I thought I might spend a few moments at the dashboard of the acbm Cambodia blogsite since I've been in Cambodge for a couple of weeks.
It's been nice to be reunited with my old friends 'Marble boy' and the Phnom Penh wide Tuktuk-moto emotional warfare team. Auntie and Landlady are their usual smiling but communication elusive selves, despite their wonder and fear at all this rental style activity happening outside their walls. Theara zooms in and out offering the occaisonal answer to a simple question and Loy is her usual friendly self, despite being prefect at her university (a swathe of extra student-lecturer interface work), working for us and then being a normal twenty-something girl. She maintains an amzingly good humour, methinks. We have a new addition to the family. Upstairs lives the one known as 'frenchie'. Frenchie is a rich young French (O, how versatile is our naming system!) fellow studying now and then, but mostly staying out till all hours of the morning with his bevy of various friends. I have never spoken with him myself, but his black car is always parked downstairs sometime in the wee hours.
Bro Daniel arrives this morning to join the team and Jamie, our current Brisbane addition will give him the time honoured welcome at the airport. Don and Una seem to be keeping everything under control and there is little to report other than traditional German sausages being added to the menu here at Wat Christadelphia. German sausages! Soon we'll be employing a bellhop.
I thought I'd regale you (if you're not already asleep) with my own observations of a beggarly moment down on the riverside yesterday as Nirann and I were seeking to open a Bank account. There was a blind beggar with short cropped silver hair which clashed violently with his dark sunglasses. As he walked, he would take one step forward in a measured move almost like a khmer dancer. His foot would come down with the toes turned out firmly and deliberately. But it was not this in itself that attracted my attention so keenly. The old man was led by a little girl of about 5 or 6 in a dirty green dress. Her little legs were almost trembling with desire to run forward, but she could only move forward step by step with the man's hand on her shoulder. Each step he took, she would burst forward in preperation for his next. Her hands and her eyes darting anywhere and everywhere as she touched anything within reach. The menues on the restaurant tables or the brouchures in stall windows were all fair game for this little girl who would pick up the object turn it over, cast it aside, look for something new and then jump forward again to open up a new world of possibilities.
I wondered to myself whether this little girl would learn anything from being forced to spend a little longer on everything nearby. Rather than shooting along the street, she was taking in the world, bit by bit. I was fascinated by the thought that she would be another 'Sherlock Holmes' able to observe everything in the room with super-keen eyes. Or perhaps she would be be too consumed with her desire to run free that when she was older, nothing would stop her from traveling everywhere and anywhere.
My thoughts turned quickly to the symbols. The old, catious and burnt. Patiently and carefully assessing the danger and moving forward slowly, while youth ached to be free and unfetered, experience all the world had to offer. Was it as simple as the old holding back the young? Was it wisdom tempering enthusiasm or wisdom, finally knowing it's own blindness relying on the strength of youth thinking it had sight was it just youth aching to be free of constraint.
I would have taken a picture, because it was an image worthy of recording. Sadly my sensibilities of photographing beggars gave me pause and the moment was lost.
There is only 3 more days left before I return my beloved family. Maybe a baptism, some more dorm work and some more sleep await me before then, so I sign off again!
God's blessings on the work here.
It's been nice to be reunited with my old friends 'Marble boy' and the Phnom Penh wide Tuktuk-moto emotional warfare team. Auntie and Landlady are their usual smiling but communication elusive selves, despite their wonder and fear at all this rental style activity happening outside their walls. Theara zooms in and out offering the occaisonal answer to a simple question and Loy is her usual friendly self, despite being prefect at her university (a swathe of extra student-lecturer interface work), working for us and then being a normal twenty-something girl. She maintains an amzingly good humour, methinks. We have a new addition to the family. Upstairs lives the one known as 'frenchie'. Frenchie is a rich young French (O, how versatile is our naming system!) fellow studying now and then, but mostly staying out till all hours of the morning with his bevy of various friends. I have never spoken with him myself, but his black car is always parked downstairs sometime in the wee hours.
Bro Daniel arrives this morning to join the team and Jamie, our current Brisbane addition will give him the time honoured welcome at the airport. Don and Una seem to be keeping everything under control and there is little to report other than traditional German sausages being added to the menu here at Wat Christadelphia. German sausages! Soon we'll be employing a bellhop.
I thought I'd regale you (if you're not already asleep) with my own observations of a beggarly moment down on the riverside yesterday as Nirann and I were seeking to open a Bank account. There was a blind beggar with short cropped silver hair which clashed violently with his dark sunglasses. As he walked, he would take one step forward in a measured move almost like a khmer dancer. His foot would come down with the toes turned out firmly and deliberately. But it was not this in itself that attracted my attention so keenly. The old man was led by a little girl of about 5 or 6 in a dirty green dress. Her little legs were almost trembling with desire to run forward, but she could only move forward step by step with the man's hand on her shoulder. Each step he took, she would burst forward in preperation for his next. Her hands and her eyes darting anywhere and everywhere as she touched anything within reach. The menues on the restaurant tables or the brouchures in stall windows were all fair game for this little girl who would pick up the object turn it over, cast it aside, look for something new and then jump forward again to open up a new world of possibilities.
I wondered to myself whether this little girl would learn anything from being forced to spend a little longer on everything nearby. Rather than shooting along the street, she was taking in the world, bit by bit. I was fascinated by the thought that she would be another 'Sherlock Holmes' able to observe everything in the room with super-keen eyes. Or perhaps she would be be too consumed with her desire to run free that when she was older, nothing would stop her from traveling everywhere and anywhere.
My thoughts turned quickly to the symbols. The old, catious and burnt. Patiently and carefully assessing the danger and moving forward slowly, while youth ached to be free and unfetered, experience all the world had to offer. Was it as simple as the old holding back the young? Was it wisdom tempering enthusiasm or wisdom, finally knowing it's own blindness relying on the strength of youth thinking it had sight was it just youth aching to be free of constraint.
I would have taken a picture, because it was an image worthy of recording. Sadly my sensibilities of photographing beggars gave me pause and the moment was lost.
There is only 3 more days left before I return my beloved family. Maybe a baptism, some more dorm work and some more sleep await me before then, so I sign off again!
God's blessings on the work here.
Comments