to keep it filled, we sit beside a campfire, under a starry sky. Tomorrow we travel to Phnom Penh to see more of this country’s disturbing past. Tonight, we listen to our spirit guide weave stories old and new. After, as we make our way back to the camp, Han spies a scorpion. Playfully, he reaches out, spinning it by the tail. I leave him playing there; Han, dancing with a scorpion in a minefield- beaming his Cambodian smile.

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