Hello,
I arrived in Siem Reap in the early evening. Later that night I went to walk around the streets where I previously strolled and wrote about. I was excited to meet up with some of the kids I knew from before. When I got to that location, I quickly noticed that all the street kids were gone.
I asked a driver about them. He told me that tourists were complaining about people begging on the streets, so the government introduced a new law forbidding any begging in certain areas of the city. When children continued to beg, they were thrown in jail. When the children returned, they were often put in trucks and taken to the country side.
I actually miss the kids. Perhaps, some tourists should have taken the time to say hello to them. I wonder how they make money to eat now?
Love Gerry
Hello,
I recognize some of the children on the dump. This visit, I saw a girl that I met before on my last visit. It struck me really hard this day, because I realized that she was still living there months and months after I left. And, she will still be there on my next trip, if no one helps her out. It’s unreal that some children have to live this way.
Love Gerry
Hello,
I had an interesting thought during my travels. I was having something to eat and talking about the kids. I feel that I know many of them very well now. In our discussion, the person asked me if they could all speak English. And, I told him that the older children spoke well and the younger children were just learning. He asked “so, how do you know these younger kids?”
The next day I actually paid closer attention to the amount of English some of the younger children spoke. It was very very little. And yet, the amazing part is that I could tell you many things about these children, including lots about their personality traits. Yet, I couldn’t talk to them.
I read in a book once about the “theory of thin slices”. The theory suggested that if you pay attention and trust your intuition, you can know a person in only a few minutes. It suggested that many people take years to try to know someone and make decisions about things like marriage. Well, the theory would suggest that intuition is more important than time.
So, I can’t talk with many of the children. Yet, I could talk about each of them for hours. You often only need to take a thin slice to know the rest of the cake.
Love Gerry
Hello,
During my previous visits, I had met a young girl selling books on the street. I remembered this girl especially, because I never bought anything from her and told her that I wouldn’t buy her books, but we could be friends. She never tried to sell anything to me and stopped all the other kids when they bugged me for money. Anyway, I was walking down the street on this day and this same girl ran up to me said “Hello Gerry. How are you?” She remembered my name after all this time away. Soklin remembered my name. And, she has never again asked me to buy another book. We sometimes sit at a table and play the game “Connect Four”. She beats me every time.
Two months after I left Cambodia, I received a phone call from an Internet shop. Soklin went to every place where I hung out to ask if they knew me. She found my friends at the Frog and Parrot and got my phone number from one of them. She phoned me from an Internet phone to tell me that she was still going to school and that she wanted to know when I would come back to play “connect four” with her again. I got to know Soklin from a simple “hello”. And, her simple “hello” back to me after returning to Cambodia and on the phone is most special.
Love Gerry
