THE DESTINATION
I was nineteen and brimming with wanderlust. I had just finished my first year of University, and found the major my family had pressed me to study to have a soporific effect on me. I was exhausted of routine, desperately seeking something new.
I couldn’t find work the entire first month of fall quarter, so my friend Emily, who was doing registration work for student missions, set me up with a job, working front desk at her office. There, I answered phones and returned e-mails and scheduled meetings, in an office specializing in conducting students with opportunities to travel, study, and work abroad.
I was restless and a dreamer and strived to be unconventional, which is why, as I perused the website of job opportunities, I chose Cambodia. The call was in Phnom Penh, the capital city in Cambodia. And while it was the biggest city in the country, the population at the time was just over 2 million people.
Less than 30 years prior, a horrific genocide had taken place under the regime of Pol Pot, leaving the country in shambles, keeping it still in its present day condition of developing and third world. My grandparents had taped me a program that aired on the travel channel about the Killing Fields, what looked like thousands of skulls piled upon one another in disarray, stacked in a small wooden building, with glass windows and a high ceiling. An open field surrounded the building, which held shallow pits with wooden signs pounded into the ground, standing upright beside them. These signs provided simplistic explanations of each site, explaining numbers of deaths and bodies thrown into these pits and buried under the rule of the Khmer Rouge (KR).
I had read in history books about the terror of Pol Pot and his philosophies. He, not unlike Hitler, was passionate about recreating, what he perceived, to be a wonderful new reality and community for his country. He believed in the simplicity of Agrarianism, which stressed the viewpoint of a rural lifestyle. And was inspired by Mao Zedong, who started the cultural revolution of Communism in China. “A sheet of blank paper carries no burden,” Mao wrote, “And the most beautiful characters can be written on it, the most beautiful pictures painted.” Therefore, anyone of education or influence or opinion was sent to the slaughter. So when the country was finally freed from the KR bonds, they were forced to rebuild upon the grounds of the poor and illiterate.
I signed up for a 10 month commitment at a private English school on the outskirts of the city, in a district called Toul Kork. We provided classes from kindergarten to high school in makeshift classrooms, walls made from woven bamboo, with palm tree roofs. The climate was tropical and humid, making fruit and vegetables and rice easy to grow. But the classrooms only allowed for a single ceiling fan, which blew around the children’s papers when they tried write. So as I result, we sat in our plastic desks and chairs, soused in our own sweat.
The flight was just under 20 hours, and the excitement of travel and the confusion of jet lag made for wonderful distractions of the reality of my commitment. I arrived late morning, and hadn’t slept for what felt like days.
A middle-aged couple met us at the airport, and brought us to our apartment, where three of us were to live in a single bedroom in the steeple of a church, bunk beds stacked three-high, connected with a ladder made of steel.
After we had dropped off our belongings, they showed us around the city, bringing us to several wet marketplaces, restaurants, and shops, getting to each place, riding on the back of motorbikes, sitting side-saddle (to spread your legs was considered unlady-like in this conservative culture), the summery wind blowing through our hair.
The city of Phnom Penh was poor and destitute and dirty. It was surreal and compelling, and aesthetically, nothing special. Yet laughter and misery and life inhabited this dark and dusty place, where love and hate boiled, baked, and fried on every street corner from every street vender in the city, where love and hate breathed the same air.
We unpacked our things and went to bed just after the sun had gone down. We were exhausted and overwhelmed from our travels and the novelty of our soon-to-be lifestyle.
At 4 a.m., I awoke, to the heavy breathing of my roommates above and below me in their bunks, still fast asleep. I went outside on the balcony and looked up at the stars. Where was I, and why had I done this? I asked myself.
It was raining, but still warm, and I placed my hands inside the pockets of my brand-less track jacket, standing alone in the darkness. There were dim lights on top of the gate guarding the house next door, which reflected in the mucky puddles in the street. The continual beating of the rain created movement in the water, causing the light to dance across its surface like a kaleidoscope. And something so ugly and foul, like the streets of Cambodia became strangely and enchantingly beautiful.
I read a poem in my Literature class in High School, with an author and name I couldn’t remember, but was about a man who felt his bones detach from his body and float haphazardly in his body. And this is how I felt : out of place and sorts. Just realizing that I wouldn’t be home, to the company of my family and friends in a very long time. At 4 a.m., the country was slumbering, and everyone I cared about felt hopelessly distant. And I wept, in silence, and in my lonesome, until the sun came up.
THE JOB
The next week didn’t prove to be any easier. I was assigned to teach the first grade, and I started work in my classroom, cobwebs in the corners of the room, rats and lizards in the drawers of my creaky steel desk. I was ordered to make lesson plans for the year, yet I didn’t receive any books or curriculum until the second week of my teaching.
I was handed an attendance sheet and a clipboard, with the names of my 30 students, ranging from ages 6 - 11, most of which I could not pronounce. First names like Panharangsey, and Chhoun and Veasna, that were actually pronounced Pahn-huh-rong-say, and Chew-uhn and Vee-us-snah, in tones far more guttural than I was used to speaking in. These children lined up in a row by height by the flagpole, my first day, staring me wide-eyed in the face. I tried my best not to butcher their names, but as I read them, I was sure that I had. But they were merciful and kind, unjudging children on my first day of work.
Their first moment of shyness soon wore off, and in the classroom, they held the energy of any young child their age, yet maybe less disciplined. They sang songs, laughed, played games together, danced in the isles of the desks, and jumped out the windows.
I loved them, but I was inexperienced. I counted, hit the white board with rulers, and shouted until I lost my voice. I learned to be harsh and unmerciful. But they loved me regardless.
Every 50 minutes, we had a 10 minute break between switching subjects, and I would switch on the stereo, making various mixes of songs from my computer. We would dance together, and the children would fight over who could sit in my lap, or who I would eat lunch with that day. After school had ended, some students would save the money their parents would give them to purchase a morning snack, and instead would pay a motorbike taxi to bring them to my apartment, only a few blocks away from the school.
There, I would let them color and draw pictures on my tile floor, read them stories, fold them origami, or cut them animals and flowers from construction paper. And they were ecstatic to have my affection and undivided attention, or any adults for that matter.
Every day, things got just a little bit easier, and started to make a little more sense. And I realized, that I had done it. I wasn’t just a 19 year old kid anymore, uncertain of friends and boyfriends and this quarter’s grades. To these kids I was Teacher, the epitome of knowledge and discipline and growth. I worked hard, was self-sufficient, and happy for my responsibilities. And for the first time, I realized, I was exactly who I wanted to be.
