Temple Monkey
I’ve got a few hours on most of you and seem to have skated across Friday the 13th with no misfortune. On Thursday the 12th I wasn’t so lucky. Well, to be truthful, bad luck had little enough to do with it, as is so often the case. I went to download videos from my fancy new HERO CAM into my computer only to discover that the whole time I was shooting the memory card was actually still in my laptop. I’m just getting to know this cool little GO PRO device and the brochure keeps telling me it’s ‘idiot proof’; obviously I was not among the sample group of idiots. It wasn’t too much that I missed: 2 afternoons of gamboling around two or three different temples with the headcam on. I was hopping and dashing and bouldering and skipping down stairs ostensibly showing how my fancy electronic prosthesis can navigate crazy terrain, but more than anything I was just showing off; so in the land of Karma, I guess I got some on me.
No matter, I’m gonna jot this down and go out and try it again – a little bit anyhow. I’ve been riding out to the Angkor Wat temple complex for 3 or 4 days now and, for the most part, just taking a little time off. All work and no play make Stevo crabbay. Though today I’ll go for the late afternoon light, as a rule I’ve been heading out plenty early; around 06h30, and as I get closer to the major temple complexes I laugh to see the roads becoming more and more congested with ratty little kids on giant step-through bicycles (the bikes here are, for the most part, Chinese-made and come in one size only: huge). The kids I call temple monkeys and it’s like they’re going to work, punching the clock on their way in to where they can lurk in the shade and hassle tourists. I can’t imagine they often succeed in shaking a nickel out of anyone, but it gives them something to do – they’re certainly not going to school.
Lots of kids are though, the government has spent a lot of money in recent years on schools and schooling and it shows. I’m told the system is more effective and disciplined than, for example, in Thailand, Lao or Vietnam; the neighboring countries.
The countryside around Siem Reap, as with most of Cambodia, is flat as pee on a plate. It’s lush and pretty and highly utilized and you’re never far from a cropping cow, a wallowing bullock, a man in muddy water casting a crayfish net or someone cooking confections on the side of the road. There’s water everywhere and you get the feeling that the water table itself is never more than inches beneath your feet. There are dogs everywhere too and, though a lot of them are in pretty gnarly condition, Cambodians clearly love their dogs and not, I’m virtually certain, in the culinary sense. I mean you don’t canoodle with your dog and scratch his ears when he’s headed for the stewpot; or maybe you do… . They’re Buddhists, of course, for the most part, so they won’t kill anything, except themselves, en masse, if History seizes them, so a lot of these domestic animals are free agents and fending for themselves. The dominant breed is a pit bull/corgi/Dalmatian/hyena/gecko cross and often comes without any hair at all from the withers back, giving them a distinctly leonine look. They never, ever give chase and rarely bark, which is both great and weird as I’ve ridden in plenty of countries as smoking hot as this where curbside curs like nothing more than scaring the shit out of you.
Actual monkeys aren’t much in evidence, here anyways, which is fine with me; I find them even fouler than fowl. Rats they got. Got rats. I prefer to consider them muskrats or somesuch. There’s plenty of water around and yer muskrat seems much less offensive.
The animal world is fleshed out by tourists of every conceivable shape, size and color. Lots of white folks from everywhere, I would say particularly Europe, but the overwhelming majority are Asian and I would guess Chinese; which speaks volumes about the ‘new world order’. Lots of NGO-types too; so there’s plenty for me to do. Many Cambodian NGOs are based here or at least have a branch here; they like to take donors out to the temples and anyhow Siem Reap is generally a much more placid and agreeable town than Phnom Penh.
I had a bit of a fixation on finding Aki Ra’s landmine museum and relief center, though I understood that finding Aki Ra (usually pronounced like the Japanese ‘Akira’) himself there unlikely. He himself seems to harbour a fixation on finding and defusing landmines (still crazy after all these years) and is in the field at least 25 days/month. I do know where he’s at now and might just go off and track him down – or just wait til the 29th when he’s showing a film and holding an open house at the facility I visited. I’d like to meet him as much as I do just because he seems to do everything right; his slogan is simply: ‘I want to make my country safe for my people’, which sounds pretty good to me. He’s authentic and seems incorruptible (this in a land where even de-mining is riven with fraud, theft and corruption). The government doesn’t like him and neither do the fatcat NGOs – he’s considered a Maverick and a throwback. He was a child soldier with the Khmer Rouge (the baddest of the bad guys) and, while still a child, repented to such a degree that he has made this his life’s work. He started de-mining on his own – famously – using a Leatherman tied to a stick.
But, and here’s where I hope to come in, he’s all about the people too, what they now call ‘Victim Assistance’, so that where he encounters amputees and orphans and, damn, amputee orphans, he endeavours to care for them and get them back on their ‘feet’. Now, at his relief center there are over 30 orphans most of whom are somehow debilitated. The complex is like a microcosm of a prosperous caring village and contains rehab facilities, a school, temple, some food production, clean pure water and hygienic toilet blocks, etc. Now they have both mirrors and mirror therapy in their toolbox and I can feel proud of that and hope to stay connected and helpful to such a meritorious undertaking.
Not far down the road (and within 7 or 8 kilometers of the small elegant temple of ‘Bantey Srei’ there is also a small woodcarving woodshop run by amputees. I wheeled in there with my last two mirrors and was thrilled to find that 4 out of 5 of them suffered from phantom pain. I hung around and gave them a demo and left them the last of my precious payload. I wanted to buy a carving or two too and, on an inspiration, the boss, who spoke English pretty well, showed me a ‘handicap Gesu’ – Christ on the crucifix with a BK amputation. I laughed my head off and bought it (I started at 10 bucks and he at 5) and asked him where he got the idea. He said, ‘Oh, that was easy, Gesu himself showed me.’ (the shop is funded in part by a Catholic priest who lives over in Battambang). He then took me into the back to see a 4 foot-high sculpture of Madonna holding the baby Jesus and little baby’s left arm is broken off (I think it’s above-the-elbow). He said he had worked weeks on it and was almost finished – just the last coat of varnish to go – and one of his staff bumped it over and broke poor baby’s arm off. Nice inspiration, classic delivery.
I had a great meeting with the local Director of ‘Angkor Association for the Disabled’, Chan Savorn, whose English is also quite strong. He has over 260 handicapped members – most of whom are amputees, and we are arranging a mirror jamboree later in January. He has also introduced me to his colleague in Phnom Penh who is the director down there and the founder of the society. He himself is a dbl AK amp (a landmine victim) and is heroically invested in mobilizing and educating amps, getting them off begging on the streets and, now, living without Phantom Pain. I’ll be seeing him on Thursday back in Phnom Penh. Poco a poco si lleva larga.
Tomorrow it’s back to Phnom Penh for an interview with Asia Life Magazine, another with a woman from TED in hopes of securing a speaking engagement for their TEDXPHNOMPENH event and then my movie premier at the German – Cambodian Cultural Center, which promises to be a promising night.
I’m trying to find a balance in my efforts between promoting my ass and getting my ass out there in front of amps and caregivers and so far I feel I’m doing an OK job. I’m also trying to find a balance between going out there on my own and enjoining in the efforts of bigger established orgs, and that’s maybe a little harder to do, but it’s worth it in order to reach as many people as humanly possible… .
I’m maybe a little run-down too; hotel life is bit wearisome. I’ve noticed, too, that for the first time in my new life (it’s been 7 ½ years now) I’ve started to dream as an amp. To be expected, of course, though frankly I’d rather not. It’s prolly a function of not just these elapsed years but all the recent face time with amputees and amputism. Happily, bullocks now nuzzle the edges of my dreams too, and beautiful brown children ride, laughing, through them on giant squeaking mint green bicycles.
