Human Rights Day

In December I got to spend my birthday at a Women Peacemakers Human Rights Day rally in Kompong Cham province. I even had the chance to give a small speech on MCC's behalf, which was nerve-wracking & fun. It was a great birthday trip involving a typically confusing route & the requisite wall of speakers blaring random music (i wanna make love, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah) & a ride in a Toyoto Corolla with five people + Daniel & I + nearly 100 helium filled balloons with the windows shut (for air conditioning!) + the driver's face probably 6 inches from the windshield due to all the balloons. We concluded it was probably one of our safer car rides, given all the balloons cushioning us in every direction!

We felt really privileged to be part of such a great event, among such energetic people gathering to celebrate human rights & to promote peace.

peace + biking = peacebiking

Our good friend Levi was lucky enough to be visiting Cambodia on the International Day of Peace. So we joined the "peacebiking" event that Women Peacemakers (the local NGO I work with) helped organize in Phnom Penh. Together with nearly 300 people we cycled through the city & joined a Buddhist, Muslim, & Christian prayer celebration for peace.

Since we were among the very few foreigners attending the event, several people put video cameras right in our faces while we trying to sit & watch the prayer celebration. It was difficult not to laugh, but we tried to remain calm & smile our gentlest, most peaceful smiles.

[levi got to be on tv!]

[last two photos :AP/Heng Sinith]

spectacle

a few weeks ago i (amanda) travelled to kompong cham province with a small organization i work with here called women peacemakers.

the organization provides training in rural cambodia about women's right, domestic violence issues, peacebuilding & conflict mediation skills. cambodia has only recently emerged from decades of brutal & traumatizing civil war so education about peaceful alternatives to mediating conflict are so vital to the country's development.

the work of women peacemakers is inspiring. we traveled five hours by bus from phnom penh to a regional town with a guesthouse & a market.

[can you spot the pig head?]

& early every morning we drove an hour & a half

through miles & miles of rice fields

until we reached the primiary school in the isolated community where the training was held.

the two young women who led the workshop are strong & articulate & i was so impressed with their dedication to their work.

the workshop participants were gentle & kind & tried very patiently to understand my heavily accented khmer.

however, the entire time i attended the training i was an utter spectacle.

[kids gathering to peek in at me during the training]

with my limited khmer, i was able to pick up that the participants were constantly narrating my actions to each other. "she is sitting down". "she is eating fruit". "she is writing with her left hand". & then discussions about my appearance. "her skin is so white". "her shirt is not khmer style" "she looks like angelina" (who people like here because she adopted a cambodian child, somehow skirting the US ban on adoptions from cambodia due to child trafficking issues) .

it was endearing & unnerving all at the same time & provides a lot of food for thought on the arbitrary nature of cultural standards of power & beauty. behind the admiration, do the older participants ever think about my country's devastating bombings of their land & their people? or do they only see the media's idealization of all things western & young?

& the children.

in phnom penh, the kids i see on my street love to run out & yell "HELLO" when we pass by. the kids in this village just seemed totally stunned by my presence.

[when i came out of the bathroom on the first day, i was greeted with a crowd of stares]

they didn't yell greetings, because i think they had actually just never seen a foreigner before. (babies cried!)

but their fascination was tender & once they realised i spoke khmer at a child's level, curiosity got the best of them & they followed me around for days.

their bright smiles were the highlight of my trip, but their reality is much darker than i think i can ever really understand. the widespread poverty in their region means that they are very vulnerable to exploitation & abuse.

[please pray for these sweet children]

[it looks oddly hip, but many of the children have blond streaks in their hair because of a nutrient deficiency & malnutrition]

[i posted this little one-shoed guy in my last post, but i haven't been able to get him out of my mind. the villagers told me that his mother had to go to malaysia to get work (a lot of cambodians are migrant workers in malaysia, thailand, and singapore) & so he does not get proper care]