Who...let...the...dogs...out?
My whole life I've been caring. I was that little girl chasing after every stray or loose dog in a desperate attempt to find its master. Sometimes I was successful in my dog rescue mission (especially if the dog lived in the house across the street) and other times I was called back into the house by my (smart) parents. I laugh now, picturing my little girl self if she were time-machined to Cambodia today and saw all of the stray dogs playing chicken with speeding cars. (Actually, most likely they are not stray, just loose dogs because dogs are practically nomadic creatures here. They are not man's best friend, they are home alarm systems or...a special meal.) Little girl Laura would instantly be chasing one mangey dog after the next and then quickly be shipped to the nearest hospital to get her rabies shot and a wound stitched up. And then I wonder “ would little girl Laura learn her lesson after that?” I think once a bleeding heart, forever a bleeding heart no matter how many times that heart is broken.
This bleeding heart has cynical streaks, to say the least but I still care. I care a lot. I wouldn't be a Peace Corps volunteer if I didn't care. I wouldn't want to pursue social work as a career if I didn't care. But I have been challenged. People challenge me. Cambodia challenges me. Cambodia breaks my heart.
The other day, I set off on my regular run through the neighborhood. Running on the shoulder of National Road 3 until I could sneak off to my favorite dirt road where the likelihood of getting pummeled by a motorbike or speeding van filled with 40 passengers was significantly decreased. But not even 1 kilometer into the run I was jolted out of my “running zone” in which I blare my music enough to drown out the screaming “Hellos” and general buzz of village life in rural-ish Cambodia. Across the street, on the opposite shoulder from me was a woman curled up in the fetal position and a bike tossed on its side. Even more jarring was that people were casually biking and driving past this woman without even batting an eye. Schools girls continued giggling and gossiping cheerfully as they rode past her like she was invisible, part of the scenery of any ol' sunsetting day.
take a break and...look at the flowers.
The little girl Laura that wants to save everyone woke up, stopped running, and turned off her music. I don't like disturbances in my workouts but this was not something I could ignore. Why wasn't anyone stopping to help her? I crossed the street and realized who this particular woman was. She had occasionally yelled drunken nonsense at me during previous runs through the village. And not surprisingly, she was drunk again, curled up in a ball on the dirt with eyes wide open but unfocused.
I was slightly wary about approaching her because I don't know what this woman is capable of and had no doubt of her probable impulsivity. Spending three years around people with brain injuries, brain injuries that often led to a lack of impulse control, I've developed a sensitivity to what that looks like. What some people look like when they are on the verge of exploding. I also learned how to remain calm in moments of crisis (or give the impression of calm while inside adrenaline surged through every vein, resulting in what feels like mass destruction in all the important valves of my body.)
Regardless of the potential risk, I approached her, gently spoke to her, asked her if she was okay. She reacted immediately which I took as a good (?) sign. She mumbled some things that I couldn't understand and I asked her where her house was. I said we'd walk to her house together and I helped her up. She could barely stand on her own. She stood up and grabbed me, put her arms around me tightly. Was this a hug? This was the closest a Khmer person had ever been to me, the closest thing to a full on bear hug I'd ever received in this country. And then I thought “wow, this lady is strong.” And then I said it out loud. “Boy, you sure are strong.” Oh god. I'm not panicking at all...
I tried to convince her that we'd walk to her house together. And I thought to myself “Laura, really? You know that if you commit to this, you will be walking or more likely carrying her the 500 meters or so to her house for the next hour. Not to mention her heavy city bike would be carried along with us. This does not seem sensible.” To forfeit my exercise for the day was not something cynical and selfish Laura wanted to do. But a force stronger and more mystifying than cynical and selfish Laura would keep me from acting on my good deed for the day (or let's say good deed of the month.) This woman was unwilling to listen or cooperate with me. After she finished tightly embracing me, she stood back, spat and fell to the ground. Her shoes were off and thrown about so I decided, if anything, we should get her shoes on because being barefooted in Cambodia is frowned upon unless you are a pants-less baby boy.
I helped her up again and placed her shoes in front of her so she could easily slide her feet in. She fell again. She had a thorn in her foot, which she was very upset about but I pulled it out within a second and the shoes were slipped on. Success! We did it! While I struggle to get her up again, one of my favorite taxi drivers rolls by and is telling me to stop what I'm doing. And then I notice the family across the street is watching me with concerned faces and gesturing with their hands (a very Khmer gesture that I've really taken to in which both hands are raised up and twist like they're screwing in two lightbulbs side by side – this gesture magically means “I don't want to have anything to do with it.”) to leave her alone.
The woman, seemingly unwilling and bullheaded, slurred something incoherent to me and I felt helpless. I decided to cross the street again and talk to the concerned family. I've exchanged friendly smiles with each member of this family many times and I have always appreciated their unobtrusiveness, the politeness they've demonstrated to me. The grandfather, sweet man that he is, spoke slowly in English that I should carry on with my run. He grabbed my hands in his and said sincerely “hotpran hotpran hotpran hotpran” (“exercise exercise exercise exercise”) as he mimicked the way arms move when they run, with our hands held tightly together. I told them I was afraid a car would hit her or that she would fall again. I asked if she had family that could take care of her. The grandfather, grandmother, and their grand-daughter collectively told me to just go and run, and that I shouldn't worry about her.
They were more concerned about me than this woman that clearly needed help. And as they were telling me to go and run, my eyes welled up uncontrollably. I turned around at that moment and turned my music back on. Okay. Just keep running. Just keep running. Act like you aren't worried about that woman. She'll be fine. She can barely hold herself up and just tried getting back on her bike and fell again, but she'll be fine. She'll make it home, no problem. Running while on the verge of crying is a strange sensation but I knew it was what I needed to do in order to shake off the shock and cruel feeling I felt all over.
I ran an extra 10 minutes just to get it out of my system. Running gave me time to sort through what had just happened. To understand why it happened. I can only contemplate and hypothesize why from what I know about Cambodia and Khmer culture. One thing I remind myself when I am upset or confused about the way things work here is that Cambodia is still healing from a tumultuous past. Not only that but Cambodia is still experiencing injustices and corruption that render the people powerless.
My tutor once told me that if there is a car accident, most people do not want to help because they are afraid of being blamed later. Car accidents, all over the world as far as I know, generate crowds – gawkers, rubberneckers – because everyone has a little bit of darkness and morbidity tucked into the folds of their brain. I think Cambodia invented rubberneckers because watching car accidents is like a watching a sports event. Everyone stops what they're doing to have a look at the mess. “What? A crowd? Let's go and see what happened then stand uselessly until someone else decides to help.”
Scaredy kitten.
But why are so many people afraid to help? Afraid they'll be blamed? That mentality might stem back to when the Khmer Rouge was in control. It was safer to stay silent. Getting involved in any trouble could get you killed. So many people kept their mouths shut and watched others disappear, even their loved ones.
Another factor could be the under analyzed and even ignored presence of mental illness – which is likely another side effect of the damage the Khmer Rouge had on the country. * One of my first days at the health center back in 2012, the health center director went through record books with me and was proud to say no one sought treatment for mental illness at their health center. Which he believed to be because there was NO mental illness present in our commune of over 15,000 people in 16 different villages. This was difficult for me to swallow considering my own history and also, my minimal knowledge about countries recovering from genocide.
(* Disclaimer: I am only postulating here. I don't claim to know the reason for anything that happens in a country I've only lived in for a year and a half. It could simply be that it is a developing country and these things take time.)
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) If Cambodia were anything like America – PTSD diagnoses would be handed out like pieces of Pez candy. But depression or even temporary sadnesses are very hush-hush here and usually not confronted directly. (Generally just not discussed.) I've been challenged with this approach (or lack thereof) to emotions because I am very honest about my issues and want people to know about it because it makes me who I am. Unfortunately, because the topic of depression is avoided, I end up putting on fronts and pretending I'm happy when I'm not – very often, and it's mentally exhausting. So when I think about people in my community, people that survived the Khmer Rouge, children that are being raised by survivors of the Khmer Rouge, I get worried. I can't even imagine what kind of baggage is building up in the brains of some people here. The baggage could very well be getting passed on from one generation to the next, like a family heirloom.
Alcoholism. Is there an elephant in the room? To some people, drinking is a game here. A competition. Some people say “If you don't drink to get drunk, why drink at all?” meaning get shit-faced or go home. So when I saw that woman on the side of the road, when I realized who she was, I was pained by the reality of her situation and the people avoiding her. They write her off, saying she is crazy, a drunkard. And that's that. She is a hopeless case so she is not worth your time, Laura. Keep running. And again, it's interesting that the health center director, my sort-of boss, was so proud to claim zero mental illness in our community and yet the community has “crazy” people.
Not crazy, just Kids in the hood.
I can think of four people that are deemed “crazy” and each “crazy” person is treated differently depending on their state of consciousness. My favorite “crazy” person (I know, I know...it's not good to encourage the label of “crazy” and then to have a favorite “crazy” person is even worse. But I am only human. I have my faults) is a gentleman that I've deemed a Cambodian hipster because he usually bikes (very quickly, actually) around town with a beer in hand, yelling judgments at people. My first encounter with him he was wearing army fatigues, gold spray-painted-untied-army boots, held a dead snake in one hand and said to me “Welcome to America!” He and I have become misfit friends because he speaks better English than a majority of any people that attempt to speak English in my village. And they call him the crazy one. He lived in Texas for 20 years and raised a family there only to divorce and move back to Cambodia. He then disappeared to Russia for five years, and rumor has it, returned fluent in Russian and “crazy.” He is honest and that is what I like about him. He came to the health center once and I asked him how he was, he said he was fine and when I said I was also fine (he didn't ask me) he shot back “I don't care!” I had to laugh. He also remarked once that I was not afraid of him which I think he appreciates.
Not crazy, just charring a snake.
What I am most puzzled by is the amount of tolerance people have for him. One reason is possibly because he is related to very important (read: rich) people in the community (possibly even my host dad somehow. It's really hard to tell who's actually blood-related in Cambodia. We're all related when you really think about it, right? We're all related SOMEHOW. Anyway. Tangent.) Another reason he is tolerated is because he is fairly conscious of his “craziness” and is fairly amusing. People give him beers at parties and just let him ramble, transitioning smoothly from Khmer to English and back again, and, what many people probably don't know, criticizes Cambodia frequently in his ramblings.
Another “crazy” person is a man that walks up and down the national road, back and forth from his small home to the center of town, sometimes barefooted, sometimes smoking a cigarette, sometimes picking up trash and throwing it down again. He wears the same thing everyday, khakis and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He once stopped in front of the health center, stood tall, saluted us, and continued walking. I once ran past his small house and noticed that the yard was impeccably clean – then I saw him walking with a piece of trash to his fence, he threw the trash on his neighbors side of the fence where there laid a huge pile of trash. I have never witnessed him speak before and this is probably why people don't bother to acknowledge him in anyway.
Not crazy, just napping.
The other two “crazy” people are the woman that crashed her bike and a man that is likely suffering from severe alcoholism and PTSD and other symptoms that often go hand in hand with the diseases. What sets these two apart from the former “crazy” people in my community, is that they are not conscious (or don't seem as conscious) of their “craziness”, they are not “funny” when they drink, they are generally inebriated, angry, drooling, inconsolable, potentially violent, and therefore nuisances. They are nuisances that smear the reputation of such a flawless community. So ignore them, treat them like dogs or worse than dogs.
Regardless of the past, I still can't comprehend how humans can ever treat fellow humans like they are less than human; not worthy of full, happy and healthy lives. But this isn't something exclusive to Cambodia, it happens everywhere.
Sometimes I wonder what the world would look like if it only consisted of people that cared too much. And what is the purpose of having people in the world that don't care? I guess there needs to be a balance of good and evil? We can't all be chasing after stray dogs – nothing would ever get done. And we can't all be cold, selfish individuals because maybe we wouldn't even exist if we were?
the long road ahead of us.
The main takeaway from all this wondering and caring is that we as a worldwide community still have a long way to go. Cambodia has a lot to do before it can be the truly wondrous Kingdom it proudly claims to be. The stigma of mental illness still exists in America today regardless of how far we've come and how much we've learned in over half a century. So...perhaps I must give Cambodia a little grace. I alone can't make big differences without support from the community. Just as I realized I couldn't carry a heavily inebriated woman all by myself. Development takes years, decades, to make a significant dent. More people that care too much will continue to sympathize and fall in love with Cambodia and recognize its potential to be wondrous. But this recognition can't only come from the outside, Cambodia needs to recognize its own potential. As well as its faults. Progress can't be made if problems continue to be ignored. Avoiding a problem won't make it go away. And good old confrontation can sometimes trigger positive change and growth.
