Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Continued from Part 1...
There are also women at the beach carrying long poles over their shoulders, a cooler of squid balanced on one side, a tiny lit grill cooking the squid on the other. Many salespeople, whether six-year old boys or fifty-year old women, carry their tiny lobsters or spring rolls balanced atop their heads. There is a man on a motorbike who rides down the beach, close to the shoreline, a steamer of dumplings behind his seat. He is hard to buy from; I don’t know how or when he sells, he never stopped when I yelled to him.
And there were the naughty boys, about thirteen years old, who combed the beach with bracelets to sell, all the while eyeing the bags and personal items of tourists. The other Cambodians would warn us about these boys, telling us that they steal and signaling us to watch our belongings when the bad boys came near. Even though these bad kids were young, the other kids and even adults seemed scared of them. I can understand why; one boy walked right up to me, threw out a few American swear words and made slicing and stabbing motions with
his hands! The restaurant staff knew these kid’s stole tourist’s stuff, but did not tell the kids to leave when they were hanging around. Either they were scared of these boys too, believed everyone had to make a living somehow, or themselves received a cut. I think they were just scared.
Some salespeople were very serious and would depart immediately after you rejected their offers for the fifth time. The can-collecting kids and the kids selling bracelets or fruit would stay and play all day. At any given time, our beach chairs would be covered and surrounded with children. These kids were sent to work everyday, all day it seemed. But like normal kids, they just wanted to play. They wanted to cuddle with us, swim with us, do headstands for us, have us take their photos. After awhile of playing, the kids would suddenly grab their bags of cans or bracelets and run off to work.
It didn't escape us that the chance to play with kids at the beach, if you didn't bring your own, would never come up in the US. People would look at you very creepily if you tried to play with their
kids. If you don't bring your own in America, you're out of luck.
At the end of the day, the kids would get really sad and quiet if they hadn’t collected enough cans. One kid imparted to us that his mother would hit him. We ordered extra food to share with the kids and made them alternate spoonfuls. Sometimes there’d be ten of them gathered around a few plates. The restaurants sometimes fed them scraps but otherwise they were left to their own devices. Many times, we saw them run to eat tourists leftovers.
There were three brothers we fell in love with, about eight, ten and twelve who showed up to smile everyday, big smiles on their faces. We shared breakfast with them, lunch and planned to leave the beach, shower and have dinner later. At nine PM these kids were still at the beach, waiting for their parents to come and get them, and getting quiet and introspective. They were hungry. These poor kids. We ordered some dinner to share. Through a Cambodian friend, we verified that these kids did have homes and parents. They were just very, very poor and this is the best their
parents could do for them.
We took walks down the beach with the can-collecting kids, helping them look for cans but having fun together too. They were really quite bad at can-collecting, for being full-time can-collectors. We found a lot of cans they would have missed. I only glimpsed one of their parents during our stay. One kid yelled out “Father!” and another kid, without a good bye or a backwards glance, went sprinting to follow a scary-looking man. Cambodians really aren’t big on goodbyes anyway; one minute you’re talking, the next minute they’ve left. Sometimes we’d be playing with the kids, then they’d disappear and show up again six hours later. We stayed at the beach from 9 AM to 9 PM because the chairs were shaded and there was never a dull moment.
Continued in Part 3...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.842s; Tpl: 0.03s; cc: 9; qc: 58; dbt: 0.167s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
NomadAdrift
Raymond
again, amazing pictures.
kids always seem to possess a unique ability to connect with the moment.