If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itThe world is my Cricket. Let’s...
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If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itHold onto your hat, baby, we makin’...
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Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itLittle bit of LOVE comin’ your way. Me and My Mirror is back in Cambodia on December 15 along with ‘The Wellcome Trust’ – a welcome...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itBlack pepper, Kampot pepper corns from the South of Cambodia, the kind you grind into your Chicken Noodle Soup. Kampot pepper turns your head around and makes you realize that, though all pepper is created equal, some peppercorns are more equal than others and destined to rock and roll. I buy its distilled essence and burn it like incense. Beats patchouli I’ll say that. I burn it nightly now cuz it puts me in a mind to go back. And so I am. Departure December 14 on an airline I can’t pronounce with just one stopover in a city I’ve never heard of which 4 million souls likely call home and whip out, every couple weeks, soccer jerseys and scarves and noise-makers to rile the arch rivals 10 miles away and 3.5 million strong. The Kingdom of Cambodia kind of (of all the countries in the region) spares you that though, which is one of the chief reasons I Love it. Even Phnom Penh goes slow; it’s chaos, but slow chaos – more like an inexpert promenade; a hot glacier that groans like 10,000 scooters running out of gas and tooting horns with a loose wire. The Department of Tourism calls it (justifiably) ‘The Kingdom of Wonder’ and some of us, lovingly and maybe at times of despair, also label it ‘The Kingdom of Blunder’. And blunder it does. A million things make Cambodia wonderful (and I’ve never heard one single person who has travelled there – really – gripe), but first and last it always boils down to the peeps. And they are fine. Their history, though, is indescribably tragic (and for some history is now) and I feel it’s their palm-like strength in surviving this that provides the incandescence to their warmth. I think of the Italians, whose history is a landmine of tragedy, and I think there is a parallel here: Italians are famously warm, engaging, spontaneous, deeply family oriented and never far from a long stare into the distance. You might say the same of our Cambodian friends and might also suggest that, at least in part, living in the moment is a way of...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itDespite the landgrabs and resource poaching my Cambodian friends are moving ahead! Way fewer landmine causalties, for instance, WAY fewer. Way better healthcare too. Way less war, which means something too. A huge amount of super-dangerous ground has been successfully cleared by the dangerous and meritorious efforts of the various international and home-grown mine clearing orgs. Injuries due to any kind of UXO is drastically lowered, also, it must be enforced, due to efforts by many parties to educate villagers on what and what not to do when they encounter explosive devices. Shit is still out there and, so, shit still happens… so give a warm welcome to the ‘Hero Rat’. CMAC (the Cambodian Mine Action Center) has been working with a Belgian NGO training African Giant Pouched Rats at the subtle task of demining. We all know how smart they are and they are ‘very readily trained to food reward’. I would somehow also rather blow a rat, say, than a nice Alsatian. 40 people died in Cambodia in 2012 due to landmine and other UXO explosions. A big hungry well-trained Giant Pouched Rat could have saved many of them. You Go! 64,202 people have been killed or maimed by landmines in Cambodia alone since the fall of the Khmer Rouge in ’79. Plenty of them are still kickin’ tho’ with a leg blown off. I’m going to go help them on December 14th . Just me and my...
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